Oingo Boingo front man steps out solo… with Oingo Boingo

Just before commencing a career in film scoring, Danny Elfman cut this solo album in 1984. The following year he would score Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and his career as a composer would quickly kick into high gear. Elfman’s score for 1980’s Forbidden Zone suggested his future direction, but this solo album was more tightly connected to the sound of Oingo Boingo (who were in the middle of a two-year hiatus, and a change of record labels between Good for Your Soul and Dead Man’s Party) than his soon-to-be-developing ideas for film scores.

If you like mid-80s Oingo Boingo, you will enjoy this solo outing, which features similar synths, guitars, horns, drums and vocal styles. With Oingo Boingo serving as his backing band, it’s unsurprising that this sounds like an Oingo Boingo album, albeit with a few mid-tempo numbers that might never have made the Boingo cut. Varese’s reissue adds the single mix of “Gratitude” (from the soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop) to the original nine tracks. The eight-page booklet includes the original front and back cover art, lyrics and new liner notes by Jerry McCulley. [©2015 Hyperbolium]