Roddy Frame (who is Aztec Camera in all but name) started out as a bold pioneer but became just another earnest Scottish popster. By 1983, punk seemed poised to become the official language of the alternative universe. That year, Aztec Camera's debut, High Land, Hard Rain, cut a wide swath through the noisy competition, pointing the way towards a brave new world of thinking pop - topical, aggressive, minimal, yet sophisticated. Brandishing an acoustic guitar and and wearing his feelings proudly on his sleeve, Roddy Frame and his ever-evolving supporting cast proved that smart music needn't be all bluster and agitation.

Add to the mix Frame's fierce intellect and his intuitive understanding of soul music, and High Land, Hard Rain seemed to many of us as a harbinger of great change. In the end, it was a brilliant moment in time and little more, because with the Mark Knopfler-produced Knife (1985) and the albums that followed, Frame moved Aztec Camera towards an over-produced, middle-of-the-road sound that cut the legs out from under his incisive lyrics and leftist politics. Beginning as a less corrosive interpolation of Elvis Costello, Frame ended up merely as a more nuanced version of Simply Red's soporific Mick Hucknall - or, even worse, a less fey alternative to Culture Club's Boy George.

Yet, Frame remained capable of grand statements. Take "Just Like The USA" (from Knife), which uses America's political and economic excesses as a personal metaphor. Or "How Men Are" (from 1987's Love), in which Frame employees a personal crisis as a canvas on which to paint a damning feminist screed. Even more, Frame's earnest, impassioned tenor always cut to the heart of the matter without regard to the musical clutter that increasingly threatened to overwhelm it. His vocal prowess - consistent and deft, never merely professional - is the silver lining of Aztec Camera's unfulfilled promise.

With the benefit of hindsight, Frame's music wasn't groundbreaking at all. In fact, his group was a harbinger of adult alternative, the obnoxiously lukewarm radio format that arose during the 1990's catering to aging, noise-addled punks. In that context, Aztec Camera's soft touch appears not as a bold new direction but as a weakening of resolve. And, Roddy Frame simply wasn't the revolutionary we envisioned - he just made good pop records. The failure of vision, then, was as much our's as his.

Nevertheless, taken on their own terms, all of Aztec Camera's records are agreeable, and portions of them can be quite bracing. Certainly, I recommend the stellar High Land, Hard Rain, and in retrospect Knife is entirely credible - despite the fact that it baffled and infuriated fans upon release. Delving deeper, the four remaining albums each present several stirring moments, though Dreamland (1993) and Frestonia (1995) find Roddy Frame settling ever more comfortably into into the easy chair of middle-age. (After Frestonia, Frame dropped the pretense of the Aztec Camera moniker and began releasing records under his own name).

I also give a qualified recommendation to the imported Best Of Aztec Camera (1998). Despite its lofty price, it's a better value than collecting the entire Camera catalog. Unfortunately, it omits several key tracks (e.g. "Just Like The USA") and includes a few that are best forgotten (e.g. Frame's starchy, contrived political rant, "Good Morning Britain," recorded with the Clash's Mick Jones). A later collection, Deep And Wide And Tall (2005) lowers the price and while failing to improve the track selection - quite the opposite, in fact.

Be aware that the original editions of Aztec Camera's albums are rapidly falling out-of-print. Of particular interest to collectors, then, is an ongoing series of 2-for-1 CD reissues by American indie Wounded Bird Records. These include a disc pairing the slick-but-soulful Love (1987) with the stylistic melange of Stray (1990). Much better is another CD joining Knife with Aztec Camera, the 1985 EP featuring "Jump," Frame's delightful (if unlikely) cover of the skronky Van Halen classic. [top of page]