GANG OF FOUR Vinyl Records and CDs

... In A Uniform") were more sorrowful on the subject of modern man's isolation than they were scathing. When bassist Dave Allen left the band, the gang of three softened up for Hard, an agit-pop reconfiguring of Roxy Music and Chic's swank musical universe. While the 1983 album is hardly essential listening, it does feature the excellent single "Is It Love," and the under appreciated track "Woman Town." The album was harshly criticized as a post-punk sellout (you'd think no one had ever heard New Order's single "Thieves Like Us," for Pete's sake) and Gang of Four folded soon after its release. Key members Jon King and Andy Gill reformed the band for 1991's Mall, which retained the same high quality musical and lyrical ideas as before but was missing the all-important element of pop craftsmanship that the band previously employed (there's a reason Entertainment, and not PIL's Metal Box, is the sound of today's crossover indie rock). By the late 1990s, kids not even born when Entertainment was released began getting signed to major labels with music that sounded an awful lot like the Gang of Four. This prompted the original band members to reform and headline a heralded, sold-out 2005 tour across Europe and the U.S. Gang of Four is currently working on a new album.