Post-punk mainstays A Certain Ratio have spent their decades-spanning career twisting their brand of factory-floor dance-punk into all manner of musical knots. The exhaustive 2019 compilation box set acr:box, which covered everything from their more orthodox post-punk beginnings to their emergence as funk-punk pioneers, only made the depth of the Manchester band’s musical development even more apparent.
On 1982, A Certain Ratio mostly play to their strengths by leaning into the progressive, dance-y side of their sound. Things start off a bit clumsy on “SAMO,” which, outside of its airtight performances, scans as disappointingly generic white-bread funk. “Jean-Michel and Andy was right/All you mothers were too uptight,” Jez Kerr sings in tandem with Ellen Beth Abdi. The title itself references the graffiti tag that Jean-Michel Basquiat and fellow artist Al Díaz were associated with, but the stale groove misses the explosive creativity of its subjects’ art.
The album, thankfully, immediately picks itself up with the sparse, moody “Waiting on a Train,” which features rapper and fellow Mancunian Chunky. His laidback flow adds to the song’s mellow vibe, carried with assurance by Abdi’s breathy vocal harmonies and drummer Donald Johnson’s lumbering, syncopated rhythmic backdrop. Guitarist Martin Moscrop, for his part, peppers the tune with effect-pedal weirdness, squeezing some truly bizarre noises out of his instrument in between verses. A Certain Ratio has always been a collaborative endeavor—1982 also features saxophonist Tony Quigley and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Steele—and that spirit continues to push the group into unfamiliar and unexpected places.
The coalescing horns heard during the bridge of album closer “Ballad of ACR” bring to mind the spectral jazz fusion of Miles Davis’s “Great Expectations,” while “1982” buzzes with the electronic chilliness of Kraftwerk, its vocal hook distorted by a campy robot effect. True to its title, the band’s 12th album invokes a nostalgia for the past, even as it manages to sound a good deal fresher than their 2008 comeback, Mind Made Up. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but in 2023, their mix of retro-futurist and just plain retro feels less quaint than it did 15 years ago.
Though the group’s sensibilities lack the ferocity of dance-punk peers like Gang of Four, certain moments here deliver a palpable energy that’s no less infectious. “Holy Smoke” imagines a utopian all-night dance party—“We got this city locked down tight…The all-night party goes on all night,” goes the hook—as its über-funky stomp echoes Janet Jackson’s industrial-tinged “Rhythm Nation.” The band’s stylistic omnivorousness also takes them into the polyrhythmic realm of Afrobeat (“Afro Dizzy”), disco (“Constant Curve”), and vapor-jazz (“Tombo in M3,” which references Davis’s ghostly fusion trumpet in a more overtly jazz context).
Aside from the aimless electronic noodling of the penultimate track, “Tier 3,” 1982’s charming and incredibly danceable blend of post-punk and funk continues the group’s efforts to ever-so-slightly update their sound by incorporating new elements and eschewing genre boundaries. Compared to some of their iconic contemporaries, A Certain Ratio never quite got their due, but the niche they’ve settled into in recent years serves their legacy well.
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