‘The Fine Art Of Surfacing’: The Boomtown Rats’ Powerful Third Album

It’s fair to say expectations were high for The Boomtown Rats’ third album The Fine Art Of Surfacing. Having first broken through with the U.K. Top 5 hit “Looking After No.1” in the summer of 1977, the Irish sextet’s popularity built steadily and their acclaimed fifth single “Rat Trap” became the first 45 by a punk or new wave act to top the U.K. chart in the fall of 1978.

However, while “Rat Trap”s parent album A Tonic for the Troops also went platinum in the U.K., its immediate follow-up The Fine Art Of Surfacing raised the band’s Stateside profile after a tragic real life event inspired frontman Bob Geldof to write its signature hit “I Don’t Like Mondays.” On a promo tour in the U.S., Geldof was at a radio station in Georgia when he heard that a 16-year-old student had shot two people dead and injured numerous others during an incident at a school in California. As the horrific story unfolded, Geldof heard the teenager explain that her primary motive had seemingly been an intense dislike of Mondays.

“I was doing a radio interview with [keyboardist] Johnnie Fingers and there was a telex machine beside me,” Geldof told Smash Hits magazine in October 1979. “I read [the story] as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in is a bit strange.”

In the same Smash Hits interview, Geldof stressed the song “wasn’t an attempt to exploit tragedy,” yet the emotive, piano-framed “I Don’t Like Mondays” struck a chord with the wider public. It became the Rats’ only US Top 75 hit, and the song topped the U.K. chart, becoming the first of three major hits taken from The Fine Art Of Surfacing.

Released in October 1979, the album itself was produced with power and clarity by Robert “Mutt” Lange (later to helm classic titles by AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Shania Twain) and it captured some of the Rats’ most ambitious and finely-crafted songs. “Diamond Smiles” and the robust “Someone’s Looking At You” both followed “I Don’t Like Mondays” into the U.K. Top 20, though, in retrospect, most of its tracks could easily have succeeded as spin-off singles.

Lyrically, Geldof was at the peak of his powers. His caustic wordplay was especially vivid on the religion-related “Nice N Neat” and the widescreen, Springsteen-esque drama of “When The Night Comes,” but his approach was always innovative and thought-provoking. Indeed, his words on the paranoid “Someone’s Looking At You” and “Having My Picture Taken” (the latter imagining the future world of social media) sound prescient today.

As a record stacked with such an array of notable tracks, The Fine Art Of Surfacing was always in with a good chance on the charts, but ultimately it exceeded expectations. Its U.K. Top 10 placing was anticipated, but it also sold strongly in the U.S. and Canada. The album proved to be the band’s commercial zenith, but even if it’s judged purely on artistic merit, The Fine Art Of Surfacing remains an extremely high watermark in the Boomtown Rats’ wider career.

Listen to The Fine Art of Surfacing by The Boomtown Rats now.