Anthony Moore Flying Doesn’t Help LP

Flying Doesn’t Help is Anthony Moore’s contribution to the post-punk, pre-wave sound of London in 1979 – light with pop, fronted with meta-punk attitude and draped in strings of keyboard theory. As someone else said at the time, “The perfect release!”A lovely collision of art, pop and punk from the megacenter of all things in the rock-and-roll era.

While much of Anthony Moore’s earlier work is pleasant yet dispensable, 1979’s Flying Doesn’t Help falls into a different class altogether. Elaborate yet accessible, the effects of More’s (now minus one ‘o’) masterwork can be felt on a number of levels.The opening track, a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold story called ‘Judy Get Down,’ is ‘Lady Madonna’ for a new generation, both in its playful use of double entendres and in its unfailing Beatlesque melodicism. The songs that follow run the gamut from mordantto mischievous to desolate. More manufactures a musical landscape that is starkly beautiful, emotionally charged, and a tad dangerous, not unlike the best of John Cale’s solo material.