7 (also known as Madness 7) is the third album from the British ska/pop band Madness. Released in October 1981, it reached No. 5 in the UK album chart. All but one track was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas in the summer of 1981, the exception being "Grey Day" which was recorded in London earlier in the year.
The third album is often where a band makes a great leap forward, and so it is with Madness’ Seven. Although they’re still clearly the same nutty band that tore it up with One Step Beyond, Seven finds the group expanding its horizons considerably, ratcheting up the melodious pop quotient in their songwriting, as well as the distinctly English character sketches.
Much of the album comes across as a blend of the Kinks and Ian Dury backed by a propulsive ska beat, and the production is a appropriately just as imaginative, colored by the odd sitar, finding new carnivalesque flourishes for the horns, and expanding the rhythmic palette considerably.
Sometimes, the group still gets ridiculously silly -- “Benny Bullfrog” is a novelty by any other name -- but the genius of Madness is that they would toss off these frivolous numbers as easily as they would throw out something as elegiac as “Grey Day,” while finding the sweet spot between those two extremes on singles like “Cardiac Arrest.”
Side A
A1. Cardiac Arrest - 2:52
A2. Shut Up - 4:07
A3. Sign of the Times - 2:43
A4. Missing You - 2:32
A5. Mrs. Hutchinson - 2:17
A6. Tomorrow’s Dream - 3:54
Side B
B1. Grey Day - 3:40
B2. Pac-A-Mac - 2:37
B3. Promises Promises - 2:52
B4. Benny Bullfrog - 1:51
B5. When Dawn Arrives - 2:43
B6. The Opium Eaters - 3:03
Notes
Release: 1981
Format: LP
Genre: Ska, 2Tone
Label: Stiff Records
Catalog# SEEZ 39
Vinyl: VG+
Cover: VG+
Prijs: €10,00
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