THE MOTHERSHIP – Bright Side Of Dim

mothershipThe Mothership’s debut album (‘Ten Miles Wide’, released in 2011) was a promising first effort.  Although some of the material was generic, it was passionately played and its four stand-out cuts were strong enough alone to recommend listening.  The band showed off a very solid approach to a retro riff, but with the woozy acoustic track ‘Ugly Love’ nestled at the end of the record [free mp3 here], the band showed they had more potential than merely being grungy revivalists.  The “desert sessions” style of their quieter moments set high hopes for their sophomore release.

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DELUXE EDITION DREAMLAND: UB40 – Labour Of Love

‘Labour of Love’, UB40’s first covers album from 1983, remains one of the band’s best selling albums. While political purists may sneer at the accessible selection of covers found on the record, the album should be applauded for bringing a few well-known (and more overlooked tunes) to a wider audience. These were clearly tunes the band loved in their formative years, and in the case of The Slickers’ ‘Johnny Too Bad’ and Eric Donaldson’s ‘Cherry Oh Baby’ in particular, these tunes presented the best of the band’s capabilities at that time.

The album has been pressed on CD three times. Firstly, in its original pressing dating from some time in the late 80s, as a two CD set with 1989’s ‘Labour of Love II’ and, later still, as disc one of the three CD anthology ‘The Platinum Collection’ – a budget priced box set containing the first three volumes of the ‘Labour of Love’ series. It has never appeared in any expanded form. This is a particularly frustrating considering the wealth of extra material from the period; material currently sat gathering dust in the record company archive.

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