Blancmange: He's having a coffee - he wants it hot

The return of Blancmange was announced about 18 months ago. Soon after we heard excerpt of tracks they were working on from their web page: they were pretty poor and almost laughable. I dismissed them as the finger paintings of two old collaborators having fun and trying to find a way into writing something worth recording.

Imagine my surprise when I played their new album “blanc burn” to find one of the afore mentioned ‘finger paintings’ the first track on the CD. From this inauspicious start things do improve slightly, but not much. The half finished single “Drive Me” goes nowhere; “The Western” works well, but is pulled down by the tracks book ending it. Apart from “Don’t Let These Days” little else on this album deserves mention.

Blancmange have always displayed questionable quality control on their albums and I suppose “blanc burn” follows in this tradition. They aren’t being avante garde, they aren’t being clever, and they aren’t being individual. It’s just crap, and if the album dies on its arse they only have themselves to blame.