Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Start of An Obsession, March 7, 2001
Waking Hours will start for you an obsession with this band. The first run will leave you with pleasant thoughts for some catchy songs you may not have heard before ie. Kiss This Thing Goodbye and Hatful of Rain. The other songs may at first slip by your conscious thoughts but, they will remain, and GROW. The riffs to Kiss This Thing Goodbye will jangle in your head until you HAVE to play it again to find out if it really was as good as your fresh memory seems to think. The plunking piano and killer fun banjo (!) will soon have you wondering why this song isn't played on regular radio, constantly. Then you will listen to Hatful of Rain again and somehow feel the sheer musical joy you get when hearing John Cougar Mellencamp's "Cherry Bomb". Then Opposite View will begin to be noticed for it's lyrical energy perfectly describing the feelings of those warm college nights while When I Want You begins to have you humming "Yes I Will" in your head over and over with more kick each time. Then you will find yourself looking for your accoustic guitar even if you never owned one as you listen to This Side of the Morning yet AGAIN! You will marvel at how cool the lyrics "I wanted to be loved but just got laughed at instead so, if this taxi is for hire, I'll get in the back just to feel the friction of the tarmac and the tires" sounds. Then you will think of the lyric "Whole generations thinking of themselves as infidels and pop stars" and you will have to get out the booklet and read the full lyrics to Stone Cold Sober. And just who is it playing the guitars in that song??? Brooding over how much you can relate to Nothing Ever Happens will get you thinking about who exactly was Jimmy Blue? Then, it happens. You realize that you are hooked. You read the WHOLE lyric book and find yourself thinking it reads like a kind of musical poetry, and you're normally indifferent about contemporary poetry! You will log on for reviews on other Del Amitri albums and wonder if those could be as fun as Waking Hours has grown to be. Then you will realize that Waking Hours has 13 B-sides out there on various singles! Another review will rave about how great Spit In the Rain is and someone will comment on the ecstatic joy of the fans at a live playing of The Return of Maggie Brown. You then find that Amazon still has a best of the Del Amitri B-sides called "Lousy With Love" matched with The Best of Del Amitri - Hatful of Rain available. Oh! Those are the guys who did "Roll to Me" and "Always the Last to Know"!!! The hooks go deeper. Then you are referred to the website http://duk.public.se/del-amitri/ and your eyes bug out of your head at how much Dels material there is out there! Then, a critical stage is reached on the one-way road to Del Amitri Obsession, you log on to EBay, type in "Del Amitri CD single" and find there are 14 hits! Holy cow! A vinyl copy of the single to Move Away Jimmy Blue is going off shortly and you grab it cheap to hear the B-side This Side Of The Morning (live in a car park at 2 a.m). You get it and love it but, can't get over how good Another Letter Home is! Now you find you must have it on CD! Face it, you have now crossed the Rubicon into Del Amitri obsession, AND YOU LOVE IT!!! So, Welcome to Charlie's Bar! We fellow fanatics have been waiting for you with glasses raised! Drink your fill to the gills! There will be no Whiskey Remorse, you have found your way to the happy home of Del Amitri junkies!
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the best "breakup" album ever recorded!, April 22, 1999
I first heard this band listening to a free-form radio show in Philadelphia, and the DJ played the album without interruption. I was floored! The sadness, bittersweet reflections, and eventual recovery (not without cynicism) from an intense breakup have been perfectly captured here, and there are no false notes. Though not a "concept album," Waking Hours nevertheless follows the singer from accepting the relationship is doomed in the first cut ("Kiss This Thing Goodbye"), anger over his loss and the world in general ("Stone Cold Sober" and "You're Gone"), to thoughts of revenge ("When I Want You"), lament ("This Side of the Morning" and "Empty"), to eventual acceptance with a dose of cynicism and 'to hell with you' declarations in "Hatful of Rain." I really rooted for this guy to pull through by the end of the album. The album's last cut, "Nothing Ever Happens" is a scathing indictment of Glasgow life from our love-hardened protagonist. I had the pleasure to see this band live and meet them after the show. I told singer/bassist/band leader Justin Currie that Waking Hours helped me get over a bad relationship. He looked at me with a a small smile and said, "Me too."Waking Hours is simply terrific!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cynical Idealists, October 12, 2000
The thing I particularly like about Del Amitri is that they always strive for timelessness. While other groups ride waves and trends and finally get washed up somewhere along the shore, Del Amitri go about their musicial craft with quiet dedication and a confidence born of survival. These songs will never age. Waking Hours from 1989 is one of their best albums. Already the songwriting is mature, the muscianship accomplished. For those who haven't heard them, they play basic Pop Rock with touches of Blues, Soul, and Country, but they're not just covering the bases. All these influences work to their best, creating the right atmosphere for the burden of each song, helping to change the mood from ironic cheerfulness (Kiss This Thing Goodbye) to sombre nihilism (Empty) back to defiant optimism (Hatful of Rain). The lyrics are good enough to read on their own. They write songs about relationships failing, love becoming meaningless, and people repeating the same mistakes again, underlying these themes with a kind of cynical idealism that is faithful to experience while at the same time rejecting it in favour of an irrational inner optimism. It is this which sends us out to fight or to love again and again.
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