Time is loneliness when you're not around

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

11/05/86 : Sands Of Time - The S.O.S. Band

Well, I wasn't expecting to see this lot! I think I know a couple of their singles but I've certainly never heard a whole album of theirs - I think it's safe to say expectations aren't high.

Well, this is a peculiar one - it's all very smooth R&B/soul and not at all my sort of thing, but I have to admit it's all very well done. It's like a slightly more relaxed version of Five Star and infinitely better produced - it's got a very clean sound to it. I've no idea what I'm supposed to do with it and will not be making any attempt to search it out again, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.

This week we're at #15 in the charts with a new entry on the start of a surprisingly long eight week run, with this being as high as it got. The top five this week were Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, Billy Ocean (a new entry), Whitney Houston, Dire Straits and Earth, Wind & Fire and the next highest new entry was a live album from The Style Council (#8).

Wikipedia tells us this is their sixth album and it was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis - they did a much better job on this than they managed with The Human League. The critics were nice enough about and, somewhat surprisingly, it did best commercially over here with it only making #44 in the US and the top forty in other random countries - I've absolutely no idea why we took a shine to it.

"Customers also listened to" Ha Choon-Hwa, Change, Midnight Star and Noel Parlane - it takes a special album these days to come up with four artists I've never heard of. I'm not sure this album is special in any other ways, but it's well done for the sort of thing it is - I certainly couldn't say I hated it, but I'm not sure who would actively love it.

04/05/86 - Slightly underwhelming bleeps
18/05/86 - Something different from the norm