Customer Reviews

The Stone Roses 20th Anniversary

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Raw and churning and aggressive, (the) Pixies' "Doolittle" emerged on this side of the Atlantic as yet another ancestral focal point for the grunge movement in 1989. Subversively poppy, hook-laden, and with big stinky grooves, The Stone Roses' eponymous full-length debut that same year in Great Britain emerged as the spear-carrier of the Madchester scene, combining psychedelically-tinged rock with heavily danceable rhythms. Both CD's received a significant amount of airplay on truly alternative radio stations (before "alternative" came to mean corporately- sponsored modern rock programmed by super computers). Both CD's are considered to be masterpieces of post-punk pop, yet The Stone Roses benefited from a stateside release in 1990 that allowed them to shift many more units just as "Doolittle" was playing out, suddenly embraced by newly-emerging modern-rock stations and seen as heralds of The Next Big Thing.

I can't really qualitatively compare "Doolittle" with "The Stone Roses"; they represent two different sub-genres of music. But I think I can qualitatively compare "The Stone Roses" with the rest of the Madchester scene, and based on what I heard then and continue to hear to this day I can tell you that out of all of the music released from that era, this one is the most enduring. If you're just coming to The Stone Roses, know this; the band knew how to sell a groove. So heavily integrated together that they might well have been linked through telepathy, drummer Reni and bassist Mani consistently created supple, heavy, complex interlocking rhythms that set the band apart from the rest of the Madchester pack, allowing texturally-driven guitarist John Squire to overlay his muscular, sinuous, arpeggiated, and, at times, aggressively funky riffing over a heavy spine that nevertheless bent into all sorts of elastic positions.

Some of the tracks have an almost anthemic feel, building immediately toward crescendo or sustained explosive release ("Don't Stop" and "This Is The One")while others reach that plateau in a more gradual build-up of dynamic tension ( "I Wanna Be Adored","Made Of Stone", "Waterfall" , "I Am The Resurrection") while others simmer heavily or percolate ("Fool's Gold", "Elephant Stone" and "Shoot You Down"). No track seem to have more of a ubiquitous presence on modern rock airwaves in `90 than "Fool's Gold", which seemed to be a universal feature on every playlist. Several other cuts also received quite a bit of exposure; "I Wanna Be Adored", "She Bangs The Drums", "Elephant Stone", "Waterfall", and "Shoot You Down" all retain presence as classics today as a result.

And I'm not really an audiophile, so while this review is appearing under the re-mastered version, its primary purpose is informative w/r/t/ the relative strength of the content, rather than whether or not the sound has been definitively improved (or not), and this was (and remains) a muscular release. I strongly recommend buying it.

When this album was a big deal I didn't even know it existed. Our first child took up any music time that used to be. Now she's in graduate school and the Stone Roses play around here quite a bit. Even being from another time and another place this music is powerful stuff. This remastered edition is the straight record with one bonus track--Fool's Gold. Granted, the Deluxe version has an extra disc of recordings and a 3rd disc dvd of their famous concert. Much more fun I'm sure. Lately though, I've purchased a couple of remasters without all the bonus historical theater and been quite happy with a better version of the album I knew so well. As far as being "the greatest album of all time" (NME) I personally don't think that recording is here yet, but it is thoroughly amazing. I love listening and dancing with it--it chases away all the geezeritis--for a while. Then I put it on again. Fool's Gold was made for dancing.