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The first song is a little bit revolutionary, with a unique dance beat, "Sailing on the Seven Seas." One thing Andy was able to do is keep that same dreamy, romantic imagery in the lyrics, if nothing else! The song is rightly considered one of the best on the album. The next one is another hit single, "Pandora's Box (It's a Long, Long Way)" which tells the story of a silent movie star. It is a classic case study of what OMD was about these days -- the imagery was still there, the sense of style, and even the fragility, although that was eclipsed by a more modern and heavier dance beat. Now, groups like Depeche Mode and others had been adding heavy dance beats to their songs for years, but their style was very different from OMDs. Although the song is good, it paved the way for laziness in McClusky, since he seemd to try and sound just like it many times later this album and the next. "Then You Turn Away" has some of the same fragility and tenderness of earlier OMD, but the instrumentation is completely different. "Speed of Light" is, if anything, even more dance oriented than "Pandora's Box" although the two songs do have a very similar sound overall. "Was it Something I Said" is the next song, and the first real slow song, although it does have a heavy beat (for OMD anyway) -- just not a fast one. While it's a good song, it starts to sound a little too much like "Then You Turn Away" again, and we start to see that the entire album, with a few exceptions, sounds eerily similar. The styles, beats and instrumentation have very little variety for the rest of the album. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad -- it's a good sound. However, there's no denying that it would be better if it had a little more variety. "Big Town" is, again, a mostly slow song, but with a pronounced beat, much like "Was it Something I Said" and "Then You Turn Away." Following that, we have "Call My Name" which sounds terribly similar to "Pandora's Box" and "Speed of Light." After this point, the album takes a strange, yet subtle turn. There are a number of songs that sound a little more different, yet they aren't actually very much more interesting in spite of that. For instance, the next song, "Apollo XI" is an instrumental dancish song with lots of samples of the President, Mission Control and the actual astronauts that first walked on the moon. "Walking on Air" is like the depressed cousin of "Big Town," "Then You Turn Away" and "Was it Something I Said" rather than another close brother, although "Walk Tall" sounds like it belongs right in the middle of that group. "Neon Lights" is sort of an instrumental, with some "back-up" vocals by Christine Mellor, but none of McClusky's vocals. Other than that, it's a slightly dancey, yet laid-back tune, that's nice and relaxing, and thankfully different than the rest of the album. And finally, McClusky finishes the album off with the only "true" slow song in the traditional sense (i.e., without a nice beat that just happens to be too slow to dance to) "All That Glitters" which is presumably named for the snatch of verse written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings to describe his character Aragorn. In many ways, this is more like classic, OMD, fragile and tender, like the older material, yet in a modern pop-song format. It is a very pretty song, and a nice finishing touch to the album, which was notably lacking anything like it. Of course, it uses very similar instrumentation to the rest of the album (and to OMD in general) which makes it fit the album, even if it stands out from it. Overall, Suger Tax is an excellent album, but mutliple listenings start to really blend together since so many of the songs fit into one of two formats: the modern dance OMD, or the modern dance but a little bit slower OMD, which is already pretty similar. Some of the best songs, including the singles are included in that, which just makes songs like "Seven Seas," "Neon Lights" or "All That Glitters" stand out even more than they may deserve. It was a worthy continuation of the OMD name, even without Humphreys, but the trend toward sameness makes it somewhat disappointing.
Then again, to put it in better perspective, few of the OMD albums were, in my opinion, really that great overall, although they had enough good songs that their Best Of is one of the best CDs of the 80s overall. Seen in that light, the album is perhaps one of the better OMD albums to date, since at least the entire thing is good and very listenable, even if it's partly because so much of it sounds the same.
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