Monocled Alchemist

vintage music press reviews

ORANGE JUICE ‘Rip It Up’ (Polydor POLS 1076) * 1/2

Orange Juice | Rip It Up | (Polydor) 1982 | DO THEY want me to be kind? I don’t really believe they do. ‘Rip It Up’ is as big if not bigger a disaster than the first Josef K album. It is not an Orange Juice record: It is a record By Orange Juice On Polydor Records — the strifes, the reassurances, the compromises that made them cry all coming through like nobody’s business, especially Orange Juice’s.

‘Rip It Up’ — surely a despicably jokey self-commentary of a title currently matched only by the Who’s ‘It’s Tough’, OJ sharing that sorta company! — sees Orange Juice essentially as a still small band reaching out into all sorts of bland territories that are each and every one beyond their reach.

‘Rip It Up’ is Radio Two in the worst sense; in the sense that it won’t get played on Radio Two or Radio One. In it, Orange Juice are to be seen slaughtered in a production totally incongruous to their fine details, to their very slight and delicate emotion pricking.

Orange Juice | Rip It Up | (Polydor) 1982

When Orange Juice have handclaps, as on ‘Can’t Help Myself‘, they are done so clumsily it makes you cringe and think of ABC. The whole LP is so excruciating to OJ’s best aspects there is something vaguely cruel about it: That title is unfortunately apposit.

Orange Juice have two flopped singles on this album, they use two African chants of songs from black drummer Manyika at awkwardly spaced out intervals — everything points to desperation straits, even down to Edwin’s voice which sounds terribly disinterested in everything going on, as if he wished to be miles away . . .

Previously, the charm of OJ was precisely that Edwyn was not crying into his tea (not too sweet, just enough milk). On ‘Rip It To Shreds’, his nose is firmly planted a good two inches into his cup (ten sugars, condensed milk) and he sounds like Kermit let down by Ms Piggy yet again.

Orange Juice | Rip It Up | (Polydor) 1982

There is a temptation to call the RSPCA and have him put down, so constant is his self-pity. It seems the only kindness. But I said I wouldn’t do that . . .

Orange Juice are an expensive watch that has been mauled apart and stuck daftly back together again, saying “wear me!”. They are so self-conscious at the moment, their music scarcely has room to breathe, never mind sweat.

When a band as talented as OJ starts trying to sound like Heaven 17 then it is a very sorry state indeed.

I don’t even wish to think about it anymore. This is equal to killing a baby kitten. Orange squashed, if I’m any judge. (Sounds, 13/11/82)

Juice what I always wanted

ORANGE JUICE ‘Rip It Up’ (Polydor Pols 1076 2385 651) | EDWYN WANTED so much to be a soulboy, but he was always such a coy boy. He told everybody how much he admired George McCrae, he bent his wilting 6ft 3in frame to something approaching a backflip. And readers, it almost worked.

‘Rip It Up’ is a pleasing patchwork of muted moods and half stolen memories. Having said that, the record ultimately falls down on its weak vocals. Mr Collins simply lacks the power and range to embroider his songs with anything approaching the feeling or sincerity of a real soul singer.

Orange Juice | Rip It Up | (Polydor) 1982

As such ‘Rip It Up’ never breaks away from cosy slippers by the fire easy listening. It lacks the scattered glass and gravel that speak more of love and life than a thousand exercises in deeply mumbled mock crooning.

Hang on, let me light my pipe and I’ll show you the highlights of this worthy night on the sofa.

(1) The title track, a simple song, working on a neat guitar progression, enhanced by bibbity bop synth. A dancer.

(2) ‘Mud In Your Eye’, a touching ballad, somewhat ruined by Edwyn’s affected vocal. A rich sound with violins.

(3) ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, a nice piece of mid-Seventies soul. (+ + + Record Mirror)

Zest free Juice

Rip It Up (Polydor) I JUST played Buddy Holly’s version of ‘Rip It Up’ to remind me, although Edwyn Collins gives the impression he is unfamiliar with such iconography. Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’ is a development of an altogether more wistful deal on life: such is the cycle of youth music, so are our salad days enfeebled.

Orange Juice are a minor group trying hard to be bigger and more significant than they really ought to be. Their wan series of Postcard singles served them better than any fetchingly polished album ever will: their real dimension is best considered through the blurred viewfinder of those scratchy, bashful records. The difference between ‘Breakfast Time’ here and its Postcard prototype is that between nervous energy and familiar excitement.

Or, to nail it down, Collins’ interests and attitudes melt away in the glare of a clear focus. The fatuous ruminations on love in ‘Mud In Your Eye’ and ‘Louise Louise’ betray the indolence of his thinking, tepid variations on pop hackery long since consigned to public domain free-for-alls. The music they devise to accompany these musings is mostly old-fashioned, alarmingly reminiscent in places of the kind of genteel lace-making of the likes of Caravan. The clarity which has served the Banshees so well serves principally to highlight the clean digital momentum of a faceless pop music.

Orange Juice | Rip It Up | (Polydor) 1982

Sometimes it is a little more than that, because the arrival of drummer/vocalist Zeke Manyika does effect a bizarre revitalisation in places. Manyika’s presence seems so contrary to the spirit of Juice — which, despite Collins’ protestations, remains essentially lacking in red corpuscles — that the impossible works and something raised on a different spirit rises up. ‘A Million Pleading Faces’ and particularly ‘Hokoyo’, where Manyika takes the lead vocals, have the infectious upswing that characterises the finer syntheses of white pop and black dance.

But those moments pass, and always we have to return to Collins’ spineless singing and naive critiques of romance. What is most clearly missing from Orange Juice is wit, a commodity they seemed to be circling around on their amusing retread of ‘L.O.V.E.’ There it appeared that Collins could end up as Green’s embarrassed and guileless cousin — except there is none of the resplendent style of ‘Songs To Remember’ in ‘Rip It Up’. ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, a fairly doltish melange of familiar pop hooks, shows they have no idea of what irony is.

Collins’ worst failing is his overweening sentimentality. Perhaps he and Buddy Holly aren’t so far apart at that. (NME, 13/11/82)