Adding keyboard player Andrew Clark to make
Be Bop Deluxe a quartet,
Bill Nelson finally found a balance between his virtuosic guitar playing and the demands of pop songwriting. The arrangements were still busy, but the humor of
Nelson's music was on display as never before, and the songs frequently were catchy. For the first time, it began to seem that the group had a future beyond serving as a foundation for
Nelson's splashy guitar work, as
Be Bop Deluxe charted in the U.S. and the U.K. and even scored a Top 25 British hit with "Ships in the Night." ~ William Ruhlmann