Casiopea -- What Can't Speak Can't Lie

 

I only wrote about fusion band Casiopea just a couple of weeks ago with their bouncy-as-heck "Living on a Feeling" from their 1983 album "Jive Jive". Well, coming across this other Casiopea song which is just a couple of tracks away from "Living on a Feeling" at the end of the album, I simply had to give my two officially non-existent Canadian pennies on this one.

First off, do any of you folks of a certain generation remember "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"? Yup, this was a radio favourite back in the 1970s with the legendary Elton John doing that duet with English singer Kiki Dee. Listening to it and watching the video of John and Dee playing it up has brought a lot of warmth to my heart. If anything, it's been healing my heart.

Well, that last track on Casiopea's "Jive Jive" actually has Dee performing the vocals on the haunting "What Can't Speak Can't Lie". Composed and arranged by Casiopea guitarist Issei Noro（野呂一生）and written by Gary Osborne, who has also collaborated with Elton John in the past, "What Can't Speak Can't Lie" has got a cosmic soul inside all of that urban contemporary thanks to the spacey synthesizers. I mean, if Hollywood had ever decided to come up with a fusion of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and an 80s romance, this probably would have been the theme song.

Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）did a cover of "What Can't Speak Can't Lie" with Casiopea one time.

In a strange way, those measured echoing beats in the song remind me of Art of Noise's cover of "Robinson Crusoe". That was one haunting theme song for a 1960s TV show.