Don't Stand Me Down

The line-up shrank from ten to four during the making of it. The producers Jimmy Miller and Tom Dowd worked on the sessions and were dismissed, and Nick Gatfield called the process long and painful and costlier than Too-Rye-Ay. Rowland refused publicity and released no single. An edited version of This Is What She's Like appeared in November 1985 and missed the charts. In a 2016 interview with Clash, Rowland said the band had planned three albums: this one, a live album and an Irish album. Recording and mixing took almost two years across Switzerland, the UK and the US, and John Porter was also at one point attached as a producer. The cover shows the four remaining members in an Ivy League look of ties and pinstriped suits, and the most controversial feature of the record was the conversational dialogue inside the songs. The tour that followed played to half-empty theaters.

Reviews were divided. NME gave it nine out of ten, and Uncut and Select five stars each. Colin Irwin of Melody Maker called it the most challenging, absorbing and moving album of the year, while Trouser Press called it a torpid snore. Creation reissued it in 1997 with two bonus tracks and retitled songs, and EMI issued a Director's Cut in 2002 and 2004 that restored Kevin Rowland's 13th Time. Paul Moody of Uncut called it a neglected masterpiece, and the 1001 Albums book likened it to Pet Sounds for the 1980s. Rowland said in 2014 that while in rehab he read Chris Roberts calling the album a masterpiece in a Melody Maker booklet, and that being understood lifted his spirits.