2003 remastered reissue of the Glaswegian adult alternative act's 1985 debut album. Includes 4 bonus tracks 'The King Is Poor', 'The Difference Is', 'Lines Running North' & 'Brown Eyed Girl'. Superfecta.
2003 remastered reissue of the Glaswegian adult alternative act's 1985 debut album. Includes 4 bonus tracks 'The King Is Poor', 'The Difference Is', 'Lines Running North' & 'Brown Eyed Girl'. Superfecta.
CD Reviews
1985 like it was yesterday
John Stephenson | Detroit, MI USA | 12/05/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Truly, truly: one of the greatest albums of that era. I was the only person that I knew of who bought and listened to it, and the music literally was so deeply impressed upon my mind that I walked around for weeks while these songs played autonomously in my head. At the time, this music reminded me of "Gregory's Girl", a film by Scottish director Bill Forsyth. Justin Currie, who was all of but 16-18 years old when he wrote the lyrics, was, in his early years, a clever wordsmith but went on to write some of the most endearing "love-gained" and "love-lost" songs in my conspectus of the past 50 years of pop music. His lines have true literary merit... And you can dance to them!"
FINALLY someone else gets it!!
Ed Goodman | 08/04/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have been waiting (nearly) 20 years for someone to figure out that this is one of the most under-rated brilliant albums ever released. While Del Amitri went on to great fame during their A&M career - nothing they ever did came close to matching the sheer pop brilliance of their self-titled debut album. Sadly fans of the band tend to distance themselves from this album because it's not nearly as AOR friendly as their subsequent hits - but what's a crying shame is that fans of Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe and Aztec Camera and The Smiths and The Church and The Sound and The Railway Children and Orange Juice haven't embraced this album. And god bless Superfecta for including the equally as brilliant b-sides (okay, let's be honest, it's a ... cover of "Brown Eyed Girl" but at least it's tongue-in-cheek). Do yourself a favor if you're a fan of early '80s pop music (before the words "new wave" and "alternative" came around and LONG before the words "pop music" became curse words) - and buy this album!!"
I have to agree
Trisha Potter | CT south shore | 06/17/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"if true art is something that communicates to its audience, then this is true art. a permanent top 10 lister, a desert island pick ... if you only remember one thing from your surfing session tonight, remember this: all the best musicians come from scotland."
Fantastic debut, now with delicious BONUS TRACKS
Ed Goodman | santa barbara, CA | 06/03/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The sound quality of this remaster is amazing. And the CD has ALL of the b-sides from the singles from this album. Can't write any more as i'm going to go listen to it again! Here's the track list:1. Heard Through A Wall
2. Hammering Heart
3. Former Owner
4. Sticks And Stones Girl
5. Deceive Yourself (In Ignorant Heaven)
6. I Was Here
7. Crows In The Wheatfield
8. Keepers
9. Ceasefire
10. Breaking Bread
11. This King Is Poor
12. Difference Is, The
13. Lines Running North14. Brown Eyed Girl"
Justin Currie, in the liner notes, isn't kidding
M. Palmer | North Carolina | 09/10/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"about no choruses and too many words in these songs, but he's also right about the charm of this first album. This stuff isn't very sing-along-able (without a lot of listening and practice), despite the devotion to melody and harmonizing. Several of the songs are rapid-fire tongue-twisting soliloquies or jaded poetry rants molded by the beat and jangly guitars and a sort of punk attitude if not sound. Yet the music is lovely, poignant, affecting. Currie's younger voice is higher, more earnestly intense, but even here a talent to be appreciated. The long-winded lyrics are angry, agonized & naive sometimes but not stupid or (entirely) clueless. (I have no doubt "Crows in the Wheatfield" was inspired by Van Gogh's painting Wheatfield with Crows.) Already there are the plays on words and twists of meaning we've come to know and love in the Dels' songs.
I love the breathless adolescent rush of "Hammering Heart," "Sticks and Stones Girl" and "I Was Here"; the hopeless, sweet sadness of "Former Owner"; the biting, world-kicking, self-dissatisfied "Crows in the Wheatfield"; the hurt frustration of "Lines Running North"; and the beautiful but terrible "Keepers." Terrible in the sense of its subject, which isn't love but controlling, abusive obsession: "you may be bleeding though you're not dying, but you are dying to go/stop teasing me/I'm not seeing you leaving me."
All in all, this is a separate curiosity from the later Del CDs, is more than "mere" entertainment, but it has grown on me quite a bit since I first played it, and I go `round humming bits of this, too. The final bonus track of this reissue is a cover of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl." It sort of grates on the ear and they're horsing around with it-can't quite tell whether they're sending it up or they like it (or both), but it leaves you smiling.
Track Listings (14) - Disc #1