Oliver!: The Boo Radleys - Skyscraper (14 March 1992)

Peel was giving plenty of airplay to The Boo Radleys' album, Everything's Alright Forever, through early 1992.  God knows why. Maybe a little bit of fellowship towards Liverpudlians.  I haven't been too taken by what he played from it, partially down to impatience with Sice Rowbotham's tokenistic vocals which sound like someone from another band wandering into someone else's song, singing a few lines inoffensively, and then meandering off again.

Despite that, I like Skyscraper a lot because it sounds like a track that is trying to transcend its limitations.  This becomes especially apparent in the rock out finale from 2:05 onwards, which despite owing a melodic touch or two to Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight (though not half as blatantly as Suede did a couple of years later) means that anyone who would have stood up in 1992 and said, "This is going to be one of the most artistically interesting  bands in the country through the 1990s", wouldn't have got laughed out of the room.  It was an upward curve for The Boo Radleys from here, and Skyscraper marks the first tentative step forward.

Influencing both shoegaze and Britpop?


Videos courtesy of MarkTurver1990 (The Boo Radleys) and InnerMusicLove (Clapton).