Gang of Four - Solid Gold

The band's rampaging, balls-out rock side got captured on Solid Gold, which was released in early 1981. Sporadically exciting, the album's live-sounding production was more conventional than Entertainment!'s dessicated starkness.

Lyrically, Gill and King seemed to have lost their touch. The songs veered from crude, third-person typology (the protofascist caricatures of "Outside the Trains Don't Run On Time" and "He'd Send in the Army") to clumsy satire (the anti-American "Cheeseburger").

Gang of Four - Outside the Trains Don't Run On Time 1981


Gang of Four - He'd Send in the Army 1981


Gang of Four - Cheeseburger 1981

The better songs like "Paralysed" and "What We All Want" struck a note of sadness that tapped into the apprehensive mood that pervaded the start of the eighties, as the implications of the Thatcher and Reagan victories began to sink in.

Gang of Four - What We All Want 1981

The supine despondency of "Paralysed" offered an occasional glimpse of fragility in Gang of Four's music. The spoken lyric was taken by most reviewers as the lament of a man laid low by being laid off. According to Gill, who wrote and recited it, it's actually much closer to the blues in the original sense.

Gang of Four - Paralysed 1981