The First of a Million Kisses

Looking back, it was a very odd situation, but performances that depended on machinery to some degree dominated the popular music scene of the late 1980s. Into it burst Fairground Attraction, holding firmly to a policy of making their own music without machines or high technology. Their central figure, Eddi Reader, had sung as a street musician in her native Glasgow from her late teens and later busked across Europe with a circus. Her sincerity and uninhibited release of spirit go beyond mere volume or energy, soaking into the listener's heart like holy water.

Yet, looking calmly at the design of this light, stylish album, one notices how deftly it incorporates the elegance of old jazz, and how organically it connects with Eddi's latent taste, formed when she first admired Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland as a child. The striking Elliott Erwitt sleeve photograph plays its part beautifully too. The ‘brilliant nostalgia’ I felt on this delightful record at the time has not faded at all a quarter of a century later.