CD of the week: Stone Roses (You've waited five years, but is it any good?)
Second Coming (Geffen)
It sounds as if the Stone Roses are taking the "second coming" bit seriously. They've refused all interviews except one with the Big Issue, and appear not to be promoting this album at all (yet, anyway). One can picture the reaction in Geffen's Hollywood boardroom, as the act signed for a reputed several million dollars sits at home in Manchester, avoiding the media.
But then, the five-year gap between the release of their hysterically praised debut and Second Coming is proving a most effective advertisement in itself. There can't be too many people who don't know how, after revolutionising British rock in 1989 with their guitar-pop-meets-dance music, the Roses painfully divorced their old label, signed with Geffen and disappeared until this year.
The band's courtiers promised that their new sound would be a surprise, and that it is. Second Coming opens with a four-minute guitar/drum instrumental that recalls Adam Ant in his Burundi-beat days, then segues into Breaking Into Heaven, seven minutes of Led-Zeppelinesque guitar/rhythm section and Ian Brown's hazy vocals. Next, on Driving South, guitarist John Squire pillages the Jimi Hendrix riffbook.
Ten-Storey Love Song is nothing less than straight pop full of lush choruses, wherein the singer uncharacteristically swoons, "Take my hand/I'm your man/I got love enough for two". The tone again changes on Your Star Will Shine, whose acoustic guitared pettiness is so unexpected as to make you check this is the Stone Roses. Begging You is a firestorm of phased and flanged guitar and get-out-of-my-way drumming, while Tears is a minimal blues.
The biggest surprise of all is how good it is. On Second Coming, the Roses sound like everyone but themselves. But to expect them to be treading the same druggy path as five years ago is to deny their right to evolve. You sense that the retro feel of this record is just a temporary diversion, that they'll change and mature in their own time. Until they do, it's worth taking the time to let this brash, sexy album grow on you.
**** (out of four)
Caroline Sullivan
Back To Media 1994