More side project than supergroup, Arcadia was the band formed by the members of Duran Duran that didn’t run off with Robert Palmer and the Chic rhythm section to briefly become The Power Station. It’s Duran Duran enough, though – enough to warrant inclusion in EMI’s ongoing series of 2-CD/DVD deluxe edition reissues of the Fab 5’s heyday catalogue. Rightly so. Though it only yielded one bona-fide hit in the form of the glammed out synth-funk single “Election Day”, Arcadia’s only album So Red the Rose is a surprisingly enduring collection of slightly over-ambitious pop. The core group of singer Simon LeBon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, and drummer Roger Taylor were joined on the record by a flock of session players, along with numerous high profile guest stars, most famously Grace Jones doing that psycho monologue in “Election Day”. On the epic (and epically underappreciated) ballad “The Promise”, the trio is joined by none other than jazz-great Herbie Hancock on keyboards and (wh-wh-what?) Sting doing back-up vocals on the chorus. In 1986, the video was striking (in 2010 strikingly cheesy) – a black-and-white interplay of forebodingly grainy stock footage and the band performing on what looks like a regurgitation of the set of their previous video “Is There Something I Should Know?” Yeah, I suppose it jumps the shark a bit when Simon whips out those pan-pipes, but the song stands up, regardless.
