B-Movie
Hidden Treasures
Wanderlust
“I want my Rosebud back,” Steve Hovington passionately implores on the opening track of Hidden Treasures, the new compilation LP by B-Movie.
Rosebud is, of course, the famous sled/symbol of lost youth from Orson Welles’ 1941 Citizen Kane, and for B-Movie the reference could not be more appropriate. The band is one of post-punk/new wave’s most overlooked outfits. Their recording career was brief, from 1979-1982 in their darker first incarnation and again from 1984-1986 in a much poppier form. Their releases amounted to a single LP (1985’s Forever Running) and several earlier singles and EPs. Hidden Treasures gathers and remasters the earlier singles and a handful of songs from the B-Movie vault.
Now that the band is reformed, Hidden Treasures simultaneously hearkens back to the lost youth of the band while simultaneously making the case for B-Movie’s inclusion amongst other early post-punk luminaries. Does it succeed? For the most part, yes. Hidden Treasures has in spades all the sonics one expects from the era: insistent bass lines, choppy guitars, and melodic synths with Hovington’s strong baritone up front in the mix.
Casting one’s mind back into the day, there is no doubt every song presented here could have caused a dance floor eruption (“Polar Opposites”) or delighted applause on a Top of the Pops appearance (“Marilyn Dreams,” “La Lune Lunatique”). One of the most notable features of the record is the band’s versatility with the post-punk formula. On “Ice,” the band marries its core melodicism to a sequenced bass line that wouldn’t be out of place on a DAF record. Musically, “All Fall Down” is as goth a song as ever got gothed, though the nuclear paranoia-based lyrics would be somewhat foreign to that style.
Special recognition must be given to the closing trio of songs, which, to this reviewer, are three of the best unheard new wave songs ever produced. “Nowhere Girl,” one of B-Movie’s original singles, got the closest to being heard widely, charting as high as 67 on the UK charts. Why this excellent radio-ready confection of a song didn’t blow up is a mystery. “Crowds,” with its incredible synth work, jumpy bass, overlying guitar drone, and isolationist lyrics could veritably illustrate how to go about writing compelling new wave songs. Finally, the malevolent and despairing “Beginning to Fade” should thrill all proper depressives on its own terms and as something to listen to after the 10,000th spin of Pornography (The Cure, 1982).
With so much to extol, why were B-Movie’s titular treasures hidden at all? I think, perhaps, it might be because so many pieces and parts of their repertoire were heard among other bands that struck post-punk/new wave gold around the same time. The lyrical cadence of The Sound here; the brooding synths of early Human League there; Strawberries-era (1982) Damned and even a little A Flock of Seagulls or Alphaville in the background.
The explosion of talent and style during this era ensured that not every band was going to get its due. It’s not fair, and based on this set of songs at least, B-Movie plainly deserved better than they got.
Returning once more to Citizen Kane, Rosebud ends up as ashes, the sled’s meaning remaining forever a mystery to the principals of the film. Luckily for fans of this era and for new wave completists, B-Movie escapes Rosebud’s fate, and Hidden Treasures gives us a treat, indeed. ◼
