Undercover - Devotion
1992/2018, LoFidelity
1. Work It Out
2. Man, Oh Man
3. Sea of Tranquility
4. Purple Flower
5. Devotion
6. Promenade
7. Where I Should Be
8. Dark Night
9. All That I Am
10. So Wonderful
Bonus Tracks
11. Cry Myself To Sleep (Live)
12. Witch Hunt (Live)
13. Devotion (Live)
14. Promenade (Acoustic Live)
15. Devotion (Live)
16. So Wonderful (Live)
A long, long time ago...back when the world was new, Undercover's Devotion inspired my youth group's logo. See, there's a song called "Purple Flower" on here and along with the mention of a purple flower in The Choir's "If I Had a Yard" we thought there was some sort of something going on. So a purple flower was our logo for "The Hippy Youth Group." Named that because a bunch of other kids from another district were like, "look at those hippies over there." Yes, I know Circle Slide pre-dated Devotion by two years so there couldn't have possibly been any correlation. No need to send letters.
Anyway, this was my first introduction to Undercover. I saw the previous album, Balance of Power, in my local bookstore but chose something else over it. I came into the scene way too late to have ever heard their more punk stuff. Devotion rocks pretty hard and while I didn't love it originally, I've grown quite fond of it lately. Quite a familiar refrain I've been singing in reviews these days. I blame it on trying to reclaim my lost youth. The original is really hard to find but the band has completed a Kickstarted a reissue and that's where my copy came from. The extra tracks are all right, mostly live stuff. I also appreciate that they recreated the liner notes of the original album. I know it's kind of a weird, small thing but sometimes when these reissues come out they redo the liner notes and often they don't look as good.
Useless Fact: As far as I know Ojo Taylor is no longer a Christian and is a college professor somewhere.
This was my second Undercover album. I had discovered Balance Of Power from 1990 first, and it has become my hands down favorite over the years. I must have listened to that album hundreds of times when it was released. Devotion took a little time for me to get into mainly due to the brighter hues and colors of the songs, although there are still plenty of shadows to be found within songs such as Work It Out and the title track. Devotion still holds up as a classic from a bygone era however. I just backed the reissue campaign on Kickstarter, but to be honest, it was mainly to get a shot at the Balance Of Power reissue next year, providing Devotion was successful. Now it looks like there will indeed be a Balance Of Power reissue. Anyway, nice review. I enjoy reading reviews of these lost albums from my youth.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by! I'm glad you enjoyed the review. I'll probably be backing the Balance of Power kickstarter too just so I can hear that album. I've been thinking about checking out their older stuff but I just haven't had the time.
DeleteI didn't come to Undercover until well after their relevance, and "Devotion" was an album I didn't hear until I had heard everything else before it, and had been listening to that for years. It still hasn't quite grabbed me the way I hoped it would, but "Sea of Tranquility" came up in my random shuffle the other day, and I dug it, so I might have to give this one more time to grow on me.
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