by Ned RaggettMore of a solo effort by Andi Sexgang than a band album as such, Blind is still a fine effort that finds Sexgang and collaborators -- including fellow Sex Gang veteran Terry MacLeay and new bass partner Cam Campbell replacing Dave Roberts -- whipping up an enjoyable enough array of songs. The fractured cut-and-paste sense of earlier numbers still carried through on Blind, though not as consistently, for better or worse (Sexgang's perfectly fine as a frontman for more straightforward songs but they can lack a certain extra chaos). If song for song this particular incarnation wasn't quite as strong as earlier versions -- the switch from bass to guitar as lead instrument at many points in particular is a notable change -- Campbell was a competent enough performer and Sexgang's theatrical, keening sense of delivery remained intact. If anything, he sounds a little more arch than before, as well as more understandable. Kevin Matthews' drumming can favor the tribal here and there, adding a bit of ancient mystique to a band more inclined to modern decadence. Then there's the kick-up-your-heels cabaret prance of "Ida-Ho," the suddenly beautiful/suddenly overwrought "Last Chants for the Slow Dance" (one of the best songs in the band's original style), the perfectly Cockney Rebel-styled glam epic "The Quick Gas Gang," and more besides. In one of the weirder but not too surprising moves from the often hard to figure out Cleopatra label, said company reissued the album in the early '90s only to tack on two wholly new tracks by Sexgang and Roberts following their reunion. Both cuts appeared on a separate reunion album later, making their inclusion all the more jarring and pointless (especially since the fairly generic semi-baggy rhythms on the remixed "Welcome to My World" have nothing to do with Blind as a whole).