There's smell of fresh cut grass and it's filling up my senses

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

12/06/88 : People - The Hothouse Flowers


Our second visit with them lads from Oirland and this is one I owned (taking us to seven for the year) - it's not my usual sort of thing, so I guess I bought it because of "Don't Go". I've certainly not listened to it in many a long year, so it will be interesting to see my reaction now.

Yeah - it's still not my usual sort of thing, but I liked it. I remembered a surprising number of tracks with "I'm Sorry" and "Love Don't Work This Way" still standing out as favourites (along with "Don't Go" obviously). If you think about it, it comes across as somewhat twee and rambling Celtic folk-rock - so don't think about it and just go with the enjoyable flow. I was also surprised to see their name mentioned at work yesterday because they're still going - so fair play to the lads.

We're at a surprisingly high #2 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a nineteen week run with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five are Nite Flite, Fleetwood Mac, Belinda Carlisle and Motown Dance Party and the next highest new entry is Scritti Politti (#8) - which I don't think I've ever listened to and probably should.

Wikipedia has remarkable little on the album - it's their debut, was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley and that's your lot. Looking at the band's entry to pad things out doesn't overly help - they've spent a lot of time over the years pursuing solo careers as well as collaborating with others, including Def Leppard, Indigo Girls, Michelle Shocked and Tim Finn. Critically, the album was liked well enough but The Washington Post amusingly said "the driving, often joyous music of [some] songs promises much, but such lyrics warn that Hothouse Flowers could bloom into a major annoyance". Commercially, it did best here but was top twenty in quite a few countries including #6 in New Zealand and #11 in Norway and Sweden - it also got to #88 in the US. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a quid but there's a version with an alternative cover (with no explanation involved) for £35 if you're determined to splash out - the cover's not any better though, so maybe don't bother? This was a nice revisit though after all those years - I'm not entirely sure why I like it, but like it I do.

05/06/88 - Both perfectly fine and a crushing disappointment
19/06/88 - A fairly successful album

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