After scoring with their 1973 effort Moontan<\/i>, Golden Earring put out a series of lackluster albums and seemed poised for one-hit wonder status\u2026 until 1982\u2019s Cut <\/i>and the excellent \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d brought them back to worldwide hit status. And as before, the band didn\u2019t really know what to do for a follow-up, making 1984\u2019s N.E.W.S. <\/i>a rather forgettable and strange experience.<\/p>\n
To be fair, the Dutch band mostly doesn\u2019t try to duplicate \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d or \u201cRadar Love,\u201d instead serving up an album that\u2019s about half \u201980s rock and half truly godawful cheesy synthesizer pop-rock. It\u2019s truly baffling how the band that served up a smoking 13-minute instrumental live version of \u201cZone\u201d on 1984\u2019s Something Heavy Going Down <\/i>(the version from Leiden is epic) was capable of absolute dreck like \u201cFist In Glove\u201d or the title track the same year.<\/p>\n
I mean, everyone in the \u201980s 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 \u201cIt\u2019s Over Now,\u201d is painful. None of those songs show up on Something Heavy<\/i>, the tour document of the Cut\/N.E.W.S. <\/i>years, so even the band must have realized they were on the wrong path here. Note: The studio version of \u201cMission Impossible\u201d is not all that great, but the song sounds a lot better live, as most GE songs tended to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough Is Enough\u201d and \u201cClear Night Moonlight\u201d sort of attempt a more radio-friendly approach similar to the first half of \u201cTwilight Zone,\u201d but without that song\u2019s superior second half, and don\u2019t make the impact (though at least they were energetic enough to make the tour setlist). That leaves \u201cWhen The Lady Smiles,\u201d which was a charting hit in Canada and the band\u2019s native Netherlands. It\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
The best songs from here can be found on various compilations and live albums, and the highlights sound better live anyway, so there\u2019s really no reason to seek this one out anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":35170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7305],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-47051","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-golden-earring","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47051"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}