'They call us lonely when we're really just alone.'
What Aztec Camera did with a few songs between 1981 and 1984 is quite remarkable. To say Roddy Frame was an extraordinary talent doesn't do him full justice. But wonderful though much of what he has done since is, and he still comes up with songs that stagger me, it's what he achieved in those years that are surely what he'll be remembered for.
I just listened to the whole of High Land, Hard Rain again. I never need much of an excuse. It's an often repeated mantra to friends on my part that it's the finest record made up of songs written by someone of seventeen, written about being seventeen. It came out when I was seventeen and I fell for it immediately, fell for it hard, and have fallen again and again for it ever since. It always makes me feel as if I'm seventeen. What more could you want from an album.
Frame has remained a player and put out some wonderful songs and albums over the following decades but this is surely his masterpiece. I doubt that even he would disagree with that. It set the bar just too high for everyone, perhaps even himself. I could have chosen either Oblivious or Walk Out To Winter for this but the byline for this post determined it was the former. It might be appropriate for Frame's gravestone when that day comes. One of the very great romantics. Lower or upper case. You decide.
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