1980 doesn’t sound like an inspired album title but, in the mind of silver-tongued militant jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, who was cutting a new LP at the end of 1979, both the year and the new decade ahead seemed to represent something portentous, rather than promise an antidote to the political, social and economic failings of the 70s. As GSH’s musical partner at the time, keyboardist Brian Jackson, observes in this reissue’s sleevenotes: “It felt like 1980 was the 21st Century. With 1984, the Orwellian doomsdate, right around the corner, we were concerned.”
Certainly, a sense of anxiety pervades the mood of 1980 – it’s much more reflective and subdued than previous albums by the duo, while there’s a foreboding air of resignation, exemplified by songs such as Corners, Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams) and the mesmeric title track. Though the anger of earlier albums has been replaced by a more muted form of protest (with the exception of Shut ’Em Down, perhaps, which targets nuclear power and ecological disaster), there’s no evidence of GSH and Jackson suffering from creative entropy, even though 1980, sadly, was their collaborative swansong.
