Prefab Sprout: The Kings of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Completely

“Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque.” So goes the refrain of “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Prefab Sprout’s biggest hit and, for many, their signature song. It’s arguably one of the most inane choruses in ’80s pop, and the band’s frontman, Paddy McAloon, has since described the song as their “novelty” effort. Listen beyond the nonchalant synth pop bounce, though, and you may detect a note of poignancy in this tale of an aging pop star still dining out on the success of his first hit. “All the pretty birds have flown, now I'm dancing on my own,” McAloon sings. “I'm the king of rock ‘n’ roll, completely.”

That multi-layered quality – surface sweetness masking a dry, acid wit – is a recurrent feature in the discography of one of the most intriguing and, at times, dazzling pop outfits of the ’80s. Take “Cars and Girls,” released the same year, which has since become a regular fixture on driving compilations marketed at middle-aged men – hardly a seal of quality by any standard. But its outward sunniness is only half the story. Beneath you’ll find a critique of Bruce Springsteen’s clichéd evocations of the open road, as viewed from the distinctly unglamorous surrounds of Northern England. “Brucie dreams life's a highway / Too many roads bypass my way / Or they never begin,” sings McAloon, who will later herald the chorus with a stylised “Ah!” that reads like the purest distillation of starry-eyed, hi-def pop contentment going. It’s a formula that may justifiably leave you confused. Is McAloon genuine or joking? A misunderstood eccentric or an arch pop prankster with a hidden agenda?

The answer, of course, is both – or rather, not quite either. It’s an approach shared by few others – with the exception, perhaps, of fellow Brits Scritti Politti. Like Gartside, McAloon balanced an enduring faith in the potential of the pop song with a keen awareness of its limitations. And like Scritti, Prefab Sprout embodied the belief, fiercely uncool at the time, that music need not set itself in opposition to the mainstream in order to be smart, original or important. “[In] the ’80s, I was listening to the surfaces of records,” McAloon has said. “I wanted us to have the gloss of pop music... I didn’t want us to be a scratchy alternative band.”

But where the critical theory-toting Gartside had “Jacques Derrida,” McAloon had “Faron Young,” or Steve McQueen. Time and again his songs would return to the great mythical figures of US pop culture, tackling them with an intoxicating mixture of wide-eyed reverence and ironic distance. “Hey Manhattan, here I am / Call me star-struck Uncle Sam,” reads the chorus of “Hey Manhattan.” And later: “These myths we can't undo / They lie in wait for you / We live them till they're true.”

Prefab Sprout never quite lived the myth, though they came close. Their 1988 album From Langley Park to Memphis, from which the band’s biggest hits were drawn, was part-recorded in Giorgio Moroder’s studio in Hollywood under the aegis of long-term collaborator Thomas Dolby. It reached #5 in the UK album charts, and even featured a turn on the harmonica from Stevie Wonder. But as its title – plotting a line of flight from a nondescript village west of Durham to the hometown of Elvis – suggests, Prefab Sprout drew their strength not from being a part of the pop firmament, but by observing it from the outside.

In fact, by the end of the 1980s the quartet of McAloon, his brother Martin, then-partner Wendy Smith and drummer Neil Conti were already at the tail end of their brief moment in the sun – a moment that began with their 1984 debut, Swoon. “New Wave was just too fashionable for us,” McAloon has said. While the early ’80s was a particularly adventurous time for British music, the album’s labyrinthine structures and densely cryptic wordplay sat uneasily with the zeitgeist. Glasgow’s Postcard Records stable was perhaps a touchstone, but for the most part McAloon was looking further afield for inspiration: to early Steely Dan, the literate singer-songwriters of the ’60s and ’70s or the assiduous songcraft of Broadway musicals and the Great American Songbook. The result was a thorny, challenging album, though its finest moments – see the gloriously self-loathing “Couldn’t Bear to Be Special” – soared higher than most.

Its followup, 1985’s Steve McQueen, was not only the band’s best work, but one of the finest pop albums of the decade. The magic ingredient, arguably, was producer Thomas Dolby, whose trademark synthetic sheen helped to place the record alongside a raft of exceptional British pop LPs emerging around that time – Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, The Blue Nile’s A Walk Across the Rooftops, Scritti’s Cupid & Psyche 85. But even in that hallowed company, few dared to be as bold and idiosyncratic as Prefab. Certainly, few could compress such dizzying harmonic and structural innovations into a pop song as exquisitely well-formed as “Goodbye Lucille #1” or “Desire As.” Even fewer could wear serious sentiment so lightly without tipping into comedy – as in “Moving the River” or “Horsin’ Around” – a trick that is two parts Cole Porter to one part diffident Geordie wit.

The album was a cult hit, and Langley Park – and Prefab's brief dalliance with the mainstream – followed. But like Green Gartside, the self-effacing McAloon wasn’t quite built for pop stardom. 1990’s Jordan: the Comeback was a sprawling 19-track epic that felt simultaneously less substantial and less accessible than Prefab’s past work. A 1997 comeback attempt, Andromeda Heights, saw sickly sentiment win a decisive victory over McAloon’s more caustic tendencies. Since then McAloon has become something of a recluse, struggling with health problems while embarking on a series of ever more grandiose conceptual projects, most of which have yet to see the light of day.

Still, the band’s ’80s output prevails. And while efforts to revive the music of that era have been in full swing for over a decade now, Prefab’s particular expressive mode – falling somewhere between taut post-punk seriousness and the pure-surface sensuality of MOR pop – seems largely forgotten. “Any music worth its salt is good for dancing / But I tried to be the Fred Astaire of words,” McAloon sings in “Paris Smith.” There’s a lot we can still learn from the unique agility of his songs.