The Lilac Time - Tree (1989)

In early 1989, the Lilac Time's record company Fontana/Phonogram asked the band to begin recording their second album, which the band had hoped to record at their country retreat in the Malvern Hills, although Phonogram insisted that it be recorded in a modern studio not far from the company's London headquarters instead. It was originally intended to be a double album titled 'Tree', with one album consisting of singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy's songs and the other one of instrumentals, primarily composed by his brother Nick. Fontana refused to release it in that format, and so the record instead became a single album, with the revised title of 'Paradise Circus', and made up of twelve tracks written by Stephen and one by Nick. Many of the instrumentals that were recorded during the sessions instead saw release on the b-sides of the singles taken from 'Paradise Circus' and its follow-up '& Love for All', as well as on the first album by Nick Duffy's spin-off band Bait. The sound that Duffy and engineer/producer Tony Phillips were attempting to achieve on the recordings was later described by Duffy as a "small folky sound without the de rigueur large ambient snare drums of the age", but as the recording sessions progressed, Fontana became unhappy with the music that the band had committed to tape, and insisted that they return to the studio to cut more commercial songs which could be released as singles, while also urging them to "Americanize" their sound - something that was reportedly parodied by Duffy in his song 'American Eyes'. Fontana also insisted that the pedal steel guitar was lowered in volume, as the wife of one of the Phonogram executives didn't like sound of the instrument (!!). As a result of this, which served to both annoy the band and delay the album's release, it didn't appear until October 1989, two years after the release of the band's debut album. When 'Paradise Circus' was reissued in 2006, its bonus tracks included an additional twelve instrumentals from the recording sessions that had been intended for the second disc of the proposed double album, and so I've extracted them and made them into a stand-alone record, with its own cover art of a Peking lilac tree. 

Track listing

01 Ponderosa Pine 
02 Night Mail/Dirty Armour 
03 Shepherd's Plaid 
04 Ounce Of Nails 
05 Spin á Cavalu 
06 Australian Worm 
07 On Milkwood Road 
08 Night Soil 
09 Rubovia 
10 Silver Dagger 

11 November 
12 Paradise Circus (Old Smithy version)