Roll Up and Shine (Performance And Cocktails - Stereophonics)

Member Name: lulu2231

Product:	Performance And Cocktails - Stereophonics
Date:	30/06/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant, an everyday listen

Disadvantages: none!

As I wrote a review for word gets around, and defined that album as the foundation for Perfromance and Cocktails, well, it only seems apt that i review Performance and Cocktails too.

The album was released in March 1999 and gave the Stereophonics three straight top ten singles, 'The bartender and the thief' reaching number three, and both 'just looking' and 'pick a part thats new' reaching number four in the uk charts. The band also released 'i wouldn't believe your radio' and 'hurry up and wait' from the album.

Performance and Cocktails was the 5th best selling album of 1999, and relly gave the phonics the recognition they well deserved as a band.

The album follows a similar pattern to Word gets around, starts of very upbeat and rocky, then towards the middle of the album slows down a little, then gets a bit more catchy, and slows down to mellow the listener out. Though, whatever style of song you listen to on the album Kelly Jones voice just fits so perfectly and smoothly.

This is a brilliant album and many people see it as the bands defining moment. However, I personally feel that word gets around was much rawer and better.

Unfortunately, what could be seen as both a weakness and a strength, the steroephonics albums all seem to have thier own 'theme'. They dont really seem to stick to a 'style' of music (i know they are mainly an 'indie' band, but thier albums generally have different feels to them,) I feel this possibly reflects that bands growth and feelings at the time of writing.
Performance and Cocktails was the second album to come from the popular welsh trio, and you can sense it was written while they were 'on a high' so to speak, following the sucess of their first album.

To date this has possiblty been the bands most popular album, and (as seen on wikipedia) has sold over 2 million copies to date.

The credit for all the songs on the album went to all three members. This was definatly a time when the band were still good friends and knew how to work together in perfect harmony in and out of the studio, and it reflects on the album.

This is possibly in my opinion one of the best albums of the late 90's

Summary: Not quite as raw as Word gets around, but a more polished grown up version.