English Garden (album)

Background and composition

Bruce Woolley started writing and recording pop songs at home with Revox equipment during his school years: "I was playing guitar but floundering about without direction." This made him start making songs specifically for music publishing companies, and he was eventually hired by someone to do so. He had spent eighteen months writing compositions for other artists, but did not appreciate what they were doing with his songs. He decided to quit this position and write songs for himself, meeting producer Mike Hurst and his manager Chris Bough, who was also well known for being manager for singer-songwriter Cat Stevens. Thus, Woolley financed to form his band which he called The Camera Club, which, in addition to him being the vocalist, had Matthew Seligman on bass, Rod Johnson on drums, Dave Birch on guitar, and Thomas Dolby on keyboards. Recorded in Eden Studios in London, English Garden was engineered by Richard Goldblatt with assistance from Nick T. Froom.

Meanwhile, Woolley had also formed a group with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes called The Buggles in 1977, recording demos of tracks such as "Clean, Clean" and "Video Killed the Radio Star". Woolley had left the group to form The Camera Club by the time the Buggles were signed to Island Records in 1979, and the band recorded both songs for English Garden. Many writers called Woolley's recording of "Video" much better than the Buggles' version. This included one critic who called both acts overall as of being very high quality, but felt that Woolley's version was more faithful to the source material than that of The Buggles, noting the filtered vocals and cute, female vocals of the latter rendition as giving it a novelty feel. However, he also wrote of liking both versions of "Clean, Clean" on the same level.

While also categorized by one writer to be a light power pop record in the vein of acts like The Move, as well as a pop rock release by another, English Garden is a new wave record taking influence of works from David Bowie and Brian Eno, like the majority of artists in the style that existed around the release of the album. However, unlike other new wave releases that only increased their hopelessness of Bowie's and Eno's songs, English Garden's honest, humorous lyrics, which deal with a male remembering about his currently failing marriage thanks to "automation and his modern surroundings" as one journalist analyzed, show that the narrator is struggling, but is optimistic that his relationship will improve.

Reception

English Garden garnered mostly rave reviews upon its release. The Age's John Teerds spotlighted the album's "inventive" songwriting, strong vocal performance, and "appealing" melodies, but also noted that it may take two or three hearings of the record for the listener to enjoy it. Ted Burley of Montreal Gazette honored the quality of the release as above other new wave acts at the time and should've set the decade's norm for the genre. He wrote that Woolley was "attacking the eighties rather than surrendering to them", being able to make the production fresh and the vocals futuristic while making it sound human and non-robotic. Among the "lush" harmonies and "tasteful" arrangements, the unique, non-permissive lyrical content was also a significant highlight in his review, praising its "slice-of-life realism and scope." A more mixed review called the album "one of those weird pop albums that England seems to spew out yearly" and "sort of 10cc for nostalgists".

In North America, the group was signed by Columbia Records after just five weeks of rehearsal, and the album was released in the continent with cover art designed by Janet Perr. English Garden was promoted in the United States with a tour just before its release in the country, and songs from the album also garnered radio play in the States. The album peaked at number 184 on the Billboard 200 chart. There were also several performances in Woolley's home country promoting English Garden. However, despite this and the record's critical acclaim, the release quickly faded into obscurity; a writer for Trouser Press analyzed that this was to be expected given that the LP only presented Woolley's devotion to music from the 1960s, but also said that the group might've been famous in some sort of way thanks to Dolby's involvement in the band.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Bruce Woolley and produced by Mike Hurst. Additional writing credits are noted.