Doing a 180: Ultravox, Vienna / The Waterboys, Room to Roam

We're still getting the hang of this whole “new releases come out on Fridays now” thing - because, you know, we've only lived our entire life knowing that the sky is blue, water is wet, and Tuesdays are when the new releases come out - but we wanted to make sure that you were aware of a couple of new additions to our 180-gram vinyl reissue campaign.

Ultravox, Vienna: It wasn't the band's greatest commercial success in the United States (that honor goes to Quartet, oddly enough), but there's little question that Vienna is the album that most Ultravox fans would cite as being the best pick for their “if you could only own one” album. In addition to the classic title track and “All Stood Still,” both of which were top-10 singles in the UK, Vienna also includes the lesser hits “Sleepwalk” and “Passing Strangers,” which are solid numbers in their own right. Yes, it's an '80s album and it sounds it, but as Midge Ure said in his interview a few months back, “There's something quite magical about what we did.”

The Waterboys, Room to Roam: It might not have been the commercial smash in the UK that its predecessor, Fisherman's Blues, turned out to be, but Mike Scott and company nonetheless delivered another strong outing with this 1990 album, which featured “A Life of Sundays,” which hit #15 on the US Alternative Singles chart, and the Irish top-30 single “How Long Will I Love You?” It also proved to be the last gasp of the lineup of the band that featured Anthony Thistlethwaite and Steve Wickham, both of whom subsequently departed the Waterboys' ranks and - it must be said - were very much missed by fans, but that doesn't make this album any less enjoyable a listen.