Fun Boy Three - Waiting

Fun Boy Three Waiting
1983 Chrysalis/EMI

There once was a UK ska/2 Tone outfit called the Specials, and they were a great band. They scored a bunch of hits, travelled the world, and made merriment.

Then their laconic vocalist, Terry Hall, went with co-Specials Lyndval Golding and Neville Staple went and formed the oddly arty and quite pop FB3.

Waiting is their sophomore release, and I find their best. produced by the also laconic (and odd and arty) David Byrne of the Talking Heads. The album starts with a 2 minute Petula Clark style swinging 60s goofy piano ditty called Murder She Said (Angela Lansbury was unavailable for comment as to why her show was never as animated as this track), and then we get into The More I See (The Less I Believe), which mixes socially probing lyrics and skewed new wave together with spooky background vocals and muted brass phrases to set a sort of mission statement for the rest of the album.

Going Home is equal parts Police throwaway B-side and last vestiges of the Specials. We're Having All the Fun is kind of a happy sneer at squandering ones life in Thatcher's England, and veers into a joking narrative about their adventures with chemical vices in The Farmyard Connection. There is a hint of comedic Tango in The Tunnel of Love and the mid-tempo Things We Do has a melancholic fatalism circling a piano and violin vamp.

The Pressure of Life is a bit whiny and sounds like a filler track from a Hipsway album.* And by the time Well Fancy That! comes about it turns to a showtune closer that you really have to be in the mood for to get to (like servicing your 9th Pilsner Urquelli in a Prague pub for example).

The really oddity here is their take on the Go-Go's hit Our Lips Are Sealed (Hall co-wrote the song with then Go-Go Jane Weidlen). It has its own charm, but just does not come off as well as under its more famous variation.

Byrne's hand is apparent only in terms of general crispness and quality of production, rather than any inherent trait one could see as directly connected to TH; there are flashes of ethnic percussion and quirky arrangements, but it is far less pronounced.

* Yes, I liked Honeythief as well, but one great song out of 20+ cuts over 2 albums means most of Hipsway was filler.