As I've said previously in this countdown and re-experiencing of my distant youth, 1983 was a big year in Pop Music for Liverpool and the kind of characters that could only come from that great city. Care, The Pale Fountains. Bunnymen and Wah! still to come, and now Icicle Works. Just right in 1983 for a wet behind the ears late teen like me who was into romance, literature and melody and hoping to get his first girlfriend if he could..
The Works eponymous debut album was just right for youthful types who'd been incredibly excited by the Bunnymen and Teardrops records of the previous tears. I grew out of it within a year in a way that I didn't with the Teardrops or The Bunnymen and didn't buy the records that followed when they, in quick succession, became highly political and then severely traumatised by the influence of Neil Young.
Still, for a while I very much enjoyed the company of Ian McNabb and his muse. He was like McCulloch and Cope's younger brother. McCulloch for his way with lush melody and vaguely Gothic sensibility. Gothic as in the Romantic authors and poets rather than Gothic like Bauhaus the band. Cope for his devotion to the Sixties Scott Walker. Here was their only Top 40 hit. It was overwritten, but all the more endearing for all that.
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