Astronauts

Description

With the shoegaze and baggy movements at their zenith, The Lilac Time’s fourth album was released at a moment when the left-field music zeitgeist was shaped by the nascent shoegaze, baggy and grunge movements. Whilst Astronauts conformed to none of those trends, neither was it the record Stephen had in his head when he finally finished working on it. We’ll never know how that record would have sounded, but it’s hard to imagine a better version of the album he did end up making. The songwriter who brought ‘A Taste of Honey’ and ‘Hats Off, Here Comes the Girl’ into the world envisaged the sort of choruses that would jump from the single speaker of your favourite transistor and lodge themselves into the collective memory bank.

Tracklisting

Disc 1
1. In Iverna Gardens – The Lilac Time
2. Hats Off Here Comes the Girl – The Lilac Time
3. Fortunes – The Lilac Time
4. A Taste for Honey – The Lilac Time
5. Grey Skies and Work Things – The Lilac Time
6. FinistŠre – The Lilac Time
7. Dreaming – The Lilac Time
8. The Whisper of Your Mind – The Lilac Time
9. The Darkness of Her Eyes – The Lilac Time
10. Sunshines Daughter – The Lilac Time
11. North Kensington – The Lilac Time
12. Madresfield – The Lilac Time
Disc 2
1. Astronauts Meditation – The Lilac Time
2. Writing Dreaming – The Lilac Time
3. We Came from Anywhere – The Lilac Time
4. She Is All Colour – The Lilac Time
5. Writing Finist‚re – The Lilac Time
6. This Immortal Promise – The Lilac Time
7. In Iverna Dreaming – The Lilac Time
8. Hats Off #1 – The Lilac Time
9. Writing the Whisper – The Lilac Time
10. You Come By – The Lilac Time
11. North Kensington Idea – The Lilac Time
12. Madresfield (Demo) – The Lilac Time
Disc 3
1. Fields (Sunday 28th October 1990, Derby College of Higher Education) – The Lilac Time
2. The Road to Happiness (Thursday 16th May 1991, London, Underworld) – The Lilac Time
3. Black Velvet (Underworld) – The Lilac Time
4. Julie Christie (Saturday 18th May 1991, Manchester University) – The Lilac Time
5. And On We Go (Derby) – The Lilac Time
6. Dreaming (Manchester) – The Lilac Time
7. Icing On the Cake (Derby) – The Lilac Time
8. Lost Girl in the Midnight Sun (Underworld) – The Lilac Time
9. If the Stars Shine Tonight (Manchester) – The Lilac Time