KIM WILDE — SELECT: Doubling Down On The Synth-Pop Darkness

Kim Wilde’s self-titled debut was an instant chart hit in the U.K. and gave her instant com­mer­cial cred­i­bil­ity.  She could have gone the shameless-commercial route and dumbed down her moody new wave approach to reach a broader audi­ence but she didn’t.  Instead, her follow-up out­ing Select actu­ally dou­bles down on the dark­ness.  The result isn’t as con­sis­tently engag­ing as the first album but it’s a solid lis­ten.  Better yet, it’s one of the dark­est, quirki­est albums to be mar­keted under the ban­ner of com­mer­cial new wave music.

The first side of the album is engag­ing if not quite excel­lent: songs like “Words Fell Down” and “Just A Feeling” have sleek, synth-driven arrange­ments and plenty of energy but they aren’t as relent­lessly inven­tive as the songs on the first album.  The best song on the first side is one of the album’s sin­gles, “View From A Bridge.”  It’s amaz­ingly dark for some­thing aimed at the charts: the lyrics are a “jilted lover con­tem­plates end­ing it all” sce­nario that is taken to another level by an enig­matic final verse that pushes things into Twilight Zone ter­ri­tory.  Wilde wails the verses with the proper level of anguish, which is off­set nicely by the robotic, stac­cato vocals on the chorus.

The sec­ond side is a killer, with some of Wilde’s best-ever record­ings.  “Chaos At The Airport” is a creepy tale of air­plane pho­bia made real whose breath­lessly hooky melody would have fit in on the first album and “Can You Come Over” is a sur­prise detour into guitar-driven power pop that sounds like a really good Blondie b-side.  Even bet­ter is “Cambodia,” an enig­matic wartime-set tale of lost love that is unex­pect­edly artsy for a sin­gle — an airy, hyp­notic mood piece that recalls the high melo­drama of Ultravox’s best Midge Ure-era record­ings.  The lat­ter track has an instru­men­tal coda that doesn’t add much but it’s not enough to dim the song’s ethe­real appeal.

However, the best song on the sec­ond side — and per­haps the best of the album — is a daz­zling blend of bal­ladry and elec­tron­ica called “Take Me Tonight.”  The lyrics are the story of an end-of-the-night pickup but they’re told in a dis­arm­ingly direct first-person style that gives them a per­sonal touch.  Wilde is at her most seduc­tive, build­ing from breathy croon into a full-voiced expres­sion of amour.  That said, the clincher on this song is a daz­zling arrange­ment by Ricky Wilde that weaves count­less lay­ers of synths, both pro­grammed and played, into a dreamy sound­scape that lulls the viewer right into the song’s mood of intox­i­cat­ing desire.

If there’s a dif­fer­ence between the first album and Select, it’s that they’ve pushed the enve­lope a lit­tle fur­ther in the wake of their early suc­cess.  It’s a fam­ily effort and they’re doing pop their way: if it’s a bit on the dark side, then what of it?  Once again, the father-son team of Marty and Ricky Wilde han­dled the writ­ing and pro­duc­tion here.  While they go for acces­si­bil­ity in their melodies (lots of hooks to be found) they pur­sue a more chal­leng­ing path in the lyrics: in addi­tion to the grim sce­nar­ios out­lined ear­lier, there are also tales of social unrest (“Action City”), police bru­tal­ity (“Wendy Sadd”) and tales of inter­per­sonal dis­con­nec­tion (“Ego” and “Words Fell Down”).  Kim’s vocals retain their teen-dream acces­si­bil­ity but her abil­i­ties as a styl­ist are pushed fur­ther by the likes of “Take Me Tonight” and “Cambodia.”

While not the smash hit that Kim Wilde was — Select only hit the top-20 in the U.K. and stiffed in the U.S. — it retains a level of ambi­tion that makes it unique amongst the pop­pier end of the new wave.  If you liked the first album, the sec­ond side alone makes Select worth the price of admission.

(CD Notes: Cherry Pop’s reis­sue of this title does it jus­tice, offer­ing a nice set of liner notes that include single-sleeve pic­tures and lyrics as well as a slew of bonus tracks.  “Cambodia” is pre­sented in its sin­gle ver­sion (which clips off the mean­der­ing instru­men­tal coda of the album ver­sion) and rest of the bonuses are non-album tracks: the best of these is prob­a­bly “Child Come Away,” a stun­ner of a synth-ballad with a dark, frag­mented sce­nario about a child who was the vic­tim of an unspeak­able crime that is never fully detailed.)