REMEMBER the advert Guinness For Strength? Add Clive Langer’s mixing-desk muscle to The Invitation To The Voyage and now you have McGuinness For Strength too, five years on from eclectic Eugene’s 2007 debut, The Early Learnings.
Not since Langer (and co-producer Alan Winstanley) added the cream top to Elvis Costello’s Goodbye Cruel World in 1984 has he gone for a pop energy boost so forcibly, and on this occasion it suits the songs so much more. Domino would not be the first label that springs to mind for such a shameless commercial approach, and nor would Nik Kershaw be your first pick as a likely influence, but stranger things have happened – like Test cricket debutant James Taylor’s protective cycling helmet at Headingley last Saturday.
The fantastical, experimental McGuinness has fun, not only aping clinical Nik but borrowing from Henry Mancini on Shotgun and even slipping into Nineties’ Morrissey mode on the title track.
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