Readers of this little series of monthly articles (if there are any) might figure that I can only talk about
under-appreciated rock bands from the
Pleistocene Era, and that this is surely not true of any recent rock artists. In that they would be mistaken:
WATERLILLIES (note the double “L”) was the duo of producer
Ray Carroll and vocalist
Sandra Jill Alikas-St. Thomas who released two albums in
1991 and
1994. They were certainly not without success: “
Tempted”, the title track from their second album reached
#4 on the
Billboard'
Hot Dance/Club Play Charts; then, remix meister
Junior Vasquez did his thing on a slower tune from that album, “
Never Get Enough”, and his version made it to
#1 on that chart for the week of
April 1, 1995. There is a little more on this band now than there was when I first considered them for a monthly piece (by the way, the first time I managed to let the 1st of the month slip by without getting it published), but there is still only a stub in both
Wikipedia and
Allmusic now. A diligent search in
Allmusic will even bring up a fairly lengthy though back-handed review
(by Rick Anderson) of Tempted; while allowing that they “subversive[ly]” go beyond the typical electronic formula and granting the album four stars, the review closes by calling the album “a borderline essential album of basically inconsequential music”. One fun fact about Waterlillies is that, as far as I know, the first album, Envoluptuosity includes the only example of the word “fornicate” being used in musical lyrics. Beyond the limited information that is given on the two albums (only the first album even has clear photographs), I have been able to find out next to nothing about the band, except that they have a lot of fans in the Internet who are rather incensed at their being ignored so thoroughly.My own theory would be that their musical style –
electronic dance music – is itself
under-appreciated at this point in time, the same way that
glam rock,
heavy metal,
hip-hop,
reggae,
punk rock,
garage rock, and
rock and roll music as a whole were
under-appreciated in earlier times. More’s the pity, since the albums are structured with individual songs and not merely as thumping aural wallpaper for blasting over loudspeakers. Besides having a really long name,
Sandra Jill Alikas-St. Thomas is a trained vocalist, and her style reminds me of a more sultry and ethereal
Annie Lennox. Not that all
electronica bands live in the shadows: Largely on the strength of the huge success of remix versions of “
Missing”, also originally released in
1994,
Everything but the Girl gained considerable mainstream success. I have even seen that band credited with merging
electronica with
dance music (most of us could be excused for never considering those to be two separate musical styles). If and when
electronica gets the mainstream respect it deserves, these two albums by
Waterlillies might be remembered as early examples of musicians in the genre stretching out beyond its utilitarian beginnings.
