It stayed in the UK Albums Chart for 20 weeks, peaking at No. 10,[4] and it was crowned the album of the year by British music magazine Melody Maker.[5] Although it was the group's breakthrough record both critically and commercially, it was to be the last studio album recorded by the original pairing of Alan Rankine and Billy Mackenzie, as Rankine departed four months after its release.
Recording
Signing a distribution deal with WEA Records at the end of 1981 on the strength of the demos for "Party Fears Two" and "Club Country", Associates were given a £60,000 advance by the record label. Having spent half of the advance immediately on block-booking a studio for an indefinite period of time, the band moved into individual rooms at the Swiss CottageHoliday Inn in London, including an extra room for MacKenzie's pet whippets, which he fed on smoked salmon ordered from the hotel's room service. The band also spent large amounts of money on other items such as clothing and drugs. In a 2007 interview bassist Michael Dempsey recalled that "we were all ridiculously profligate. But it wasn't entirely ridiculous to be doing things that way because Bill would coax money out of record companies in a kind of mesmeric way. He thought that the more money we owed them, the more obligation on their part to make this work to get their investment back." Rankine said that the excessive spending influenced the sound of the album: "If we hadn't spent the money, the album wouldn't have got made in the way it did. It was mental, but there was also a self-assured cockiness, because we knew we had these songs."[6]
Sulk was recorded at producer Mike Hedges' self-built Playground studio, in a former warehouse in nearby Camden Town, and cost £33,000 to make.[7] The stories regarding the recording sessions for this album have been well documented over the years. Rankine said that "I don't think there's been any exaggeration about what went on. If anything, I think people have been holding back a bit in their recollections. It was madness."[6] He confirmed that the sessions included stunts such as urinating in a guitar and filling drums with water to see how it affected their sound,[8] but that the story that the band had filled the studio with helium balloons was an exaggeration, stating that they had fooled around with a helium balloon that had been brought in one day, but no more than that.[9] However, both Rankine and Dempsey said that despite the heavy spending and antics in the studio, the band worked long hours and were completely focused on the record they were making.[6] Drummer John Murphy left the band shortly after completing the recording of the album, unable to cope with MacKenzie and Rankine's behaviour.
Writing and composition
The bulk of Sulk was written and recorded in the same sessions for compilation album Fourth Drawer Down (1981), and the bizarre antics in the studio were a result of the band experimenting with ways of creating new sounds. Rankine said, "We were constantly thinking of what we could do to make this sound different, what can we do with the tools that we've got—which was the musicians. We were the tools. It wasn't just for the sake of being different. But we'd look up lists of instruments and go, 'What the hell is a jangle piano?' The next day this piano would suddenly arrive with all these little metal bits. And that's what we used on 'Party Fears Two', for the intro." He also described their restructuring of the traditional drum kit to create an attention-grabbing sound: "What we did on ["Bap de la Bap"] and quite a lot of the songs on Sulk was take away all the tom-toms and make the whole drum kit out of snare drums. So there'd be a seven-inch metal snare drum as the snare and a five-inch copper snare as one of the toms, and then maybe a real deep nine-inch black beauty made out of ebony as another tom-tom. So it made the whole thing really explosive."[10]
MacKenzie's lyrics on Sulk are often cryptic and ambiguous. Speaking to NME at the time of the album's release about the band's biggest hit single, MacKenzie said, "'Party Fears' could be about a whole lot of things. It could be about a husband and wife arguing with each other. It could be about communism and conservatism, political party extremes. It could be about schizophrenics. The lyrics of a song like that go deliberately to the extremes to get something across, like an actor using a heavy hand gesture when he speaks a line."[2]
According to Rankine, "'Nude Spoons' was about an acid trip Bill had had when he was fifteen or sixteen. Apparently, the spoons were copulating and there was a war going on between the spoons and the plastic flowers in the pot next to them." Rankine believed that "Club Country" was MacKenzie's response to attending the New Romantic clubs at the time and finding the scene to be very superficial.[8]
Release and promotion
