Penguin Cafe Orchestra

condition (record/cover):  NM / EX+

The fourth Penguin Cafe Orchestra studio album, released June 1987 on Editions EG (EGED 50). Signs Of Life extends the Broadcasting From Home aesthetic into a slightly more reflective, slightly more grown-up direction. By 1987 the band had been touring constantly for three years and was at its most ensemble-cohesive: the rhythmic interplay between Simon Jeffes on guitar and ukulele, Peter Veitch on accordion, the Helen Liebmann cello bed and the Gavyn Wright / Geoff Richardson string parts had become its own settled language.

The album opens with "Bean Fields", a rolling chamber-folk piece that became one of the band's signature live moments. Other highlights include "Southern Jukebox Music", "The Snake And The Lotus" (a slower, almost ambient piece), the dancing "Perpetuum Mobile" with its hypnotic ukulele ostinato (the album's best-known track and one of the most-licensed Jeffes compositions), and the closing "Wildlife". The instrumental writing is denser than on the previous albums, with more counterpoint between cello, accordion and string ensemble; Steve Nye's production is warmer, less compressed.

The original vintage Editions EG UK pressing on EGED 50, with Emily Young's painted cover. Signs Of Life is widely considered the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's strongest late-period studio album before Jeffes' death in 1997; the live record When In Rome… (1988) would follow and the final studio album Union Cafe (1993) would arrive after a six-year gap.