This is the 25th Anniversary reissue which features “remastered audio lacquers cut by Kevin Gray” and was “pressed at Pallas”. I don’t know Mr Gray or where Pallas is (I’ll do some digging later) but what I can tell you is that this record sounds absolutely brilliant.
Similarly to ‘Love Story’ by Lloyd Cole I played the other day, this is another album that came out during the heady days of BritPop that showed not everything released at that time had to sound like upbeat cheeky cockney Blur, art school talk-sing Pulp or ‘Quoasis’.
It is hard for me to pin this album down as it bounces around from track to track, probably because it was conceived while the band were touring and they were exhausted at the time by all accounts.
It has a harder edge than ‘Out Of Time’, ‘Automatic For The People’ or ‘Monster’ that preceded it which really appealed to me in 1996 and still does today to be fair.
If you think the impressive work done by the Mr. Gray and the bods at Pallas might hang a bauble on your tree then this Anniversary Edition is available at all good stockists (and some dodgy ones) and will set you back about £30 delivered.
Tracks To Try: ‘How The West Was Won…’, ‘Undertow’, ‘Bittersweet Me’, ‘Binky The Doormat’, ‘Zither’, ‘Electrolite’.