If you had to choose: MIRAGE vs. TANGO IN THE NIGHT

[Mr Scarrott]

Tango. Maybe I'm biased because it was what first got me into the Mac when I was a student and everybody else was in the cool indie heaven that I could never enter.

The first three tracks just sound epic and really grab you by the whatever. OK, Stevie didn't write SW, but so what? There's nothing that really has that effect on Mirage until Gypsy knocks the preceding four tracks out of the park.

Yes, Tango is uneven, we all know that, but there's a shimmering quality to Lindsey's production that evokes the feel of the title of the album throughout. It's like they're all calling out to and misunderstanding each other, on a hot summer's night across the waves in some Mediterranena idyll. The occasional lapse like WTTRS is banished by a glorious IIM which is nearly as strong as the second side's opener, LL. Lindsey rescues a fragile Stevie who again reveals her confusion in WISYA; he ends the whole thing with a cheery, almost music-hally ditty that seems to mask an inner fear, he's still looking out for love but not in quite so menacingly a manner as in the opener. Somehow, the whole album, although it occasionally creaks, hangs together.

But it's Christine that seems to own it with two anthems, a soothing lullaby that echoes tracks as far back as SMAS, and a beloved joyous song that will forever remind us she's everywhere, despite leaving us.

So Tango, then. Mirage is a pleasant rag-bag of ideas but it was no attempted equivalent to Abbey Road as Tusk was to the White Album and Rumours was to Sergeant Pepper. Maybe the Mac had to wait another album to make that comparison make some sort of sense.