After the release of their second album,
Approved by the Motors, the
Motors were reduced to a duo after the departure of drummer
Rick Slaughter Wernham and guitarist
Bram Tchaikovsky. As most casual
power pop and
new wave fans know,
Bram went on to slightly bigger and better things as a solo artist, taking the
Motors' guitar-driven sound with him. Although the band had introduced keyboards on their second album, fans were not prepared for the synth sounds that dominated
Tenement Steps, their third and final album. Although an enjoyable, if not entirely consistent, release, the duo of
Nick Garvey (guitar/keyboards/vocals) and
Andy McMaster (bass/guitar/keyboard/vocals) overextended their talents, creating an ambitiously over-produced album that sounded -- ambitiously overproduced!
Garvey and
McMaster were still great songwriters, but the songs got lost in a synthesized
Spector-like wall of '80s sound. In other words, the
Motors one-hit machine was running low on fuel. Keyboards seemed to drive the songs, with guitars added to the mix almost as an afterthought. For a debut album this would have been a fairly impressive feat, but for the
Motors, it was step backwards while they were trying to make that crucial stop forwards. The triumphant
"Love and Loneliness," the album's opener, remains one of the band's finest moments, although its chorus sounds suspiciously similar to
Stephen Stills'
"Love the One You're With." "That's What John Said," another of the album's three singles, is a standard
rock & roll number dressed up in slick '80s production, and is one chord away from being fantastic.
"Metropolis" (another single) and
"Slum People" are average songs with overactive imaginations, awash in huge, swooping production trickery.
"Here Comes the Hustler" would have been more welcome on this album had it not been released a year before as a B-side (with a slightly different mix).
"Modern Man" is nearly unlistenable, sounding like a bad
Flash and the Pan B-side and should be avoided at all costs. The title track is a huge success, both dramatic and melodic, with all the right bells and whistles in all the right places. Perhaps this should have been the formula that the album should have stuck with. With only eight songs, the album's batting average is far lower than it should have been. ~ Steve Schnee
