There you go day and night up in the clouds flying so high

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

10/04/94 : Brother Sister - The Brand New Heavies


Only our fourth mention ever for The Brand New Heavies - and two of them have come in the "people also listened to" section for Jamiroquai albums, so I'm expecting this to be perfectly fine but not really my sort of thing. And I've just been informed that we owned this one, taking us to eleven for the year.

Ah - that good old acid jazz sound! I remembered "Dream On Dreamer" (but had forgotten how decent it was) and "Midnight At The Oasis" (which I always thought was a pretty silly song, but didn't know at the time it was a cover - obviously I now know it was originally done by Maria Maldaur in '73). And the rest of the album isn't a million miles away from that - yes, some of the tracks went on a bit too long, as did the album as a whole, but I actually found this way more enjoyable than Jamiroquai because of a) the female vocalist and b) the lack of didgeridoos. I imagine this graced quite a few dinner parties featuring some cool cats back in the day - but funnily enough I was never invited to such things.

We're at #4 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of an impressive 55 (FIFTY FIVE!!) week run, after which it was never seen again - with this being as high as it got in this week and its 21st week ("Midnight At The Oasis" was responsible for the resurgence). The rest of the top five were Pink Floyd, Deacon Blue, Ace Of Base and Mariah Carey with the next highest new entry being EYC (#14 - and I don't remember them at all). 

Interestingly (and possibly uniquely so far), Wikipedia merely tells us this is "AN album by The Brand New Heavies" - I think I've always been told the cardinality before (but it's always nice to use the word cardinality, isn't it?). Checking their entry, I find it's their third and the only other thing I can tell you about it is that it was their last with N'Dea Davenport on vocals. Well, until she rejoined them ten years later anyhoo and she's still there - and they're touring next year as well. Critically, the album was generally very well received although Music Week sniffed it "will probably have only a brief period of chart success" - 0/10 for predictions from them there. Commercially, it did best over here but did get to #20 in Australia and #95 in the US which is possibly better than they were expecting.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for a mere quid but the original vinyl is going to set you back slightly more - up to £90. I'm not sure I can quite go as far as to say this is a great album, but it grooves along nicely and has certainly got some decent tunes.

03/04/94 - I still can't forgive them for this
17/04/94 - Not a good album

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