Listen on Spotify:
Noël - Side One: Dancing Is Dangerous/Is There More To Life Than Dancing?
Noël - Dancing Is Dangerous (stand alone edit)
Noël - The Night They Invented Love/Au Revoir
Noël - I Want A Man
Updated and re-uploaded July, 2007
Dancing is dangerous...gently embraces us... then won't let go 'til the end of our days...
Since I started the blog in January, I've received quite a few suggestions and requests. While I may not get to them right away—in fact there are many that I have yet to get to—I do keep a note of every single one of them. Today's entry is one of those suggestions that I got some eight months ago, back in March. A major thank-you to reader
James McClure for turning me on to this fabulous piece of vinyl. These past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to really go crazy and stock up on 12" singles and albums for my collection. Out of all the records I've picked up lately, this is probably one of my favourites—certainly one of the most interesting disco albums I've come across.
Entirely written and produced by
Ron & Russell Mael, better known as
Sparks, this record came right after their amazing
Giorgio Moroder-produced
No. 1 In Heaven (1979, Elektra) LP. An album which seemed to cross boundaries between rock, disco and new wave, even if it may have left them open to criticism for "going disco,"
No. 1 In Heaven also gave them a rather timely creative and commercial resurgence. So much so that in an
interview promoting it, Russell Mael had said they would be saying "
goodbye to guitars" from then on. It was to be a fairly short-lived goodbye, yet their work with Moroder seemingly inspired them to crank out a fully-fleshed disco project of their own. Which brings us to this album...
To be honest, I've been putting this off, because I was a little unsure how to approach this album. It's disco, but then again it's not. By that, I mean it's certainly not your average get-down-and-boogie type of record. If anyone was under the impression that Sparks'
No. 1 In Heaven was disco, then this album goes much further—easily the furthest they ever went into the genre. While barreling down the disco trail, they almost seem somewhat subversive in their approach. They seem to be grudgingly giving in on "
Dancing Is Dangerous," an epic electronic hymn to dancefloor surrender if there ever was one, yet they follow it up with the thinly veiled cynicism of "
Is There More To Life Than Dancing?" As far as the timing, I'm not sure exactly when they released this album; either way, the tone of the title track just seemed especially timely and appropriate for 1979. Just when disco had reached its peak in popularity, creative experimentation and subsequent quick fall from prominence, how appropriate that something like this comes out. Were they taking an accurate reading of the cultural climate, or were they just slightly ahead of their time?
While on that note, if there's any track that seems to capture how far ahead they were, it would be the side two opener "
The Night They Invented Love." That track is, to me, the absolute peak of this album. The quirky seductiveness of the lyrics and delivery is absolute brilliance. That aside, I really can't talk about this track without mentioning that breathtaking, sexy, haunting sax. It's right up front in the mix and is really the one key musical element which takes this song right over the top. It almost sounds like the sort of thing which would have come from a big 1980s movie soundtrack as opposed to a 1979 disco album. If there's any frame of reference for this, this album feels at times like a precursor to the experimental, sometimes avant-garde "
disco-not-disco" that
Ze Records was putting out in the early '80s.
As much as this album is not your average disco record, Noël herself—looking like a tarted-up post-punk waif—certainly didn't look like your regular disco diva either. Looking less like a
Madleen Kane or
Andrea True, and more like
Courtney Love in disco drag, it just adds another layer of intrigue to this project. Who was this Noël woman and where did she come from? How did she hook up with the brothers and where in the world is she today? Whatever the answers, none of the Sparks websites nor any of my intensive Google searches are forthcoming with anything substantial. What I have found out is that she was apparently from Los Angeles and is regularly (and annoyingly) mixed up with another
Noel, a male freestyle singer who had a hit with "
Silent Morning" in 1987. The most significant tidbit that I did find was from the
discomusic.com forums, with one user mentioning that she did in fact release material after this LP. That then led me, thanks to eBay, to a record by a group called
Noel & The Red Wedge and their only album,
Peer Pressure (1982, Scotti Bros.). I haven't heard that record yet, but I'm assuming it's the same woman, given the name and the picture on the cover...
Despite his influence, it would hardly be giving the brothers credit to just classify this as their version of a Giorgio Moroder album, since this is undoubtedly an original piece of work on its own terms. On the surface there are technical similarities (the synths, segued tracks etc.), but there are certainly enough stylistic differences to set this apart from just another Moroder knock-off. In essence, the vocals, arrangements and lyrics—individually and combined—are a bit further out of left field than much of what Moroder was involved with at the time. Those spaced out synths paired with the Maels' trademark clever, witty, observational lyrics and the enigmatic nature of this project give this album a feel all its own. Listening over the last little while and pondering the lack of details about this album, its singer, and the approach they took, I've asked myself whether this was an outsider's genuine disco embrace, the Maels' version of a cynical disco cash-in, or perhaps all the above? Regardless, what remains is a cool, elegant, deftly original piece of twisted disco for its time.
LINKS:
NOEL - IS THERE MORE TO LIFE THAN DANCING? LP @ DISCOMUSIC.COM (web archive)
NOEL - IS THERE MORE TO LIFE THAN DANCING? LP @ DISCOGS
NOEL @ DISCOGS
SPARKS ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY (web archive)
INTERVIEW WITH RUSSELL MAEL (CAPITAL RADIO, 1979) (web archive)
EXCLAIM!: INDISCREET ECCENTRICS (OCTOBER 10, 2000) (BY ANDREW ZEALLEY) (web archive)
CATEGORIES: DISCO DELIVERIES
