Alphaville Update

So a while back I wrote about how awesome German synthpop band Alphaville's first album, Forever Young, is.  And it is!  I think I actually like it more than when I wrote that.  It sounds like what I imagine heroin must feel like.

However, here's a hard truth: when I castigated a particular music guide for writing the band off, I was, I'm afraid, being too harsh, because every other Alphaville album sucks.  Hard.  It's just bizarre.  Their debut consists of fantastic, indelible pop songs, whereas everything else they've done is just…really, really boring.  I mean, I'll grant that there are a few songs I don't totally hate, but certainly none I love; none of them have any of the great hooks and overheated emotion that make Forever Young so memorable.  Sure, a lot of people rate their later work highly, but a lot of people are kind of, I don't know, dumb?  Actually, though if you look at their discography, you can see that public sentiment is on my side for once.  Forever Young was a substantial hit, the follow-up, the boring Afternoons in Utopia was, presumably based on expectations, a somewhat reasonable hit; after that--not much.  The same goes for their singles.  And it sucks, because I really want them to have done a whole bunch for Forever-Young-caliber albums.  But, alas, 'twas not to be.