Adventures In Stereo
Alternative Stereo Sounds
Creeping Bent

We were watching Adventures In Stereo when they played live recently and wondered what was written in the book the vocalist Judith keeps referring to. I eventually concluded that it must be the lyrics, and fair enough, after all, it can't be easy to remember everything when your back catalogue is 50 songs large but you've only had a year or so to learn them all. There's not even the option of thinking of them as "the long one", "the one with the guitar solo", etc.

That's actually the quandry that AiS must face, how do they vary their repertoire when all their songs can be summed up as a Velvety-Beach-Boys-meets-Spector? Well, they are taking care to augment the sound with some more instruments such as flute, and they also have a slightly different style on this album - I'd say that maybe they're nearer the Wall of Sound area than Nico. The 2 recent singles - Down in the Traffic and A Brand New Day, both present here, are quite representative of the faster tracks but there are still a few downbeat, almost soulful, ones to be heard. In fact, out of the 18 tracks on the album there are better tracks than these 2 singles, but since tracks clock in as short as 45 seconds the choice for singles was admittedly rather limited. Anyway, slow but sure progress is what we'd write in Judith's book for now. That difficult third album will be the real test.

Copyright © 1998 Stuart McHugh