Men at Work: Cargo : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

With their good-time syncopation, ringing guitars and tasteful use of saxophone, Australia's Men at Work were the consummate Eighties roadhouse band, marrying the clean trimness of corporate New Wave to the tireless punch of crowd pleasers used to playing for drunks. The reissues of the band's 1981 and 1983 releases are most impressive for their sparkling production and for the clever way singer and chief songwriter Colin Hay mines a narrow patch of originality. The hits still glow -- "Down Under" is a fiendishly effective postcard, "Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive" is herky-jerky fun -- and a couple of gems, the B sides "Crazy" and "Till the Money Runs Out," await discovery by skinny-tie revivalists.

ARION BERGER
(From RS 916 – February 20, 2003)