Reviews RALP303

Neglected mid-80s swoonsters back to haunt In the days when you could self-finance recording an indie album at ABBA's Polar Studios, that's what these Norwegian dreamers did. Their lovely, piano-led 1985 near-classic of Euro-melancholy now revisits on vinyl for the first time in four decades. Back then, it prompted Virgin to sign them and tart it up with re-recordings, which wasn't as evil as that might sound. The band, sort of named after an Italian Renaissance painter because that's another thing you could do at the time, briefly wooed fans of The Blue Nile, China Crisis and Black, and songs as sweetly snowy as Shouldn't Have To Be Like That gave them a moment of being the darlings of us poetic types in long black coats. 4/5.
Record Collector (UK)