Blindspotting: Gang of Four, "Entertainment!"

The Legacy: This series is all about spending time with acknowledged classics that I've never heard for whatever reason, and I'm generally not shy about advertising my ignorance, because who can listen to every single goddamn thing in one lifetime? Still, there are records that are considered so fundamental that even if I'm willing to admit to arriving extremely late to the party, it's awfully daunting to try and add to the discourse. Entertainment! is one of those albums.

Some records are made to be hits, and others are destined to detonate with life-altering force among a select group and then go on to influence countless works; Entertainment!, like the Gang of Four's catalog in general, falls into the latter category. It's one of those records whose innovations have been so thoroughly subsumed into pop culture that you can't possibly understand how it sounded to the listeners on its wavelength in 1979 — post-punk's jangled nervous system is mapped out here, but you also get bits and flecks of nascent New Wave, reggae, and maybe even a little angular funk. It rolled out the template of the alterna-'80s so effectively that there was no way it was ever going to be anything but a commercial also-ran; the first time people hear the future, it almost always sounds like nonsense.

First Impressions: Well, I wouldn't say Entertainment! sounded like nonsense the first time I listened to it, but I also wouldn't say it came very close to living up to its title. Gang of Four's sound is all hard angles, which is an approach that I can respect, but also one that's always had a distancing effect for me.

But after a few spins, the record's unique charms started standing out — chief among them the Gang's rhythm section. Jon King and Andy Gill had a semi-robotic approach to lead vocals on Entertainment!, but there's nothing machine-driven about the pocket; Dave Allen's burbling bass and Hugo Burnham's tight-as-fuck drums give the record a seething, red-blooded pulse that acts as a tonic against those somewhat icy vocals and Gill's serrated guitars. I would still seriously question anyone who turned to this album for fun, but the band's bottom end is, for me, the wagging finger that beckons the listener in and invites them to absorb the group's righteously strident lyrics. File this one under Albums I May Not Return To, But I'm Glad I've Heard.

Favorite Song: I need to pick "Love Like Anthrax," if only because the metallic squall that girds this track reminds me of the first time I consciously listened to a Gang of Four-adjacent record. Allen and Burnham were part of the band assembled by Michael Been, frontman for the Call, during the sessions for his 1994 solo LP On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough — a bleak, jittery, feedback-laced descent into a dark night of the soul. Like Entertainment!, it's an album that kind of put me on my heels the first time I listened to it, but one I've learned to appreciate through further exposure.