Fine Young Cannibals - Fine Young Cannibals

Limited colored vinyl LP pressing. Fine Young Cannibals' ?rst, eponymous album, originally released in 1985, remastered for the very ?rst time with Roland Gift's involvement. Solid Red 140 G vinyl editon, gatefold, printed inner sleeve. The album remastered for the very first time, with Roland Gift's involvement. Includes download card, featuring the album + 29 rare/unreleased tracks (B Sides, live, remixes). "When Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger split from the rest of the English Beat to form General Public, Andy Cox and Dave Steele originally advertised on MTV for a new lead singer for the Beat. When that didn't pan out (although it did work for Wall of Voodoo), Cox and Steele hooked up with the unique and soulful singer Roland Gift and formed the Fine Young Cannibals. Though the trio ?rst hit the mass U.S. consciousness with 1989's electronic dance-pop The Raw and the Cooked, their 1985 debut was a soul-jazz pop charmer that's more low-key but every bit as entertaining. Along the lines of early Everything But the Girl (the two groups share a producer, Robin Millar) with a heavier Motown in?uence, the songs on Fine Young Cannibals are uniformly strong. The singles 'Johnny Come Home' (a plea to a runaway that sounds like the Beat's ska stripped down to it's tense and obsessive essentials) and 'Blue' (one of the more oblique and successful antiMargaret Thatcher tracks of it's era) are terri?c, but album tracks like the casually devastating 'Funny How Love Is' and the manic 'Like a Stranger' (which incongruously ends with a female chorus shrieking 'You've been too long in an institution!' repeatedly while Gift tries out his Otis Redding impression) are even better. The album's highlight, though, is a reworking of 'Suspicious Minds' (with scarifying backing vocals by Jimmy Somerville) that, while it doesn't replace Elvis' version, certainly takes the song into an interesting new direction. Although often overlooked, especially in the U.S., in the wake of their massively successful follow-up, Fine Young Cannibals is a powerful and satisfying debut."