Gene - Be My Light, Be My Guide
The decision to leave Gene’s first two singles - For The Dead and Be My Light, Be My Guide - off their debut album Olympian doesn’t look any better with the passing of time. There’s a rawness and a passion to Be My Light, Be My Guide that occasionally went astray on that debut, replaced by a gentler sheen that in parts more than makes up for it (and if you don’t know the title track you’re missing out on the best shuffling britpop Smiths tribute ballad-cum-emotional masterpiece bar none). There’s some snarl in Left-Handed, and the violence of Sleep Well Tonight, and while you won’t catch me rating Olympian as anything less than wonderful on the Stellar / “What were they thinking?” scale of debut album measurement, the thought of what could have been is always there…