The Associates – The Affectionate Punch
(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)
I know this album, at least for me, was impossible to find on any blog out there, so I’m being nice and uploading it on mine. It’s not my favorite Associates album [Sulk is], but it’s very ambitious. Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine set a very high bar when making this album that might be hard to overcome when making future albums. The sound is far more post-punkesque, whatever that means, than their later albums, which eventually evolve into synth-pop music.