The Raw & the Cooked is the second and final studio album by British rock band Fine Young Cannibals, released in 1989. The title of the album was lifted from the book of the same name ("Le Cru et le Cuit" in French) by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Four songs from the album first appeared in film soundtracks in the mid-1980s, three of which were soul tracks from the Tin Men film. The band had already recorded over half of the album by the time David Z came to produce the remainder. His work with the band, which resulted in dance-rock material, included studio experimentation.
The Fine Young Cannibals did not exactly come out of nowhere, but in 1989 they went from a name in the business to a headlining one, selling multi-platinum amounts of their second album and scoring two #1 U.S. chart hits. It was one of the very few albums of that year which was both critically and commercially rewarded, and apparently, the critical reputation has grown over the years. Practically the entire album graced a radio playlist somewhere at some time, not just "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing". At best, it's a clever, quirky blend of soul, rock, and synth pop, accentuated by Roland Gift's vocals, but there are times where Gift is not exactly God's gift in that department, either. "Good Thing", for example, usually strikes as a brute-force copy of the real thing. But the differing styles heard throughout makes things interesting. Overall, just a steady, decent, well-executed record worth your time.
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