A long interview with Roses singer Ian Brown in the Guardian inspired me to pull this CD off the shelf and give it a spin for the first time in years, and brought home a sad truth that I once stubbornly resisted: Second Coming is one of the most disappointing albums ever released.
In 1989 the Stone Roses released an eponymous debut that became the musical blueprint for the early 1990s, the most fertile period in British rock music in thirty years. The Stone Roses was so staggeringly good that its imitators went on to fill stadiums the world over. But while those thousand flowers bloomed, the Roses squabbled with their record label and released nothing more than a handful of singles. Fans waited for them to return with a follow-up that would show the pretenders how it was done. Five years later - five years that saw glittering releases by Primal Scream, the Charlatans, Ride, James, Blur, Oasis, Spiritualized, Radiohead, Pulp, Suede and so many more - they came up with... this.
It starts well, oh yes. The first four minutes and thirty-seven seconds of 'Breaking into Heaven' suggest greatness, with their slow wordless build over jungle noises and squalling distant guitar licks; hints of the debut's epic closer 'I am the Resurrection'.
And then: it turns into bad boogie done by a seventies West Coast bar band. In one edit, one brief segue, one second, the Stone Roses throw it all away. The song, the album, and the band never recover.
Sure, there are moments. Specifically, 'Begging You', an insistent, fresh, dance-floor-friendly track that should have been the starting point for the album; an hour of music built on this would have mattered. But here it's an island in a sea of waste - and it doesn't turn up until track seven, when the damage is well and truly done.
The only other track that bears considering is 'Your Star Will Shine', which would have made acceptable filler on a better album. The first single, on the other hand, sounds impossibly dreary from this distance - 'Love Spreads' should have been the coal-mine canary that warned us all of what was coming. As it is, it's now the closing track to the closing album by the band that could have been, should have been, as big as the Beatles.
Back in 1995 I wrote my one and only letter to Rolling Stone in ten years as a subscriber, defending this album from a two star review ("Okay, it's not perfect, but it's at least worth three"). I see now that I was clutching at straws - no, at a straw, called 'Begging You'. As a debut album from a pub rock band of which one expected nothing, this might have been a two-and-a-halfer; as the long-delayed follow-up to a landmark album by a landmark band, it barely deserves one.
All that, and it has the most irritating hidden track ever recorded.
So the question is, is it worth picking up Brown's solo albums? ('Cos The Seahorses sucked, too.)
Yeah, I think so. Unfinished Monkey Business is the only one I own but it's got some good stuff on it ('My Star', 'Corpses', 'Under The Paving Stones The Beach'), and the dangerously titled Golden Greats seems to live up to its name with a handful of Fools Gold indebted singles - 'Golden Gaze', 'Love Like a Fountain' and 'Dolphins Were Monkeys'. His latest single 'F.E.A.R.', recently on heavy rotation on Xfm, and my general appreciation of these other tracks has inspired me to buy the new album 'Music of the Spheres', though I can't give an opinion on it as it's currently winging its way to me via Royal Mail.
Oh, and the Seahorses did indeed, as you so nicely put it, suck. Though I would perhaps add 'the big one'.
Unfinished Monkey Business and Golden Greats are both underrated albums. Music of the Spheres is overrated. And a word of advice when buying Ian Brown albums - wait for a few months, you just know they're going to end up in the discount bin.
I've now heard all of Brown's solo albums. They all have their moments, and seem pretty consistent in quality; I'd give a slight edge to Music of the Spheres. None regain the Roses' heights, but they definitely beat their depths.
Why bother with all the Spheres, Ian Brown, Seahorses garbage? Stick with The Stone Roses, and their imitators - there is nothing else (except their other singles compilations) that compares. I think anyone could stand to listen to that album over and over again.
The stone Roses first album was in my view the greatest example of a band at one with both their music and their words. Many bands have been inspired by them but none will ever surpass them in pop/rock history.
I just can't help questioning 'what the Roses could have been'. I was simply unprepared for the tears to follow after listening to 'Second Coming'. 'Love Spreads' kicks ass on that album and could someone tell me why they had that pointless looooong intro to 'Breaking Into Heaven'? Honestly, songs like 'Tightrope' are a joke!
Given the greatness that is the stone roses first album - a garden of eden record, a salvation for so many of us through the dire aftermath of political incorectness that was the early 90's the sequel for some of out there was always going to disappoint. The reaction of those unwilling to listen to a different stone roses record to the one that they repeat-played so much even the CD player is rejecting it is not surprising. A fear of this unknown new sound, a sickly reminder that you really have aged five years in the meantime, that absence of apparant melody in favour of John Squire/Jimmy Page inspired fretwork-all resons to be sceptical of the so-called second coming.
What we got was an angry record, a complex homage to Led Zep, a chance for a Stone Rose, namely Squire to step forward assume a verging-on supercillious status and wrestle with a sunburst Les Paul until is screamed like a heartbroken lion. Driving South, Begging You and Love Spreads are exponents of this.
Interspersed into this torade of impassioned guitar love-making are melodious reminders of the Roses past, Ten Storey Love Song, Tightrope and Tears are song that appear to come so naturally, their ability to make you weep is just wondrous.
Given time, this album will garner a differnet kind a respect, it will age like a fine wine, for all the youthful ebullience you associate with the first album Second Coming will attach to itself a venerability that will enable it to live on not as a footnote to the first album but as a stark and exhilirating aide-memoire of the Stone Roses brilliance.