QUIT DREAMING AND GET ON THE BEAM

When you think about it, this album is a very natural progression from Be Bop Deluxe. That band's last album, Drastic Plastic (their best effort in my opinion) started to incorporate lots of electronic elements and experimentation, found sounds, even musique concret, while still maintaining their art rock image. With Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam, Bill Nelson has ditched his old band and taken the next logical step into full blown electronica/post-punk.

The arrangements have become dense and at times obscure, the synths are stacked up heavily and the vocals are buried in the mix, but Nelson's strengths as a songwriter shine through. His chord progressions and song structures have always been a little too adventurous for your average FM radio listener, but this becomes less of a problem now that he has abandoned the glam rock mantle of his past and embraced experimentation. The melodies are still catchy and the occasional solo shows that he can still wail on the guitar as much as he ever could.

The album opener, Banal, is one of the strongest tracks of Nelson's career, with a great melody and plenty of guitar and sax. It probably could have been a hit were it not for the dense layers of sound piled on top of an otherwise straightforward rock song. My only real criticism is that all the songs are a bit "samey" due to Nelson's fascination with his new studio techniques, so that by the end of the album I tend to grow a little tired of it. But taken one track at a time, there's not a weak moment and I find I get something new out of it every time I listen.