Any Day Now: Expanded & Remastered Edition

More cohesive than Island of Jewels and more streamlined than Asylum, Any Day Now stands as one of the Legendary Pink Dots' best albums of the '80s, ex aequo with The Tower. There is no specific unifying theme this time, although alienation and estrangement seem to permeate the whole project. The Dots' keyboard patches were starting to get old by 1988, but in retrospect, this gives the album a vaguely retro charm. Edward Ka-Spel is in top songwriting shape, with "Casting the Runes," "A Strychnine Kiss" and "Neon Mariners" standing out as particularly catchy songs. The latter is especially haunting, thanks to careful arrangements and one of Ka-Spel's trademark vocal deliveries. Any Day Now is noteworthy for its lack of long experimental tracks, which (without unfairly diminishing the artistic interest of such efforts) makes the album somewhat more accessible to newcomers. The only extended track is the ten-minute "Waiting for the Cloud," but it is through-written, with the song proper in the first half (and a strong one at that), followed by an instrumental development that showcases why the Dots were often perceived as the unlikely link between prog rock and industrial, and a final recap of the song. Patrick White's violin is mixed somewhat higher on this album, giving more presence to his elegant lines. The original Bias release consisted of nine tracks (ending with "Cloud Zero"). Subsequent reissues added the complete Under Glass EP released the same year, a set of three weaker and somewhat more mainstream songs, including some slap bass in "The Plasma Twins" and an arena rock-like double solo of violin and electric guitar at the end of "The Light in My Little Girl's Eyes." ~ Francois Couture