Track Listing

1. Baby I Don't Care
2. The Only One
3. Landslide Of Love
4. Falling For A Goldmine
5. Down On You
6. Song To The Stars
7. Kiss Their Sons
8. Born To Be Sold
9. Pay The Ghosts
10. Bad Valentine
11. Velveteen

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15191 in Music
• Released on: 1999-03-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 50 minutes

Customer Reviews

Gutted
Having patiently waited for Uncle Amazon to dig my favourite teenage album out of it's dusty store cupboards, I was very excited when I arrived at the office this morning to find the oh-so familiar little cardboard box sitting on my desk. How can something so brown, plain and boring looking be such a recognisable symbol of the portal to fun, toys and music that lets you escape the utter boredom of work.

Pausing only to get myself a quick coffee (well, brown caffeinated sludge) from the kitchen, I threw the Wendy and her boys into the CD drive and started pretending I was actually working.

Well what can I say. The reason I recently decided to procure said album was thinking of my band's singer and revisiting various rock-chick albums that I have enjoyed over the years that we might possibly be able to use and frankly I've been really looking forward to it.

So what's happened? Has my music taste improved? When did I grow up? This album is utter pop-rubbish.

Pop? When on God's earth was Transvision Vamp poppy? It was always cutting edge hard rock when Adam was a lad. Sneered at my parents and secretly envied by the uncools. Wendy was the overly tanned and let's be honest,frankly yellow-looking, Nancy of chart rock. Unrefined and sexy, often an afternoon would be spent looking at the tape sleeve wondering what she'd be like naked.

There is little more a drummer than the guy who presses the play button on Kylie Minogue's drum machine.

The guitar is so compressed and edited that it could be on a computer game.

And okay she can sing but I'm dashed if I can remember so many harmonies and choruses that make her sound like she singing for Lock, Stock and Watered-down.

Oh well. At least my cup of brown caffeinated sludge now has a shiny mirror-like coaster to sit proudly on.

Gutted.


Hope I have better luck with Tiffany.

Good in their day.......
I heard this first time round, in the late 1980's, and really liked it then (the vinyl got a lot of play). Unfortunately now, older and wiser, it sounds a very weak album. Wendy James looked good, but her singing is very weak, although has a certain charm to it, and the tracks are pretty formulaic. 'Baby I Don't care', and 'The Only One' are the pick of the bunch.
Not a terrible album, but one very firmly of its day, and not one I would think is ever going to be reappraised as more than that.

Seminal
For a period in the late '80s, Transvision Vamp seemed to be everywhere in the U.K. Mainly, it was lead singer Wendy James and her sex kitten image on the magazine covers. Velveteen was the band's second release of their Blondie-like bubblegum rock. It will never go down as a great album, but Velveteen has its own definite charms. James' vocals are hardly impressive, but they are endearing in a childlike manner. It's a style that fits the simple fun of the lyrics on the stomping "Baby I Don't Care" and the new wave rocker "Kiss Their Sons." It's hard not to want to scream along with the choruses. "The Only One" is hyperkinetic with a slight disco touch. The lack of ideas catches up to them as the second half starts to sound familiar, but they close things strongly with the epic-length title track. Strings lend a bit of drama to a song that shifts from pummeling, tribal rock to dreamy pop to garage band rock to quasi-lounge music with James giving one of her better vocal performances. Velveteen is an enjoyable and effortless listen.