Fine Young Cannibals

Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition of this 1985 album from the British Pop hitmakers. Fine Young Cannibals was the eponymous debut album by the trio that came together when David Steele and Andy Cox (previously bass player and guitarist in The Beat) found charismatic singer Roland Gift to complete their new band. Launched with the Top Ten single ‘Johnny Come Home’, the album featured a further three singles, ‘Blue’, ‘Funny How Love Is’ and another huge Top Ten hit with the cover of Elvis Presley's 1969 hit ‘Suspicious Minds’. The album was a considerable UK chart success, peaking at #11 in the album charts in the UK, and enjoying an impressive 27 week chart run. The bonus tracks include the three non-album b-sides and nine remixes of the two top ten hits. The booklet features annotation by Alan Robinson.

Fine Young Cannibals Review

When Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger split from the rest of the English Beat to form General Public, Andy Cox and Dave Steele originally advertised on MTV for a new lead singer for the Beat. When that didn't pan out (although it did work for Wall of Voodoo), Cox and Steele hooked up with the unique and soulful singer Roland Gift and formed the Fine Young Cannibals. Though the trio first hit the mass U.S. consciousness with 1989's electronic dance-pop The Raw and the Cooked, their 1985 debut was a soul-jazz pop charmer that's more low key but every bit as entertaining. Along the lines of early Everything But the Girl (the two groups share a producer, Robin Millar) with a heavier Motown influence, the songs on Fine Young Cannibals are uniformly strong. The singles “Johnny Come Home” (a plea to a runaway that sounds like the Beat's ska stripped down to its tense and obsessive essentials) and “Blue” (one of the more oblique and successful anti-Margaret Thatcher tracks of its era) are terrific, but album tracks like the casually devastating “Funny How Love Is” and the manic “Like a Stranger” (which incongruously ends with a female chorus shrieking “You've been too long in an institution!” repeatedly while Gift tries out his Otis Redding impression) are even better. The album's highlight, though, is a reworking of “Suspicious Minds” (with scarifying backing vocals by Jimmy Somerville) that, while it doesn't replace Elvis' version, certainly takes the song into an interesting new direction. Although often overlooked, especially in the U.S., in the wake of their massively successful follow-up, Fine Young Cannibals is a powerful and satisfying debut. The U.S. CD adds two extended remixes of “Johnny Come Home” and “Suspicious Minds.” Stewart Mason – All Music Guide