Here’s Tom with the Weather

A conscious land-grab for the post-Britpop musical milieu, 1999’s H.M.S. Fable was supposed to finally give Liverpool’s ill-fated Shack the break they had so long deserved. While it was their most commercially successful album to date, stardom didn’t beckon and the Head brothers largely remained a cult phenomenon, adored by the faithful but unlikely to be bothered by the paparazzi. As 2003 follow-up …Here’s Tom with the Weather showed, however, Shack’s talents still eclipsed almost every other retro-minded act of the preceding decade. The record slipped back into the narcotic haze of 1997’s majestic side-line The Magical World Of The Strands, and the waifs and strays of the city’s drug culture once again populate these twinkling, alluring songs. Sgt Pepper-era Beatles had they swapped LSD for heroin and found themselves on their uppers, “On The Terrace” is one of Mick Head’s most beautiful, pathos-soaked songs, while brother John’s “Miles Apart” drifts in a fug of orchestral beauty worthy of their beloved Love.