Don't set fire to Haircut One Hundred's Pelican West album

Time does some very funny things to you, not least when it comes to music. Back in the early 1980s, I would have have happily died rather than admit to having even the faintest interest in that terminally unfashionable band, Haircut One Hundred. Haircut One Hundred! Nick Heyward on Top Of The Pops (October 1981), looking about 12 years old, a canary-yellow sweater draped over his shoulders on top of ... another sweater, a chunky loose-fitting oatmeal thing his gran probably knitted for him. Blimey. This was truly ... bad. Except, unthinkably, earlier today, a mere 44 years after it was released, I bought a copy of Haircut One Hundred's first album, Pelican West. (Self-) incriminating evidence here:  

Long play at 33 and one-third rpm: Haircut One Hundred go retro

Wtf. Yeah man, it's true. And the case for the defence? Er, well, I splashed out my hard-earnt £2 to pick up this secondhand record in a charity shop because of a lingering memory that H100 were ... actually ... quite funky. That they had a fairly interesting take on poppy jazz-funk. And, yes, it seems to be true. Anyway, here, for my sins, is my instant rundown of the album after hurrying home to play it:

-Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) - a killer tune that could easily be by Pigbag. Supremely funky with great congas and horns. Even a Nick Heyward "rap" interlude can't ruin this fantastic tune. 

-Love Plus One - much more lightweight than Boy Meets Girl, but with some very nice Orange Juice/Aztec Camera vibes. Again, good congas percussion. All in all, a decent pop song. 

-Lemon Firebrigade - the album drifts into slightly bland "tropicala" cocktail bar jazz-funk here. One of Pelican West's weaker tracks. 

-Marine Boy - another weakish track. Starts off with some really bland sax, but gets slightly better with Heyward's keening vocal delivery. After about a minute there's a pretty wild break, with hectic congas and other stuff, then it's back to the "smooth" poppy jazz-funk stuff again. Not fantastic but quite an interesting arrangement.   

-Milk Film - sounding like a Farmers Boys' b-side (not a bad thing), it's slightly quirky pop with a mildly funky inflection. Kind of nice.

-Kingsize (You're My Little Steam Whistle) - back to fairly high-octane funk. Again, this could be an Orange Juice track or - just about - something by A Certain Ratio. Overlong, but pretty good.  

-Fantastic Day - more of an out-and-out pop song than most of the music on the album, it's ... not brilliant. For me it just about stays on the right side of the annoying/bearable line, but only just. 

-Baked Bean - another pretty funky tune, ranking, I reckon, alongside Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) and Calling Captain Autumn as the album's three standout moments. Has a nice break toward the end, then a sudden - and rather good - fade-out. This, Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) and Calling Captain Autumn would probably each sound really good as extended 12" dubs/remixes.

-Snow Girl - probably the worst track on the album, made especially hard to listen to becase of the yukky "snowy-owy-owy girl" lyrics. 

-Love's Got Me in Triangles - and it's back to another funk workout, or at least something that's part-"tough-funk" instrumental, part-cocktail bar pop. Too much "smoochy" sax for my liking, but quite good nevertheless. 

-Surprise Me Again - another pop song that could almost be a Roddy Frame recording. Lots of high-in-the-mix choppy rhythm guitar and heavily-layered vocals. Not bad. 

-Calling Captain Autumn - back to funk with the album's last track, a tight composition with quite a bit of "attack". The congas are back, so are the horns, and it's got lashings of funky rhythm guitar. Plus a vocal refrain which goes "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah". 

Hmm, a track-by-track mini-review - not something that occurs very often on the Niluccio on noise blog. Anyway, it might have been impossibly uncool to admit to liking Haircut One Hundred in 1981, but I don't think it is now (actually it probably is still very uncool). I'm assuming that the reason Pelican West sounds as good as it does has a lot to do with the funkiness and all-round musical savoir faire of drummer Blair Cunningham, an American musician from a family of drummers (his brother Carl was the drummer in Stax band the Bar-Kays). Plus, it was produced by Bob Sargeant, who'd by then worked on The Fall's Live At The Witch Trials, the Ruts' The Crack, the Monochrome Set's Strange Boutique and two albums by The Beat. Back in the early 80s, my own (unformed) tastes were jumping about all over the place: stuff like the Undertones, then the Dead Kennedys and Crass (but also Fun Boy Three and things like Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five's The Message), then Theatre Of Hate, Bauhaus and early goth, then ... well, then a million things at once, including a lot of stuff from John Peel. Resplendent in their cable-knit sweaters and exuding all that squeaky-clean "new pop" energy, bands like Haircut One Hundred were never going to be taken seriously by budding musos like me. For sure, most of the ultra-commercial pop of that era - Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson, the Police, the Pretenders, Howard Jones, Paul Young, the Thompson Twins, Duran Duran etc etc etc - is truly terrible (at least it is in my view). In fact, someone should buy up all the existing records, tapes, CDs and er, digital streaming codes from these artists (and many others), heap them all together into a gigantic pile, and then set fire to them. But not Haircut One Hundred's Pelican West. This doesn't deserve to be burnt.