Here's another album, like Le Parc yesterday, that almost destroyed my faith in the band that made it. In 1990 I would have bought just about anything with James' name on it, always in the hope that it might show what I knew them to be capable of from their live shows. But Gold Mother had the opposite effect on me. Several of the songs sounded like James-by-numbers, and Walking my Ghost sounded like Horses-by-numbers.
Then the re-released version of Sit Down came out and, of course, that was the final straw. Suddenly everyone loved my idiosyncratic, struggling and under-performing band. To add insult to injury, the record label re-issued this album with Sit Down on it, and offered a free exchange to anyone who'd bought the original. Of course, I ignored that. Apart from anything else, they actually removed a track to make way for Sit Down. Why? The album would have still been under an hour if they'd just added an extra track. And Crescendo, the track that was removed, is one of the more interesting ones — a forerunner of the jams that appeared later on Wah Wah.
Like many a disappointing album, Gold Mother doesn't sound that bad 18 years later, though I still think there are few tracks that could count as top-drawer James: maybe Crescendo and Come Home, and certainly Top of the World. I hear the title track differently now. Apart from anything else, it's only in the last six months that I've known what meconium is. But it has little emotional resonance for me (neither Lucy nor I were both present and conscious at the Boy's birth), and Tim Booth doesn't sound like he's quite convincing himself, either.
Thankfully James finally delivered three years later with Laid, I came back to the fold, and later discovered that, while I'd been away, Seven was pretty good too.
![]() Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm |
Comments