Up to their knees in money in the dirt of the churchyard steps

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

22/04/90 : Days Of Open Hand : Suzanne Vega

Well, this is a pleasant (and fortuitous) surprise!  I love a bit of Suzanne but for some reason I've never heard this album (or owned it - 7/37) so I'm very much looking forward to catching up with it.

Yeah - no idea why I never caught up with this and it's pretty similar to Solitude Standing, her previous album which I own and really like.  However, I would say this is all a bit more shimmery-synthy and my main gripe is that her voice is very low in the mix throughout the album - just a little bit more of her really wouldn't have hurt.  And maybe that's why it didn't entirely grab me on first listen - it feels "fine" but no more than that.

This week we're at #7 with a new entry on the start of a seven week run - unsurprisingly this was as high as it got.  The top five this week were The Carpenters (about to start a five week run at the top), Fleetwood Mac, Alannah Myles (a new entry), Public Enemy (another new entry with a slightly different album to Suzanne which we've previously met) and Phil Collins and the next highest entry is Iron Maiden at #11 (which I'm ABSOLUTELY fine not listening to).

Wikipedia doesn't have loads on the album but it does tell me that, as well as using more synths, it features the ney and the dumbek - which I have to admit passed me by.  It also tells me that the string arrangements on "Fifty-Fifty Chance" were done by Philip Glass, which seems like an odd sort of thing for him to bother doing.  The critics were pretty nice about it, with AllMusic declaring it to be "subtle" which seems a good word for it - may too subtle for most because it didn't really do all that much commercially with it only getting to #50 in the US.  I'm quite surprised it didn't get a bit of a bounce with the DNA remix of "Tom's Diner" coming out in July of this year - there's a song with a fascinating Wikipedia entry if you've not read it (did you know that 16 November 1981 is "Tom's Diner Day"?).

"Customers also listened to" Wendy & Lisa, Wang Chung, 10,000 Maniacs and Morris Day - a fascinating collection of names from around the time, most of whom seem to have no connection to Suzanne Vega at all (but I like to imagine that her and Natalie Merchant get on well).  I didn't mind this album - but in the context of the rest of her catalogue, "didn't mind" isn't really going to warrant a revisit, I'm afraid.

15/04/90 - Very samey
29/04/90 - A nice memory jogger

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