Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time were gloriously out of time as the 90s began. Their brand of soft pop with folky overtones and nimble guitar work wasn’t only out of fashion, it was barely a blip on the radar. Creation’s Alan McGee was still a fan though, and he signed the group to his label and set them to work on “Astronauts”. Fittingly, it made nary a nod to the prevailing gazes, grunges, or raves of the day. Instead, it featured Duffy and new sidekick Sagat Guirey – who had replaced Nick Duffy — unspooling a clutch of lovely tunes set to subtle backing made up of gently plucked Spanish guitars, gentle vocal harmonies, soothing synth pads, and the politest of drum beats.
The opening tracks are a bit of a red herring as “In Iverna Gardens” does indeed have insistent drums and some blippy synths, while “Hats Off Here Comes the Girl” sports some groovy backward guitar riffing. They are still far off the beaten track; far too pretty and sweet to compete with the baggy hordes.
Most of the album is pitched somewhere between the amorphous dream folk of tracks like “Fortunes”, the fragile storytelling of “Grey Skies and Work Things”, the loping country pop of “The Whisper of Your Mind”, and the restrained psychedelia of “Sunshine’s Daughter.”
Centered by Duffy’s reliably warm and welcoming vocals, it’s a set of songs that is easy to appreciate for their craft while also letting the gentle warmth flood in. Of course, this whole discussion of the album’s placement securely outside the mainstream ignores “Dreaming,” a soft pop song given a techno remix by labelmates Hypnotone. Even given the 303 squelches and funky drums, Duffy’s able to make it sound pastoral somehow, much in the way that Ultramarine was able to make thier synths sound like they were made of paper and wood.
It’s a neat trick that somehow doesn’t ruin the mood so precisely set by the rest of the album; it serves to enhance it. This was the last Lilac Time record for a few years, with Duffy feeling like maybe the band had run its course. This version of the band ends on a very high mark with “Astronauts“. [The 2024 deluxe reissue of the album features an album’s worth of demos recorded by Duffy solo at his house; mostly of songs that made the record but also two — ‘We Came From Anywhere’ and ‘You Come By – that didn’t. It also comes with a disc of live recordings made during the final run of shows for this edition of the band, pulling songs from throughout their career to date.
Housed in a lovely sleeve design and paired with a lengthy essay written by Needle Mythology owner Pete Paphides, this is a definitive look at an important, often glossed over album, of both Stephen Duffy’s career and the era in which it was issued.
The Fat Angel Sings 