The Eurythmics of Our Lives: Vol. 7 - We Too Are One
Written: Dec 23 '05 (Updated Dec 26 '05)
Product Rating:
Pros: Several lesser known latter day classics (which don't appear on The Ultimate Collection)
Cons: Mainstreamed production, and some inconsistent songwriting.
The Bottom Line: In which the author (temporarily) says good-bye to two old friends from his childhood who just can't stand to be around each other anymore.
plorentz's Full Review: We Too Are One [Bonus Tracks] [Digipak] by Eurythm...
Roy Orbison said it: It's over. It's over. It's over. Or at least, you hope it is. There are so many feelings at that moment, it's often hard to tell. Just physically, there's a feeling of chronic hoarseness, from all the fights. The exhaustion of it. The feeling of heaviness and bruises. And the nerves - the shaky hands, the queasy high, the light-headed feeling that accompanies any momentous life change. Emotionally, the loving and the hating at the same time; the drive to reject rubbing hard against the fear of rejection; the struggle for both closure and supremacy. The all over body tingle at anything - a car in the grocery store parking lot, the smell of cologne on a stranger, a certain table at a certain restaurant - reminiscent of less complicated, diving head first times.
There's freedom, but then also the phantom relationship. Like a prisoner suddenly released, who still feels the weight of locked cuffs on his wrists. And regret too. The feeling of failure. The feeling of unworthiness, inadequacy. The dark rooms. The divorce diet. The days spent without speaking to another living being. Days spent in pajamas, cuddled next to 12-packs and Little Debbies boxes. Days spent disappearing. The disappointment in everything. The hate. The grief. The long, hard moving on.
Couplehood is a fragile enterprise, be it romantic or otherwise. In the case of The Eurythmics, the couplehood was romantic, and then otherwise, an intense personal relationship transformed into an even more intense, and very public, creative partnership. But built into any compact between two people thus bound is the possibility - in some cases, the eventuality - of the breaking of that bond. The moment when the relationship becomes mutually harmful rather than mutually supportive. The moment when concern, love, interest in the Other is supplanted by concern, love, interest in some other Other. This is the moment documented on The Eurythmics' seventh studio album, the meaningfully titled We Too Are One.
Like the album's title, these songs affirm the fact that Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart (who, in the time since their previous album, had each married other people, and dabbled in solo musical projects) will always be known as the Eurythmics, will always, in some way, be married to the music they made in the 1980s, will always, to some degree, be associated with each other in our (and indeed, their) minds, will always, on some level, love each other. But also that they are two separate individuals, and at that particular moment, they (as Annie herself points out in Phill Savidge's liner notes) could barely stand to be in the same room together.
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It's fitting then, that this album is best known for giving us the duo's last Top 40 single in the U.S. - "Don't Ask Me Why" - a song that makes obvious (and loving) sonic allusions to one of their earliest hits ("Here Comes The Rain Again"), but nevertheless arrives at this unsubtle verdict, rendered with harsh nonchalance by Annie:
I don't love you anymore
I don't think I ever did
For a pair of artists well known for their irony, their nuance, their ability to deliver sly lyrics with incisive double-meanings, the songs of We Too Are One are remarkably unambiguous. ("You Hurt Me (And I Hate You)" pretty much says it all, doesn't it?) And not just lyrically. This is their most mainstream sounding record, the production and arrangements apparently geared to the widest possible pop audience, stopping just shy of generic (except for the single "Revival" which, unfortunately, is generic).
Nevertheless, the album works surprisingly well, and, track-by-track, boasts some of their best latter-day songs, not the least of which is "The King and Queen of America", a triumphantly campy mockery of American consumerism with big horn sections and big background vocals, a big beat and a big, obvious hook. "(My My) Baby's Gonna Cry" is almost as good, and with Dave Stewart actually singing, trading lines with Annie on each of the song's almost moronically simple verses ("You could be so good, but you have to be so bad / when you could make me happy, lover, you made me sad"), it sounds like nothing so much as a long lost Roxette single. (And I mean that in the best possible way.)
"How Long?" and "You Hurt Me (And I Hate You)" are anthemic, muscled Eurodisco, and "Sylvia" is a lovely (however quirky) allusion to Sylvia Plath and her legendary death wish. But the best songs here are the grieving ones that close out the LP's two sides (sometimes I miss "sides"): "Angel" is a soulful outpouring of love from Annie to her dead mother that boasts the album's sweetest, best lyrics:
I believed in you,
I believed in you
Like Elvis Presley singing psalms on a Sunday
Meanwhile, for the gorgeous "When The Day Goes Down", Annie reassures herself that disappointment is the one thing that every human being has in common with every other human being, and somehow we all have to find a way to live through it - and Dave seeming to second that notion with the production, at first soft and sympathetic, but slowly growing towards strength, resolution, forward movement - a fitting epitaph for one of the most beloved and intensely creative acts of the 1980s:
This is for the broken dreamers
This is for the vacant souls
This is for the hopeless losers
This is for the helpless fools
The burned out and the useless
And the lonely and the weak
And the lost and the degraded
And the too dumb to speak
And the day goes down
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Like all of the other CDs is this long-awaited series of reissues, We Too Are One has been repackaged (under the supervision of original art director and stalwart Eurythmics associate Laurence Stevens) in a glossy tri-fold digi-pak, with a generous booklet featuring a bounty of period photos as well as Phill Savidge's historical notes.
The CD also adds five bonus tracks, including two non-LP b-sides, "Precious" (not the "Precious" that would appear on Diva) and the slinky electrofunk number "See No Evil"; a nifty 12" dance remix of "The King and Queen of America" and an acoustic take on "Angel" featuring members of the London Community Gospel Choir. It's all capped off with probably the best of all the unreleased covers which have come to light for these discs - a suitably melodramatic (and highly unlikely) rendition of The Smiths' "Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me", which would have sounded right at home on the original record.
We Too Are One is not one of the Eurythmics' best loved records, but time has been very kind to it, and it has moments of great power and beauty. Maybe not a must have, or a priority purchase, but well worth the loving attention it's given with this reissue, and very well worth a second (and third) listen.
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RATINGS:
Original album: 4 stars
Reissue: 5 stars
Total: 4.5 stars rounded down
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"We Too Are One" [deluxe edition] by The Eurythmics
RCA / Legacy Records
Originally released 1989
Reissue released 11/15/2005
Produced by Dave Stewart and Jimmy Iovine
Remastered by Ian Cooper
71 min.
SONGS: We Two Are One - The King and Queen of America - (My My) Baby's Gonna Cry - Don't Ask Me Why - Angel - Revival - You Hurt Me (And I Hate You) - Sylvia - How Long? - When The Day Goes Down /BONUS: Precious - See No Evil - The King and Queen of America (Dance Remix) - Angel (Choir Version) - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
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