King Kong Groover

King Kong Groover
Studio album by Babylon Zoo
Released 26 February 1999
Genre Alternative rock, glam rock
Length 48:22
59:14 (Japan edition)
Label EMI
Producer Jas Mann
Babylon Zoo chronology
The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes
(1996)The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes1996		 King Kong Groover
(1999)

King Kong Groover is the second and final album by Babylon Zoo, released on 26 February 1999. The singles from the album were "All the Money's Gone", which peaked at #46 on the UK Singles Chart, and a cover of Mott the Hoople's "Honaloochie Boogie", which was issued as a promotional single in France (plans for an international release were abandoned).

The song "Chrome Invader" was originally called "Silver Surfer" but had to be changed for copyright reasons. The Japanese version of the album includes two bonus tracks – an acoustic cover of T.Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" and a remix of "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes".

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
New Musical Express[2]
Scotland on Sunday[3]

King Kong Groover met with negative reviews.[4] A New Musical Express journalist awarded the album one out of ten, calling it a "slickly produced machiavellian plundering of pop classics" and a "clumsy effort to resurrect a career that was a fluke in the first place."[2] Scotland on Sunday reviewer Colin Somerville accused the band of plagiarising The Beatles' "Across the Universe" on "Bikini Machine", and wrote: "Sadly lacking in anything even remotely approaching originality, King Kong Groover is the sound of a career spinning into terminal decline."[3]

Deviating from critical consensus in a retrospective review, Dave Thompson of AllMusic said that while there is "nothing in sight to even approach the peaks that their debut hit 'Spaceman' attained", the album has "yearning majesty" and "neo-operatic flair".[1]

Commercial performance

An "abject failure",[1] King Kong Groover sold less than 10,000 copies and did not chart.[4]

Track listing

All tracks written by Jas Mann except where noted.

  1. "All the Money's Gone" – 3:46
  2. "Manhattan Martian" – 6:01
  3. "Honaloochie Boogie" (Ian Hunter/Mick Ralphs) – 3:28
  4. "Honeymoon in Space" – 4:53
  5. "Stereo Superstar" – 3:39
  6. "Chrome Invader" – 5:03
  7. "Bikini Machine" – 3:55
  8. "Are You a Boy or a Girl?" – 5:05
  9. "Hey Man" – 5:34
  10. "Aroma Girl" – 6:58
  11. "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes" (Armageddon Babylon mix) (Japanese version only) – 5:54
  12. "Cosmic Dancer" (Marc Bolan) (Japanese version only) – 4:58

References

  1. 1 2 3 Thompson, Dave. "King Kong Groover Review". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
  2. 1 2 "King Kong Groover Review". NME. January 2, 1999. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Somerville, Colin (7 February 1999). "Album releases". Scotland on Sunday. The Scotsman Publications.
  4. 1 2 "Spaceman band falls back to earth". Sunday Mercury. The Free Library. 9 May 1999. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.