Gary Numan’s critical stock has been rising steadily over the last few years thanks to some nifty sampling of his work combined with a more general reappraisal of 80’s music, and we all now have an excuse to revel once again in the strobe-lit intensity of his music.
The press release for his latest album, Jagged, comes strewn with quotes from fans as diverse as Marilyn Manson, Beck and Afrika Bambaataa, belated praise for an artist who has often been lambasted by critics for refusing to play their game artistically, politically or commercially. ‘Jagged’ contains eleven tracks that writhe and pound along with the dark-pop feel that Numan has been developing in his latest albums – not as wiry and confrontational as his best remembered works, but brooding and hypnotic nevertheless. It’s synth heavy with bursts of growling guitar and the occasional string arrangement, and has a beauty to it reminiscent of Depeche Mode. There is something a little contained about the sound but it’s the structure of each track that makes this album feel a little samey after the first few minutes.
In fact – it seems to be written using a single blueprint, which goes something like this…
A soft hiss of effects that suggest darkness, bleed into the intro. Tattered ribbons of menacing sounds (industrial music’s shorthand for ‘Here Be Monsters’) crawl and scatter around the edges of the speakers before la Numan steps up and sings a verse or two in his fabulous, guttural howl of a voice, slithering up and down eastern styled scales. Next, the vocals are joined by some rabid drumming, the kind of twisted, metallic percussion that sounds like ‘Stomp!’ on a bad acid trip and we go on like this for another couple of verses. Then, before the first chorus there are a few moments of calm before we‘re hit by a torrent of synth and guitar and the white heat of Numan’s vocals, primal yet somehow mannered at the same time.
It’s a powerful way to create a song, but it’s also prey to the law of diminishing returns and so by the halfway point in the album there really are no surprises left. Also – the brutal, stabbing quality of a lot of Numan’s earlier work is softened here by glossy synth pads that float and muffle and cover the abrasive melodies with an unnecessary sheen.
Ironically therefore, ‘Jagged’ isn’t actually all that jagged. It’s polished and sensuous and dark, but it’s also formulaic, and musically, the type of thing that we hear more and more in horror films, cinema trailers, adverts and computer games.
Lyrically, the off the wall outbursts of ‘Cars’ gives way to the tamer, sixth form poetry of ‘Haunted’: “And I cannot be saved/Not by you/ Not by God/ I want to bleed”. And what we are left with is smooth electronica with a gothic bent.
Hearing the song structures repeated throughout the album is almost like watching someone trying to start a fire with a flint – it’s those entwined moments of expectation then disappointment again and again and again – although the flip side of this comes when occasionally a spark catches light as it does on the epic and glorious ‘In a Dark Place’ – where simple criticism surrenders in the face of sheer force and big, big choruses sweep away all before them.
And so, while the album is in no way cutting edge, it is still defiantly majestic and sees Numan once again choosing to wander through his own wilderness to the sound of eleven beetle-black songs.