Oil & Gold
Oil & Gold, the third full-length Shriekback album, is widely considered the band's highest moment. Released in 1985 on Island Records after the failure of 1984's Jam Science on Arista Records, Oil & Gold saw the band metamorphose from contemplative to rocking. The addition of Martyn Barker on drums and Lu Edmonds on guitar gives many of the songs an almost punk rock feeling.
In many ways, Oil & Gold is the bridge between the old trio of Barry Andrews, Carl Marsh, and Dave Allen, and the new vehicle for Andrews alone. Longtime singer Marsh left the band halfway through the recording, leaving Andrews to take over the vocals. Still, the album's highlights, including the three opening songs, sung by Marsh, and the minor hit, "Nemesis", became the band's signature sound.
The two songs "This Big Hush" and "Coelocanth" were featured in Michael Mann's 1986 film Manhunter and "Faded Flowers" was featured in Band of the Hand. The song "Everything That Rises Must Converge" refers to the short story of that name by Flannery O'Connor. The song "Nemesis" is about the hypothetical star orbiting the Sun.
Read more about Oil & Gold: Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words oil and/or gold:
“Eat what you can get.
Where’s the salt
in this dump of a village?
And, Lucky Man,
what’s the use
of a salty thing
if there’s no oil in it?”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)