Liberating Vinyl Since 1995
Faith In The Brakes immediately blends the best of Ocean Colour Scene, Ordinary Boys and Brit Pop with earlier mod revival bands such as The Chords and Purple Hearts, with the energy non stop for the entire 3 minutes. Chord progression and vocals are perfect – for music to be successful in a youth movement it needs to have identity, and this has it in bucketloads.
The album has elements of all the best of early Roxy Music, but never quite captures the same brilliance. Manifesto starts well, the intro is appealing, but it quickly fails to live up to the promise. A fairly tame, middle-of-the-roader really. Not the phrase you would normally associate with 1970s Bryan Ferry. Listening through again I can’t emphasise enough how much Trash sounds like the Mod Revival records of this era.
The first thing to mention is this was written after Nicky Wire lost both of his parents just before the pandemic, and continuing into lockdown the album, or at least its lyrics, reflects sadness, insecurities and loneliness. The loneliness of being an orphan is real even well into middle age. Been there myself. But more than that it makes you reflect on and see the world altogether differently, probably due to the heightened sense of your own mortality.
Released in 1977, Front Page News definitely rates as early Wishbone, but even so this is what they call the Mk 2 lineup and there seems to be a consensus they were passed their best by then. I hadn’t realised they had been so prolific latterly either, with regular releases well into the 2010s.
Heaven Up Here was released on Korova in 1981 and was, by all measures, a success – a top 10 album in the UK, an entry in the US Billboard album charts, and it spawned two singles, A Promise and Over The Wall.
Just a shade under 15 minutes, Anatomy starts off with a single piano playing traditional jazz style over the thrumb of mingling voices in the audience. You can almost smell the cigarette smoke.
Imagine a Peter Greenaway movie, personified, going into Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse. The result would be the biorhythm and undulating classical melody of Michael Nyman.
All or Nothing! Records, 1988 A difficult to describe band and quite obscure it seems, Attacco Decente were around from 1984 to 1996, a long …
Close your eyes, imagine laying on a rug in a field, mid summer. You can smell the freshly cut grass, the flowers, and hear the insects buzzing around, the crickets and barking dogs. It’s the English Summer perfectly captured in sampled sound and droning organ. Summer’s Cauldron is a perfect introduction to the album. It sets the theme brilliantly and you know something special is about to happen.
Forget Come On Eileen and Too-Rye-Ay, forget dungarees and floppy hair. Dexys Midnight Runners underrated classic is a raw, lyrically brilliant, musically innovative masterpiece, and a debut album that deserves wider recognition and acclaim.
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