Day 287. I'm basking in the glow. (14/10/13)

Prefab Sprout. You remember Prefab Sprout don't you? One hit wonders in the mid 80s, did that 'hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque' song. The one with the wacky video, all round a swimming pool, a man dressed as a hot dog dancing round. Slightly twee?

Obviously you know that I'm going to tell you that you're remembering the wrong Prefab Sprout. That you're remembering five minutes of a thirty year career and you're remembering the wrong Prefab Sprout, that they were a band of infinite scope, a band that understood beauty and symphony and tragedy and glory in equal measure. That their best work can be measured against the best work of the truly great. That they actually meant something.

It's a long time since Prefab Sprout(and yes, that's still a bloody awful name)'s last truly great album, 1990's 'Jordan: The Comeback' - a body of work that took in the search for Atlantis, the return of Elvis, the archangel Lucifer's fall from grace and a love of Doo wop. All to a classic pop sound and far lighter and catchier than the preceding description would suggest.

Since then there's been the rather lovely 'Andromeda Heights', the disappointing 'The Gunman and Other Stories (containing songs that were written for Jimmy Nail's Crocodile Shoes series but performed with infinitely more élan) and then a long period of illness for band leader Paddy McAloon.

An ongoing battle against tinnitus and a sight problem that effectively blinded him for a substantial period but acted as impetus for his one solo work 'I Trawl The Megahertz', a symphonic piece based around slices of dialogue found on the radio channels that he obsessively surfed, unable to work or indulge in any visual activity and again far more sumptuous than you would imagine, seemed to have finished the band as a functioning outfit.

An album 'Let's Change The World With Music' crept out in 2009 although it was almost twenty years old by the time of its release. Taken from McAloon's apparently vast vault of unreleased material and influenced by the dance scene of the early 1990s it was too late, too dated and (for me) not as remarkable as you would wish.

Prefab Sprout were obviously over.

Except...

I'm making no bones about this; Crimson/Red is a heartbreakingly beautiful work of consummate (go on, I'm saying it) genius.

Prefab Sprout is now purely Paddy McAloon. All instruments, all vocals, every moment Mc Aloon's own work. Produced by Paddy and long time Blue Nile associate Calum Malcolm, the sound shimmers and glows, harmonicas fade in and out, guitars swing and sting by turns and the vocals soothe as they always have; age and illness haven't altered the man's mellifluous tones one bit.

The subject matter is the eternal; the joy of song, the aging process, the beauty and pain of love, what happens to an artist whose ability is fading, what it means to step from the spotlight. All is allegory.

Bob Dylan appears in the closing track 'Mysterious' although you won't realise that it's him at first, you need to bathe in the hints; a poet who roars 'right out of nowhereseville, mysterious from the start' inventing his own history and hiding his identity in a 'mythic fog'.

The great Jimmy Webb shows his face in 'The Songs of Danny Galway', 'the sorcerer from Wichita'. McAloon worked with Webb, there's a fantastic clip on YouTube of the younger, be-fringed Paddy (he now bears the countenance of a well presented Wild West preacher) playing 'The Highwayman' with Webb, here he stands in awe of 'emotions we all know burnished till they glow'.

Elsewhere it's all music, love and reflections of Paddy himself; the elderly entertainer leaving the world behind in 'The Old Magician' 'the shabby hat and gloves, the tired act that no one loves. There was a time he produced doves' - the perfect metaphor for talents waning with time.

'Billy' gives us the joy of music found in unlikely places, 'Adolescence' an empathy with the journey that his children are yet to undergo summoning up Shakespeare and Psychedelia and in 'Devil Came A Calling' his gives us his version of the old 'selling your soul for success' story. 

What other writer, though, would claim of Satan that 'in fact I found him charming, articulate, urbane.'?

The truth is that Paddy McAloon has never aspired to the world of the pop star, he's never been a standard 'indie' flag bearer, never attempted to emulate The Velvet Underground, Stones, Ramones, Byrds etc, his touchstones are the theatrical, the educated, the writers of the great 'songbook'; the Berlins, Porters, Sondheims, Gershwins of this world.

It's a rarified group to aim for but, (and take this for hyperbole as much as you wish) despite his tribute to Jimmy Webb, Paddy McAloon has no need to stand in awe of anybody; his is a unique modern greatness and 'Crimson/Red' may just be his masterpiece.