Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

It was obvious right from the start that there was more to Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart than the restricting format of The Tourists would ever be capable of revealing.

The early Eurythmics material, however, including the first ‘In The Garden’ album, frustrated as much as fulfilled, offering tantalising glimpses of Dave’n’Annie’s dark new electro-soul vision but never quite gelling into a coherent entity. It is only with this, their second album, that it all finally crystalises into something that does justice to the potential of this odd but well-matched couple.

Sweet Dreams marries Annie’s wide-ranging, powerful-and-richly expressive voice, to Dave’s inventive rhythms and intelligent use of electronics, sealing the pact with some haunting lyrics tat conjure up the very private and fearful imagery of nightmares more than the sweet dreams of the title.

Although it serves well as a ‘danceable’ party record and seems at first to soothe and uplift, familiarity uncovers the darkness of its prevailing undertones and Dave’s instrumental nuances and Annie’s evocative vocals take on more sinister, at times sepulchral connotations.

The gentle, almost pastoral, caress of ‘Jennifer’ for instance, which follows the folksy-soully title track on side two and continues the determined thud of its beat, becomes the cold embrace of death once its lyrical implications are absorbed: "Jennifer– where are you tonight? Underneath the water/Underneath the water" and Annie’s intimate vocals are transformed into a deeply sorrowful lament.

The Grace Jones-tempoed and flavoured ‘This Is The House’ likewise belies its true message of ghostly decay behind blasting horns and a jokey Spanish intro, which Annie sings with an impudent cockiness – "Nothing there but the dust and the rust/oh, oh, everything changes…"

The album closes with the tour-de-force of ‘This City Never Sleeps’, a soporific portrait of the constant twilight pulse of the ever-restless metropolis, full of half-heard background sounds and almost Floydian tortured guitar, the whole pinned together by Annie’s repeated highpitched interjections of "In the city-y-y-y". Marvellously evocative and deservedly the longest cut.

Back on side one, ‘Love Is A Stranger’ is driven along in fine electro-disco style as it grapples with the darker facets of the most explosive of sentiments – "It’s noble and it’s cruel/It distorts and deranges/And it wretches you up/And you’re left like a zombie" ,disintegrating into Hammer-horror histrionics at the word ‘Zombie’.

Again ‘I’ve Got An Angel’ lures and deceives with Annie revealing her demons as she sings with soaraway innocence over a Leaguish electro-funk backing, full of jungle flutes and syncopated cluckings and suckings, which leads neatly into a typically oblique version of Hayes/Porter’s funk standard ‘Wrap It Up’, full of primeval video-arcade vocal extemporising on the intro, and featuring Scritti’s Green on guest vocals to disappointingly little effect.

But Sweet Dreams is marred only by such minor flaws. A record that displays thought and consideration at every turn; on its evidence Eurythmics are now a strong and positive force convincingly capable of showing most of the current crop of electro-poppers and vacuous white soulsters a clean pair of heels.

If they can keep up this rate of progress they will stay comfortably ahead. As makers of such satisfying, interesting and original music, they richly deserve to.