Yes, you can dance if you want to. And yes, you can even leave your friends behind. But you can only do it for so long — eventually, the club will close, the night will end, and then you have to decide what you’re going to do next.

That’s the downside of having a hit that even now, over twenty years later, probably still qualifies as “iconic.” Before “The Safety Dance” embedded itself in the public’s collective brain like a synthesized ice pick, Men Without Hats were a very good underground electronic band, pitched somewhere between a slightly snarkier OMD and a rather more human Kraftwerk. Post-”Safety Dance,” they were pegged as a novelty band, a bunch of goofball Canadians with a long-haired front man who liked dancing with dwarves.

The result of this was that, although Rhythm of Youth — yes, the one with the hit on it — sold reasonably well, the follow-up, the sadly underrated Folk of the ’80s Part III, stiffed. By the time that recording started on Pop Goes the World, the band (such as it was — after their first EP, the Hats were never really more than brothers Ivan and Stefan Doroschuk and a constantly revolving assortment of backing musicians) was at a career crossroads. The next thing they put out had to be good.

The album that came out of these sessions was one that I think of as the great lost albums of the ’80s. It’s a swirling, joyous record, on which the Hats’ earlier synthetics are infused with guitars, pianos, and flutes (played by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, of all people). It has a loose thematic organization, if not an actual concept per se, involving a couple of people named Jenny and Johnny who have a band; the songs all work independently though, without any The Wall-style interludes that don’t make sense without the rest of the album.

The thing I notice the most now, a long time after I first heard this album, is its ebullient, unquenchable optimism, a pervasive notion that even if some times are hard, the moments in between are worth celebrating. It’s the kind of sentiment that risks sounding like a musical Hallmark card, but the Doroschuks are better songwriters than that. Sure, “In the Name of Angels,” “Jenny Wore Black,” and even the self-consciously silly title track wear their hearts on their sleeves, but there’s nothing duplicitous or disingenuous about them. When, in the second of those songs, Ivan sings, “There’s two holes called my eyes where the dreams peter through / all that I can remember is when I was with you,” what could be an unbearably saccharine moment is transformed by the sweep of the music and the force of Ivan’s conviction into a pure moment of joy. Even the more pensive moments, like the sparkling fragment “Bright Side of the Sun” (possibly the best song of less than 45 seconds that I’ve ever heard), and the wavering closer, “The End of the World,” can’t hide their smiles.

Unfortunately, Pop Goes the World didn’t revive Men Without Hats’ commercial fortunes. The title track scraped into the US top 20, but the album’s sales were disappointing at best. The band tried one more time, with The Adventures of Women and Men Without Hate in the 21st Century, an album that perhaps held the pre-Fiona Apple record for most awkward title. 21st Century, though not as consistent as Pop Goes the World, remains a criminally overlooked album, a record that retains its predecessor’s sonics, but reverses its emotions. It’s suffused with a subtle, ironic, but unmistakable despair; a close friend of mine in college, whose favorite records included Blood on the Tracks and The Queen is Dead, refused to listen to 21st Century more than once, calling it “the most depressing album I’ve ever heard.”

It didn’t sell, either, and that was essentially the end. The Hats briefly refashioned themselves as a hard rock band (!) for 1991’s Sideways, but it wasn’t even released in the US, and the band officially disbanded shortly thereafter. Ivan went on to have a moderately successful solo career in Canada; the band put out a reunion album in 2003, No Hats Beyond This Point, which was so wildly unsuccessful, both commercially and critically, as to lead one to believe that the Hats’ story is really over now. Unlike several other artists of their time, they haven’t been the subjects of a critical reappraisal, or even a nostalgia push; all of their studio albums are currently out of print stateside.

But even after it’s largely been forgotten, the music remains. And it’s brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant.

Label: Mercury
Release date: 1987
Rating: 9/10

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