New Clear Days is the 1980 debut album by the British rock group The Vapors. It spent six weeks in the UK album charts, reaching a highest position of No. 44 in June 1980. It contains their best-known song, "Turning Japanese", which reached No. 3 in the UK chart in February 1980 and was also a worldwide success. A remix of "News at Ten", went to No. 44 in July of that year. A third single, a re-recording of "Waiting for the Weekend" that included a horn section, failed to chart. The title of the album is a pun on "Nuclear", with nuclear weapons and power stations being prominent societal issues at that time.
Song details
"News at Ten", a cynical examination of the generation gap and the narrator's fear of ending up as complacent as the parent he despises for his conformism, was expected to be a hit on the back of the success of "Turning Japanese". Its poorer performance was blamed in part by the long-running strike at the BBC's Top of the Pops, which meant it received very little media exposure. There was also a marked reluctance by BBC Radio 1 - then the nation's premier radio station - to play a song named after an ITV programme. Apart from the three singles, the other best known track is "Sixty Second Interval". Its ambiguous lyrics have been interpreted as concerning the short ceasefires agreed upon between armies during wars to allow each to attend to their wounded in the no man's land between them. The song was the inspiration for the long-running "Sixty Second Interview" feature of the UK's free Metro newspaper given away at public transport stations. "Letter from Hiro", the album's lengthy finale, concerns the sense of powerlessness a boy feels as events push towards World War II, and towards the inevitable ending of his friendship with his more patriotic Japanese pen pal. The song concludes with the playing of a traditional Japanese tune on a cimbalom.
Artwork
A reflection of the album's title and lyrical content, the album cover shows a grainy television screen displaying a BBC TVweather forecast. Among the symbols for clouds is one located over London that is, on closer examination, a mushroom cloud. In addition, one of the temperature symbols has been replaced with one warning of radiation and the weatherman is glowing.
Releases
The American and Canadian releases omitted both "Cold War" and "America" in favour of the single "Prisoners". The U.S. album was released on CD twice: in 1995 as Anthology, by One Way Records, with four tracks from their second album, Magnets, as bonus tracks; and in 1998 as Vaporized, by Collectables Records, which included the Magnets album on the same CD. In 2000, Captain Mod Records, an offshoot of the Captain Oi! label, specialising in punk rock and new wave bands, reissued both of the band's albums on CD, separately. New Clear Days featured the original UK LP track listing for the first time on CD, and included all single mixes and B-sides the band recorded for the album as bonus tracks. The CD reissue of New Clear Days was remastered by Tim Turan and, while some of the bonus tracks had previously been issued on Turning Japanese: The Best of the Vapors, many of the tracks made their debut on CD for the first time. The booklet included a brief essay on the band's history as well as the lyrics for all the songs on the album.
Track listing
Original European, Australasian and South African LP release
