Level 42 - Level Best (1989)

Having bought this, I realise that I've never knowingly met one other person who ever liked Level 42, such has been my social circle. I therefore have a possibly false impression of them as existing somewhere on the Sting-Lighthouse Family spectrum, something beige and tasteful which Alan Partridge would have in his car, and of course there was that album which came with a free pair of driving gloves…

The Wikipedia page refers to jazz funk and something called sophisti-pop, but I don't care. The hits wormed their way into my consciousness before I had time to form any of the usual objections based on the presumed existence of anything called sophisti-pop, and those selfsame tunes have stayed there ever since; and yes, weirdly there were enough of them for a greatest hits album. There are six or seven on here which I don't recognise, which still leaves more than just The Sun Goes Down and that other one.

As you may recall, it's all very smooth and sounds fairly expensive, but all that ostentatiously complicated slap bass, jazzy electric piano, and pitch perfect vocal harmony is dynamic rather than just tasteful for the sake of it, with all those extra notes working the sort of profoundly emotive melodic power you usually only get with a symphony orchestra, depending on what it's playing. In other words, at least with the likes of It's Over, Leaving Me Now, or The Sun Goes Down, the thing wrenches your heart right out of your chest before you've even had chance to admire the razor crease in its chinos or the expertise with which that cocktail was mixed. I'm not kidding. The way those notes fit together in the chorus of It's Over is genuinely fucking astonishing to me, enough to bring a tear to the eye even when you haven't actually split up with anyone, or noticed the line which appears to run:

Don't look for me around this town,
'Cause I will be so far away, you'll never find me anywhere,
And I won't take no souvenirs,
No perfume, no pictures, no brassiere…

Thankfully that isn't what he's singing.

There's some degree of cheese, I suppose - the token song about a flying saucer encounter, and of course the massively futuristic Micro Kid whom older listeners will recall as having had megathoughts, whatever those were, and Hot Water is built upon that chuggy rhythm which I assume has since been made illegal because no-one does it these days; none of which seems to matter because this lot somehow made all that shit sound amazing - not so much the Shriekback of the golf course as Kool & the Gang with a rocket up their arse.