专辑简介

by Stewart MasonFresh off the success -- critically, anyway -- of the Chills' Submarine Bells, Slash records signed the Verlaines, another long-running New Zealand pop band. But where the Chills produced arguably their finest record ever for Slash the first time out, the Verlaines didn't quite deliver on the promise of their years of indie releases with 1991's Ready to Fly. On previous albums like Some Disenchanted Evening and the singles compilation Juvenilia, leader Graeme Downes blended a propulsive, brooding form of Kiwi guitar pop with some considerably more sophisticated elements, including perfectly realized string, woodwind, and brass sections. (Downes has a doctorate in music; the first Verlaines album had been recorded as part of a school project, in fact.) On Ready to Fly, those two elements of the Verlaines' music are bifurcated, with only three songs featuring the typical orchestrations, this time almost entirely by themselves, and the other nine songs being unadorned, straightforward guitar pop. This division makes little sense, but aside from that caveat, the songs on Ready to Fly are a uniformly strong lot, with the opening "Gloom Junky" an appropriately downcast opener for a less-than-upbeat selection of tunes.