The Rumour – Not So Much A Rumour, More A Way Of Life (2001)

I was sad to hear this week, that musician Bob Andrews died earlier this year. Probably best known as keyboard player with 1970s pub rock outfit Brinsley Schwarz, with Nick Lowe, he later formed The Rumour, with bandmate Schwartz.

While the band had little success on their own, they had three top ten album hits with Graham Parker, before Andrew went into production, with hit hits including Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry, The BlueBells' Young At Heart and the Las' There She Goes. His piano was the highlight of Nick Lowe's hit I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass.

This compilation draws exclusively from The Rumour's second and third albums on Stiff, so there's nothing from their 1977 debut Max, named as a nod to Fleetwood Mac using them to name their hit album.

The first half of the CD draws from their 1978 album, unfortunately titled Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs and Krauts, which, to my mind is the stronger of the two albums contributing here. It's great to hear their two not-hit singles, Frozen Years and Emotional Traffic, while Tired Of Waiting (a Rick Danko cover) is great. Euro, a series of observations about our closest neighbours (which contributed to the album's title), is fun.

Between the albums, there are a couple of single tracks by The Duplicates, a non-de-plume based on the idea that the band was overlooked as only Graham Parker's backing band, neither any more than ordinary.

The latter half draws from the band's third album Purity Of Essence, by which time Bob Andrews had left the band. There isn't much here to excite the music lover, certainly among the self-penned songs. Nothing is awful - they were all good enough musicians to make anything sound half decent - but there's no spark here. There were a couple of singles, neither hits, both covers, Bacharach and David's Little Red Book and Nick Lowe's I Don't Want The Night To End, probably the stronger of the two.

If ever there was an example of a band appearing at the wrong time, it was The Rumour in 1977, neither pop, nor punk and having moved on from pub rock. Also, if we're honest, while the musicianship is fantastic, for the most part the songwriting wasn't strong enough to sustain the band. A couple of great singles and a lot of average songs, really goes some way to explaining why their best days were backing Graham Parker.

Link to Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs and Sprouts

Link To Purity Of Essence

2* - a few great songs, but most of the rest is a turgid listen