Search - Godley & Creme :: Music from Consequences/L

Classic albums full of wit, humor and invention

Wayne Klein | My Little Blue Window, USA | 07/27/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Perhaps the consequence of ambition is to be savaged by critics and fans alike. "Consequences" was torn to shreds by many critics for its pretentions when it was first released. A narrative double disc album, it featured a story about nature rebelling against man along with songs and instrumentals by Godley & Creme who had recently left 10cc. While ambitious and, yes, perhaps pretentious the sprawling album offered something music hadn't seen in awhile--artist attempting something on a large scale with wit and intelligence. The drawback to "Consequences" was its reliance on, perhaps, too much narration by the talented Peter Cook when fans had come to expect something different from Godley & Creme.



The "Music from Consequences" came to market to salvage a disasterous reception for the duo's album double concept album. It focused primarily on the songs and instrumentals with a bit of narration by Cook to hold it all together. On the whole, it works equally as well as the original double album. The best songs are very much the equal of what the duo had accomplished within 10cc. "5 O'Clock in the Morning" stands as, perhaps, the best track on the album with its observations about the life of the working person.



"L" on the other hand didn't have ambition of "Consequences" but it did have just about as much creativity going on. "An Englishman in New York" features Godley & Creme's sarcastic wit at its best and the galloping melody and vocal delivered by Kevin Godley reminds me of "The Dean and I" in terms of its ambitious scope and musical changes. It's not a perfect album but does benefit from a better, more focused "message" than "Consequences". Featuring gutarist Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music, 801)on many tracks, the album shows the duo's Zappaesque word play and musical invention frequently in top form.



While this edition lacks the bonus tracks seen with the other reissues (each of the others has anywhere from 4 to 8 tracks on each CD), it's a great compilation of two fine albums by this often forgotten creative duo. Godley & Creme wouldn't have a hit in the US until their next to last album ("The History Mix") with the innovative "Cry" (which benefited from an original video directed by the duo themselves)and as good as that song is, these two albums at their best are even better. I'd give "Music from Consequences" 4 stars and "L" 4 1/2. The remastering for both albums is comparable to the US releases (where "Consequences" was released in its entirety as a two disc CD and "L" was combined with the witty "Freeze Frame")."

Post Breakup Entries

Peter A. Greene | Franklin, PA United States | 02/23/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"After leaving 10cc, Godley and Creme produced the three-record extravaganza Consequences. It was either very clever or very self-indulgent depending on which parts you focused on, but the narrative portions (think Fireside Theater on British holiday) put many folks off, hence the "musical excerpts" disc.



The disc, oddly enough, completely scraps the sequencing of the original, but it does show off many of the twistedly cool musical ideas were embedded in the longer work.



"L" (I don't know-- a corner that they're turning?) is the obligatory angry post-group-breakup album. "Group Life," "Hit Factory" and "Business Is Business" can sit right by "It's Johnny's Birthday" in the catelog of songs that flip the bird to former bandmates and the music biz. (Business, however, has the tastiest four bars of arabian sax break ever recorded.)



The irony is that much of this could easily have been on a 10cc album. "Punchbag" is yet another song about a suffering, picked-on nebbish, while "Englishman in New York" is yet another fine story-telling track centered around a slightly bent central character.



What Godley and Creme kept from the 10cc divorce was their rich vocal palette and the darker part of the group's sensibilities. They also kept the quartet's tendency to, well, not self-edit as rigorously as might have been wise. But this particular collection has many many fine jewels and if you're wondering about whether to dip into their catelog or not, this isn't a bad place to start."

Deranged

ElvisCostellosWeiner | Michigan | 02/08/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"These two albums show Godley And Creme at their deranged best...or worst, depending on how you look at it. These two seemed to work best with a normalizing influence, like in 10cc with Eric and Graham stopping these two from flying off into the stratsophere. Once they left, something like Consequences was perhaps inevitable. No doubt feeling pretty good, after the commercial and critical success of the first four 10cc albums, they probably felt they could do anything. The result was Consequences, one of the most over the top, ambitious etc. albums of all time. It effectively killed their career in the critics eyes: 10cc continued on for four more albums, each strong in their own ways, with various strangeness running throughout, illustrating Eric and Graham were also a bit strange themselves.



However, Music From Consequences, the album containing the songs from Consequences with some of the instrumental stuff, also illustrates Godley And Creme's "normal" aspects. Indeed, to call this stuff "normal" is like calling Clint Howard "handsome." These are tuneful songs, but full of the weird push and pull of classic 10cc. This album shows that, in the impenterable nonsense of Consequences, there was a great little weird pop album waiting to come out.



After the massive failure of Consequences, the band scaled back their ambitions, and released the short L. However, just because they scaled back their ambitions didn't mean they scaled back their insanity: this is one of the most complex, twisted, confusing, and just plain weird albums to ever be released by two formerly succesful pop stars. The interesting thing about the album is it's TUNEFULNESS: though it becomes weird, twisted, dissonant, it never forgets the importance of GOOD MELODY. It's sort of sad, though, to see them operate here: if they would have stayed in 10cc, these songs would have fit in well with the more normal stuff the other two were doing. Imagine hearing "Sandwiches Of You" sitting next to "Things We Do For Love." Twisted indeed!"