Album Club: 14.12.2011: The Boo Radleys - Giant Steps. 1993
Creation Records
Spotify Link: http://open.spotify.com/album/6347aGYak5Dsi0hwPMMpmj
Wikipedia Links
Album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_S...Radleys_album)
Band:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boo_Radleys
Most of what follows is lifted shamelessly from my review of this album on Neil's Adventures in Hi-Fi Audio website:
Many people remember The Boo Radleys for the hit single ‘Wake Up Boo!’ in the summer of 1995, but this was not really at all representative of the band’s sound up to then. They’d been very strongly influenced by bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jnr. but by the time of 'Wake Up Boo!' they had unwillingly been dragged into the so-called Britpop fraternity which diverted attention away from the complex arrangements, experimental techniques and sophisticated songwriting that the band were routinely displaying.
‘Giant Steps’ preceded ‘Wake Up Boo!’ by two years and is characterised by it’s uncompromisingly big sound.
Apart from the above influences, there is dub-style bass, obvious tinges of The Beach Boys in some of the harmonies, Hendrix, in some of the guitar playing and the pop combined with dextrous experimentalism of The Beatles throughout the whole. Seventeen tracks spread over more than an hour of uplifting and sometimes challenging music – glorious!
Before now, I've described 'Giant Steps' as "a 'Forever Changes' for the nineties" & I don't think that's too far off the mark really, and this album is now a bit of a hidden classic that deserves to be more widely appreciated. It can be gentle, but also frightening in its intensity. A hugely diverse range of influences shaped it into what it is, so there should be something there for almost everyone!