317) Friends Again - Trapped and Unwrapped

James Grant has recently released a record with Bernard Butler and Norman Blake and criminally has never achieved the commercial success of his two fellow musicians. 

He should have as Love and Money’s second record Strange Kind of Love (https://www.albumsin200words.co.uk/post/33-love-and-money-strange-kind-of-love) contained loads of potential hits but as per usual we made bad choices, Sonia and Jive Bunny were getting to number one folks whilst Love and Money never graced the Top 40 once. Unforgivable really.

However, Grant and fellow Love and Money band mates Paul McGeechan and Stuart Kerr and future Bathers member Chris Thomson had already experienced the UK record buying public crap choices with their first band, Friends Again.

They released their debut, and only record, Trapped and Unwrapped in 1984 and this was another record we didn’t hand over our fivers for, which is strange as we were happy to send Orange Juice into the charts a few years previously and Hipsway a few years later and Friends Again were not to dissimilar.

The album opens strongly with Lucky Star and Sunkissed, the former all wonderful shimmering guitar and the later a melody floating on optimism with strong vocals. If you are a sucker for these wonderful 80’s Scottish bands and their glorious guitars, I am, go straight to South of Love and enjoy as the chorus comes in, magic.

Lullaby No. 2 and State of Art are superior 80’s songs, Lullaby could be on an Orange Juice record and that’s high praise and State of Art the band add strings to a song that screams hit, until it wasn’t.

Swallows in the Rain was produced by Tom Verlaine of Television no less, who seemingly loved the keyboards, not the guitar, the keyboards, Tom knew a tune.

The record ends strongly with Honey at the Core a superior pop song and Moon 3 which is a departure to the rest of the record, all acoustic and a good way to finish the record as you want to hear more from this band and that’s surely the sign of a good record.

8/10

GIVE IT A STREAM: State of Art