I enjoy a really broad range of music, ranging from symphonic to opera to jazz to rock, and every once in a while I stumble across something extraordinary. One such new CD was Suite XVI, an aggressive yet strangely melodic rock album of 2006 by those "Men in Black," The Stranglers, an English group who've been perpetuating the darkness since 1974. Except in attitude, their music is not totally of the punk rock genre but something much harder and more musically accomplished, more related to NYC's New Wave movement of the 1970s. Fiercely intellectual and absurdist in the Monty Python sense, it is also vaguely menacing. This is black humor at its best, symbolized by their choice of a rat as their logo.
Despite over three decades of playing, 16 studio albums (hence this album's title) plus numerous live recordings and compilations, The Stranglers have never really hit the big time here in America. This despite their strongest influences having come from American bands, especially Television and The Doors — in fact their keyboardist Dave Greenfield sounds at times remarkably like the latter's Ray Manzarek.
If this were a new band, the media would be praising them as yet another "savior of rock." But they've been around for a long time, often neglected by all but their fiercely devoted fans. Perhaps this new CD will change that.
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