Vocalcity deserves all the plaudits it got... I came to it very late, in the grip of depression, very little could reach me, but Vocalcity did.... It seduced, and there are few records more seductive... It struck me as an alternative template for pop, a model for a pop entirely liberated, as Tim suggests, from the testicular dynamics of climax-orientated Rock ... (and, after all the rock model has an influence far beyond the rock genre...) Partly this is to do with the extra time, ten rather than three minutes as standard....
Where I would differ (ever so slightly) from Tim's analysis is in the notion of Vocalcity as foreplay... as if it were only putting off climax rather than opening up a mode of enjoyment in which there was no question of climax at all... the album is a sumptuous suspension... It's not only the tension-release of rock that VC banished, though: it looped Dance's urgencies into permanent delay (in the double sense), oneirically transforming its imperatives into the delicate clamour of Mondrian mists, a city of ghosts, whispers, undulations, reverberations...
After this audio-vapour, this nearly-absent sound perfume, The Present Lover did seem a little too ... Present...