Lost/Forgotten Album #369

[Jon]

Guess what?

It's album #12.3 in the series!

This week it's the 1989 release from Fiona, Heart Like A Gun. With THIS album cover, it looks like she means business!

The album reached #150 on the Billboard chart. You might have heard track #2. Or maybe not. 

This is a quick one since we're already going to the allmusic.com review:

At her boiling-point pinnacle, Fiona's soaring, occasionally corrosive voice finally gets the fine-tuned material it deserves -- and she co-wrote nine of the ten tunes. Listeners learn over the power chords that "Mariel" is in deep trouble, though they don't learn how or why. "Victoria Cross" is getting put to bed after a long night on a turning point; "If it wasn't all so sexual," the protagonist admits, "well, we might have stayed friends." "Where the Cowboys Go" pleads for a lover to leave town, "while we still can/While we're young," but the pleader lacks the independence of Fine Young Cannibals' similar "Don't Look Back," and her resolve slips as the bass synth oscillates. The material is consistently strong, but also all of a piece, and this friend on a ledge, or that bit of lesbian intrigue, form settings in an overarching mythology; these songs embody the train-crash-intense emotions of the young (or the emotionally intense of any age). In their exhilarating and harrowing street-opera encounters over greasy pizza and sticky Coke, at a house party with the folks out of town, or in an upstairs bedroom real or imagined, they pack the thick misery and release of the "Gotterdammerung." Like anything with intensity, it's tempting to laugh; when Fiona and Kip Winger moan, "you're sexing me," at each other, someone with farm experience could imagine them sedately side by side, determining the maleness or femaleness of newly hatched chicks. Against that, though, you might be well-advised to ask yourself the last time you felt this much blood in your veins.

Heart Like A Gun

1. Little Jeannie (Got The Look Of Love)
2. Everything You Do (You're Sexing Me)
3. Where The Cowboys Go
4. Mariel
5. Draw The Line
6. Here It Comes Again
7.Bringing In The Beast
8. Victoria Cross
9. Look At Me Now
10. When Pink Turns To Blue

Availability: Around $11 new or used.

[Scott]

Starting typing in my response and had formulated one of my best and wittiest replies ever when the power went out...  Ugh.  Went something like this...

Your sub-series is a romp through Fionas entire catalog (but wittier) but its missing that one thing everyone likes about her...  and then I forget (but it was smart and witty!)... oh well!

Nope, don't recall that second track at all.  So far its another slice of time, containing all the sounds of 1989.  Its like a Hit Parade without a real hit though.  Half way through and I don't hear any good arguments for a RED replacement track.  Sounds a heckuva lot time a Belinda Carlisle album.  Ya, nothing here to argue with you about, its an album from 1989 no doubt!!

Oh ya, that one thing its missing?  Sideboob...

[Jon]

Wow.

Just.....wow.

You need to stop watching Toy Story.

[Yngve J. Chapleen]

I remember this from Draw The Line. It was the song that prompted me to buy the CD as well. Also heard Here It Comes Again, before the purchase. Did my research prior to committing and I think I thought the same thing I think now: Messano did a really good job on the first one, but Heart Like A Gun is a better release as far as the whole package goes... and not just the sideboobs... because then, it would have been a different story.

The only problem I have with this CD, is the credits. On mine (the 1989 original) it lists all the guest musicians in a bulk. If I remember correctly, Brad Gillis, Dweezil Zappa, Rod Morgenstein (among others) played here, but I don't know who did what on which track?

Does the Rock Candy Edition list them out, song by song?

I like this album. And the theme of the subseries is: CD's produced by Beau Hill.

[Jon]

No, the RC version does not.

[Yngve J. Chapleen]

This board echoes.

I hate echoes.

[RJhog (Admin)]

So what is this, the third Fiona album you've posted?  I think I missed one, still have to get back to it at some point.

This is certainly pop, just as I would imagine.  But there is some pretty fine guitar playing now and then.  That second song is a bit cheesy, but I'm a big fan of Kip Winger, so I can live with it. 

The only really bad song here is Look At Me Now, it's is quite annoying.  Otherwise, not at all a bad listen.

Oh yeah, sometimes it sounds like she's trying to sing a bit too high, her voice not quite being able to reach where it needs to be.

You may have the red track right.  Draw The Line is pretty good too.