Second Coming - Stone Roses (1995)

Ideated from: Starting my second year of this blog with some famous second albums

The first Stone Roses record came out in 1989 and was a high point in the acid-house-informed madchester scene of the 80s. It was a jangly, harmony-laden masterpiece that still gets listed on people’s best of all time lists.

It took the band more than 5 years to create the follow-up, and it was a commercial disappointment. It’s not that this is a bad record, but there were a lot of factors working against it: It was crushed under the weight of expectations. It came out after the UK music scene had undergone a major transition to a more pop-rock, arena-ready sound. The band had managed to branch off in a direction that wasn’t really in step with all that.

Divorced from all that context, though, it’s still pretty great. The Roses ditched the jangle pop sound, and instead drenched their new songs in deep-pocket backbeats, guitar skronk, and organ blasts. There are a number of truly rocking tracks, dancable and sing-along-able.

The point is, not being the best record you ever heard is not the same as not being a good record.

Tracks I Liked

Driving South - Hard-driving guitar with a north-of-England industrial edge.

Straight To The Man - A bit of a sequel to the best track on the first record, Fool’s Gold

Love Spreads - a weird choice for the label to push as a single. It’s a sprawling, chorus-less tune that pushes 6 minutes. But you can’t deny that the last 90 seconds just owns.

Is Tightrope a good track?

I’m getting ahead of myself, but I realized that I can do another comparison between songs that share a title with the one called “Tightrope”. This one is pretty solid, but takes well over a minute to really find its mid-60s-The-Who groove. Not my favorite Tightrope, but it was never going to be close.