La Folie
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Isolationist, misanthropic, and cantankerous, punk survivors the Stranglers were never a band known for ostentatious displays of affection, at least not to music journalists. However, 1981's conceptual La Folie (roughly translated as "madness") has become known in band circles as the Stranglers "love" album. Typically, these were no ordinary chansons d'amour. Songs of faith, familial strife, devotion, and dependency--spanning religion, celebrity obsession, lust, death, and drugs--the nearest the album got to being superficially palatable was on the gorgeous, harpsichord-strewn "Golden Brown," ex-jail-bird Hugh Cornwell's paean to the seduction of heroin. And then there was the chilled-out title-track, six sultry minutes of J.J. Burnel reciting--entirely in French--the true story of a Paris-based student who murdered and ate his girlfriend. The Raven aside, La Folie found the Stranglers at their most instrumentally dexterous and melodically inventive: witness Burnel's nomadic bass lines, the discordant Four Freshmen harmonies on "It Only Takes Two to Tango," Cornwell's barb at the commercialized martyrdom of deceased pop stars on the waspish "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead." There are some great should-have-been singles too, like "Non Stop" with its cheesy organ licks, and the perky, salacious synth-pop of "Pin Up." Even the bonus tracks are excellent--"Strange Little Girl" (a Top 10 hit and a song covered by Tori Amos) and its even better B-side, the Hot Club de Paris pastiche "Cruel Garden." La Folie is easily the most underrated album from Britain's most underrated band. --Kevin Maidment
Tracks
| 1 | Non Stop |
| 2 | Everybody Loves You When You're Dead |
| 3 | Tramp |
| 4 | Let Me Introduce You To The Family |
| 5 | Ain't Nothin' To It |
| 6 | The Men They Love To Hate |
| 7 | Pin Up |
| 8 | It Only Takes Two To Tango |
| 9 | Golden Brown |
| 10 | How To Find True Love And Happiness In The Present Day |
| 11 | La Folie |
| 12 | Cruel Garden |
| 13 | Cocktail Nubiles |
| 14 | Vietnamerica |
| 15 | Love 30 |
| 16 | You Hold The Key To My Love In Your Hands |
| 17 | Strange Little Girl |
