Felix NEill

What we have here is one of the great lost Eighties pop albums. Tracie was signed to Paul Weller's vanity label Respond in the early Eighties and had a brace of good Motown/mod influenced pop singles before the album appeared. Featuring one track written by Elvis Costello and a clutch of tracks penned by Weller himself, the songwriting is of a uniformly high standard. Although wearing it's Eighties production values rather loudly (the album was co-produced by Weller), the quality of the songs and the vocal performances from Tracie shine through. I think the ballads work best, but it's all good. This is a lovely artefact in common with Weller's output at the time, featuring a heavy Sixties retro vibe and sleevenotes by Tracie herself (supposedly). Having said that, the cover itself is a disaster area and I suspect that they were self-consciously veering too far away from the "sex" angle to the detriment of the overall finished product. Ah well. That was the Eighties for you. Sexual politics all in a muddle etc.

If you enjoy this, I recommend that you buy the brilliant Cherry Red re-issue which contains those early singles and a further selection of session tracks, B-sides and extended version in a lovely package. Cherry red are hitting the ball out of the park with just about every one of their pop reissues, so you should probably go and check them out anyway.

Vinyl rip at 320 Kbps.

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