True Colours (1980)

This is the one. Frenzy cleared the runway and the Luton demos proved how sharp this band could get, and True Colours is the takeoff. Album number five, their first truly commercial record, and the moment all that art-rock weirdness finally fuses with new wave and pop into something that sounds like nothing they’d done before. Fourth entry into the NSA club, and the easiest one to call yet.

It opens with I Got You, and there’s not much mystery about why this is the song that broke them worldwide. It’s a new wave pop masterpiece, instantly recognizable, the most timeless thing in the catalog, and my favorite on the record. From there the album loops back to their quirky roots, except now those instincts come wrapped in tighter, shorter pop-rock, and the combination clicks every time.

Shark Attack is whimsical fun, cartoon sharks causing mayhem set to a hook. What’s the Matter with You is the band channeling The Beatles outright, a tight Lennon/McCartney-style pop-rocker with a fantastic 60s keyboard solo dropped right in the middle. Then I Hope I Never, one of the album’s real standouts, a ballad carried by Tim Finn’s tender vocal, delicate piano, and atmospheric synths. It’s also the song that became my dad’s first impression of the band, which is the kind of detail that sticks to a record forever.

Poor Boy might be the most striking thing here. The band builds it out of space as much as sound: eerie piano, haunting vocals, and a climactic finish that earns every second. It’s one of the strongest cuts on an album with no weak ones.

And the playing is the quiet headline all the way through. The arrangements are intricate and layered, the instrumentation is broad without ever turning busy, and the way they use keyboards, guitars, and percussion to build depth doesn’t sound like their peers from this era.

This is the masterpiece. True Colours threads infectious pop melodies through real experimentation and never drops either one. Eclectic, ambitious, and somehow fully accessible at the same time. Hats off to the Enz.

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Highlight Songs:

• I Got You

• What’s The Matter With You

• Poor Boy

• Shark Attack

Own it, Stream it, Forget about it?

Own it, no hesitation. True Colours has the commercial pop-rock appeal to win over basically anyone, with a ton to love and almost nothing to nitpick. This is it.

And a heads-up for the obsessives: there are 13 different color variations of this thing on vinyl. Collect them all and one day you can be as cool as me.

Overall Rating:

5 Stars