Music Review: Eddy Grant - Going for Broke

With last year’s Caribbean crossover album Killer on the Rampage, Guyana-born Eddy Grant proved he could create a successful solo album by working alone in his Barbados studio. Grant wrote, arranged and produced every song on that album, including the gritty hit single “Electric Avenue,” and played all the instruments as well. But his follow-up album, Going for Broke, suggests that he is now suffering from artistic isolation. The circus-style reggae of “Only Heaven Knows” and the somnolent ballad “Blue Wave” reveal senseless content and inexcusably sloppy technique, while an irritating, indulgent guitar solo mars the vigorously rocking “Romancing the Stone,” which he wrote for the recent film of the same name. It is time for Eddy Grant to seek the objective ear of another producer.

Originally published in Maclean’s 9 July 1984