Giant Steps (The Boo Radleys album)

Reception

NME and Select named it as album of the year, and it was ranked as #1 in Fanning's Fab Fifty for that year. It reached the UK Top 20, but did not spawn a Top 40 single. Reviewing the album's rerelease in 2008, Sic Magazine wrote, "For 64 minutes they were the greatest band on the planet."

The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In 2016, Pitchfork Media ranked the album at number 25 in its list of "The 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time", with of the website Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing:

"The Boo Radleys’ songwriter/guitarist, Martin Carr, named his band’s 1993 album after John Coltrane’s 1959 LP, but Giant Steps also is a winking acknowledgment of another kind: He's the first to know that the Liverpool quartet has taken a huge leap forward. Although they hardly renounce the thunderous swirl and delicate suspension of 1992’s Everything's Alright Forever, the Boo Radleys treat that candied rush as an absorbed language, with Carr choosing to pursue a grand vision that unifies psychedelia, British guitar-pop, jazz, and dub. Part of the appeal of Giant Steps is that the Boo Radleys’ enthusiasm leads them to attempt fusions that would scare away other bands: Witness “Lazarus,” which begins with an elastic reggae beat before becoming consumed by sheets of guitars, wispy harmonies, and stabs of brass. “Lazarus” is essentially Giant Steps in microcosm, but the album gains strength through its own untrammeled ambition. At the dawn of britpop, the Boo Radleys chose expanding consciousness over provincial patriotism, and the results are still majestic."

Original release

All songs and lyrics written by Martin Carr, with music by The Boo Radleys.

1. "I Hang Suspended" - 3:57
2. "Upon 9th and Fairchild" - 4:50
3. "Wish I Was Skinny" - 3:37
4. "Leaves and Sand" - 4:25
5. "Butterfly McQueen" - 3:28
6. "Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce)" - 2:45
7. "Thinking of Ways" - 3:48
8. "Barney (...and Me)" - 4:42
9. "Spun Around" - 2:31
10. "If You Want It, Take It" - 2:47
11. "Best Lose the Fear" - 4:12
12. "Take the Time Around" - 4:07
13. "Lazarus" - 4:38
14. "One Is For" - 1:36
15. "Run My Way Runway" - 2:20
16. "I've Lost the Reason" - 5:17
17. "The White Noise Revisited" - 5:02

2010 expanded edition

1. "Lazy Day"
2. "Vegas"
3. "Feels Like Tomorrow"
4. "Whiplashed"
5. "Does This Hurt"
6. "Boo! Forever"
7. "Buffalo Bill"
8. "Sunfly II (Walking With The Kings)"
9. "Rodney King (St Etienne Remix)"
10. "As Bound As Tomorrow"
11. "I Will Always Ask You Where You've Been Even Though I Know The Answer"
12. "Peachy Keen"
13. "Further"
14. "Crow Eye"

1. "Tortoiseshell"
2. "Zoom"
3. "Cracked Lips, Homesick"
4. "At The Sound Of Speed"
5. "Let Me Be Your Faith"
6. "Petroleum"
7. "Lazarus (7" Version)"
8. "Lazarus (Acoustic)"
9. "(I Wanna Be) Touchdown Jesus"
10. "Lazarus (St Etienne Remix)"
11. "Lazarus (Secret Knowledge Remix)"
12. "Lazarus (Ultramarine Remix)"
13. "Lazarus (Augustus Pablo Remix)"
14. "Lazarus (12" Version)"