Yes, their actions were their own...

Reflections inspired by Fangirl's post: I bought Entertainment in 1998, a few weeks after Second Edition and Pink Flag. Beautiful prose on their behalf (collected in the regrettably out of print SPIN Alternative Record Guide helped. When I was struggling to rid myself of the most powerful infatuation of my life that winter, those albums did their best to make things worse.

The last few years have seen a revival of interest in all things post-punk, and while the bands retain their vigor most of the criticism doesn't. The failed compromise interests me than the confirmed masterpiece. And this is where Go4's Hard enters the picture. Thanks to VH-1's constant rotation, "Is It Love" unshackles itself, massages its wrist and ankles, and rises unsteadily. I wish I'd heard it when I was writhing like a crab on its back. You can understand why Nile Rodgers was first approached as producer: it's got the straightforward dance groove Go4 had seemed incapable of recording. But Go4 were a band incapable of bad faith; even this bonafide dance hit (#8 on the Billboard Dance Chart!) shudders with the fear of impending doom first heard on "What We All Want" and "Natural's On It." On Hard it's one more corpse the listener bumps against; on Brief History of the Twentieth Century, it's out-on-bail before the life sentence of "We Life As We Dream, Alone." (Although there's a solid re-appraisal of Hard here.) So what if guitarist Andy Gill makes like a sullen Phil Oakey (is that even possible?)? Resigned, disgust tasting like stale vomit, he injects a burst of pre-millienium tension before yielding to the conventions of love -- and love songs. "Is It Love?" wonders if there's a difference:

No one lives in the future
No one lives in the past
The men who own the city
Make more sense to me too
Their actions are clear
Their lives are their own

Chilling pronouncements -- or confessions, given by a man who's endured unimaginable torture (watch the video: Gill and his gang wander through a third-rate discotheque with less animation than the corpses in "Thriller"). Listen to the slow burn of the synth strings beneath "Their actions are clear"; they're the saddest notes I've ever heard in a Go4 song, immediately calling to mind Songs of the Free's "I Will Be A Good Boy." You can accept Gill's realization that the capitalists are humans too, or you can believe the mumbled baritone hiding behind syncopated rhythm guitar, as if ashamed. The indentured black singers shout, "It's alright!" but he's not listening to these reassurances; it's too painful. Some California band calling themselves the Red Hot Chili Peppers want him on the phone.