Customer Reviews

Giant Steps

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You have got to be kidding me! I NEVER write reviews on AMAZON, but seeing this album with only one supporter, well, I just had to get my 2-cents in.
For you aging sixties hipsters, remember the first time you heard Pet Sounds? Or perhaps LOVE's Forever Changes? How 'bout Tommy?
For you seventies burn-outs, remember Led Zep IV? Wish You Were Here? Bowie's LOW?
How about all you eighties 'wavers' (including myself!), do YOU remember the first time you heard Joy Division's Closer, Pornography by the CURE, or Laibach's Opus Dei?
In the early nineties, you had Screamadelica by Primal Scream, which drastically changed the sonic landscape by melding stonsey-type rockers with house and ambient music.
And you had the Boo Radleys GIANT STEPS, which combined the shoegazing sonics of My Bloody Valentine with Brian Wilson style harmonies. But that was not all. One listen to Lazarus (in an abbreviated version here, unfortunately) and you will become a fan. As my brother would say, "it's a dubtastic psychedelic trip, maaaaaan!"
Every track is a psychedelic standout, the best of the best being the afore mentioned Lazarus, Rodney King, Butterfly McQueen and Best Lose the Fear.
If you buy this album and have never heard it before, your first listen should be on high quality headphones, lest you miss the little gems of musical wonder hidden in each track.
Bottom line: everyone with even a passing interest in quality music should own this. Yes, it really is that good, it stands the test of time by sounding both nostalgic and twenty years ahead of it's time.

I was lucky enough to get this album shortly after it came out. After 2 breathless listens i was sure that eventually this band would take over the world. Its funny the way things work out. For at least 2 years after I got this slice of genius - it was played daily in my house. Now almost 10 years later i still haven't come accross an Album as good.

I've been on many web-sites and seen reviews of this album which invariably give 5 stars or 10/10. This is no fluke guys. It can reasonably be considered amongst the greatest rock albums of all time. By some freak its not sold well. 100,000 in 10 years is an estimate flying around!!!Do not be mis-led. You have the chance to join an elite few and witness 1hr 15 minuets of the greatest pop , shoegazing, alternative, reggae album. Stone Roses - pretty good , Nirvana - fair play to you lads , Beatles - where would we be without you. But Giant Steps - by the Boos , that my friends, is the standard.

"Take what you know , break it up and rearrange it"

Dan

The Boos' second major label album following the underwhelming Everything's Alright Forever, Giant Steps was indeed a giant step forward for the band. Led by songwriter Martin Carr, Giant Steps features a stunning variety of sounds - the Boos seem to try almost everything, from acoustic pop ("Wish I Was Skinny"), to jazz ("Leaves and Sand"), to trancey dance music ("Rodney King [Song for Lenny Bruce]"), to dub (the amazing "Lazarus"), to Oasis-style rock ("If You Want It, Take It" - recorded a year before Definitely Maybe came out) and succeed an enormous amount of the time. In fact, if the Beatles had been a 90's group, I'm tempted to say that they might have sounded more like the Boo Radleys than Oasis - the Boos had the same experimental, try-anything attitude that the Beatles had three decades prior.

The album almost sounds like a mess upon first listen, but repeated playing brings out the adventurous nature and quality of what the group did. It's very rare for a contemporary group to push limits like the Boo Radleys did, and do it with such success, but Giant Steps is just that- it's a great, well-done album from an underappreciated group (even in Britain).

Highlights include all of the aforementioned songs, plus the opener "I Hang Suspended", and the poppy "Barney (...and Me)".

Giant Steps is one of those extraordinary albums that tugs at your unconscious and whirls you through some airy region that is part molten dreams and part hair-thin half remembered visions that only flicker into life when this album shakes your biological fat encrusted brain from its habitual somnanbulance. The tunes are as striking as anything penned by Brian Wilson; however, they also contain some strange psychic liquid distilled through the emotional falls and glides of the albatros, Martin Carr. On this album he and the band risk their lives to extract these tunes from the undiscovered country where dwell spectres indifferent to the fears and hopes of schmuks like me. Just when your life seems dominated by your stupidity an album like Giant Steps reminds you that there are characters like Martin Carr that have courageously travelled to the edge of our banality and found mystery drifting in rivers just beyond our ken. Everytime I hear this album it peals with an intensity of joy mixed with craving for that something that both saves and destroys us. But best of all this album reminds me that these glorious songs switch an extra chamber in my mind that enlarges my megre existence. Thank you Boo Radleys for this gift.

