Some bands Create albums that are so-so and continue to do this till they get old and release a dance album to boost sales and be down with the cool kids. Then there are artists who release 1 single album of sheer brilliance then split and never release anything again, and here i give you "Octopus".
Lead singer Mark Shearer spotted a certain "Damon Albarn" walking back stage give them some constructive criticism. When Octopus got signed to Blur's Food label he had these wise words for Damon "He'd better watch out, because we're on the up. We're not here to be this year's darlings and then disappear."
And looking back now 15 years later........ thats just what happened.
The album im talking about is "From A to B" which was released in 1996 on Food records. The 1st single taken from the album was the Punky "Magazine" which i remember buying on i think Red coloured vinyl, which sounded like crap but looked pretty!. At the time it was an effort to get a single by an indie band into the top 100 but their 2nd single "Your smile" reached the amazing heights of #42 and was officially a hit with Radio 1's evening session. They only released 4 singles and 1 album but i think the band had so much to offer. "From A to B" has a rich landscape of so many themes and sounds, combining guitars, horn section, Beautiful melodies, punk and acoustics. Just listen to tracks like "Saved", "your smile" and the beautiful "Adrenalina" and you you will find the most heart fealt songs of the Britpop generation.
If you do manage to get a copy of the actual album you find that it is desguised as a fold-out colour board game including cut-out tokens that you use to play with the game. I was always Jealous of My mate Geoff for buying the 12" vinyl version as i only had the poxy cd !!.
With so many influences and styles this was one of the best psychedelic tinged albums in the entirety of Britpop.
