There's a shadow on his photograph on Tinian '45

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

07/08/88 : Raintown - Deacon Blue


This is another one I owned (bringing us up to five for the year) and I was very much not alone in owning it because it felt like everyone at uni owned a copy. It's also one I revisit from time to time - so I'm looking forward to showing it some love here.

Yeah, I still really like this. It starts interestingly with "Born In A Storm" which segues nicely into "Raintown" and just continues stylishly throughout. Selected highlights for me are "He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now" (which I learned is about Harold Agnew - this is an interesting article), "Loaded", "Chocolate Girl", "Love's Great Fears" and "Riches" but it's all really well crafted with decent tunes and lyrics throughout. 

However, the absolute highlight has to be "Dignity" which is a lovely song about wanting better things, crystallised into a single target which will somehow make everything better and how having that to aim for provides purpose - "they'll ask me how I got her, I'll say 'I saved my money'" still gives me the shivers. Considering I first listened to this album 37 years when I had absolutely no clue where my life would take me, I think it's still remarkably relatable and really hasn't dated - it was an absolute pleasure to revisit.

We're all the way down at #14 in the charts this week on their fifth week of a decent 42 week run with this being the third of eight runs between '87 and '90 giving it 77 weeks in total. Surprisingly this was as high as it ever made it but the follow-up, When The World Knows Your Name benefited from its hard work by debuting at #1. The top five this week were Now! 12, Kylie, Hits 8, Tracy Chapman and Michael Jackson with the highest new entry being The Psychedelic Furs (#62).

Wikipedia tells us its their debut album and apparently has "overtones of a concept album", which completely confuses me because it then tells us the themes involved are urban life, weather, unemployment, dreams and love, which is quite the broad concept. I also learned that "Love's Great Fears" is one of Ricky's favourites and features Chris Rea - we also have BJ Cole on "Chocolate Girl", so somebody somewhere must have pulled in some favours for this debut album. Critically, the reviews were very good with Spin calling it "surprisingly timeless, sophisticated, and genuinely emotional pop music" but commercially there's no word on anywhere other than here - I imagine it did venture into Europe but probably just took its time (like it did here).

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD for a couple of quid but, for no apparent reason, there's a cassette version available for £200 - apparently it's quite rare, but that still seems like a whole load of cash. I was very happy to revisit this for free though - it's a great album and well worth checking it if you're not familiar with it. 

31/07/88 - Bland, bland, bland
14/08/88 - Truly horrible

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