Wang Chung - Points On The Curve (1996)

Points on the Curve is Wang Chung's second studio offering, and was first released in 1984, at the height of the New Romantic boom in British pop. The band's first album (entitled Huang Chang) was a raw, edgy introduction to a unique sound, that mixed classy Brit pop with Chinese themes and tonalities. It explored fresh new pop territory. Their second album, played less on the Chinese theme, and tackled the more usual pop themes of unrequited love and passion. It lacks the freshness of their first album, but still stands out as a stellar moment in early 80s pop music.

The album's only successful UK singles chart release from the album, 'Dance Hall Days,' kicks things off with a very upbeat number. It did reasonably well in the UK charts, reaching inside the top 10, but it is one of the weaker tracks on the album, in my opinion, since it least represents the band's sound.

The second track 'Wait' is a beautiful ambient piece of introspection and is one of my definate favourites on the the album. 'True Love' and 'The Waves' follow next, and strive for the more commercial sound of 'Dance Hall Days' but are beautifully crafted nonetheless. Track 4, the angst ridden 'Look At Me Now' is truly superb, and my favourite. The line 'It's hard to recall when we were at school, our ambitions and revisions and our hopes for the future...' speaks urgently of 'what could have been' and is met by the rejoinder 'Look at me now!' The album is worth the purchase price for this track alone.

Another stand out track is 'Talk It Out' which concludes the album and is a great crowd pleaser.

The album was produced on the back of the underground success of the band's first album, and was a brave attempt at lifting the band into the same lofty spheres occupied at the time by the likes of ABC, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. But the band's sensitivity to its subject matter and delicate sense of arrangement do not enable it sufficiently to loosen the tethers to its true art, and the album did not have enough hits to bring it the commercial success for which it was so desparately striving. The band left the UK and found fame and fortune briefly in the USA, writing and producing the sound track to the classic 80s film To Live And Die in LA.

Points on The Curve is an outstanding album, for all its attempts at commerciality. I bought the cassette 2 years after the album was released (and when I was at university), and I listened to it non-stop for nearly two years. The remastered CD came out in 1996, and I had bid on a few Ebay auctions for it, before acquiring it very recently. The songs still sound as fresh today as they did 22 years ago. I only wish I had aged as gracefully.