Hooters - One Way Home

Hooters released their follow up to Nervous Night in the summer of 1987. It hadn't seemed like two years between albums. When the album dropped I picked it up right away. I really don't recall my reaction at the time. I do know I immediately pulled "Satellite" off the album as my favourite track and it ended up on a lot of mix tapes. There were a couple other songs that I liked too, but I'll admit to having shelved the album pretty quickly after hearing the highlights, and giving it a few spins. It was a damning judgment, but this was 1987 and I was getting so much music that my attention span was pretty short. However, there was always something about the band I liked, and I would pick up their next album Zig Zag in '89 and then I would more or less lose track of the band.

Getting back to One Way Home, I will say that it's been a hoot (sorry) getting to hear this again. Now, I do have this on CD, but finding a pretty mint copy of the record was too much to pass up. I have always found it really, really irritating when the jacket doesn't list the songs in order, and the band does one better by including a lyric sheet that has the songs in a different order as well. Nothing like making you work to follow along.

Musically the band was top shelf, and they were a rock band who incorporated a lot of different influences that has helped keep this sounding pretty fresh after all these years. "Satellite" is still to me the centre of the album, but really there are no duds here and the folk elements blend so well with the harder elements that were sometimes infused with a reggae swagger.

In many ways this to me the best of their trilogy of major label releases in the '80s. It's their most cohesive and the one that should have been huge. True, as I sit here all I can remember of Zig Zag was their cover of "500 Miles" and "Brother, Don't You Walk Away" so I'm just making a blanket judgment based on an admittedly faulty memory. After all, before I sat down and revisited One Way Home I didn't remember much aside from the big songs - although I'd always thought of this as a stronger album than Nervous Night despite not having the killer hits. I know right, that makes no sense. Feelings, sigh.

There was something special about these guys and sadly One Way Home didn't perform nearly as well as it's double platinum predecessor. It would go gold which was something, but from there it was a steady spiral downward, at least from a commercial perspective.

Too bad. This was a smokin' album. I don't know if it was Eric Bazilian or John Lilly who handled the lead guitar duties on the album, but I've always loved the guitar work on those first few albums - so tasty. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Eric, the guy played pretty much everything but drums on the album. This isn't to sleep on the other creative in the band, Rob Hyman - Rob and Eric shared lead vocals, splitting the duties more or less down the middle. Their voices were remarkably similar (at least to me), and they often sang counter harmony to each other creating a blended vocal that gave them a lot of their sound.

One Way Home is a really solid album.

I think I'm going to have to pull out Zig Zag now and see what else I've missed.