Ambition and love wearing boxing gloves

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

05/06/88 : Love - Aztec Camera


Completely coincidentally, I was just thinking the other day about how unlikely it was that we'll ever get to meet either of the first two Aztec Camera albums, which I really like - and up pops their third album, which I have, of course, never listened to. So let's give it a go, shall we?

Hmmm - it's an "interesting" one. None of it is dreadful, but for the most part it just doesn't have the appeal of the previous albums. High Land Hard Rain is nicely jaunty indie-pop and Knife is more downbeat indie-folk whereas this is, well, neither - all the interesting bits (for me) have just been smoothed over with generic pop/R&B noises. Having said that, I obviously like "Somewhere In My Heart" (because everyone does) and I'd also forgotten how good "How Men Are" was, but I feel it could have had a more interesting downbeat arrangement. I'm also going to mention "One And One" because it's a weirdly out of place electro-pop number, so it is at least of some interest - but unfortunately most of the album is just a bit bland.

We're at #10 in the charts this week on their eighth week of a surprisingly successful thirty week run, with this being as high as it got. This was actually its third run, brought about by the success of "Somewhere In My Heart" - it managed 43 weeks in total between '87 and '89. The top five this week were Nite Flite, Fleetwood Mac, Wet Wet Wet, Motown Dance Party and Belinda Carlisle with the highest new entry being Elkie Brooks (#59).

Wikipedia tells us that although it's credited to Aztec Camera, the band from the previous albums had been ditched and it was really Roddy Frame and session musicians. The general view is that the change in sound was to try and break the US market - I'm not sure it wasn't just Roddy trying something new, but we'll never know. Whatever the thinking, it didn't impress some of the critics ("a backward step into pop cliché, an attempt to make a record which would work on American radio") but, somewhat bizarrely, the equally hard to impress NME and Robert Christgau both loved it. And it didn't exactly work commercially either, doing nothing away from these shores, which seems strange because I feel "Somewhere In My Heart" would have gone down well in Europe.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for £1.50 but if you want the deluxe remastered double CD version, it's going to set you back forty quid - sorry, but there are far better things to spend your money on. This managed to be both perfectly fine and a crushing disappointment - I actually have a sneaking suspicion I did listen to it at the time and have just blocked it from my mind. The only positive outcome is that it makes me want to revisit their previous albums, which are far more worthy recipients of your attention.

29/05/88 - Neither particularly good nor bad
12/06/88 - One I like, even if I don't know why

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I have never believed that we should just stick to football

Image
The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... Dear England : The Olivier Theatre  Well, this is different from the usual review in several ways - I wasn't on my own (because I was accompanied by the lovely Mrs Reed) and I was in the posh seats (because I was accompanied by the lovely Mrs Reed). Somewhat surprisingly, given the high football content, this was her choice - it originally ran a couple of years ago to great reviews, but has come back updated to take into account the last European Championships.  It was also a trip to a new theatre - I'd previously been to the Lyttleton Theatre at the National, but this was my first trip to the main theatre there. And very impressive it was too as we walked down to our very well positioned, comfortable and spacious seats (Mrs Reed does need her leg room).  The stage looked impressive too - but it gave very little clue as to what we were going to get.  As the lights went down, the top ring rose to display the Old...
Read more

Left you in Catford 'Spoons and you were all alone

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #47 :  Dead Channel Sky - c lipping. Clipping frontman Daveed Diggs is best known for being in the original cast of Hamilton, and for all that this album is filled with noisy industrial rap, you can easily imagine it being successfully adapted for the Broadway stage. Dead Channel Sky is set in a cyberpunk dystopia not dissimilar to the scorched-sun “real world” of the Matrix, humming with janky tech and populated with fascists and freaky hedonists. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes render it in acid squiggles and revving breakbeats, while Diggs delivers his mutoid poetry like a prophet jacked up on some amphetamine he’s synthesised in a backstreet lab.  Somewhat surprisingly, this is our second visit with the pretentiously named clipping. - last time I described it as "unremittingly grim", so obviously I'm super glad to be back with them. Well, that was "interesting". The first track ...
Read more

I got caught compiling my own news

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #35 :  SABLE, fABLE - Bon Iver If, as Justin Vernon recently suggested, this is the last ever Bon Iver album, it’s a beautiful redemption arc: a loving send-up of his anxious, myopic sad-sack self blossoms into a radiant appreciation of possibility, sensuality, risk. Everything Is Peaceful Love has one of the year’s best refrains: “Damn if I’m not climbing up a tree right now!”, giddy with thrill and absolutely no idea of what to do when you get up there other than enjoy the view. And while there are gorgeously passionate songs here, it’s the ones about gracefully letting go of an unviable love that really underscore the admirable humility in Vernon’s bowing out. I always feel like I should enjoy Bon Iver albums more than I do - they feel like they have the ingredients I need but come across a bit detached and miserablist for me to actually want to revisit them - but The Guardian suggests there may be hope for this...
Read more