The Move
The Move
Hi. I’m Claire. I really like music, maybe a little too much. I’m planning on writing a whole series of reviews for my friend Lesley’s website, but I have some words I would like to say before getting to the actual reviews themselves. Firstly, don’t expect these reviews to be doing double duty as both band history and my own opinion on the music. I personally like pretty much everything I’ll probably review here, and I personally don’t want to try and work in every single nugget of history into these things, since even something like Wikipedia has a decent summary of the band. I’ll still be referencing events happening related to these singles, so if you’re confused… sorry???
This is a hell of a debut single. The Move really come out swinging with two very good original writes from Roy Wood, who then proceeded to write nearly everything else this group put out for the next 4 years. There’s a couple of lyrical themes which are displayed rather prominently here, which are also a hallmark of the group for their early singles, at least until walking lyrical inspiration and bassist Ace Kefford left the band. Night of Fear’s main hook is famously based on a theme from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, which, although it mostly uses pre-existing themes for its melodic material, I actually can’t find if the motif the hook is based on was one of them or not. Tchaikovsky writing material which is easily on par with traditional melodies is par for the course, and it’s a testament to both him and Roy Wood that it adapts so well to a pop context. For the flip, you have what is sometimes called “The Disturbance”, though I’m pretty sure that the article here is extraneous. This is the first Move song which deals directly with the subject of what would most likely be termed mental illness or neurodivergence now, but what no one at the time would have probably thought of as more than “being a bit off your rocker”, or some such thing. While the lyrics are probably inventive and humourous enough to not immediately raise eyebrows, I have always found them to be a little silly in an unintentional way. The lyrics seem to be coming from the point of view of someone who’s looking at mental illness from the outside, someone who’s personally somewhat fascinated with the concept, but hasn’t actually experienced it themselves, leading to a stereotypical image of what someone in that sort of state would be going through. Of course, the lyrical themeing here does lend itself nicely to the Move’s stage presence at the time, smashing TVs and making all sorts of havoc as part of their live act. All in all, this is a smashing debut single, and a sign of things to come.
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