SOUND OFF
NEW YORK—How’s your memory? Can you recall the ragged end of the ’70s, the apprehension anyone with brains felt at Reagan’s election, and the uncertainty inherent in the arrival of Orwell’s decade? The Sound do. Although many of their contemporaries have mutated into dance fodder—Joy Division as the increasingly homogenized New Order, the Cure most dramatically, and the Comsat Angels least sucessfully—the Sound have remained remarkably true to their sound and vision.
SOUND OFF
NEW YORK—How’s your memory?
Can you recall the ragged end of the ’70s, the apprehension anyone with brains felt at Reagan’s election, and the uncertainty inherent in the arrival of Orwell’s decade?
The Sound do. Although many of their contemporaries have mutated into dance fodder—Joy Division as the increasingly homogenized New Order, the Cure most dramatically, and the Comsat Angels least sucessfully—the Sound have remained remarkably true to their sound and vision.
Which, of course, is hardly the way to get ahead in a world where Huey Lewis is anything but a cartoon character. While their former peers tour America as icons, the Sound—when anyone bothers to even notice them—are portrayed as dour and humorless partypoopers. It’s a characterization that singer-guitarist Adrian Borland finds particularly irksome.
“I think we really get the wrong press,” he stated, “all this grim business stuff—it’s not accurate. When it comes right down to it, we play quiet songs and loud songs, and songs that are like leading up from one to the other. And that’s exhilarating! All the reviews make it sound like we’re building walls around the stage.”