After scoring with their 1973 effort Moontan, Golden Earring put out a series of lackluster albums and seemed poised for one-hit wonder status… until 1982’s Cut and the excellent “Twilight Zone” brought them back to worldwide hit status. And as before, the band didn’t really know what to do for a follow-up, making 1984’s N.E.W.S. a rather forgettable and strange experience.
To be fair, the Dutch band mostly doesn’t try to duplicate “Twilight Zone” or “Radar Love,” instead serving up an album that’s about half ’80s rock and half truly godawful cheesy synthesizer pop-rock. It’s truly baffling how the band that served up a smoking 13-minute instrumental live version of “Zone” on 1984’s Something Heavy Going Down (the version from Leiden is epic) was capable of absolute dreck like “Fist In Glove” or the title track the same year.
I mean, everyone in the ’80s was going synth and post-disco beats, so nobody can fault Golden Earring for trying to stay relevant at a time when they had a little bit of cachet. But yikes, trying to get through these, or the attempt at a love song “It’s Over Now,” is painful. None of those songs show up on Something Heavy, the tour document of the Cut/N.E.W.S. years, so even the band must have realized they were on the wrong path here. Note: The studio version of “Mission Impossible” is not all that great, but the song sounds a lot better live, as most GE songs tended to do.
“Enough Is Enough” and “Clear Night Moonlight” sort of attempt a more radio-friendly approach similar to the first half of “Twilight Zone,” but without that song’s superior second half, and don’t make the impact (though at least they were energetic enough to make the tour setlist). That leaves “When The Lady Smiles,” which was a charting hit in Canada and the band’s native Netherlands. It’s about the only song here that shows flashes of the prog and songwriting chops of previous albums, and was even better live, when the closing guitar solo could really sing.
The best songs from here can be found on various compilations and live albums, and the highlights sound better live anyway, so there’s really no reason to seek this one out anymore.
