Something in the moonlight catches my eye

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

17/04/88 : Bridge Of Spies - T'Pau


Our second visit with T'Pau this year and this is another one I owned, taking us to eight for the year. I remember having it on cassette and playing it loads, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it.

It starts up with "Heart Of Soul" which is a well constructed song which manages to sound very 80s whilst also being slightly different from the usual fare. I actually think it's easily the best track on the album, with only "China In Your Hand" also standing out from the other tracks which are pretty standard US new-wave pop-rock. I can quite understand if people aren't into it but, quite possibly because of my familiarity with the material, I think it's well done pretty standard US new-wave pop-rock (and not at all what you'd expect from a band from Shrewsbury) so it was great to catch up with, particularly "Sex Talk", the title track and "Monkey House". I still don't understand why they end the album on a very brief reprise of "China In Your Hand" though!

We're at #10 in the charts this week on their 31st week of an impressive 59 week run, with it getting to #1 in its eighth week. The top five this week were Iron Maiden (a new entry), Now! 11, Bros, Fleetwood Mac and the OMD best-of with the next highest new entry being The Men They Couldn't Hang (#41) - now there's a group you don't hear mentioned much these days.

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album and only includes one item of interest - but it's quite an unexpected one. The album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, who is probably best known for doing a lot of the early stuff by Queen and The Cars - I'm intrigued as to what drew him to this but the internet offers no clues and tells us he died earlier this year, so I guess we'll never know. Critically, the reviews were pretty middling but it did well commercially globally, getting to the top ten in quite a few countries including #1 in Norway and a very decent #31 in the US. We really went mad for it here though with it selling 1.2 million copies here alone.

And because there are so many of them around, discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD or LP version for fifty pence, but if you're feeling flush then you can pick up the boxset including two CDs and a DVD for £70 - I think I'm probably fine. I very much enjoyed revisiting this though - it took me back enjoyably.

10/04/88 - A good album, but...
24/04/88 - Surprisingly enjoyable

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