I love Catherine Wheel as a band. I love their career as a band less. That might sound weird. Another way of putting it is that I want to like them more than I do because I think they have talent, style, and a phenomenal vocalist. Chrome is one of those albums which I feel more strongly about than most people, and I think it should be a canonical classic. I’m usually not that much outside of the average when it comes to the things I enjoy. Ferment is solid, but lacked the varied songwriting of Chrome. Happy Days followed, and was a depressing slab of Bush-esque hard rock with weak hooks.

Adam and Eve came next, and it’s very much post-The Bends intellectual soft rock. I’ve always wanted to like this one more because some people consider it their true masterwork, but I don’t think it’s on that level. This album lacks Radiohead’s innovation with dynamic rhythms, or even the dissonance of a contemporary band like Deus. Adam and Eve is too focused on melody, and after the first few songs those become pretty weak and drawn out in extended dirges with notes held too long. Decent lyricism, at least. Too much filler. I find their post-shoegaze stuff in general easier to accept now and I’m not as reactionary towards the stylistic shift, but genre aside they just had their best songwriting during their early era. As far as Adam and Eve goes, “Future Boy,” “Delicious,” “Broken Nose,” and “Satellite” are the takeaways.