The Teardrop Explodes – Wilder (1981)

Gary Dwyer's family announced his passing yesterday. Gary was the drummer for The Teardrop Explodes for the whole of their recording career, as well as working later with Julian Cope and Terry Hall (in The Colour Field.

I never met Gary, nor was I ever part of that scene, but the warmth of tributes and memories coming out of Liverpool today has been touching.

This is the second and final 'official' Teardrop Explodes album, bought long ago, and hardly listened to. On initial revisit this felt like a bit of a mess, and I'm not wholly disabused of this notion by repeated listening, although it's falling together.

The album kicks off with Bent Out Of Shape, a bouncy, enjoyable song picking up where Kilamanjaro left off, with added horns followed by the fantastic Colours Fly Away, the least successful (chartwise) of the three singles released from this album. Then things take a turn, the fluid bass line of Seven Views Of Jerusalem being the best bit of an experimental piece, followed by the mercifully brief Pure Joy. It's really not what you'd expect from the band, and it's followed by a couple of songs best forgotten.

However, Passionate Friend, for me the best of the band's singles, rescues the start of the second half, then the minimal, underdeveloped Tiny Children. Like Leila Khalid Said is a great song, about a dubious subject, but that's about it, the final two songs feel like demos, low key, minimal and having little impact.

This CD reissue contains a number of bonus tracks, allegedly from the US mini album Buff Vanilla (which never existed) consisting of B sides, and tracks which later made it onto the posthumous album (completed by Dave Balfe without Cope's input) Everybody Wants To Shag...

Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns (b side of Colours Fly Away) feels like one of the weaker underdeveloped tracks from the album, while East Of The Equator is a bland instrumental. Rachel Built A Steamboat (b side of Tiny Children) is a folky tale, which is quite infectious, You Disappear From View was the band's final single before splitting, and it's up there with any of the band's earlier singles - a solid piece of pop. It's joined here by the other four songs fro the same EP, the dull Suffocate, the strange Ouch Monkeys, the lovely Soft Enough For You and the frantic, acid dance anticipating The In-Psychlopaedia.

But this is no lost classic. Some stuff on this album is up there with the best of the band's work, but some just seems filler. It sounds like a band preparing to implode, and that's exactly what happened.

Link to album tracks (and bonuses)

3* - a very mixed bag, from the inspired to the disappointing