Thursday 15 March 2007

I'll shake the dust off of my feet...

Great Overlooked Albums #1

Geneva - Weather Underground



Having appeared at the tail end of Britpop with their debut Further, Geneva immediately stood out as a result of the extraordinary vocal talents of Andrew Montgomery and a bucketload of amazing songs too - singles Into The Blue, No One Speaks and career best Tranquillizer more than equalling anything else to be released in those heady times.

So how come their follow-up, 2000's brilliant Weather Underground, was so overlooked? A concept record in all but name, the themes of space travel and the state of the world give the songs a poignant edge, and their previous straightforward indie-rock stylings - seen here on single Dollars In The Heavens - are balanced out by the more reflective likes of If You Have To Go.

While their fellow countrymen Travis were selling millions of albums of by-numbers guitar pop, Geneva were producing tracks like the stunning Museum Mile, the album's centrepiece and beating heart. It didn't catch on, and they split up soon after.

Thankfully, the now Brighton-based Montgomery is still putting his choirboy voice to good use in St Famous


MP3: Dollars In The Heavens

MP3: If You Have To Go

MP3: Museum Mile


And as a bonus...

MP3: Tranquillizer (from Further)

A couple of other tracks from the debut album can currently be found here

4 comments:

Unknown said...

YAY - Tranquillizer is fantastic!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link and a much better write about the band than I came up with!

Anonymous said...

the If You Have To Go track appears to be the same as Dollars In The Heavens. Looks like you might have uploaded Dollars twice.

Spence said...

Oops.... thanks for that. All the links have been checked and renewed, so the tunes will be up for another week. Enjoy!