LAURA SHENTON – The Stranglers- La Folie: In-depth

The first time yours truly came across the uncompromising and legendary The Stranglers was when ‘Golden Brown’ appeared in Guy Ritchie’s movie Snatch, and that song prompted me to explore the group’s catalogue and especially 1981’s La Folie, which was a rewarding experience. Now, the thing is that there is so much more to said LP than the aforementioned ‘Golden Brown’; it is damn near impossible to classify the record and it sounds like nothing else out there. It is this uniqueness and quality that author Laura Shenton illustrates quite beautifully in this short, concise, and well-structured book on the dynamic musical offering. Shenton approaches the subject in an objective and academic manner, which basically means that her own opinions and reflections resonate very little throughout the book. Instead, she draws heavily on interviews and articles from around the time of the record’s creation, various press clippings, album and tour reviews, and so on. Recollections from those who either witnessed or were somehow involved in the act’s endeavors and the turmoil and chaos that surrounded The Stranglers in the late 70s and early 80s are told via other published sources, but this approach works rather convincingly with respect to putting the LP into a proper historical framework. On top of that, there is something interesting about those old and oftentimes obscure texts by critics and journalists surfacing again and being used in a context such as this one.

What the author succeeds in doing is putting the La Folie epoch into a cohesive and chronologically organized perspective that provides the reader with an insight into the internal and external factors that were at play with respect to the renowned outfit and that specific album of theirs. Better yet, the 112-page affair, which you can digest in a few hours, will make you appreciate and cherish La Folie even more.