Stone Roses "I Am The Resurrection"

Stone Roses “I Am The Resurrection” (mp3)

I was inspired to pull the debut album from the Stone Roses from the shelves and give it a spin (which in turn became multiple spins) after a discussion with this guy involving the merits surrounding the album. He was surprised to hear that I rank it only slightly higher (but still higher nonetheless) than the Television Personalities’, Privilege; another 1989 release that shared many of the same production qualities and overall sound (and talked about in these pages here) as the Stones Roses but both still managing to remain quintessentially British.

The Stones Roses is an album that always makes me very happy to hear, as it was a constant presence all throughout my college years. I have many fond memories from this particular period of my life when this record would get played during a house party, a road trip or whenever my friends and I were just sitting around outside drinking lots of beer and having heated discussions about the inevitable mysteries of life.

It was one of those rare albums that we all latched on to as a good part of the production, and the guitars in particular, had a shimmering quality to it that, when backed with those aggressive funk-styled drums, made it difficult to decide whether you should dance a’la the Happy Mondays or rock out like many of the dream pop acts were urging us to do. There just seemed to be something for everyone to enjoy, which we did immensely, and not once during any of this do I ever remember hearing someone say, “Could you maybe put something else on?”

And while I would never argue the joy that is the first four songs along with other classics such as "(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister" and "Fools Gold," to my ears "I Am The Resurrection" is the one Stone Roses song that perfectly personifies what the band was all about; moments of quiet beauty before bouts of raw aggression before ending with a funk-laden outro that made you want to dance, dance, dance. It’s still my favorite Stone Roses song to this day.

A couple of years later, when hearing Privilege for the first time, the Stone Roses was the first album that immediately sprung to mind as both of these records share a particular production style that was found only during that brief period of time after the Byrdsy jangle of the 80s American underground and C86 scene had begun to dissipate but before grunge and Brit-pop took over the airwaves.