WHALE... The Band

I am surprised that album holds up at all! (Used to love it back in the day)

Both albums are still pretty good, it's true.

Tricky's presence on the debut was quite welcome.

until i scoured the credits (and subsequently this thread), i had no idea re the Tricky involvement with this band.

Saw them on tour together back in the 90s.

Just wrote this 25th anniversary commemoration of We Care. Enjoy!

https://rockandrollglobe.com/rock/alternative-rock/the-guy-with-the-best-nads-gets-his-armpit-licked-whales-we-care-celebrates-25-years/

really enjoyed that.
cheers for the heads up sir.

awesome article

Oh wow! Excellent, thanks!

Thanks for posting! I would just quibble with your evaluation of "I'm Cold" –

A worthy tune on its own, but no listener is going pay much attention this deep into the album.

– I sure did, at the time; I thought it was transfixing and very effective (it's one of rock's many great "car crash songs").

Also, nice job pointing out the risible boner in Chris Molanphy's CMJ New Music Monthly review (also interesting to compare with his review of the Garbage album, in the same issue).

I love "I'm Cold" but it's a really long CD.

thanks for reading, everyone!

Found a video of them performing "Don't Dream it's Over" on Swedish TV in the style of Jesu (before Jesu). Was not expecting that and would live to hear it in better quality.

That article is a real service to humanity Nate. Thank you.

Wonderful piece, Nate. I remember seeing the “Hobo Humpin’” video in early ‘94, then not finding the CD single until six months later, THEN not finding the album until six months after that. Worth the wait, and I was surprised at how consistent the record was.

Isn’t Rock and Roll Globe owned/founded by Ken Kurson? The same Ken Kurson who proved too toxic for a position with the Trump administration?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/business/ken-kurson-jared-kushner.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsmelORwPRI

One of my offerings for our current singles round-up, in a 90s issue of clemenza's printzine, Radio On:

"We Care," Whale: Yes they do. Thus the casual whomp of a sky-size tailfin, the headphones within headphones crittersystems making a beat for and between Cia Berg's chuckles, chortles, guffaws and giggles of whispered gossip, riddles, confessions, put-downs, put-ons and other confidences. Not non-stop; this really is a band. But she's got this kind of parody of the cosmic rock waif goin' on, re Janis/Anissette/Patti/Tori and a lot more-including her own evident tendencies. So there's also some protective rock caricature at work (the immortal "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe," for instance). Some bad stuff has happened to her, but she doesn't want to be too straight about it or too twisted. There's the incredibly clean-chopping "I Miss Me," and there's this other thing, which I've suppressed memory of the title of, so I won't get up now and go dial up that track "only"-it's so long and so stoning, in terms of sympathy and exasperation and sheer stonery (eventually like riding in a caravan on the motorway where Cliff Burton [and Metallica, basically] died, listening to the Beatles sing, "Picture yourself in a boat on the river," over and over, while clouds and smoke and deflating balloons imprinted with Edvard Munch's "The Scream" blow past your windscreen). Yes, they're Swedish. (8.0)