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Anthem
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| List Price: | £10.99 |
| Price: | £7.98 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery on orders over £5. Details |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk
16 new or used available from £6.99
Average customer review:
Track Listing
- I Want To Be Free
- Obsolete
- Popstar
- Elocution Lesson
- Jungles Of Jupiter
- I Am
- It's A Mystery
- Maisai Boy
- Marionette
- Demolition Men
- We Are
- Walkie Talkie
- Alien
- Revelations
- For You
- War Boys
- Angels And Demons
- I Want To Be Free (2)
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #12170 in Music
- Released on: 1999-02-01
- Number of discs: 1
- Format: Extra tracks
Customer Reviews
Outstandingly commercial but raw
This was Toyah's real mainstream breakthrough with much of the original vinyl sales coming off the success of the singles "It's a Mystery" and "I Want To Be Free." This is Toyah in all her different guises - urban rebel, warrior, punk, and artist. "Jungles of Jupiter" is the highlight, with the exceptional "Masai Boy." Quite wonderful even after all these years, but not as creative as "The Changeling" which followed this album and in my opinion is the better of the two. Good to see the flexi disk track and "Four from Toyah" EP tracks included which were lost from our memories long ago.
A Great CD From Toyah
Toyah's music sways between being great pop songs with rich melodies and art experiments tinged with adolescent fantasies of rebellion. You get it all here and Anthem is mostly a delight. There's hot and cold running pop songs (the dynamic "Demolition Men" and "We Are"), atmospheric, mellow numbers ("Jungles of Jupiter" and "I Am"), the big chart hits ("I Want To Be Free" and "It's A Mystery") and the annoyingly bizarre ("Elocution Lesson").
Toyah sings of aliens, the supernatural, androids, Orwellian societies, suburban boredom and everything in between all resolutely encased in her rich, esoteric imagery. I loved it as a rebellious 15 year old and now as a more settled 34 year old I'm loving it only slightly less. Toyah held the spirit of post-punk 1980's in her florid word play, fantastic universes, sometimes nihilistic prophecies and daring individualism.
On this CD you get some great extra tracks including For You (previously only available on a flexi-disc with Flexipop magazine) and Alien which she originally recorded as 9 To 5 and credited to The Maneaters in Derek Jarman's film 'Jubilee'. As it is the new millenium you also get a video of the Godley & Crème clip to I Want To Be Free to play on your computer. Anthem represents a time and mood, and as such, succeeds completely.
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How would today's young audience find this? And the audience before that? Do you get what Toyah is about? Were you a fan? What do you think now? Enough of the questions. Give this a listen, in todays multi re-packaged, re-sampled music market. This was and is original, groundbreaking, insipring. She did her 'own thing' in her 'own way' and love it or hate it, you couldn't ignore it. As all the other reviews say ,this album was Toyah at her best, if you ignore the over commercial 'I wanna be free' and lesser so 'It's a mystery', which fans are fond of (mostly) as it gave Toyah success. Even so, listen to the poetry and melody of 'Jungles of Jupiter' and rhythms of 'Masai boy'. How about 'We are' -well what are we about today? Toyah was and is all about being your own person, your own identity, individual expression of your look,your thoughts, your fashion, your way! It was and is fun! Reach for the CD, touch the play and dye your hair! It's fun!!!!!
