Thompson Twins - Big Trash (1989)

Saw this in the $2 clearance bin not long after I saw Tom Bailey perform last year, so why not?

Billboard, October 14, 1989, p. 82

Unfortunately, this album wasn't the comeback that Billboard predicted - but that doesn't mean it's a bad album. Tom Bailey can write some hooks and while there are few tunes here that are terribly derivative, I enjoy it overall. Certainly more than Trouser Press, who writes

Intended as an amused comment on junk culture, Big Trash is an uninspired waste of time and plastic, a lame pairing of grade-school rhymes and bland music that is, at best, self-imitative.

Ouch. If you like the sound of a group, is "self-imitative" an insult? Robert Christgau goes the other direction: "No one cares, but this is their best by miles.  B+" I fall somewhere in between - I won't pull out this CD often, but I certainly won't mind when a song from the album turns up while I'm listening to files in shuffle mode.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: 143

Tracks: I dig the lead track and lead single, Sugar Daddy, which was the group's seventh and final Top 40 appearance, peaking at #28. Also fun are Queen Of The USA (with Deborah Harry), TV On, Salvador Dali's Car, Dirty Summer's Day, and Wild.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None, as it's a recent pick up. I completely missed this album in the fall of 1989 as that's the time I was getting married and starting my career. I don't recall hearing "Sugar Daddy" on the radio and MTV was in its headbanger phase by that time so I pretty much stopped watching.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Science Fiction (2018)
Greatest Hits (1996)
Here's To Future Days (1985)