Disco de Paul Young: “Between Two Fires [Expanded]”

Despite popular belief to the contrary the 1980's were much like the 60's in terms of musical developement. That is in the sense that months,not merely years made an enormous different. Take Paul Young for example. What it felt like for him after he made

bore precious little to how it felt when he recorded this follow up album. Any semblance of big instrumentation with lots of gating,electronic effects and heavy synthesizers had suddenly gone very much out of the pop mainstream. Especially if your music was of the soulful bent. Interestingly enough the way Paul Young was going during this time was a similar direction to that of Prince during that time,toward a live band oriented sound that embraced elements of psychedelic soul.

The album starts out with "Some People",which along wih "Wonderland" have this thick,uptempo rocking soul to it. There's little gloss except for accents here and there. Paul helps this out by writing/co-writing every song here with a strong sense of reflection and thoughtfulness reflecting more adult matters and relationships. "War Games" is an excellent song. Could be about romance or politics actually much like "Respect" has has this thick psychedelic funk groove to it and an unusual melody. "In The Long Run" and "A Certain Passion" ride less on rhythm and more on these low bubbling bass lines and a softly percussive effect. The ballads "Wasting My Time" and the title song are straight of the Sam Cooke era gospel drenched soul ballad attitude which Paul brings to life even more so. The final song is the intense,upbeat horn funk of "Wedding Day",my personal favorite on the album.

One thing about this album is that it really helps you realize there's a big difference between melodic music and melodic pop music. In pop you tend to have melodies that tend to be crafted to sound as close to perfect as humanely possible together. That's where hit songs tend to come out of. These songs all have melodies. But they aren't as heavily crafted. Some of the melodic ideas on this album seem to spring out into similar ones. They are definitely designed not just to show how far Paul Young could extend his voice,but how his band could handle themselves musically. This is one of those few very commercial sounding albums that isn't a big hit parade. Paul Young had always had a strong artistic vision behind what he did. And was lucky enough to extend it into big pop success. Here he just sings and writes from his mind and heart. And it really does work.

This album carried me through my latter college semesters and I imagine only the Paul Young devoted are even aware of it.

This remaster is fantastic and introduced me to mixes and versions I had never heard before.

Odds are, no one but the devoted will flock to this one. But please, flock on!

Hardly his best work, but "Between Two Fires" (annoyingly unavailable for so long) does reveal the talented 80's singer struggling with more mature and original material, a goal he would reach on "Other Voices." And where it works, it works well -- especially "In the Long Run" and "Wonderland". But the album, even in its newly remastered, two-disc version is only for the hard core Paul Young fan or serious collector of 80's music.

It's a shame that Paul Young is really only known (at least in the U.S.) for the singles that came off of 1985's "The Secret of Association" album because he had several more excellent songs on his next 3 records. This soulful album from 1986 is fairly strong from beginning to end & it contains some nice gems. Songs like "Some People" & "Wonderland" are first rate singles & they should've gotten much more radio play than they did. "Some People" is an especially good pop song with nice guitar, percussion & a great rhythm to it. "Wonderland" is also a nice ballad with a dreamy sound to it & a catchy chorus. Another song that wasn't a single but easily could've been is "Wargames". Although this is a political song, it is very catchy & it has great rhythm & lead guitar as well as a nice chorus. He actually performed this one on SNL back in 1986 & it was a great performance. "In the Long Run" is another hidden gem that could've been a minor hit. It has a nice driving beat to it, fiery guitar solo & heavy bass. The last half of the album isn't bad either. It is mostly ballads but they are very decent. The last track "Wedding Day" isn't as strong lyrically or musically as anything on the first side but it is still a nice mid-tempo pop song that has a really nice groove to it. So if you're a Paul Young fan, you owe it to yourself to give this one a listen cuz this is a very good album with some great tracks.

Paul Young has an outstanding blue eyed soul voice. The tracks on this cd are well played, well produced and well written. His bass player is Pino Palladino who is currently performing with the Who. Pino is a real gem all on his own. Together they are unstoppable. More people should know about this recording. PK