Album flashback

Rational Youth - Heredity [1985]

Rational Youth hail from the ultra-cool Montréal scene of the early 80s. The group has seen a number of lineups over the years, but the one constant has been Tracy Howe.

Howe’s musical background has seen him as a young church choirboy, drummer in a punk band [The Normals] and a post-punk group [Heaven Seventeen, no, not that one…].

Men Without Hats founder Ivan Doruschuk played briefly in H17 before starting MWH, and asked his former school chum Howe to join on guitar. Howe played on one track before leaving to do his own thing.

An early version of newly formed Rational Youth had a couple of low-key hits from their indie release Cold War Night Life. This version of the band is quite Krautrock as you can hear.

Saturdays In Silesia, did not chart, 1982

This tune is a real artefact of the era. Cold War vibes, Central Europe, we’re all gonna die so we may as well dance. You know the themes.

Synth-tastic, very cold yet cheery at the same time. And according to an interview given by Howe this may be the first CanCon recording to feature the legendary Roland 808.

And if the soldiers put a padlock on the door
We’ll break it open like we’ve always done before
We don’t have much but what we’ve got we’re going to keep
Won’t you stay close to me?

Rational Youth had now caught the eye of Capitol Records, who helped with a self-titled EP which doesn’t move the needle. However, the revolving door of personnel had now stopped, leaving Howe on his own to knock out the full length - Heredity.

Enlisting former Klaatu man Dee Long as co-producer, the work began on a glossier project with more of a big label sound.

Session players were brought in to fill the gaps, including Ben Mink [k.d. lang, FM] on violin and mandolin and Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve [Tom Cochrane, Streetheart] on bass.

The result was Rational Youth in name only, and the new direction alienated fans of the synth-oriented group of the past.

No More And No Less - peaked #87, 1985

This track really is the best of the lot on this LP, and I can recall seeing the video on MuchMusic back in the day.

The keyboard parts are interesting and the guitar doesn’t overpower as it does on some of the other tracks.

Call Me - peaked #89, 1985

This tune is so straight-ahead and poppy, I feel like I would have been disappointed too if I’d been a fan of Cold War Night Life.

The quirky, cool synth work here takes a position in the background while some mediocre guitars take up too much space.

Bang On - peaked #91, 1985

Written by John Jones, a former member of Klaatu who played some keys and sang some BGs on the record, it’s… different.

A little too abstract lyrically for my taste, but YMMV.

Sadly, the performance of these three tracks and the album as a whole saw the label lose confidence, and the brand was put on hiatus following the Heredity tour.

Howe spoke afterwards about regretting using the Rational Youth name on Heredity as it was effectively a solo project, but the label pushed this strategy.

I should also shout out both Bill Vorn and Kevin Komoda who contributed to some of these projects and who were a big part of the original synth-heavy sound.

Tracy and his wife Gaenor Howe are still carrying the banner for Rational Youth, releasing a new EP in 2021. From what I can see on YT they toured Europe in 2019 as well.