ENEMY WITHIN
Enemy Within is the seventh solo studio album by English singer-songwriter and guitarist Chris Spedding. The album was originally released in October 1986, on the label New Rose Records in France, and in Germany on Date Records. The album was recorded over a period of three years starting in 1982, at three different recording studios. The album is generally regarded as the culmination of the smoother, more adult-oriented sound of Spedding’s later work. It was later picked up for release by Repertoire Records in 2001, featuring rare bonus content. (More from Wikipedia)
I got several more albums by Chris Spedding over the years and was never disappointed, though none ever topped Hurt. One in particular, his 1986 album called Enemy Within, is really quite different from Hurt but no less wonderful (it is no exaggeration to say that Chris Spedding has played just about every kind of rock music that there is); the ad that prompted me to buy it by mailorder had a short but perfect description: “Moody, under-stated work”.
Chris Spedding is well known in his home country of England (at least by other musicians) but, sadly, has never really taken hold over here. Even the so-called experts don’t seem to get him right; Allmusic’s review of Enemy Within (talk about under-appreciated – they only give the record 2½ stars out of 5; of course, Hurt only got 3 stars) shows the songwriter as being “Speeding” instead of “Spedding”, except for the opening track “Hologram”, which I believe he co-wrote with Marshall Crenshaw. Also, I seem to recall that this album is actually a re-issue of an early self-titled solo album, but there is not a hint of that on this write-up; I could be wrong about that though.
(November 2011)
