You Can't Hide Your Love ForeverOrange Juice
Polydor, 1982
Joe Strummer once said that his band's role was to rebuild everything that the Sex Pistols tore down. The Clash certainly did this admirably, but they were not the only band who undertook the endeavor. The late 70s and early 80s found a whole slew of bands taking the punk aesthetic in different directions.
One of the most engaging (and obscure) of these acts was Glasgow's Orange Juice. As the title of their debut album You Can't Hide Your Love Forever clearly implied, they were interested in stripping punk of it's nihilistic edge and injecting it with a dose of human vulnerability and emotion. Since, at his heart, punk was always actually more about "outsiderness" than toughness, this worked remarkably well. It's a formula that has been reapplied several times, perhaps most notably by Glasgow's current reigning kings and queens of melancholy - Belle and Sebastian. B&S's Stuart Murdoch cited this Orange Juice effort among his top 10 favorite albums, and his band's single "Legal Man" directly name check's the OJ tune "L.O.V.E. Love."
But indie cred aside, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever is a thoroughly enjoyable listen top to bottom. It pits shambling (and very white) R&B and Soul rhythms against Edwynn Collins' inimitable warble of a voice. The sound is very much like New Wave, but without all of the icy remove and with a cheeky sense of humor. The second track, "Untitled Melody," slyly references the Righteous Brothers classic ("Unchained Melody") and features the adorably clever turn of a phrase, "I need you more or less/You need me more and more."
The highlight for me, though, is the bouncy, almost bluesy "Consolation Prize." You can almost hear Collins smiling to himself as he sings "I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn's/I wore it hoping to impress/So frightfully camp, it made you laugh/Tomorrow I'll buy myself a dress." But the self-deprecation goes from charming to poignant when he lays bare the heart of the matter, repeating "I'll never be man enough for you" over a closing guitar jam that would be copped countless times by indie rockers over the years. But they can't hide their influences forever - if this album ever gets a damn reissue in this country, indie kids far and wide are sure to pick up on Orange Juice.
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