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Track Listings
| 1. Stranger Things |
| 2. Ask A Thousand Times |
| 3. Skyscraping |
| 4. Who Can I Turn To? |
| 5. Rolling Sevens |
| 6. Only The Best Will Do |
| 7. Love Is Its Own Reward |
| 8. Light Years |
| 9. Seven Day Weekend |
| 10. Heaven Knows |
| 11. Faraway |
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I'll be brief. Every track, except one is a cracker. A complete album with no filler, far better than their earlier stuff. I have heard 1000's of albums and would put this in my top 50. Martin Fry should have carried on in this direction.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
For those of us who always loved ABC's second album "Beauty Stab" just (or almost) as much as its perfect predecessor "The Lexicon Of Love", this 1997 album is a return to old strength - sort of. Virtually a Martin Fry solo album, the singer is assisted by multi-instrumentalist Keith Lowndes - and Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory on backing vocals, all three of them sharing writing and production credits. Good songwriting is back in again, a relief after the mostly feeble efforts ever since "Beauty Stab": I mean, honestly, "Night You Murdered Love" or "When Smokey Sings" were just so sloppy and dull compared to anything on their first albums, not to speak of all the other forgettable songs.
So with lots of good songs for this album here, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot of the song material goes heavily in the "Glam" direction, e.g. Roxy Music circa 1975/1979, not a million miles from "Beauty Stab" indeed, but "Scyscraping" suffers from the abscence of a live rhythm section. The programmed drums and bass lines have no power at all (remember: Beauty Stab actually featured the rhythm section that played on Roxy's "Avalon") and the rhythmic saxophone samples are poor ersatz for Stephen Singleton. So while all this is a bit of a let-down, "Skyscraping" is still worth listening to. Stand-out tracks are "Only The Best Will Do", "Seven Day Weekend and the epic "Light Years", also the single "Stranger Things".
So with lots of good songs for this album here, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot of the song material goes heavily in the "Glam" direction, e.g. Roxy Music circa 1975/1979, not a million miles from "Beauty Stab" indeed, but "Scyscraping" suffers from the abscence of a live rhythm section. The programmed drums and bass lines have no power at all (remember: Beauty Stab actually featured the rhythm section that played on Roxy's "Avalon") and the rhythmic saxophone samples are poor ersatz for Stephen Singleton. So while all this is a bit of a let-down, "Skyscraping" is still worth listening to. Stand-out tracks are "Only The Best Will Do", "Seven Day Weekend and the epic "Light Years", also the single "Stranger Things".
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Skyscraping was to be ABC's final album, released in 1997 with its futuristic cover design, and these days appears to be generally regarded as the album ABC wish to forget. (Even 2001's "The Very Best Of" compilation totally ignores it). That's a shame, as this is actually quite a good album.
"Stranger Things" was excellent single material and should have been a hit, and elsewhere there is good songwriting and catchiness, and no duff tracks here at all. Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17) contributes much, and the 1997 sound and production is quite rich and clean (nice acoustic guitars).
It sounds in places very reminiscent of several classic bands of the 70s/80s, and this seems to have been very much the intention here -- it doesn't sound like Fry is 'stealing' ideas at all from his influences. Skyscraping is by no means an album Mr Fry should be ashamed of -- quite the opposite!
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