Though I knew their hit, One Thing Leads To Another, I was a late comer to The Fixx party. I had their 1983 album, Reach For The Beach, with the aforementioned hit, for quite some time before I started digging deeper into their discography. It came about while perusing the list I've mentioned many times already, The Complete List of Over 10,000 Songs in My 80s Playlist from Future Flashbacks. For better or worse, this playlist has added so many albums to my already massive collection of CD's, and I'm still going through it. I recommend you download a copy of his PDF for yourself.
While I've since compiled a complete collection of The Fixx albums from the 80's, oddly, today is my first time of getting around to actually listening to one from start to finish. That's a current trend here as of late, but unfortunately, a very big reality of owning so many albums. One just has to work their way through them, which is what I'm doing at a steady pace, and the point of playing catch up in 2025 with one post per day.
I landed on the group's 1986 album, Walkabout, for a very specific reason. But more on that in a bit. First off, it kicks into gear with Secret Separation, the band's second highest charting single (number 19 on the charts). This is followed by the decent songs, Built For The Future, and Treasure It, before getting to Close The Fire, which honestly, I couldn't even tell you what it sounded like at this point. It was rather forgettable.
However, when that wraps up, that's when the punch in the face happens. Can't Finish, to date, is my absolute favorite song from The Fixx. The unique drum beat, fantastic crunchy guitars, and vocal effects all come together in what I would call a perfect song. In fact, it's so good, I dare say the band should have used it as the title for the album, forgoing the song which followed, Walkabout. The latter is decent, sure, I guess in its own right, enjoyable. But, it's not Can't Finish.
The back half of the album wraps up with One Look Up, Read Between The Lines, Sense The Adventure, and Camphor. They're adequate, somewhat enjoyable, but definitely not bad. However, as a whole, Secret Separation and Can't Stop are so superior to the rest, that these other songs ultimately feel like throw away. That's not to say that some of these other tunes didn't make it to my shuffle list. However, that's not exactly a difficult feat to accomplish, and as I've said before, I have a habit of adding songs that I inevitably end up skipping when they come back around. I suspect that's probably the case with most of these in the future.
Still, with so many more albums in queue from the band, I'm definitely intrigued enough to want to dive into more. I mean, I better be. They're all already bought and paid for. For now, though, it's on to the next shiny thing.
Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.
Disclaimer: They Toy Box does not endorse or contribute to piracy. Retro Spins posts are intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. None of the music discussed here is available for sale, downloading or distribution.
 |
| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS April 22, 1989 |
No comments:
Post a Comment