THE YEARNING HOUR

A few weeks ago, a friend gifted me a 1993 issue of The Wire. Predating my discovery of the magazine by a few years, I did not know how the record review section Soundcheck was structured at the time. To my surprise, it opened up by what was titled the “Wire Winners”, four releases considered the pick of the litter out of the nineteen-paged portion. Among KRS-One’s solo debut Return of the Boom Bap and Cassandra Wilson’s collection of Blues and Rock covers Blue Light ‘Til Dawn sat The Stars Are So Big, The Earth So Small, Stay As You Are, the first full-length by the UK unit, Pram.

Having not thought about the record in years, I fired it up on that puppy-kicking streaming service Spotify and marveled at how well it held up. Hearing the bands’ thrifty approach to a space-aged sound again paralleled well with my discovery of the 24-hour Doctor Who channel on Roku.