The Gold Experience Review

The context is a man who had written a word on his face and changed his name to a symbol to escape a contract, and the album was withheld and then dumped into a market that had stopped paying attention. The music is better than that story allows. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World is the obvious jewel, an old fashioned soul ballad with a melody strong enough to have been a standard in any era, and it was his last enormous hit.

Endorphinmachine and Now are aggressive, guitar heavy and genuinely energetic. Shhh is a slow burn with real sexual tension and a solo that earns its length. The spoken interludes tying it together are a bad idea executed at length. So is the extended complaint about record companies that closes the album. Trim four tracks and this stands up next to the eighties work. As released it is uneven, occasionally brilliant, and unfairly forgotten.