The first single released from the album was "Party Fears Two". It became the band's breakthrough single, reaching number 9 on the UK Singles Chart in March 1982. A second single, "Club Country", was almost as successful, reaching number 13 in May 1982.[4] The singles' success owed greatly to Associates' memorable appearances on the UK's best known and most watched television music show of the time, Top of the Pops. The group took the opportunity to subvert the family-friendly nature of the programme with absurdist pranks: on their second appearance performing "Party Fears Two", Rankine played the banjo while dressed in a fencing suit and wearing samurai make-up with chopsticks in his hair, while MacKenzie spent much of the song singing to the image of himself in the television monitors rather than face the audience or the cameras.[7] For their final Top of the Pops appearance, Rankine had two chocolate guitars made by the London department storeHarrods which he played during their performance of "18 Carat Love Affair", one of which he broke up and gave to audience members halfway through the song.[6] Rankine said that the reason for their stunts was that "partly it was just a response to the boredom of having to be there at the BBC studio from half eight in the morning and not getting out until ten at night".[7]
Following the chart success of "Party Fears Two" and "Club Country", the band released the double A-sided single "18 Carat Love Affair"/"Love Hangover" in July 1982, which reached number 21 in the UK charts.[4] "18 Carat Love Affair" was a version of Sulk's closing instrumental track "nothinginsomethingparticular" with added vocals, while "Love Hangover" was a cover of Diana Ross's 1976 hit single. Problems started to surface within the group the following month when they began rehearsals with a nine-piece band for an upcoming tour of the US and Canada to promote the forthcoming release of Sulk in North America. The demands placed on MacKenzie's voice caused him to develop pharyngitis, resulting in the cancellation of a string of August concert dates across the UK, including three planned headline shows at the Edinburgh Festival.[11] In September MacKenzie pulled out of the tour the night before the band were due to travel, claiming that he did not feel the musicians were up to the standards required.[12] This was the final straw for Rankine, who felt MacKenzie had thrown away the group's best chance to become famous in the US, and he quit the band.
The album was issued in the US on Sire Records on 4 October 1982 with a significantly different track listing. Along with an overall different track sequence, the UK LP tracks "Bap de la Bap", "Nude Spoons" and "nothinginsomethingparticular" were replaced with both sides of the "18 Carat Love Affair"/"Love Hangover" single and two tracks from the Fourth Drawer Down compilation, "The Associate" and "White Car in Germany". "It's Better This Way" and "Party Fears Two" appeared as versions remixed by Mark Arthurworrey, and "Club Country" was replaced by the 7" edited single version.
The original UK and European CD release of Sulk, released in 1988, also followed the US track listing, but contained edited versions of "Club Country", "Love Hangover" and "The Associate".
The remastered version of Sulk, issued in June 2000, finally reverted to the versions and track listing on the original UK release, apart from replacing "Club Country" with a different version from those on all previous releases. The remastered CD also included seven bonus tracks, including both "18 Carat Love Affair" and "Love Hangover".
Ian Pye of Melody Maker stated that the group's "melodramatic aspirations" needed a voice like MacKenzie's to be able to carry them out successfully, and said, "In parts, Sulk is really over-produced, the stamp of perfectionists, and while there's nothing to match the commercial appeal of their two [singles], this record has an almost timeless majesty that can only make Billy MacKenzie's rapturous grin grow wider still".[19]Paul Morley of NME wrote "Sulk deals with everything, in its hectic, drifting way... There is an uninterruptible mix-up of cheap mystery, vague menace, solemn farce, serious struggle, arrogant ingenuity, deep anxiety, brash irregularity, smooth endeavour... Sometimes Sulk is simply enormous: and then again it is fantastically unlikely."[20]
Reviewing the 2000 reissue David Peschek of Mojo called Sulk "their florid, hysterical masterpiece" and observed, "This remains extraordinarily potent music, a repository of the otherness contemporary pop so lacks".[21]Simon Reynolds stated in Uncut that "Sulk is so lovely it's harrowing... Associates crammed all the derangement and texture-saturated voluptuousness of psychedelia into pop".[22]David Quantick's review of the deluxe edition in 2016 observed that "Sulk appears at first to be a pop album—and there are few greater pop singles than 'Party Fears Two'—but its glossy sound and high budget disguise the fact that it's actually very odd".[15]
Ned Raggett of AllMusic said that Sulk was "very much the Associates at probably the best period of their career. MacKenzie's impossibly piercing cabaret falsetto rivals that of obvious role model Russell Mael from Sparks, while Rankine's ear for unexpected hooks and sweeping arrangements turns the stereotypes of early-'80s synth music on their heads. The bass work from ex-Cure member Michael Dempsey isn't chopped liver either, and the result is a messy but wonderful triumph no matter what version is found."[13]
Accolades
Sulk was named album of the year for 1982 in Melody Maker[5] and was placed at number 18 in the NME critics' list of albums of the year.[23] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005).[24]
"Me, Myself and the Tragic Story" 3(previously unreleased) – 3:17
"I Never Will" 4 (Demo) – 3:51
"Club Country" (Demo) – 4:05
"Grecian 2000" – 3:28
1 "Australia" is a version of the instrumental track "Voluntary Wishes", which appeared on the 12" single of "18 Carat Love Affair"/"Love Hangover", with a different arrangement and with vocals.
