Album review : CLIMIE FISHER – Coming In For The Kill (4CD Boxset)

February 18th, 2024 by brianmc

Cherry Red [Release date 23.02.24]

Climie Fisher’s 1988 hit single ‘Love Changes Everything”, taken from their debut album, truly was a pop classic. Still is.

None of the songs on Coming In For The Kill replicated its considerable chart success. And yet a handful come amazingly close to the sheer songwriting and production quality that we witnessed with ‘Love Changes…’

The duo, Simon Climie and Rob Fisher, were initially session musicians, who met up at Abbey Road studios in the eighties, and subsequently began writing and recording together.

It was a perfect match. Climie had both penned and produced material for Eric Clapton, Michael McDonald, Rod Stewart, Pat Benatar, George Michael, Aretha Franklin..and, whisper it, Westlife. Fisher’s success had come in the form of four hit singles (2 of them breaking the Billboard Top Forty) with pre Climie Fisher band, Naked Eyes.

This 4 CD Deluxe repackaging of a remastered Coming In For The Kill is a weighty, detailed, retelling of the album. CD1 is the original album, remastered. CDs 2,3 and 4 serve up an exhaustive supply of edits, demos, remixes, and alt versions. It includes 16 “previously unreleased tracks”.

Apparently, such is the sheer variety of takes generated, it qualifies as a specialist subject on Mastermind.

The idea behind it was born out of the ‘Love Changes…’ experience.

On its initial release it did not perform well. A year later it was reissued after a remix by world famous recording studio whizzkid, Bob Clearmountain. It became a worldwide hit.

The songwriting is robust, the melodies resilient, and Simon Climie’s skill behind the mixing desk manifests itself in so many ways, such that he can pull and stretch songs like ‘It’s Not Supposed To Be That Way’, ‘Love Like A River’ and ‘You’re Not Alone In this World’ into new shapes and forms, still showing respect for the original song, but presenting them in radically different guises. And of course, sometimes presenting them with minimal change.

Standouts would have to be ‘Fire On the Ocean’, one of the lead singles at the time. It has a 7” mix, and an alternate 7” version… and a 12” special mix edit, A Club Mix..and a Club Mix instrumental, Completists ahoy!

And those very completists will already know that the “original” 7” version is worth the investment. Climie fires up a pop friendly soul sound that belongs on a thousand dance floors. The minimalist bass beats and the synth sounds seem real compared to, say, the pretty programmed synth lines of peer group, Johnny Hates Jazz.

As a whole, the package adds up to an inventive, extravagant, thoroughly new-school work of ingenuity and craft.

For fans of the genre or of even just the band, it’s an entertainment. For technophiles, it’s an education. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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