There are some albums you find yourself loving more than life itself for reasons that defy easy description.
In the case of the Silencers' evocative 1987 LP A Letter From St. Paul, the arrival of an album so chock-full of such sophisticated and nuanced pop was a welcome respite from the sudden surge of decidedly unsophisticated fare dominating the charts at the time.
For every "Where The Streets Have No Name", it seemed, there were ten "Living On A Prayers" getting around-the-clock heavy rotation, causing even Jon Bon Jovi himself to notice that, by the time Slippery When Wet hit the top of the charts, musicianship and song craft had gone completely out the window.
Revisiting A Letter From St. Paul today, one is left to wonder how an album of such breathtaking beauty, both lyrically and musically, could find the support of an American label (RCA Records) when bandleader/singer Jimme O'Neill's previous outfit, Fingerprintz, had gotten no traction whatsoever in the American market.
In fact, the only reason most American music fans knew of Fingerprintz' existence at all had more to do with two former members (Cha Burns and Bogdan Wiczling) going on to join Adam Ant's touring band after the break-up of Adam & The Ants than anything the band had actually accomplished over the course of three albums for Virgin Records.
Ultimately, it was that band's inability to find an audience outside of their native Scotland that led to their eventual dissolution. O'Neill resurfaced in the unjustly ignored synthpop duo Intro, whose two singles "Haunted Cocktails" and "Lost Without Your Love" should have launched O'Neill and singer Jacqui Brooks into the proverbial stratosphere, but, instead, led Brooks to pursue a solo career and O'Neill to form the Silencers.
Amazingly, the band's three-song demo caught the attention of RCA Records, thereby providing O'Neill and Co. a direct path to the U.S. market. Receiving MTV and modern rock radio airplay, "Painted Moon" cracked the US charts, peaking at #82.
A high-profile North American tour with the Pretenders followed, signalling a decided shift in O'Neill's commercial fortunes, but follow-up single "I See Red" failed to build upon that momentum.
For this writer, the fact that the album had found any commercial success in the States at all was a minor miracle when you consider RCA's stunning inability to break rock bands during the '80s.
RCA took the proper steps to ensure no such success would ever repeat itself and subsequent albums A Blues For Buddha and Dance To The Holy Man were released in such a manner that this writer suspects that RCA pressed more promo copies of these albums than retail copies.
While the band ultimately found Top 40 success in the UK with a re-recorded version of Fingerprintz' "Bulletproof Heart", they barely resemble the unit that created the fully-formed masterpiece A Letter From St. Paul.