Clutching at Straws

Clutching at Straws follows Torch, a 29-year-old out-of-work man who drinks to numb a failed marriage, absent fatherhood and a failed singing career. The sleeve is set in a pub, the Bakers Arms in Colchester. On the front are Robert Burns, Dylan Thomas, Truman Capote and Lenny Bruce, and on the back John Lennon, James Dean and Jack Kerouac. The idea of the scene was Fish's, but Mark Wilkinson was rushed because the release date was brought forward, and he said he was disappointed with the result. The pub became the Beer House, at 126 Magdalen Street.

Chris Kimsey produced it, with Nick Davis recording and David Jacob mixing. Tessa Niles sang backing vocals on Warm Wet Circles and The Last Straw, Kimsey sang backing vocals on Incommunicado, and John Cavanagh voiced Dr. Finlay on Torch Song. The lyric sheet notes a place against each song, from Champneys Health Farm in Tring and the Quarterdeck in North Berwick to a Virgin Airways 747 from Newark to Heathrow.

It entered the British chart at two and spent 15 weeks there. Incommunicado, Sugar Mice and Warm Wet Circles were all Top 40 singles. David Hepworth wrote in Q in 1987 that some tracks could have slipped into Sting's live act. AllMusic's John Franck called it perhaps their most unheralded masterpiece, and Rolling Stone ranked it 37th among the 50 greatest prog rock albums in 2015. A 1999 remaster added a disc of demos from the aborted follow-up, and music left over from those sessions went into Seasons End.