My Review: Duran Duran - The Chauffeur

 

Duran Duran - The Chauffeur 

When fairy tales are tinged with black, burdened with drama, sinking their hands into the sacrilege of pain, confusion becomes the only clarity, in a frantic race towards that love that denies to open wide, to be consumed without evil waves.

We are lucky enough to be able to think about all this while listening to a gem that resists wear and tear, that still wounds today, for a strange apologia that cannot be scratched by opposing theories. A jewel full of glitter that does not suffocate the magnificence that dwells in its depths, a realm where magic and secret continue to pulsate. The Birmingham band, who deposited this deathless comet on its back in the treasure chest of time, wrote this song in the maturity of its adolescence, vessel, train and above all car, to bring moral concepts aboard a story where love, passion, annoyance, the inescapable consumption of desires could become a thorny message, a mental sting that, creeping in listening after listening, would cause paralysis, as the only true act of devotion to a circuit that was already capable of generating addiction. Knowing how to conjugate the pop sensation to a bundle of greyish tensions with the use of synths (the true drivers of this slow ride), is a truly remarkable operation, with the ability to leave a bitter and sweet taste in the listener's mouth, in a combination that cancels out all competition. The piano in flanger mode, the sensual bass, the work of programming, of the drum machine and then of the drums all converge in a lyric, in the voice, to head into the belly of the night, the perfect setting in which to relate to meditation, a fact, in itself, to be experienced as a disarming event if one takes Duran Duran for what they were, young men in search of success and unjustly not considered musicians of talent and great ability. This song takes care of clearing up doubts, plunging the class into the hourglass of time, where nothing can have an expiry date. What magnetises the whole thing is the poetic flow of this text, a story that reeks of frustration, of a secret love that spies with no chance of being reciprocated, in a flagrant rational detonation that engages the heartbeats, in a pulsating drama that sees musical genres converge in a hall where reception and study are crossed to complete the perfection of a project. In this scenario, the fun disappears, dissolved by these sonic textures and Simon's nasal voice that seems to suffocate the words with its high register and then fades into the final crooning.

 Traces of Baudelaire, of Ian Curtis, of the insane theatre that tries to paint the walls of the brain with dark colours, descend in the hypnotic waves of the track from the very beginning, with dramatic piano notes that already exhibit heavy breathing, to channel the magnet with no possibility of release towards our listening: the whole is a push towards the bowels of desire, its attraction towards the impossibility that exalts death.

The synth arpeggio is the real devilish drop that descends on our eardrums: deceptive in that it is apparently pleasant, with the passing of seconds it becomes a torture that leaves no escape, allowing a synthetic flute to bring momentary relief, a new form that captures the auditory apparatus.  The synthpop nerve is able to patrol the decadence typical of post-punk, for a mesmeric miracle, a 'pleasant' straitjacket, a loop from which running away is impossible, like from the Alcatraz penitentiary. In this context, the unsettling approach in the writing of a commitment becomes evident, qualifying the band and putting them in a position to be worthy of being heard by those who turn up their noses: all swept away by these three hundred and twenty-one seconds of Hamlet-like propensity, where everything gets complicated, becomes an adult metaphor that clings to the sceptre of undeniable qualities. Here we are in the stark reality, there is nothing prophetic, no lie, but a long ordeal that does not disclaim responsibility, in fact, it does the opposite, to generate conscious motions that obscure the future... 

Minutes like insects take their place in the alchemic form of a song that also flees from itself, having on its ankles tenebrous notes that emphasise the feeling that in the 1980s even being a voyeur of love meant being part of the team of suffering, in which the object of desire, so coveted, became the only culprit. Duran Duran took him and locked him up in the song that attests to his guilt, for eternity...

One has the feeling that the five of them took drops of water and deposited them in the notes, filtered them, cuddled them, and then let them go towards their destiny, as if everything was just a foretaste of a new artistic mode that would soon be fully revealed. And it did come to pass: from this pearl have sprung not only unhinged imitations, but also artists capable of trying to repeat the miracle of this rational and sensory procession.  The refinement, the production, the work of synergies stretched towards the candlelight that makes the scene gloomy make one shudder, ending up with handkerchiefs full of tears slowly dancing in the pockets while listening, alone.

When music has no chance of denying itself permanence in the vault of heaven, becoming succubus remains the only viable joy, despite the context...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

21st April 2024