Overlooked In The Rush

I've just been doing a bit of work on the pc and happened to have ITunes Shuffle on in the background. A track called 'Flaming Red' came on from Echo & the Bunnymen's Reverberation album - this is the one without McCulloch. What a great song. I then flicked onto ITunes and noticed that I'd rated nearly every track on the album. In fact, according to my informal rating system, it beat 'Ocean Rain', 'Heaven Up Here' and 'Crocodiles', though maybe not 'Porcupine' (one for another blog I think). Hey, but this is the one that Mac hates and nobody mentions. More fool the Bunnymen. Will probably rates this but doesn't like to admit it. Look at it this way. It's produced by Geoff Emerick. It's got sitars. It's got tape loops. All the songs are crackers. Read the Amazon reviews - there are two or three lengthy appraisals which give a very fair summary of why this is such a great album. I see the Bunnymen are out ...

I've been doing some CD buying recently and happened to be looking at Talk Talk's first album - this led me to the usual critical appraisals of their other records and the almost deafening praise for 'Spirit of Eden'. Now regularly cited as 'one of the greatest albums ever made', it stood at number 87 in Mojo's all time list above 'Physical Graffiti', 'Raw Power' and 'Dusty in Memphis' to name a few. That sounds like some album doesn't it? And yet, it's a strangely dispiriting album. Mark Hollis mumbles, the band (what's left of them) try hard to shape the songs but in the main, lose the fight. Dissonance mixes with Satie and primitive drum patterns to make an enigmatic soup, which the critics fall for every time. The first track lasts for over 23 minutes. Sound familiar? Track Three 'I Believe In You' is actually quite affecting and manages to avoid some of the muso failings of the other tracks - but only just....