Stray

Stray is the fourth album that Roddy Frame recorded as Aztec Camera. Having been accepted into the pop mainstream with the polished soul confections of the 1987 hit album Love, a lesser act would have hurriedly knocked together a variation on the same theme. Not Roddy Frame, a talent rarely any easier to pin down than a hyperactive housefly. He took three years out before re-appearing with Stray, a Paul Weller crop, leather trousers and an apparent determination to pick up where the Clash left off — even to the point of drafting Mick Jones in to duet on the state-of-the-nation address "Good Morning Britain". Stray almost sounds like the work of a man who has only just realised that you can plug in a guitar and is determined to make up for lost time. "That's How It Is" remains Frame's most explicitly rock & roll moment, and "The Crying Scene" was a deftly executed summation of everything that had made previous Aztec Camera records great — a way with melody, lyric, vocal and guitar apparently as effortless as it was unarguably peerless. — Andrew Mueller.