Three of a Perfect Pair (1984)

Artist: King Crimson
Release Year: 1984

Rating: 7/10

Track Listing: 1) Three of a Perfect Pair; 2) Model Man; 3) Sleepless; 4) Man with an Open Heart; 5) Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds); 6) Industry; 7) Dig Me; 8) No Warning; 9) Larks' Tongues in Aspic (Part III).

I'm sure that by now, Tony Levin fans are foaming at the mouth because I haven't fully acknowledged his wondrous contributions to 80s King Crimson.  Well fret not, LTE-stans, because his moment is here and now.  Tony's deepest grooves are on here, and I'm not just talking about "Sleepless".  His bass pulses and thrums and growls all over these tracks, adding a character that's hard to put a finger on.

But as long as we're on the subject, "Sleepless" is phenomenal.  Right from the start, Tony rips in with the coolest slap bass riff ever, sounding both portentous and groovy, and there's no way tons of people wouldn't get up and dance to this even today.  And hearing those chromatic verses about insomniac hallucinations, constantly shifting into falsetto, before collapsing back into the "don't fight it, it's over your heeeaaaaad" chorus, is a constant delight.

But wait...catchy choruses?  Dancing?  Sure sounds out of place for a King Crimson album!

Yes, the poppiest King Crimson songs are found on Side A of this album.  The title track is catchy as hell and could have almost found a home on the radio, yet the intricate guitar riffs and spooky, Freudian lyrics keep us comfortably separate from the usual pop-slop land of the Eighties.  "Model Man" and "Man with an Open Heart" each could have been hits in a different life, with the effortlessly smooth and human chorus of the former, and the "weird, bouncy "oh-oh-oh-ohhhohh" in the chorus of the latter, sounding like something from...I dunno, The Human League?  I remember Belew once issuing an apology for "Open Heart" on his old Elephant Blog circa 2009 or so, which everyone in the comments agreed was unnecessary.  Poor guy, feeling shame over something as infectious as this.

On side B, we have less excitement, but of course we can't demand a full pop album like a bunch of plebs.  "Nuages" is nicely atmospheric with its airy drone and feather-light pulse, but it doesn't need to be as long as it is.  Same goes for "Industry",  which depicts the subject well enough, I guess...but said depiction is more of a static portrait than a dynamic journey, and that makes it one of the low points for me-- especially after we just had a five-minute drone beforehand.  Look to Absent Lovers for a much-improved live rendition.  Neither of theses are bad, but going a solid ten minutes with hardly any melody is a hard thing to swallow for even arrogant prog fans like me.  

They must have realized this melodically-lacking problem, because next we have "Dig Me", a weird song about an old sports car.  Cool idea and all, having the clunky, distorted verses to suggest a junkyard smasher, and contrasting that with a weirdly angelic chorus, but it's not really a highlight in context.  Then it's right back to the drone, as "No Warning" continues the dark, ambient side of things for another four minutes, although here we at least get some of Bill Bruford's suffocating drum solos.  

But!  If there was any doubt that the old King Crimson is still present here, "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" makes another appearance, and in the same New Wave skin as everything else.  The riffs are still aggressive, the rhythm still dynamic, but the sound is sharper and more precise, with Fripp's parts in the second half sounding like a calibrated laser cutter slicing through us.  It's a great piece that goes some way toward salvaging the lost momentum.  And hey: Tony Levin is here is full force again, throwing in some ferocious passages that sound like bubbling magma.  What a great ending to the album.

Fripp and Belew were at odds during the recording of Beat, and I can't help but see this division as a sort of "you stay on your side, I'll stay on mine" resolution to that.  But the result, to me, is an unfortunate and lopsided whole that loses a lot of steam in the middle.  Fripp keeps mainly to the realm of interlocking with Belew on the pop songs, and bzzz-zzz-bzzz-ing along with his Frippertronics sounds on everything else.  A supremely talented gentleman and scholar as always, but I just wish we could've gotten more crunch out of him.

So, in summation, this is a weirdly polarized album that offers a lot of infectious and interesting moments, but the awkward bits also present the lowest points of Eighties' Crimson.