Hipsway - Hipsway
There is a bit of a pop binge on the turntable and CD player this week at ESWA Towers. Back in my youth we were treated to many credible pop acts, many of whom vanished into the mire of commercial dirge soon after fame was found. These were the bands it was seemingly ok to like up until they made it onto daytime mass radio - oh how fickle we were!. These days, as I am now in my late forties, I can readily admit to buying records by Curiosity Killed The Cat, Swing Out Sister, Love And Money, Big Audio Dynamite and Hipsway among many many others. I will confirm however that I never ever bought any Wet Wet Wet - they were just shite. Most of these singles were ditched as soon as they found chart popularity, but I have held onto the Hipsway album which I picked up on CD after release, it has never been reissued, so that's more than enough excuse for a blog post.
This Glasgow band were responsible for three great singles, all of which are featured here: The Broken Years, Ask The Lord and The Honeythief. Mercury plugged them to death with a multitude of 12" mixes resulting in minimal chart success, it wasn't until The Honeythief was featured on Top Of The Pops did they breach the UK Top 20. We all bought the double 12" pack didn't we?
The album never really sold in any great quantity as perhaps Hipsway were just too cool, or not good enough looking for the teen chart public, or your gran? A second album flopped and then they were gone, so here for posterity (well just two weeks actually) is their debut in a lossless format complete with those cracking 12" mixes.
Ripped from a compact disc album released on Mercury Records (826 8212) in 1986 to high quality lossless flac audio.
01. The Honeythief02. Ask The Lord
03. Bad Thing Longing
04. Upon A Thread
05. Long White Car
06. The Broken Years
07. Tinder
08. Forbidden
09. Set This Day Apart
10. The Honeythief (Galus Mix)
11. Ask The Lord (Extended Version)
12. The Broken Years (Extended Version)
