In Gary Numan's world, every day is Doomsday, and he's the sole survivor. Living in a germ-free plastic room with blinking neon, no shadows and a mirror instead of a window, Numan creates duplicate models of himself–in the mirror, on film, from metal – for companionship. (His first record was called Replicas.) All of the singer's songs are monologues addressed from him to them, and sometimes from them to him. "I could crawl around the floor," offers one hopeful playmate in The Pleasure Principle's "Metal." "Just like I'm real/Like you."
Inevitably, the question arises of who controls whom. States the title character of "Engineers": "We are your heartbeat ... /We
Read More
keep you alive. For now." The situations are exaggerated enough to make intriguing science fiction, but still human enough to induce pathos. Because the protagonist in "Conversation" continues to grasp at a memory with some feeling, his confession ("Am I a photo?/I can't remember") is ineffably sad.
These faintly discernible signs of life distinguish Numan from such humanoid drones as Kraftwerk, yet the similarities are certainly there: the Mr. Rhythmic pulse, the robotic handclaps, an extraterrestrial cascading organ and several synthesized buzzes sprinkled like jimmies on an electric sundae. Gary Numan sings in an effete, universe-weary voice the way David Bowie does, only I don't think Numan is pretending. At first, everything blurs together, and though the songs can easily stand alone, they needn't. Overall, The Pleasure Principle flows like an eerie film soundtrack. Perhaps this album is the real Journey through the Secret Life of Plants.
The Pleasure Principle also has similarities to Talking Heads' Fear of Music: the names of both LPs are ironic, and the tunes mostly bear one-word titles. Just as the content of the Talking Heads record indicates that the band has overcome any supposed fear of music, Gary Numan proves to be quite beyond pleasure – or pain, for that matter. Which isn't to say that his work is unpleasurable. On the contrary, it's mesmerizing, if not exactly colorful. "Cars," the new album's best cut, charted Number One in England, and it's exactly the sort of droogy disco number that you can imagine a lonely clone dancing to on Doomsday. Tambourine and all. (RS 313)
DON SHEWEY
Pleasure Principle is the album most Americans equate with this New Wave innovator, specifically the song "Cars," which was a moderate hit on the radio and, more significantly, a heavily-rotated video on the then-fledgling MTV network. Nobody plays New Wave robo-funk like Numan, and his early records remain, to this day, archetypal post-Bowie synth rock.