GIANT STEPS ('93)... definitely one of my favorite albums of all time - TOP 3 (if I sat down & made a list in order) for a while now. It didn't take me long to figure out this. Believe me, this is Bliss all the way through - laughter, wind chimes ringing, just warm summer sun tunes!
This was my very first Boo Radleys album and the one that inspired me to buy them all. Just like the title says this was a "giant step" for the band. Their album before "Everything's Alright Forever" (1992),although good- isn't nearly as memorable. Most of the bands most wonderful pure songs make it onto this release, "Thinking of Ways" which Sice kind of sounds like Brian Wilson, originally from the Beach Boys.
"Butterfly McQueen" - Acoustic strum into the words- "I finally broke your Cool in a delicate 'not a care in the world' type manner. A guitar solo blast soon follows - kicks the melody up a couple notches in Sonic-flare- Singing : "I feel you Rising - Butterfly McQueen!" feels like 'Jets flying' vertical off into space. At the end of this song - "Rodney King": Begins w/ a sweet new wave Female vocalist, takes the lead for this one track, singing: "Do you know know my name."(Do you know me! by, Sice), please tear me apart - Do you Care?" - another shorter song about 2 and a half minutes. Main Lead Sice takes background vocals.
Next up is the gorgeous Brian Wilson nod- Opening w/ just a sweet voice & no added sound you know accapella style! "Step on the gas, Go Miles" & "...with a head full of beer- I will try and tell someone tonight"
"If You Want It, Take It" - probably my second fave, on this- Guitars glisten on throughout in a Revved up, but structured stream all while Sice's sweet voice shines in a Clear soothing way- all in under 3 minutes including a mini-guitar solo EPIC towards the end.
Lead-single "Lazarus" which has a reggae good vibe feel to it.
All 17 tracks are wonderful-ranging from a vast array of musical genres such as pop grunge tunes like "Take the Time Around"- EXPLODES in a Grunge metal sound! w/ Beatle-esque swoons. An absolute triptastic, kaleidoscopic, orchestrated but melodic at times journey from "I Hang Suspended" (track 1) on through the last track "The White Noise Revisited". Some may say it's noisy, but I think that adds to the beauty of it all(noise in a good way). It's got so many top-notch choruses and I feel this album goes above and beyond the shoe-gazer scene. One track melts or bleeds into another w/o missing a step. It goes on through w/ a more structured sound then later releases. Very Pleasing sounds Shine through while C'mon Kids & others seem to go to a higher level of scope & sound. Not that this is a bad thing. Sice's vocals sound a bit friendly and inviting on GIANT STEPS. Maybe quite a bit of fuzz to a 'newbies' ear, but it just sounds normal since I play it quite a bit. Seems like 100s of times could be more.
My favorite song is "Best Lose the Fear" -
"You would like to disappear
You would like to Lose the fear
You Dream the Love
You have is Near"
Just flows - you know? Showcases the Fun chorus theme throughout. Pure songwriting. Very mature at age 23 (he lets u know) - lead singer.
Not many people at least that I know here in the U.S.A. have heard of this band and I have made a few burns for Cd. Truly a timeless masterpiece on the British indie label Creation. What a record, even the colorful cover sleeve-design is inviting!
"C'mon Kids" (1996) a couple albums later after "Wake Up" (see my later reviews) is to me anyways, the Boos second(close) Best, but Giant Steps is their FINEST Achievement!

..."Hey What's that noise, Do you Remember?" - closer,(The White Noise Revisited)
-5 stars!

Released just over a decade after the band--never having reached the commercial heights for which they should have been bound--called it quits, this 3 CD remastered reissue (from the good people at the UK label Cherry Red) reveals that the Boo Radleys may have been the most unjustly overlooked band from the 1990's alternative rock zeitgeist. Nestled snugly in the grey area between shoegaze and Britpop, Giant Steps was the band's defining moment, full of inventive arrangements, flawless melodies and bold experimentalism; the shimmering, gauzy "Lazarus," the bouncy, irresistible "Wish I Was Skinny," the glorious psychedelia of "I Hang Suspended." However, as the hour and a half of B-sides and outtakes from the same period that are collected here attest, the band was even more fearless than listeners at the time might have suspected. Not everything included is essential, but taken in total, the extra material makes an already slam-dunk case for the Radleys legacy even harder to ignore.

There's nothing to be said that everyone else hasn't. This album is simply brilliant. The other reviewer is right. There's a reason this keeps getting 5 stars. And this isn't 5 stars for the new destiny's child album. This is a serious, 5 stars, benchmark album. A classic in every sense. The way all the styles are different, yet blend together seemlessly , is outstanding. For some reason, I got this album in the winter, and it reminds me of snow and winter, so its difficult to listen to it in the summer. By that's my little quirk. You go out and find it if you can. I found one at my local used place for $6.99, previously I had it on cassette, I nearly fainted. $6.99 for this ? And I paid $15 for Oasis?