2 "The Room We Sat in Before" is a demo version of "It's Better This Way" featuring just electric guitars and vocals, and produced by Chris Parry, owner of Associates' previous record label Fiction Records.
3 "Me, Myself and the Tragic Story" is an alternative version of "Arrogance Gave Him Up".
4 "I Never Will" is an early version of "Party Fears Two", with different lyrics.
Note: the versions of "And Then I Read a Book" and "Australia" are different on the 2000 and 2016 releases.
The Associates were a Scottish post-punk and pop band, formed in Dundee in 1979 by lead vocalist Billy Mackenzie and guitarist Alan Rankine. The band released an unauthorized cover version of David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" as their debut single in 1979, which landed them a recording contract with Fiction Records. They followed with their debut studio album The Affectionate Punch in 1980 and the compilation album Fourth Drawer Down in 1981, both to critical praise.
Face to Face is the fourth studio album by the English rock band the Kinks, released on 28 October 1966. The album marked a shift from the hard-driving style of beat music that had catapulted the group to international acclaim in 1964, instead drawing heavily from baroque pop and music hall. It is their first album consisting entirely of Ray Davies compositions, and has also been regarded by critics as one of rock's first concept albums. Davies' blossoming songwriting style became increasingly observational and satirical, commenting on English culture, social class and the music industry.
"Love Hangover" is a song by the Motown singer Diana Ross, recorded in 1975 and released as a single on March 16, 1976. It rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot-Selling Soul Singles. It also hit number one on the Record World disco charts.
William MacArthur MacKenzie was a Scottish singer and songwriter, known for his distinctive high tenor voice. He was the co-founder and lead vocalist of post-punk and new wave band the Associates. He also had a brief solo career releasing his debut studio album, Outernational, in 1992, his only solo album released during his lifetime.
Joy is the fourth studio album by Scottish punk rock and new wave band Skids. It was their first album after the departure of signature guitarist Stuart Adamson who went on to found Big Country. It represented a change of direction from rock towards folk music—amplifying the traditional Scottish element already hinted at in previous releases. This would be their last album until the release of Burning Cities over 36 years later.
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Paul Haig is a Scottish indie musician, singer and songwriter. He was originally a member of post-punk band Josef K, active between 1979 and 1982.
Michael Stephen Dempsey is an English musician, best known as the bassist for The Cure and The Associates.
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Alan Rankine was a Scottish musician and record producer best known as keyboardist and guitarist for rock band the Associates, which he co-founded with lead vocalist Billy Mackenzie in the late 1970s.
Gary Gene Watson is an American country music singer. He is most famous for his 1975 hit "Love in the Hot Afternoon," his 1981 No. 1 hit "Fourteen Carat Mind," and his signature 1979 song "Farewell Party." Watson's long career has included five number one hits, 21 top tens, and 48 charted singles.
"Love Is a Rose" is a song written and composed by Neil Young. It first became popular in 1975 when Linda Ronstadt had a country hit with her version. "Love Is a Rose" has also been covered by other artists over the years.
Then Again is a collection of rarities, remixes and lost songs by former Josef K frontman Paul Haig recorded between 1982 and 1998, including previously unreleased material. Guests include Alan Rankine, Cabaret Voltaire, Mantronik, Bernard Sumner, Donald Johnson of A Certain Ratio and Finitribe.
The Affectionate Punch is the debut studio album by the Scottish post-punk and new wave band the Associates. It was released on 1 August 1980 on the Fiction label.
Fourth Drawer Down is a compilation album by the Scottish post-punk and new wave band the Associates, released in October 1981 by independent record label Situation Two. It compiles the A- and B-sides from the six singles the band released that year on the label. The album was re-issued in 2000 by V2 Records, containing five bonus tracks.
Perhaps is the third studio album by the Scottish post-punk and pop band the Associates, released on 8 February 1985 by WEA. It is their first album without founding member, keyboardist and guitarist Alan Rankine.
"Party Fears Two" is a song by Scottish new wave band the Associates, written by Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine. It was included on their second studio album Sulk (1982) and released as both a 7-inch and 12-inch single with the preceding track on the album, "It's Better This Way" as its B-side.
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