Moss Side Story | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 6 March 1989 | |||
Length | 54:00(with bonus tracks) | |||
Label | Mute STUMM 53 | |||
Producer | Barry Adamson | |||
Barry Adamson chronology | ||||
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Moss Side Story is the debut solo album of British musician Barry Adamson released in 1989. The album is a concept album, a soundtrack album to a non-existent crime film.
The music is almost completely instrumental except for occasional screams, vocal samples and a choir. To achieve the soundtrack effect, the song titles are descriptive of a film noir plot outline. The inner sleeve came with a short story written by Dave Graney which added to the concept. This complemented outer sleeve which displays the tag line: "In a black and white world, murder brings a touch of colour..." In a 2017 interview, Adamson reported that he recorded Moss Side Story due to his fascination with film music and as "a calling card [to] send it around to people" in hopes of being hired to write music for actual films. [1]
Moss Side is a neighbourhood in the city of Manchester, Great Britain, where Adamson was born. The album title is a play on words in reference to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story . The title of "The Swinging Detective" plays on Dennis Potter's series of television plays The Singing Detective , while "Round Up the Usual Suspects" quotes a line made famous by Claude Rains in Casablanca .
CD versions came with three bonus tracks. Two of them - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Man with The Golden Arm" (composed by Elmer Bernstein) - are drawn from TV or film themes. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" is a reworking of the theme to the series of the same name, Charles Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette."
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
MusicHound Rock | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The NME review of the albums describes it as a "Grand filmic suite intended as the soundtrack to a "provocative film thriller set in Manchester's Moss Side" and that Moss Side Story is "one of the best soundtracks ever, the fact that it has no accompanying movie is a trifling irrelevance." [4]
A retrospective review by Ritchie Unterberger of Allmusic described the album as "a sinister and edgy soundscape" that remained Adamson's best solo effort by far. [2]
The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . [5]
Year | Publication | Country | Accolade | Rank | |
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1989 | NME | United Kingdom | "Albums of the Year" | 34 | [6] |
All music composed by Barry Adamson; except "Everything Happens to Me" by Barry Adamson and Seamus Beaghen; "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" by Charles François Gounod and "The Man with the Golden Arm" by Elmer Bernstein.
Act one - 'The Ring's the Thing'
Act two - 'Real Deep Cool'
Act three - 'The Final Irony'
'For Your Ears Only'
Technical
Chart (1989) | Peak position |
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UK Indie Chart [7] | 9 |