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Me and my
Aortic Valve!

Jason Maloney reviews

JASON'S   ALBUM   ARCHIVE

V o l u m e # 0 1

Week Commencing: 25th January 1993

Online Date: 25th January 2005

Over the coming months, the Album Archive will take a look back at a corresponding week from the past and the new albums that were released during those 7 days. The only requirement for inclusion is that the record came out in the UK on the week in question or else it was the week which a previously uncharted album first sold enough to subsequently make the Top 75.

Today, virtually all new releases appear in stores on the Monday. Exceptions sometimes occur with major acts from the US, as worries over piracy force either an early release or a simultaneous British/American launch. Traditionally, the Americans always get their new product on a Tuesday.

January by default is the quietest month of the year for new albums in the UK, although December arguably offers precious little in the way of new studio recordings; just the last batch of Greatest Hits collections for the bloated Christmas market. Early 1993 wasn't any busier than usual, but the week beginning January 25th saw the arrival of significant albums by two very contrasting artists.


Cover
Paul McCartney:
Off the Ground

Paul McCartney: Off the Ground (Parlaphone)

Paul McCartney's last album proper had been almost four years previously; June 1989's Flowers In The Dirt silenced his critics at the time and also hit the #1 spot. Off The Ground could have reasonably expected to take advantage of the quiet New Year lull, but unfortunately the record was something of a turkey.

The lightweight #18 hit Hope Of Deliverance was amiable enough, but not even some leftover Costello collaborations and a Let 'Em In rehash entitled C'mon People could save an album undermined by lazy arrangements and horribly trite lyrics that alternated between the simplistic and the bizarre.

Although it would go on to debut at #5, just two places lower than Flowers In The Dirt had originally entered, Off The Ground dropped like a stone and disappeared from the Top 75 completely within a month.


Cover
The The: Dusk

The The: Dusk (Epic)

Matt Johnson and company were also returning after a 4-year hiatus. Successive '80s albums Soul Mining (October 1983), Top 20 breakthough Infected (November 1986) and Mind Bomb (May 1989) had seen The The's stock continue to rise, to the point where the latter achieved a #4 debut upon release.

Johnson was now back on more personal territory after the sloganeering of Mind Bomb with its sense of almost unbearable foreboding and an Armageddon fixation, Jools Holland memorably showed up on piano as he had done on Soul Mining a decade earlier, and Dusk was roundly hailed as a return to form.

It secured a career-best #2 entry in early February 1993, but a total of just 4 weeks on the UK Top 75 fell a long way short of the chart runs of The The's previous albums.

Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.

Check the Album Archive database at: The Album Archive.com

The following is a list of Jason's Album Archives online for week ending:

And in chronological order:

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on:

  • Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
  • Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
  • Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
  • Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
  • Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP