Giant Steps
by The Boo Radleys

From Jimmy Dread TOP 100 COMMENTER 06/11/2017 08:26 | #192375 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

WTF is 'baroque shoegaze' when it's at home? Some phased vocals and effects pedals aside, I've always seen Giant Steps as a 90s White Album, in which a bunch of scousers (namely a guitarist with frizzy hair and a bald geezer) borrow a dog-eared copy of the Great Merseyside Songwriters Handbook from Wallasey Library and pen a record that is neither shoegaze nor Britpop, but somewhere slap bang between the two. On a personal level the dubby bass lines in tracks like Lazarus and Upon 9th and Fairchild, the jangly pop of Barney (...and Me) and Wish I Was Skinny and the Beatles-esque kitchen sink psychedelica of Thinking Of Ways - the only legitimately 'baroque' moment on the album if you ask me - are the highlights, and although the first disc is miles better than the second what could be a sprawling mess hangs together brilliantly. In fact there's some genius on here, no more so than on Run My Way Runaway which sounds like a cross between an acid trip, the saxophonist who did a turn on The Stooges' Fun House, a nursery rhyme and the incidental music to 80s epic cartoon series The Mysterious Cities Of Gold.

Alas this proved to be their last great moment, before Britpop ruined everything. Their legacy to your average pleb won't be this masterpiece, but instead that fucking Wake Up Boo! song and the subsequent pig's ear of an album of the same name(ish) that followed, both of which saw them disappear up McGee, Radio 1 and the NME's arse. They would never reach the heights of Giant Steps (good pun) again.

Boo Radleys pull britpop in new directions with noisy distorted guitars, brass and string arrangements, dub and so on. They change things up from one track to the next, and even within individual tracks. The amount of musical styles present in "Butterfly McQueen" could make you dizzy. "Thinking of Ways" sounds like a Pet Sounds tribute. But I don't find the album derivative because they make it their own with a ton of musical ideas, often experimental sounding but always compelling.

Fun album for a serious listen, with all the musical detail and lush production on top of sweet dreamy melodies. There's a lot of sublime moments here.

"I Hang Suspended" sounds a lot like an Oasis tune, a band which came along soon after this album (though not as musically interesting as The Boo Radleys). (Edited)

Been meaning to get around to getting hold of this album since it topped the NME's album of the year poll in 93. Anything that can bury a pop masterpiece like Lazarus so far down it's order has to be good. Must try harder to get a copy.

This is baroque shoegaze. Great arrangments, track list, composition. Britpop would start from here, with more affirmed vocals, but this is great.

This Is The Best Shoegaze-Brit Pop Album Ever.