Men At Work
'Business As Usual'
Columbia
Men at Work loomed large in my childhood legend. The patchy verses of "Down Under" were coughed up daily through the tinny speakers of the radio that sat on the kitchen counter, leaving me to wait as the sound carried its way across the surface and poured down the side. Summer afternoons, 1985, my Mother cleaning the house and myself dancing in the carefree shadow, joining her in an occasional reprise of the only words I knew: "Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? / You better run, you better take cover."
Thirteen years later, it sounds just as good, and the back of their recently re-issued debut, "Business As Usual," tells me as much. "...all these years later, it's still tastier than a vegemite sandwich." Maybe, but let's back this up a minute. An entire debut album? You're telling me the men stayed home from work long enough to cut an album's worth of rock standards and pop gems? This is simply too much. Literally.
As if the musical landscape in 2003 weren't already abstract enough - the amalgamation of saccharine pop quartets and Nu Rawk bands sounding only slightly less pleasant that the static procured in your car between counties - along come the Men at Work re-issues. Re-mastered and dolled up with four extra tracks apiece, culled mostly from studio leftovers and the odd live show, there's a lot here to remember - and a bit of what's caused us to forget as the last decade slipped past.
The obvious classic notwithstanding, there are a few tracks in the depths of "Business As Usual" that start someplace kind and end up in a similarly benevolent frame of mind. "Who Can it be Now?" always sounded to me like the lovechild Sting bore with some mistress rhythm section while domestic friction was busy tearing apart The Police. In its proper context, however, the four-point sax melody that jumpstarts the song and mimics the chorus sums up both the album and a career. The skipping beats, stuttering guitars and hiccupping vocals that shape the album's larger arc are put to their most melodic use here. People Just Love To Play With Words," however, suffers from a distinctively opposite problem; an entirely bland take, the verses run aimlessly to the chorus, leaving something more suitable for TV Land Primetime than a proper place among the album's otherwise awkwardly strong tracks.
"Helpless Automaton" may well be the best of the bunch - a blend of organic rock and vocals blinded by science, it also boasts a charming lack of horns that allows the track to explore its own possibility.
The four extras tagged to the end of the album, setting the album apart from its original shape, are a mixed bag. The live "Who Can it Be Now?" is there to remind us the band had some stage chops, while "F-19"," as one of the two, non-LP B-side's, swings confidently enough and plunges into just the right minor diversions to avoid rote repetition; it wouldn't have set the world on fire then, and it won't now, but as a freebee bookend to an eclectic set like this, it makes an odd amount of sense.
I'm left shocked on this one - afraid, somehow, that I've been tricked or that my better senses (whatever was there to begin with) have up and left me. Little did I know in '85 that behind a radio novelty stood an album of some decent merit - not my particular taste, but better than most of what crawled out of the decade. And really, how often did a band in that day and age have the good sense to foresee the place they'd someday land? "Hello to you my young sweet friends, have you got money you could perhaps lend? / I wash my leather face in the afternoon sun, my shirt's torn and my time's near done."
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