I belatedly noticed that, some 15 years after finally deciding to acquire a copy of this album, I had never bothered to actually make any observations as to whether I even liked it or not. Whereupon I had to give it a good thinking-through revisit to decide how to express my reactions both initially and eventually.
The short version of the result was that I am split just about 50/50 on its contents, with half of the tracks landing solidly with me as formidible and impressive and the other half just seeming to be filler material. In retrospect I qualify the latter call as being more about my own tastes than about the quality of the tracks themselves: they may well be good rock tracks but of a Robert Palmer-specific style that doesn’t grab me.
If there’s one word that applies to this album overall, however, it is definitely slick. And that applies to Palmer himself just as much as the tracks and their production and performances.
Faves are undoubtedly “Addicted to Love” (duh!), “Trick Bag” with its incredibly shifty demon of a beat, “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” (again, duh!), and the snarling-snakelike “Flesh Wound.”
Comments © 2022 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.