Kraftwerk’s Computer Love (2022)

Australian Steve Tupai Francis has a bio that claims “over 25 years’ experience in writing in a range of contexts including music, academia, and civil society” and possession of a “collection of over 3,000 records.” What he may lack in bona fides—I don’t know his music writing—he more than makes up for with his enthusiasm. For the album Computer Love particularly, but also, in chatty footnotes, for David Bowie, Kate Bush, Visage, and others. He reignited all my own ardor for the deceptively light 35-minute set. Francis just kept proclaiming it one of the best of all time until suddenly I had the daily habit again. He’s all about the complete package too—not just the songs and lyrics but also the cover art and attendant world tour, one of the greatest of all time, he says, and instantly I began to regret never seeing them. I was perfectly infatuated with Computer Love in 1981. If the metric is raw number of times I’ve played an album, then it’s my favorite Kraftwerk album, although at one time or another I’ve owned a handful of their best. What seems amazing to me now, all these years later, is how clearly Kraftwerk saw the coming of personal computers and even the internet, at least in terms of look, feel, and mood. Yes, they were using the most primitive tools to do it—the Speak and Spell toy, for crying out loud—but using them well, maximizing them all the way. The rumble of voices, the counting in multiple languages, “Computer World,” “Computer Love,” it’s quite almost overwhelmingly perfect. “By pressing down a special key / It plays a little melody.” With our attention spans shrinking down to the size of a little melody, as Kraftwerk foretold, it’s wry and painful and uncanny and hilarious all at once. It may never have sounded better than while I was reading this book—and I obsessed over this album once. Francis triggers a lot of that simply by insisting on it, because much of what he says in his flights is true. In that way it reminds me of another 33-1/3 title, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli. Francis and Fusilli take different routes in terms of emphasis, but they are equally effective at infectiously raising the passion for these great albums. I mean, you probably have to love them in the first place. But if you do, prepare for a good+ time.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.