World Party

Even those already hip to the potent music of Britain's Waterboys will be surprised by the
wildly impressive solo venture of the band's former piano player, Karl Wallinger. (Wasn't
Mike Scott supposed to be the talented one?) Complete with a title and album cover that
seem to suggest a Princely excursion into purple psychedelic revivalism, Private Revolution
is in fact the very best sort of Sixties-meets-Eighties hybrid. The title track, for e... More >

As a sourpuss who counsels self-improvement and jots down the occasional specific, Karl Wallinger is several steps up the evolutionary ladder from Howard Jones. But it's no less fatalistic to say humanity is defined by original sin than to say the world is good because God made it. Jones believes that war is over if you think it is, Wallinger that war is over if each and every one of you think it is; both prefer attitude to action, especially collective action. And if that's rock and roll, as I sometimes fear, it doesn't happen to be good rock and roll. (Grade: C)