While the
Kane Gang wasn’t the best 1980s blue-eyed British soul outfit (think Style
Council), and certainly not the most successful (think Simply Red), their
second and final album stands out for both its music and lyrics, despite
production that’s a bit on the slick side. Their Thatcher-era social
consciousness is most obvious on “A Finer Place” (which could have made a great
anthem for a variety of marches/demonstrations), but it comes out one way or
another in the lyrics to most of the tracks here, from the boy and girl in “Closest
Thing To Heaven” (“Lonely with no money to spend”) through the motifs in “King
Street Rain” (“Good luck is just passing through on the way to somewhere else”)
and “Looking For Gold” (“The place I was born in is fading from the map”). My
personal favorite, though, is from “Motortown”, which is the closest they had
to a hit in the U.S. (reached #36 on the Billboard Hot 100):
The cash may
have gone
But there’s
hope on loan.
Favorite
tracks:
Closest
Thing To Heaven
Looking For
Gold
A Finer
Place
King Street
Rain
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