Grace & Danger

Somehow, as his marriage is dissolving, and he is abandoning his children and heading full force into drink and drugs, he gets together with drummer Phil Collins (not singing) and fretless bassist John Giblin and makes this remarkably tight album. The lyrics veer between regret and self-pity, and the music swaps in electric guitar and synth for Martyn’s acoustic guitar and Echoplex. He sounded Eighties exactly as the Eighties began, just as he had in the Seventies with Stormbringer!. Martyn, canary in the coalmine. Very Miami Vice/American Gigolo, smooth and sickly and so good.