CLASSIC ALBUM

TWO BROTHERS WITH MICHAEL JACKSON-SIZED AMBITIONS AND A SYNTH-POP PIONEER AT THE CONTROLS – THESE WERE THE INGREDIENTS NECESSARY TO FORGE PREFAB SPROUT’S MID-80S SOPHISTI-POP CLASSIC…

ALISTAIR POWELL

W ith Prefab Sprout’s second album, Steve McQueen, the chronology is all back to front.

To fully understand the genesis of this most exceptional of literate pop creations, we must return to the tiny hamlet of Witton Gilbert, a hefty stone’s throw from Durham, where in the late 70s and early 80s, a young Paddy McAloon first conceived much of this sophisticated masterpiece.

It seems a youth spent pumping gas alongside younger brother Martin, isolated in this remote rural enclave, gave birth to a bedroom lyricist and songwriter of an altogether different ilk. It was there the two siblings soaked up a wide array of literature, from detective novels to poetry, and indulged in a library of disparate sounds – Bowie to The Beatles, Steely Dan to Captain Beefheart, Sondheim to Stravinsky. As hungry to unravel the secrets of the mainstream greats and Broadway scores as those artists who occupied more distant outposts, the McAloons’ palette was far more eclectic than most.

With this self-initiated cultural education and armed with his mother’s beat-up Spanish guitar through which to make sense of it all, Paddy created a raft of songs that were distinctly – and quite purposely – out of step with most of what was going on around him. “I was into being as intensely yourself as you could be,” he said of the period to Sound On Sound magazine in 2014.