This is a great time-and-a-place record for me, all I need to hear is the first few bars of ‘Come Home’ and I’m instantly transported to 1990, a time of floppy fringes, overly baggy Joe Bloggs jeans and cheap drinks in questionable bars!
This album, along with ‘Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches’ by the Happy Mondays and ‘Some Friendly’ by The Charlatans was the soundtrack to a year where I drank too much Diamond White cider and longed to go to The Hacienda.
This is another National Album Day release that I preordered via 81 Renshaw Street. The record is a combination of the 1990 and 1991 releases meaning it has ‘Lose Control’ and ‘Sit Down’ on it as well as the Flood remix of ‘Come Home’ and the original which is nice.
It also includes ‘Government Walls’ which always struck me as sounding like the theme from a lost TV show about shady goings on in the British establishment. All long panning shots of the Houses of Parliament and close-ups of men in long Macs looking shady. Just me? Ah well…
‘How Was It For You’ is one of my all-time fave tracks, fondly remembered through a haze of Steamboats (Southern Comfort, lime and lemonade) and some new-fangled Mexican beer that had just come out that you drank with a slice of lime in the neck of the bottle - there is no way that is going to catch on!
I’d forgotten about some of the madness contained on this record, tracks like ‘God Only Knows’, the epically titled ‘You Can’t Tell How Much Suffering (On A Face That’s Always Smiling)’ and the title track are wonderfully kooky.
The flip side to those tracks are ‘Walking The Ghost’ and ‘Top Of The World’ two quiet songs I used to play on my headless bass (yeah, I have a headless bass, it was bought in the early '90s and was probably the coolest thing I had seen in my 17 years on Earth!!!)
If you fancy giving it a crack, this National Album Day edition is available all over the place for a pretty steep £40 but for that, you get the best of the 90 and 91 releases on gold vinyl - well, it is supposed to be gold, it is another record that ended up looking like baby food to be honest.
Tracks To Try: Any of them.
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