1991
Masque
About This Album
It's not just that the Mission changed their sound, it's that they changed it numerous times on one album. For bands in the goth-pop genre, 1992 was kind of the breaking point: in England, shoegazer and baggy had changed everything, and in the U.S., Nirvana and grunge added a whole new barrier to Brits trying to break into the States. Some acts like All About Eve tried shoegazer, and to a certain degree, it worked, while others would embrace their Englishness full-on or would turn to America and turn up the angst. The Mission, for some strange reason, went for a little bit of everything. "Never Again," the opener on Masque, sounds like the Mission really trying to go big-league '90s U2-Achtung Baby style, but ending up a bit more like a dance remix of themselves than a multi-styled stadium filler. "You Make Me Breathe" sounds like Cure-with-sax adult contemporary, and "She Conjures Me Wings" and "Who Will Love Me Tomorrow?" are reminiscent of the Wonder Stuff, those Carved in Sand tour openers who had made a big impact on the U.K. charts in 1991. Some of it ("Spider and the Fly," "Shades of Green," and "Even You May Shine") is classic Mission and definitely worth hearing, and "Like a Child Again" is a rather killer pop melody à la "Hands Across the Ocean" from Grains of Sand.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,5,6 and 11)

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