Circa
2006
Wild And Lonely
About This Album
Although Howard Hughes continued to work with Billy Mackenzie, providing the excellent piano that appears throughout the album, Wild and Lonely, more than any other release before it, was essentially a solo album with a supporting cast of about 20 different musicians. Other performers included studio pros J.J. Belle on guitar and Guy Pratt on bass, plus Art of Noise core member/freelance arranger Anne Dudley handling the string performances. Following up the unreleased Glamour Chase album, it was something of a mixed delight; while Mackenzie's voice remains the pure and wonderful thing it always was, parallels to Bryan Ferry's later solo career suggest themselves. There's some of the same relative musical ennui, where everything is perfectly pleasant but rarely striking. Even more distressing, more than once, said music is little more than late-'80s glossy yup-funk that is singularly unappealing in its boredom, often saved only by Mackenzie's performing bravura and nice production touches ("Fever" would be dull as ditch water without the lead piano, orchestrations, and abbreviated choir blasts). Happily, the worse moments don't define the album, and when at its best, Wild and Lonely serves up a fine selection of new Mackenzie classics.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,7,8,11,12,15 and 16)

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