Put The Needle On The Record - Week #11

Put The Needle On The Record Week #11 OMD - Sugar Tax

I think we all have albums we haven't played in years and this feature, hopefully, will encourage you to play the featured album we choose each week.

For this weeks feature we go back to May 1991 and the OMD album, "Sugar Tax", this was the first of 3 OMD albums that were recorded without Paul Hunphreys, who had left the band in 1991 and the first OMD album since "The Pacific Age", that was released in 1986.

This is still one of my favourite OMD albums and has some quality tracks on it, although some of the tracks chosen as singles is questionable. There were 3 singles released from the album, the brilliant "Sailing On The Seven Seas" (which reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart), I remember the radio alarm clock went off for work one morning and this song came on when the alarm went off and I thought to myself, this is OMD, i'm sure this is OMD and it was, a total surprise because I thought OMD had ended with "The Pacific Age" album! What a way to come back, the outstanding "Pandora's Box", one of OMD's best singles of all time (which reached number 7 in the UK Singles chart), "Then You Turn Away", which was never a good enough track to release as a single (hardly surprising that it only peaked at number 50 un the UK Singles Chart) and "Call My Name", which is a good track but the remix for the single version was weak to say the least and the 12 inch version is unlistenable! (again this made a poor showing on the UK Singles chart, also peaking at number 50). "Speed Of Light" should have been released as the 3rd single with a 4th single scrapped.

The album peaked at number 3 in the UK albums chart.

Track listing

Sailing On The Seven Seas
Pandora's Box
Then You Turn Away
Speed Of Light
Was It Something I Said
Big Town
Call My Name
Apollo XI
Walking On Air
Walk Tall
Neon Lights
All That Glitters

So if you have the album in your collection and have n't played it in a while, dig it out and give it a spin!