release date: Mar. 1984
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,48]
producer: Steve Lovell
label: Mercury Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Bandy's First Jump" - 2. "Metranil Vavin" - 5. "Quizmaster" - 6. "Kolly Kibber's Birthday" - 9. "Pussyface" - 10. "Greatness and Perfection of Love" (4 / 5)
Solo studio debut by Julian (David) Cope - former frontman of The Teardrop Explodes. All songs are written and composed by Cope and released by Mercury Records, who saw a potential in Cope with the continuation of the style and music set out by his former band. Musically, Cope does continue much down the same path as characterized by The Teardrop Explodes, also because some of the songs had actually been composed and intended for a follow-up to the group's last album Wilder (1981) - the third album was released posthumously in 1990 as Everybody Wants to Shag... The Teardrop Explodes, but fact is, the nature of the recording sessions with Cope sacking most of the band members before finishing the album is practically a Cope solo release.
World Shut Your Mouth did not sell all too well and wasn't reviewed in the most positive of ways, and Cope was more or less written off by the English music press, who saw him as a bit of a tyrrant as well as an LSD-wreck. And because the time of the early 80s needed music to belong to a specific sound and style, which this clearly contradicts. The neo-psychedelia was yet a new and not-appreciated style at this point. It seems Cope was somewhat too early out combining styles and using unusual ways of composing music.
The album has, however, become widely accepted as an important and great release of the early and mid-80s and an early example of neo-psychedelia.
I find it close to the hights of Kilimanjaro but also somewhat slightly weaker.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, Q Magazine 4 / 5 stars ]
