release date: Jun. 6, 1980
format: digital (2002 reissue)
[album rate: 2,5 / 5] [2,52]
producer: Steve James, Toyah
label: Safari Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Ieya" - 7. "Visions" - 9. "Love Me"
2nd studio album by Toyah succeeding Sheep Farming in Barnet by less than three months. Here the band already demonstrates its ever-changing line-ups as bassist Mark Henry has been replaced by Charlie Francis.
Apart from the line-up change, The Blue Meaning is very much like the other side of the coin to the debut with ten new pompous arrangements and a little more screaming - Wilcox is credited for "verbals & unusual sounds"... [sic], and she has taken an even stronger theatrical sound, which may have seemed avantgarde and experimental at the time. By doing so, she may have looked to both appearances by Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux, but in retrospect it only seems rather forced - to put it mildly.
The album was a minor success as it went as high as #40 on the UK albums chart list - at a time when the public in Britain became familiar with her through her acting career. Wilcox appeared in two movies by Derek Jarman: "Jubilee" (1978) and "The Tempest" (1979), she played a minor role in The Who's "Quadrophenia" (1979), and then she also appeared in several TV-series from the late '70s including "Quatermass" (1979), "Minder" (1980) and she was TV-presenter on the BBC programme "Look! Here!".
Had Wilcox not been such a familiar face, it is doubtful that this album would have entered the albums chart list in 1980.
Is it any better or worse than the debut? That's hard to say, really. But as an original piece of music it's not recommended.
[ Smash Hits 1,5 / 5 stars ]
