Lol Creme And Kevin Godley* – L

Though there are scads of discogs releases that somehow get the stamp of "Experimental," this one is probably one that deserves it, while hundreds, or thousands of others don't.
This is labelled Art Rock, which I am going to allow, with Pop Rock a close second. I'd like someone to tell me which song, or even part of a song, is Pop Rock. Is it the first-person narrative about a Jewish boy taking beatings? Or the one that has loops of spoken music-industry jargon repeating at irregular intervals? Avante-garde Jazz and Soul are tied for distant third. Lol much?
This little gem is a thinking man's Prog Rock secret. It is experimental in tone, in compositional structure, in timbre, and lyrically. It is experimental in production esthetic.
L is a quite dark and alienated presentation. Preceded and succeeded by Godley & Creme's often far inferior efforts, this is their magnum opus in my opinion.
Talk about Pop Rock. The opening track appears with a trope of the Beat sound, with finger snaps for the percussion, a sweet vocal format that borders on Lounge, obscuring a pedantic narrative that sarcastically emulates a sentiment of the time, urging us toward introspection, asking the listener to characterize themselves: "Are you one of these people?" Then it flies forward with a driving, though oddly muffled, machine rhythm, accompanied by what is essentially a frenetic account of a tenant acquiring a hotel room. It has an interval of an ersatz telephone recording (that I've always taken as a call to a suicide hotline -- with no one answering), which segues apparently to our intrepid wayfarer standing on the window ledge, with a crowd down below yelling for him to commit suicide. Ah yes, this is Pop Rock in its essential form.
Next up is a sardonic account apparently of a conversation in a couple's courtship. "I could eat sandwiches of you," is a bewildering term of endearment. The couple parries as though in a game, handing off the conversation from one member to the other, saying, "Your move."
It goes on. There are more and more abstractions as you go. Every formulation is quite a bit of a different take-off from the ones preceding. Some of it is barely recognizable as Rock -- Pop, Prog, Art or otherwise. The narrative is sardonic, pessimistic, and mostly anguished.
There are a lot of Britishisms in there which I could never identify until the Internet flattened borders. Dayvilles was an ice cream shop. "Pistachios and beer" now makes sense... in a way.

Magnificent. I have to add more to reach the 10 word limit. There, I did it.

If I didn’t know it, I’d think this was some artsy post-punk British band on some indie label from the 80s. Then I read the sleeve and turns out it’s those 10cc guys! How’d they do that?

Sonically outstanding. This is surely one of the most underrated albums of the seventies.

Although minor, there is a peculiar misprint on US vinyl editions and also the Scandinavia edition (visible in pictures) -- perhaps some others to be determined.
On the back cover, bottom row, third panel from the right, the black film for the photo is flopped, juxtaposing of course the black ink of the image atop the rest of the printed colors. How this could have happened is hard to imagine. (Edit: I have changed my theory about how this happened) I think the four-color separations were sent around the world, from printing plant to printing plant, and each country's art department changed the actual separations to suit their country's release. It is standard practice to work with the original art. At some point in its travels, the four-color films fell apart on that one section, and somebody retaped the black layer flopped. It remained flopped, undetected, or neglected, through at least the US and Scandinavia, maybe others to be determined.
I always assumed all copies were like this until I found a Canada copy (which doesn't have that panel), and subsequently reviewed pictures of other issues.
Note that many countries made their own alterations to this back cover. It probably should have been industry standard practice to work from the original artwork, but if this was unavailable, or impractical, each country's art departments could have been cutting and taping the same 4-color films to suit their individual needs, and each time, the films were shipped from one country to the next.

This album sounds fresh in 2016 -- echoing Zappa and presaging groups like Of Montreal, Bjork, and so many others. I had the pleasure of sitting with Lol Creme and his Gizmo one afternoon. Quite the thing.