The Raw & The Cooked by Fine Young Cannibals

The Raw & the Cooked, the second and last album from British band Fine Young Cannibals, came out on I.R.S. and London Records, and it's a smart, sleek, restless record that grabs from everywhere: Motown soul, funk, rock, British beat and glossy pop, all rolled into one. The title comes straight from Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist whose book goes by the same name, which gives you some idea of the band's ambitions.

It was stitched together over time. Four of the songs had already surfaced in movies a few years earlier, including three soul numbers written for Tin Men, and more than half the album was already done by the time David Z came in to produce the rest. His work with them leaned toward dance-rock and studio experimentation, and the singles show off both sides of the record: "She Drives Me Crazy" is a jittery, hiccuping dance-floor stomp with a hook sharp enough to cut glass, and "Good Thing" is a retro rave-up that sounds like a party in an old soul revue.

Both went to number one in America, and the album was a huge seller, moving more than three million copies and picking up a double gold award in France. Critics loved it too. A remix album, The Raw & the Remix, followed in 1990.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.