Happy 40th Anniversary to The Vapors’ debut album New Clear Days, originally released June 7, 1980.
When I was writing my debut novel The Big Rewind (William Morrow, 2016), I wanted to give Sid, an ‘80s-obsessed hipster, a favorite band. I didn’t want to fall back on the well-trod tropes: The Smiths, Duran Duran, the easy-reach albums that all-too-often make up soundtracks and pop clichés.
So I decided on one of my own beloved bands, The Vapors, whose debut album New Clear Days turns 40 this month, hot on the heels of their well-received reunion album Together. I wanted to share with my readers a band that I felt was too-often regarded as a one-hit wonder, inviting them to explore the album further than just the singles. The record itself even became one of the book’s Macguffins.
Now, I’m not saying I got The Vapors back together, but I do think it’s pretty convenient that they played their first reunion show on my birthday, April 30th, just two and a half months after my critically-lauded novel hit shelves. You be the judge.
There really is nothing better than a pop album that is as smart as it is danceable. While punk was raw, often nakedly political and in-your-face, the synth-glittery effervescence of New Wave and power-pop allowed bands like Devo, Squeeze and Talking Heads to get messages of anti-fascism and cold-war paranoia underneath club-friendly anthems.
Enter New Clear Days.
Early New Wave is marked by anxious lyricism and a skittish stage presence, and as such, frontman David Fenton seems custom-built for the task. Rail-thin, wide-eyed and sporting a uniquely British take on the mullet, he flirts and frets his hour across MTV.
For all of the album’s power-pop classics, including the iconic opening riff of “Turning Japanese,” the love-soaked “Waiting for the Weekend” and “Trains,” and the frustrated “Spring Collection”—which is due to find new life as an anti-influencer anthem—the album’s true strength lies in recognizing that it is Fenton’s romanticism that makes songs like “News At Ten” and “Cold War” so powerful. He knows what a perfect world looks like, one free of violence and war, where he can be with his beloved every moment of the day, and is deeply frustrated that neither exist.
Case in point: “Letters From Hiro” and “Waiting for the Weekend” come from the same core place of longing. While “Weekend” puts it in a romantic context, “Letters” describes a pen-pal friendship that dissolves as World War II looms. Both explore loneliness in an age of promised intercommunication, one lovelorn, the other political.
As such, the album benefits from a much deeper listening than one might initially give, given the insanely catchy, party-pop nature of “Turning Japanese.” Nuclear holocaust looms large (“Cold War”) and paranoia runs deep (“Bunkers”), while a young man’s rebellion against not only his parents’ authority, but the strict structure of a media-based society that aims to keep each generation in line (“News At 10”).
But even the album’s less-charged tracks, such as “Spring Collection,” are infused with a low-level panic, courtesy of Howard Smith’s drums as he fires like a machine gun. It doesn’t abate no matter how cheerful Fenton & Ed Balzagette’s guitars are; “Sixty-Second Intervals” is that clock-tick while you wait for test results, and the panic is doubled on “Bunkers” as bassist Steve Smith adds a hypnotic shiver that you can’t quite shake.
There’s an art to the structure of an album, and the American release botched it completely, moving “Turning Japanese” to the top of the album in place of “Spring Collection.” It’s the difference between starting your morning with coffee and starting it with cocaine.
Likewise for “Letter From Hiro,” which was the album’s original closer, now locked into the end of the A-side. Yes, it has a similar Asian-themed motif, now stretched and solemn, but the song is meant to inspire lonely contemplation about the horrors of those broken by war, so to crush it between “Spring Collection” and “News At 10,” (the B-side opener) assures that it is all but lost. Utterly futile indeed.
The only thing the American version got right with the inclusion of the 1979 single “Prisoners,” but at the expense of “Cold War” and “America.” Luckily, the CD corrects the mistake; the 2000 reissue also includes B-sides such as “Sunstroke” and “Talk Talk,” as well as the single version of “Waiting for the Weekend” used in the music video.
But the album only charted at #62 in the US, and although “Turning Japanese” had some success on the US Dance Charts, it failed—for some unknown reason—to land on the Mainstream charts. Since then, however, it has become ubiquitous to the ‘80s pop sound, appearing on countless compilations, including the soundtracks to Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion and Beverly Hills Ninja, where it was covered by The Hazies. Kirsten Dunst also recorded a cover, complete with a music video recorded on the streets of Tokyo. But if the original is open to criticism on the grounds of cultural insensitivity, her cover of the song is tantamount to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
When I saw The Vapors play at The Mercury Lounge in 2018, I brought along a copy of the book. Kat, the girlfriend of guitarist/David’s son Dan Fenton, arranged for a pre-show meet with Dan so that I could present him with a copy of the book.
To The Vapors, I wrote. The Best Band In The World.
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