Cross Purpose

Updated on Nov 28, 2024

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Released 23 February 1999 Artist Spooky Tooth Label Ruf Records		Length 42:36 Release date 23 February 1999

Recorded 22 July 1997 – 8 November 1998 Genres Rock music, Progressive rock, Art rock Producers Chris Stainton, Chris Blackwell Similar Spooky Tooth albums, Rock music albums

Cross Purpose is a reunion album released by Spooky Tooth on Ruf Records in 1999. It was the first album released by the band in twenty-five years, following The Mirror, released in 1974, and the first album in thirty years to feature the majority of the original band lineup, which last recorded Spooky Two, in 1969.

History

The album was initially planned in 1997, when three tracks ("How", "Kiss it Better" and "Sunshine") were recorded by Harrison, Kellie, Grosvenor and Ridley in England. The project then became stalled due to the distances between band members. The songs were originally to be released in 1998 as part of the album tentatively called Sunshine, which would have combined the three tracks with a 1968 BBC concert and an unreleased track from Deep Feeling, a 1960s band with which both Luther Grosvenor and Dave Mason had been associated. Instead, the owners of Ruf Records heard the three new tracks and persuaded the band to record more new material. Ruf Records financed the costs of relocating the band to record at Andapoe Sound in Weimar, Germany, where seven additional songs were recorded in September 1998. The album was released in Europe and the United States in February 1999.

Reception

In their retrospective review, Allmusic assessed the album's material as "not quite up to the level of the group's best", while noting that the band's sound is much the same as it was before their original breakup. They concluded the album to be of interest to fans of the group but not to casual listeners.