Chain (Paul Haig album)

Chain was Edinburgh musician Paul Haig's third album and was released in May 1989 on Circa Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Records. Chain, which Haig financed himself, was recorded and completed in 1988, but it sat on the shelf after the normally accommodating Les Disques Du Crepuscule decided not to take up the option of releasing it. The album was co-produced by long-time Haig cohort, Alan Rankine, instrumentalist with celebrated Dundee band, The Associates. There was another Associates connection on the album. The track Chained was written by Paul's good friend, Billy Mackenzie. Paul returned the favour and gave Billy the track Reach The Top for his album The Glamour Chase, which after many years in limbo was finally released in 2002.

One single, Something Good, was taken from the album, but much to Circa's disappointment, neither the single or the album sold in great numbers.

The sleeve features a shot of Audrey Hepburn, taken by the celebrated photographer, Angus McBean in 1958.

Deleted for many years, Chain was given a welcome re-release by Cherry Red Records in November 2007.

Track listing - 1989 release

Something Good
True Blue
Communication
Swinging For You
Time Of Her Time
Faithless
Times Can Change
Turn The Vision
Sooner Or Later
Chained
Ideal Of Living

Track listing - 2007 release

Something Good
True Blue
Communication
Swinging For You
Time Of Her Time
Faithless
Times Can Change
Turn The Vision
Sooner Or Later
Chained
Ideal Of Living
Something Good (10" Mix)
Over You
Free To Go (Public)
Ideal Of Living (Remix)
The Last Kiss

Reviews

Chain, Melody Maker, 20 May 1989
Despite gaining the respect of Billy Mackenzie and Roddy Frame, success has eluded Haig: he's still probably best known for his role in Josef K. Chain renews his partnership with Alan Rankine, formerly of The Associates, and upholds the high standards set by The Warp Of Pure Fun, released in 1985 and their last LP together. Sadly, Something Good, the best song here, has already been issued as a single with nobody taking much notice. It's the same old story.

With Something Good, Sooner Or Later and Swinging For You, Haig's delight in the ancient acoustic and the all-new electric is neatly balanced. Each combines simple guitar exercises - gently stroked chords and tickling notes - with a technological hurly-burly, a soft but rigid electronic pulse, the whirr of strings and the bellow of brass poked from a keyboard. The depth of beauty is only obvious with a greater familiarity, and a lack of immediacy has always been Haig's major fault. His work needs, but does not always command, a close attention.

Times Can Change and Turn The Vision can be perceived as studio work-outs, the former clattering with electro percussion, the latter a weak dance track, while True Blue and Faithless are back-to-basics ballads. But even here there are sampled surprises, a baby crying at the close of the latter adding more than any word possibly could. Chained, penned by Billy Mackenzie, is the only track which comes close to being a straight pop-rock song and, frankly, it's dull by comparison to even Turn The Vision.

Chain is, largely, an LP of quality, subtlety and maturity, another triumph of his charming vision of pop music. It's just a shame that more people will probably never even know.

Chain, Record Mirror, May 1989 Paul Haig is an enigma, an anomaly. He doesn't really fit in, he never has. He's been playing the type of Euro-synthi-pop to be found on this LP for several years to a small but loyal following. Now he's back with a vengeance for another stab at the charts, and the hearts, of the nation.

The first track, Something Good, is a great pop song, pure and simple, and should have been the hit it deserves. The second is a strong, soulful ballad called True Blue (Blue, incidentally, appears to be Paul's fave colour. In fact, I think it's his fave word). Track three, then, is a real disappointment, a very old-fashioned electro-bop called Communication. A couple of the other tracks are also just too obvious and not modern enough. But it's worth a little suffering because, by side two, he's back on form with some more powerful pop.

The nasal voice, European feel and deceptively simple song construction are what make the Haig sound distinctive and, for better or for worse, mark him out as a man on his own. Haig is an individual, an acquired taste. Get this record and get to know him well.

Chain, NME, 17 May 1989 So he's back, the misunderstood Frank Sinatra of the C81 generation. Paul Haig is the man who spent the early part of the decade fashioning the singles that re-invented guitar pop and was then content to wallow in spangled mediocrity for the most of the rest of the 80's. Some of us kept the faith, even through those years when it was a fruitless pastime.

How edifying then to be able to say, hand on heart, that Chain is a gorgeous, glittering return to form. Somewhere between Madonna and Scott Walker, Haig has found a voice that takes the best of his past and remolds it into a fin de siecle spectacular of manicured excess, affectedly romantic, knowingly soulless - but unlike a lot of his mid-period work, crammed with brill tunes and commercial acumen.

Except of course, it won't sell. That would be altogether too straightforward. But if there were any sense of justice in life Something Good would hog the chart all summer long. A transcendent single, it opens the album and sets the tone perfectly with it's stylish mesh of cosmetics and alienation. Nothing on this album sweats, it just perspires, fetchingly. Swinging for You combines Paul's perennial icons, Lou Reed and David Bowie. It's okay. You can come out from behind the settee it works brilliantly.

Ex-Associate (God, he must be sick of that) Alan Rankine's production is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the undertaking . A cheap, translucent gloss covering a rigid skeleton of marketable ideas. On Communication and Sooner Or Later cut-price special effects are deployed to silly and devastating effect. Conversely True Blue and Faithless come dripping with mock angst and world-weariness.

Paul's voice is the constant factor. More a deliberate historical construction than a heartfelt cry, it hasn't sounded this good, this clever since Pictures of Cindy. This LP may not make his rich, but it should make him happy. Chain is a dumb blonde with a degree in something or other. You'll love it.

Chain, Sounds, 13 May 1989 "Paul Haig," muses the press kit, "the name and face of the 90's." Significantly, the statement is tailed with a question mark - you can never be too sure with Haig.

In the Josef K days he offered a callow croon to Malcolm Ross' jagged guitar edges; nowadays the whole sound is a smooth and modern one, feet-friendly perhaps at the expense of the grey matter. Certainly there are four or five numbers on Chain that would walk into the charts in a slightly less live-ridden commercial climate.

Working with the Associates' Alan Rankine, Haig somehow contrives viable songs out of bitty dancefloor beats and sweet piano melodies. The best songs are the ones where he stops being the short-haired European sophisticate, Faithless, Communication and gets seriously into persuasive grooves and lyrical hooks.

True Blue and Something Good both sound rich and snappy. But a chart outsider might be Times Can Change, kind of hippety-hoppety Postcard with a helium vocal and no shame.