You raise me up when I'm on the floor

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

06/03/88 : Children - The Mission


Our second (and, in all probability. last) visit with The Mission and I don't mind a small serving of gothitude, so I'm happy to check this out but fear a whole album may be just too much.

Yeah, coming in at 57:48, this is definitely not such a small serving of gothitude - and there are some lengthy tracks on there, with five of them being over five minutes long. So was it too much? I can see one track would be more than enough for some, but I got to the end without too much of a struggle - yes, it's all goth-rock but there was more variety there than I was expecting. It's also very well produced - it's got a lovely clear sound to it with some beautiful strings in places, which I wasn't really expecting. And having complained about the length of the tracks, I have to say that my favourite was the 8:03 of Tower Of Strength - it's a powerhouse of a track which just builds and builds. So I quite enjoyed this album - but I can see it's not for everyone.

We're at a surprisingly high #2 in the charts this week on the start of a nine week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five was Terence Trent D'Arby, Luther Vandross, OMD (a new entry) and Rick Astley with the next highest new entry being Robert Plant (#10). 

Wikipedia isn't exactly drowning in facts - it's their second album and there were supposed to be three singles released from the album, but (plot twist!) they actually only released two. And that's your lot! Looking at the band's entry, somewhat surprisingly (Wayne Hussey seems like quite an interesting character) they're still going but they have had a few hiatuses over the years. A couple of interesting names pop up on this album - Julianne Regan (All About Eve) provides backing vocals on two tracks and it was produced by John Paul Jones, who definitely knows his way round a string section, having also done them for this. Critically, the reviews were mixed, with NME giving it 3/10 but Smash Hits giving it 8/10 - both of which probably annoyed Mr Hussey. And commercially, it made the top thirty in a few European countries but only #126 in the US.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent copy for £3 (with a surprising number of cassette versions available) but you can pick up a signed LP version for a mere hundred quid - what a bargain! I certainly won't be spending any money on it and I can't see I'll even ever revisit it, but it was actually quite an enjoyable visit with a much more impressive sound than I was expecting.

13/03/88 - Not my sort of thing, but bearable

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