Duran Duran - Seven and the Ragged Tiger

Original CD sounds better

I'm commenting on the remastered sound here, not on the music. However, I will say that Duran Duran are one my favorite groups, and this is a great album overall. Unfortunately, this remaster is dull. The sound level is louder, but that doesn't really mean anything. You control the volume knob. The soundstage is two-dimensional; the dynamic range is squashed; the bass is weak, and the high frequencies are a little distorted. Is the original CD perfect? Of course not. But it didn't sound too bad either. Rio is a different story--the original CD mastering was poor, and the reissue sounds significantly better. Seven and the Ragged Tiger was remastered by a different engineer at a different studio and sounds worse in basically every way. This is one of those cases where you're better off staying with or finding the original issue CD. April 22, 2008

Shaking Up The Lizard Mixture

OK, you have two bonafide classic albums under your belt, you are dubbed the "fab five," you take over the new music venue (MTV) with a vengence but you are seen through the eyes of the "rock music press" as bubblegum or teeny-bopper music. So you take some time with a new producer (80's miracle worker Alex Sadkin) and go over the top in terms of image and create "Seven and the Ragged Tiger." Even the title screams "Hey, this album is important!"

Unfortuantely, as most albums that are designed to be masterpieces from the start, this album has some problems. The sound is cold and angular even when the music calls for more sympathetic production. "New Moon on Monday" is a great song, but the production here reduces it to an odd anti-ballad with harmonies that sound like something you'd hear on a King Crimson record.

The funny part is that it is exactly this awkwardness that endears the album to its listeners. You listen and you know it doesn't really work, but it's still a lot of fun to hear.

Everytime I hear that "Why-yi-yi-yi" chorus in "The Relfex" I think to myself, "boy that's bad, but boy do I want to hear it again." The bass line alone in "The Reflex" is enough to redeem that tune. Then you have "Union Of The Snake" which really does show what Duran Duran were trying for. Something rock orientated with a pop sense about it. On that song they fire on all cylindars just like they do on "Shadows On Your Side" and "Of Crime and Passion." And even if lyrics like "My head is full of chopstick and I don't like it" (from "Cracks in the Pavement") make you cringe, I'd be damned if Simon Le Bon doesn't make an equally awkwardly worded and constructed ballad like "The Seventh Stranger" work.

Confounding thing this "Seven and the Ragged Tiger," but confoundingly brilliant and worth listening to. December 13, 2007

Has its moments, but over it's just plain dull

I love Duran Duran and have ever since I heard their breakthrough hit Hungry Like the Wolf in 1982. They have made wonderful, fun, challenging music for almost thirty years now. Although Seven and the Ragged Tiger is one of their biggest selling albums, it is a creative misstep. Duran Duran and producer (the late) Alex Sadkin have buried elements of what made the first two Duan Duran albums so special -throbbing colorful basslines, sharp rhythms, cutting guitar lines - leaving little to replace them. The results sound like a muddle: lots of big empty spaces and weird exotic noises masking few catchy hooks or memorable musical ideas. Even the band's huge hit The Reflex had to be re-mixed to find radio airplay in 1984 - the lifeless version on this album will leave many listeners scratching their heads (The slicker "radio" version can be found on both Greatest or Decade).
A few highlights - New Moon on Monday, which boasts a strong chorus and great harmonies; Union of the Snake, a highly charged blast; and Shadows on Your Side, a song that stays truest to what most listeners loved about the first two Duran Duran albums.
Duran Duran records before and after Seven and the Ragged Tiger have often scaled great, giddy heights - this one just barely gets off the ground. January 24, 2007

Sabbath Stone can bend over

"Seven and the Ragged Tiger" is so thrilling, I can't see why anyone would give it less than five stars. It's an album of exotic textures, interesting grooves, and genre-defying rhythms. You'd be stupid to miss it. And Sabbath Stone is stupid. April 19, 2006

The album that made me convert to Ozzy at age 7

Duran Duran's third album Seven and the Ragged Tiger was released in the Fall of 1983.
This was the band's first album after the breakout success of Rio which took a year to take off in the US.
I am a rock music fan and when I was 7(back in 1983), in addition to listening to greats like Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Van Halen, AC/DC and so on but I was also listening to new wave acts like The Police, Men at Work and the Roxy Music facsimiles Duran Duran(who took their name from a character in Hanoi Jane Fonda's 1968 film Barberella).
Whilst I still like the former two New Wave acts plus The Cars, I grew not to like Duran Duran and only got the album for Union Of the Snake but I detested the #1 hit The Reflex and New Moon on Monday was done before. Cracks in the Pavement and Tiger Tiger just cry out 80s!!!!
This was the band's last US Top 10 album for many many years(until their fluke 1993 comeback) and was the last album before Simon Le Bon and company IMPLODED over music direction, personal and money differences.
Two weeks after I got this album, my older sister brough home for me Ozzy Osbourne's Bark At the Moon and after one listen to Bark at the Moon, I threw this album where it belongs, in the TRASH and I have avoided(except for a two week window in 2003 to try and warm up to and failed) these *ss-clowns! April 17, 2006

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