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The Time: Ice Cream Castles (Warner Bros.)

Richard C. Walls, Creem, December 1984

ON THEIR third (and final) album, the Time continues to sound like Prince's opening act, the band's lyrical thrust dealing with things that its mentor and fellow Minneapolisian does better — sexual explicitness, a pre-political social consciousness, and heightened awareness of functioning in a pre-apocalypse milieu. These last two items come together most obviously in the album's title cut. Ostensibly about black/white love, its anti-boundaries stance seems as much resignation as rebellion — we're all "ice cream castles in the summer time" after all, about to melt, and living in the nuclear shadow can make outmoded societal restraints seem especially irrelevant. The song chugs along with psychedelic funk aplomb, lead singer Morris Day even throwing in a little James Brown impression lest we think the ice cream truck bells that decorate the arrangement are a tad wimpy. Toward the song's end we're offered the unsatisfying chant: "Let's do something! Let's do something soon!"

Total word count of piece: 543

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