Melville (album)

Melville is the second studio album by the Canadian rock band Rheostatics, released in 1991.[1] This album garnered wide airplay across Canada, and the single "Record Body Count" was a significant hit for the band on Canadian alternative rock stations and MuchMusic in 1991.[2]

Melville
Studio album by
Rheostatics
ReleasedApril 1991
Recorded1990, Reaction Studios, Toronto, Ontario
GenreIndie rock
LabelGreen Sprouts
ProducerMichael Phillip Wojewoda
Rheostatics chronology
Greatest Hits
(1987)		 Melville
(1991)		 Whale Music
(1992)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic link

The album's title was a complex, multilayered reference, meant to simultaneously evoke both writer Herman Melville and the town of Melville, Saskatchewan, as well as Lewis Melville, a frequent collaborator with the band who appeared as a session musician on the album.[3]

The song “You Are Very Star”, a bonus track on the CD release, ends with a hockey announcer’s narration in which the band is presented as a hockey team competing for the league’s top ranking against 13 Engines, Scott B. Sympathy and Tom Cochrane.

In 1996, the Canadian music magazine Chart conducted a reader poll to determine the best Canadian albums of all time. Melville placed 16th in that poll. When the magazine conducted a follow up poll in 2000, Melville placed fifth, behind only Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Sloan and Rheostatics’ 1992 album Whale Music. In the magazine’s third poll in 2005, Melville placed 44th, but was one of only 25 albums to have placed in the Top 50 in all three polls.

Track listing

All songs are credited to the Rheostatics, except where noted.

  1. “Record Body Count" – 1:54
  2. “Aliens (Christmas 1988)” – 4:17
  3. “Northern Wish” (Janet Morassutti, Rheostatics) – 4:16
  4. “Saskatchewan” – 5:56
  5. “Horses” – 4:47
  6. “Christopher” – 4:25
  7. “Chanson les Ruelles” – 2:49
  8. “Lying’s Wrong” – 2:44
  9. “It” – 4:29
  10. “When Winter Comes” – 6:32
  11. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (Gordon Lightfoot) – 8:45
  12. “You Are Very Star” – 3:28

The last two songs are bonus tracks available only on the CD version of the album.

References
  1. Mitch Potter, "Rheostatics take honest look at their home and native land". Toronto Star, March 15, 1991.
  2. Bill Reynolds, "Rheostatics show they know how to throw a good party". The Globe and Mail, August 3, 1991.
  3. Roch Parisien, "Alternative rockers produce a uniquely Canadian musical form". Ottawa Citizen, April 5, 1991.
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