release date: Sep. 1987
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,38]
producer: John Williams, The Housemartins
label: Go! Discs - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death" - 3. "The Light Is Always Green" (4 / 5) - 4. "The World's on Fire" - 7. "Me and the Farmer" - 8. "Five Get Over Excited" - 10. "Bow Down"
2nd and final studio album by The Housemartins was perhaps released in attempt to follow the success of the debut. The band remains the same, the producer and label are likewise unchanged, but the sound is slightly altered towards a more sophisti-pop and / or mainstream pop sound with less focus on the guitar-driven jangle pop, which characterised the debut. This fact saddened me much more then, than it does in retrospect. Shortly after their great debut, the band became associated with its a cappella hit single "Caravan of Love" (original version by the American trio, Isley Jasper Isley issued in '85 as a disco-funk track). I liked it, but really found it too slick, but I do think it brought the band much more fame as a more traditional pop / rock band than the members had hoped / wished for. Anyway, the album title and the title track reverberated with negative response in the national English Press, as it's a rather blunt attack on the Royal family, which, I think, was totally overlooked elsewhere. Back then, I would not have handed the album more than max. 2,5 / 5, being quite disappointing. Nowadays, I find it much better. It may not be the most evident successor to the band's '86 album, but knowing Paul Heaton, and David Hemingway's following band The Beautiful South and its style, this very album only anticipates that as a perfect stepping stone.
The band split up in 1988, making this the final studio album. Lead singer Paul Heaton and drummer and backing vocalist David Hemingway went on to form the highly successful and much more enduring band, The Beautiful South still in '88, and bassist Norman Cook underwent one of the most spectacular transformations ever seen in modern music history. First, he formed the successful alt. dance band, Beats International, and in the mid '90s he became one of the brightest shining stars of the new electronic style of big beat as producer, engineer, programmer, and sample artist known as Fatboy Slim.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
