Let me put you in the picture, let me show you what I mean

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

11/12/94 : Second Coming - The Stone Roses

The second album of the year we own - 67% ownership ratio so far. I bought this despite the critical mauling it got and remember thinking it wasn't all that bad, but then only listened to it a couple more times and so I've not visited it in over thirty years. It will be interesting to see what I think of it.

Yeah, it's alright. Some of the tracks could have benefited from a bit more direction and a bit less running time, but nobody's perfect now, are they? There is some very fine guitar playing from Mr Squire on here which certainly show off his skills more than the first album gave him the opportunity to do so - a lot of this isn't far off the stuff he did with The Seahorses (and I'm pleased we should get to listen to Do It Yourself when we get to '97). 

I can see that people expecting "more of the same" after the first album might have been disappointed because there are less infectious grooves on here, although "Love Spreads" is a decent tune which isn't a million miles away. Fair to play to them though for trying something a bit different (except for "Foz" the secret hidden track which is dreadful) and I certainly prefer this as a dodgy follow-up album to Primal Scream's Give Out But Don't Give Up, which we're probably going to have to endure later in the year. It's also weird how the feel to the album cover is very similar to The Beautiful South, despite the composition being completely different.

We're at #4 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of a 23 week run with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were The Beautiful South, East 17 and best ofs from The Beatles and Bon Jovi and the next highest new entry is (quite obviously) a Louis Armstrong best-of (#13) - what says Xmas '94 more than a man who died 23 years earlier?

Wikipedia tells us this is their second (and final) album - I knew it was released quite some time after the first, but hadn't realised it was over five years and it had been over four years since they played live, so I guess I can understand the weight of expectation on it. The critical reception was actually better than I remembered it, with The Guardian and Select being very nice about it - I suspect the maulings maybe came after people had had time to think about it (see also, the Star Wars prequels). Commercially, it did way better here than elsewhere, but it did manage to trouble the top forty in quite a few places. Interestingly I compared it with their debut to see how that did globally and was amazed to find that initially that did better in some other places than it did here. It peaked at only #19 for its initial release - it was then re-released in '94 when it got to #9 and it was then re-re-released in '09 and got to #5, but it's only ever spent those two weeks in the top ten.

Back to the album we should be discussing, discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a quid but that's only going to get you a CD - if you want a vinyl copy then you're going to have to spend at least £50 for the reissued version and anything up to £150 for the original version. I think I'm fine with the CD version I have hidden somewhere in attic but I thought this was OK and I suspect some people absolutely loved it, although I can also understand how plenty found it a disappointment.

04/12/94 - One I should have previously heard
18/12/94 - A most peculiar experience