English Boys / Working Girls

English Boys/Working Girls was the third and final studio album from Deaf School. Like contemporaries the Boomtown Rats, the Clash, and Elvis Costello, they were trying to push popular music to the left, but somehow they never discovered an identifiable "sound" in the process. Part of the problem stems from Deaf School's size; even here, trimmed to an octet, winning songs somehow get trampled in the translation. When they tighten the screws or give the vocal spotlight to Bette Bright, however, a vision does begin to emerge from the chaos. "All Queued Up," "Morning After," and "Thunder and Lightning" each succeed, despite running the gamut from power pop to rueful ballad. The rest of the record is good, at times suggesting the Clash ("O. Blow") or Elvis Costello ("Refugee") with a little less passion. You really can't fault the songs themselves; written primarily by Clive Langer and Steve Allen (aka Enrico Cadillac), there's usually a good melody and clever rhythm at work. But finding room for everyone to play leads to problems, like the out-of-place harmonica on "Ronny Zamora." The record's working-class dissatisfaction with life also seems a little put on; maybe it's their pub-band-gone-punk appearance, but they don't seem to tap into the same anger as the late-'70s leading musical dissidents. And so English Boys/Working Girls falls somewhere on the flank of the early alternative scene, not quite fighting the war on the front lines but still preventing escape into mundane pop.