Misplaced Ideals

Reviewing the album for Record Mirror, Mary Ann Ellis gave the album 3 out of 5 and wrote "Sad Cafe are going to need all the help they can get selling this record which is probably why they've employed shock tactics on the cover... guaranteed to stop record shop browsers in their racks. 'Misplaced Ideals' is just another recruit to that, growing army of average albums. Not bad, not good. Competent but unexciting eliciting neither orgasms nor groans. Just another variation (or is it?) on the same well worn (out) theme. There are some good (standard) rocky numbers which are spoilt by being overlong and afflicted with tedious sax and guitar solos. Self-indulgence rules (and ruins) here. Sad Cafe fall into a kind of no band'sland as far as audience appeal goes. They're too sophisticated for the heavy brigade and their style is still not distinctive enough to earn them much of a cult following. And their songs at the moment have little commercial appeal."^[3]

The original album cover featured a photograph of a man pulling off a rubber face mask, only to reveal another face underneath. The striking image was created for RCA by Storm Thorgerson.^[4] The photograph of a distorted rubber face being pulled apart proved controversial, and RCA decided to re-release the album for the European market with a different cover, a picture of a family of sunbathers walking on a beach. The North American release featured an illustration of a woman holding a cocktail, and in Japan, the album was released with a black cover showing only the eye of the face mask.^[1]