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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 1 1 Week Commencing: 17th April 1990 Online Date: 21st April 2005
Days Of Open Hand
For her third album Vega moved even further away from the minimalistic, woman-with-acoustic guitar style of 1985’s self-titled debut, instead building on the full-band sound introduced on 1987’s hugely successful Solitude Standing.
Most of the songs were rhythmically-based, hinting at the direction she would take on her subsequent 90s albums.
Despite entering at #7, Days Of Open Hand suffered commercially from a lack of any hit single (the sprightly Bangles-esque pop of Book Of Dreams stiffed, as did the woozy Tired Of Sleeping and Men In A War) and spent just 7 weeks on the UK Top 75.
Alannah Myles
From nowhere, the Canadian rock chick’s Black Velvet single shot to #1 in the US and #2 in the UK. Sultry soft rock tinged with a bluesy edge, it was by far the best track on Myles’ swiftly-released debut long-player.
The popularity of Black Velvet helped the album debut at #3 but much of the rest of the record was merely serviceable, cliched AOR and no more hits were forthcoming – except in her homeland, which took no fewer than four of the album’s tracks into its Top 20.
(DVDfever Dom adds: “I hated Black Velvet with a passion, particularly since it was played to death on the radio, but I loved the criminally-ignored follow-up, Love Is.)
Fear of a Black Planet
By 1990, Chuck D and his posse were riding high on the waves created by 1988’s breakthrough album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us back and 1989’s Fight The Power single, their mix of juggernaut rhythms, insistent samples and highly articulate lyrics taking rap music onto new levels.
Fear Of A Black Planet – as its title suggested – took on issues of race and social upheaval with typical head-on bravado. Musically, the album was awesome; the likes of Welcome To The Terrordome, Brothers Gonna Work It Out and the title track in particular bordered on the apocalyptic.
By debuting at a career-best #4 it also emulated the Top 10 success of It Takes A Nation Of Millions…, but perhaps inevitably after such a defining statement Public Enemy never scaled the same heights again.
Bad Seeds: The Good Son
Also released on this week in 1990 was the fifth album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to dent the UK chart. The #47 peak for The Good Son was their best showing since 1984’s From Her To Eternity reached #40, and the record contained one of Cave’s most acclaimed songs, The Ship Song.
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.