The first album the Boo Radleys brought out was too experimental and hit and miss, the third album was far to sickly sweet but this was just right. I liked the strange mix of musical styles and the insecure,suicidal lyrics at the time when I was a student, and I have started to apreciate them all over again now with a fresh perspective.

i stepped on the original copy i had of this cd breaking it into pieces, so for several years i went without this in my collection. one of those "i'm gonna get another cd i haven't heard instead of replacing one i should still have" deals.

finally i saw a used copy for just a couple bucks so i grabbed it and tossed it in on the ride home. with each song i kept jacking the volume up a notch instantly recalling the brilliance of each song. quiet acoustic one moment followed by blistering noise the next. add the vocal harmonies and i wondered why i deprived myself of this for so long.

all the 'bombs' (lazarus, barney, suspended, skinny) are justified in getting their props in the reviews, but 'butterfly mcqueen' is the song that defines the boo radleys for me....the very description i gave above all packed into a couple minutes. quiet and beautiful one minute, with a soaring and majestic finale....diving right into 'rodney king'

this cd goes with me everywhere cuz i never know when i'm gonna want someone to listen to a track or two.

GIANT STEPS ('93)... definitely one of my favorite albums of all time - TOP 3 (if I sat down & made a list in order) for a while now. It didn't take me long to figure out this. Believe me, this is Bliss all the way through - laughter, wind chimes ringing, just warm summer sun tunes!
This was my very first Boo Radleys album and the one that inspired me to buy them all. Just like the title says this was a "giant step" for the band. Their album before "Everything's Alright Forever" (1992),although good- isn't nearly as memorable. Most of the bands most wonderful pure songs make it onto this release, "Thinking of Ways" which Sice kind of sounds like Brian Wilson, originally from the Beach Boys.
"Butterfly McQueen" - Acoustic strum into the words- "I finally broke your Cool in a delicate 'not a care in the world' type manner. A guitar solo blast soon follows - kicks the melody up a couple notches in Sonic-flare- Singing : "I feel you Rising - Butterfly McQueen!" feels like 'Jets flying' vertical off into space. At the end of this song - "Rodney King": Begins w/ a sweet new wave Female vocalist, takes the lead for this one track, singing: "Do you know know my name."(Do you know me! by, Sice), please tear me apart - Do you Care?" - another shorter song about 2 and a half minutes. Main Lead Sice takes background vocals.
Next up is the gorgeous Brian Wilson nod- Opening w/ just a sweet voice & no added sound you know accapella style! "Step on the gas, Go Miles" & "...with a head full of beer- I will try and tell someone tonight"
"If You Want It, Take It" - probably my second fave, on this- Guitars glisten on throughout in a Revved up, but structured stream all while Sice's sweet voice shines in a Clear soothing way- all in under 3 minutes including a mini-guitar solo EPIC towards the end.
Lead-single "Lazarus" which has a reggae good vibe feel to it.
All 17 tracks are wonderful-ranging from a vast array of musical genres such as pop grunge tunes like "Take the Time Around"- EXPLODES in a Grunge metal sound! w/ Beatle-esque swoons. An absolute triptastic, kaleidoscopic, orchestrated but melodic at times journey from "I Hang Suspended" (track 1) on through the last track "The White Noise Revisited". Some may say it's noisy, but I think that adds to the beauty of it all(noise in a good way). It's got so many top-notch choruses and I feel this album goes above and beyond the shoe-gazer scene. One track melts or bleeds into another w/o missing a step. It goes on through w/ a more structured sound then later releases. Very Pleasing sounds Shine through while C'mon Kids & others seem to go to a higher level of scope & sound. Not that this is a bad thing. Sice's vocals sound a bit friendly and inviting on GIANT STEPS. Maybe quite a bit of fuzz to a 'newbies' ear, but it just sounds normal since I play it quite a bit. Seems like 100s of times could be more.
My favorite song is "Best Lose the Fear" -
"You would like to disappear
You would like to Lose the fear
You Dream the Love
You have is Near"
Just flows - you know? Showcases the Fun chorus theme throughout. Pure songwriting. Very mature at age 23 (he lets u know) - lead singer.
Not many people at least that I know here in the U.S.A. have heard of this band and I have made a few burns for Cd. Truly a timeless masterpiece on the British indie label Creation. What a record, even the colorful cover sleeve-design is inviting!
"C'mon Kids" (1996) a couple albums later after "Wake Up" (see my later reviews) is to me anyways, the Boos second(close) Best, but Giant Steps is their FINEST Achievement!

..."Hey What's that noise, Do you Remember?" - closer,(The White Noise Revisited)
-5 stars!