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| cover vinyl |
release date: May 5, 1981
format: vinyl / cd (1994 reissue)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,58]
producer: Roger Bechirian
label: Ardeck - nationality: Northern Ireland, UK
Track highlights: A) 1."Fascination" - 2. "Julie Ocean" (4 / 5) - 3. "Life's Too Easy" - 4. "Crisis of Mine" - 6. "His Good Looking Girlfriend" - - B) 1. "When Saturday Comes" - 2. "It's Going To Happen!" (5 / 5) - 3. "Sigh & Explode" - 6. "Boy Wonder" - *15. "Kiss in the Dark" - *16. "Beautiful Friend" - 17. "Life's Too Easy (Alternate Version)" - *18. "Fairly in the Money Now"
*Bonus track on 1994 cd reissue
3rd studio album by The Undertones and the follow-up to Hypnotised (1980), which quite naturally was perceived as the difficult second album after a most stunning debut, and Hypnotised actually succeeded better than critics had imagined it would. With that, the band succesfully bonded with the sheer energy of the punk rock debut and at the same time proved to be able to take their style to a new territory mixing it with pop / rock and more subtle new wave, although, you could argue that the strongest moments still bore the energy of the debut, but nevertheless, the band showed more diversity with an album that went as high as to number #6 on the UK albums chart list - a peak performance of any studio album by The Undertones.
Positive Touch is a big leap in terms of style changes - and perhaps it distances itself too much, both by being their most incoherent album, and also for introducing a bold use of brass and strings. Looking at the highlights, though, it's remarkable that it both contains near soul pop-tunes like "Sigh & Explode" and "Julie Ocean" AND "It's Going to Happen!" - a song which is up there amongst their absolute best but which also appears very much on its own. The band had tried really hard not to be political and they were at times critizised for not addressing the ongoing Northern Irish conflict and here they actually make produce their possibly most political statement with "It's Going to Happen!"
The 1994 expanded cd is the better release with at least three fine bonus tracks - "Beautiful Friend" is a non-album single, which came out in between Positive Touch and The Sin of Pride but it fits nicely on the album alongside "Fascination" and "Julie Ocean". In retrospect, Positive Touch still is a mighty fine album showing how you could make the difficult transition from punk rock to pop / rock with bits of power pop and Northern soul bonding quite nicely with how beat artists of the 60s made the transition by employing blues and r&b to form new musical styles.
[ 😲allmusic.com, Smash Hits 4,5 / 5, Select 4 / 5, 👎Blender 3 / 5 stars ]
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| 1994 cd-reissue |
