This Prison Moon

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Gary Numan's glory run was astonishing: eight albums, released during a frenzy of creativity between 1978 and 1984, all essential. The Tubeway Army ones, long prized by students of early punk, deserve their good reputation; they establish the persona Numan would return to for much (though not all) of his career. The next two, The Pleasure Principle and Telekon, are classics by any reasonable standard -- not just "Cars," but "This Wreckage," "I Die: You Die," "I Dream of Wires," "Engineers" -- a young artist had found his zone. 

Famously, that zone felt like enemy territory to music critics. So radical was his brief presence on the pop charts that, for many, it has framed him forever. In fairness, his vocal style, instantly recognizable, makes it hard not to say: "Hey! It's the 'Cars' guy!" when you hear a Numan song you haven't heard before. But there was always more to him than that, and evidence is seldom more convincing than on Warriors, his last album for Beggars Banquet, under whose wing he'd risen to fame.

Produced by Bill Nelson, it continues the musical trajectory begun on its predecessor, I, Assassin: a languid slide from the motorik leanings of the earlier work into more openly dance-floor friendly tunes where funk bass and saxophone are as prominent as the synthesizer, and often much more so. Melodies still recall the Tubeway Army -- hear those changes resolving the first instrumental break in "I Am Render"? those are Numan's front steps -- but the instrumentation is sensual,  richly textured. Songs wander within their grooves like players would in open-world video games will thirty years later, dallying unhurriedly in the scenery. Much of this  three-dimensional feel must be down to Nelson, whose band, Be-Bop Deluxe, had spent the 1970s straddling art-rock turf deftly, one leg on either side of the hyphen, playful and pointed -- I think, too, of Joni Mitchell, so absorbed by her own presentation that the imagined listener's reaction doesn't even register as an afterthought. Hear that final minute of "The Iceman Comes" -- ! This isn't about framing a persona or staking any kind of claim in a pop environment adjusting to changes in technology. It's just stellar playing, beautifully recorded and mixed, everything in service to the song.

Numan reportedly doesn't care for this album and returned to self-production; visionaries often struggle to see their work through others' eyes. The more metallic direction he pursued after this is also full of rewards. But Warriors is a jewel in the catalog, and deeply worthy of a long look. 

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