THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE

1979 was the year when City Boy would return to their Art Rock ambitions and release their most accomplished album yet! The Day The Earth Caught Fire was both heavier and tighter than the two previous releases. The tracks are all thematically linked creating a concept album that prophesies disaster that our world is coming to. It might be considered a bit too much to ask for the audiences living in the era of oil crises and New Wave to comprehend the hardship that the band dealt with in order to pursue this artistic vision. The success of the previous release just didn't catch on and it's truly a great pity considering how good this material is.

The title track might seem a bit dated in its typical late seventies production but, other than that, it's an excellent piece of rock music that has been undeservingly forgotten by the audiences. The rest of the tracks keep themselves true to the concept album format, concluding with a 13 minute long medley called Ambition/Me And My Tarot/Rev-On/The End. I guess that some might say that City Boy weren't too kind to their mainstream audience with The Day The Earth Caught Fire since the album lacks everything that they might have enjoyed on Book Early. Only Modern Love Affair gives us the reminder of the simpler past while the rest of the album can almost be considered a long awaited continuation of Dinner At The Ritz.

This is a great album that might have dated a bit more than the other releases in the band's catalog due its somewhat generic production that really oozes the spirit of late '70s/early '80s. Therefore I can't recommend it as much as Dinner At The Ritz, but it's not far from there.

***** star songs: Day The Earth Caught Fire (5:26)

**** star songs: Interrupted Melody (5:30) Modern Love Affair (3:31) New York Times (5:11) Up In The Eighties (4:14) Machines (5:04) Ambition (12:38)

*** star songs: It's Only The End Of The World (4:04)