London
1983
Deep Sea Skiving
About This Album
Bananarama's first album is by far their best. Before they fell in with the lucrative but often boring Stock, Aitken & Waterman assembly line starting with 1986's True Confessions, Siobhan Fahey, Sarah Dallin, and Keren Woodward were unashamedly poppy, but they had enough artistic credibility to create a debut album that, barring a couple of small missteps, actually works as an album instead of a collection of singles with some filler. (They were even hip enough for their first single to be produced by ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook.) Of course, the singles are terrific. There are four British chart hits in these 11 songs, and every one of them still sounds terrific, where later hits like "I Can't Help It" are terribly dated. The slinky "Shy Boy" and a rattling cover of the Marvelettes' "He Was Really Sayin' Somethin'" (co-starring the trio's early mentors Fun Boy Three) are classic girl group songs updated for the '80s, every bit as credible as any mid-level Spector or Motown singles. That Cook-produced debut single, "Aie a Mwana" (oddly left off the album's first U.S. edition), now sounds mostly like a curio of the brief tropical craze that hit the U.
Track List

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