0209. Madness
The Rise & Fall
This is called Madness' "experimental" album and even though they experiment a bit (or a lot, depending on how conservative you are) they still manage to make it sound like Madness. Not only through Suggs' recognisable phrasing (as you'd expect), but also the musical phrasing is classic Madness. No, the major divergence is mostly their use of tempo-shifts. Sometimes its a miss, like in Blue Skinned Beast (in spite of being their first political song - aimed at Margaret Thatcher), but mostly it's still Madness.
The one true experiment is the final song, Madness (Is All In The Mind), where hey completely leave their style and instead wander into jazz' dominions (with a touch of ska) and changes vocalist from Suggs to Chas Smash (which in it self makes for a whole different style).
But for the most part it's as with the title track, which opens the album with their patented stiltyness.
Despite their tongue-in-cheek image a lot of the lyrics are quite serious and without the accompanying video Our House is more of a nostalgic trip down memory lane (in accordance with most of the rest of the album) than the Monty Python-folly etched on the retinas. The perhaps best track of the album is however Tomorrow's Just Another Day, which is an excellent (I repeat: excellent) melancholic pop-song about being on the verge of giving up.
And I think that's where their greatness lies: bouncing music with a serious tone in a slightly deranged package.
