Take In The Sun

by Bike

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Jason Hermens Inside with its guitar driven slow build to a full wall of sound Favorite track: Inside.

Ian Henderson You liked AB's bittersweet songs with Straitjacket Fits? You'll love this. Music as good as the best of Creation Records's '90s roster, lyrics even better. Underappreciated at the time, perhaps, but a classic in hindsight.

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1.	Take In The Sun 03:13	buy track
2.	Circus Kids 03:39	buy track
3.	Tears Were Blue 03:03	buy track
4.	Welcome To My World 03:54	buy track
5.	Inside 04:13	buy track
6.	Anybody Know 03:47	buy track
7.	Old and Blue 03:17	buy track
8.	Keeping You In Mine 03:16	buy track
9.	Sunrise 04:32	buy track
10.	Save My Life 03:42	buy track
11.	Slide On By 04:19	buy track

about

With two brilliant singles, "Save My Life" and "Circus Kids", already recognised as bright spots on the New Zealand musical map, the impending arrival of Bike's debut album Take In The Sun was an eagerly awaited event on the local calendar.

Adding to that expectation is the fact that Bike's classic misty-eyed pop is all the product of songwriter Andrew Brough. His superb voice and songs came together in sublime moments for his former band, Straitjacket Fits - we still chill to songs like "Down In Splendour" and "Sparkle That Shines" - but these were all too rare. When Bike's 1996 debut single, "Save My Life", was a finalist for the APRA Silver Scroll songwriting award it was a sign that this new band delivered more of the Brough goods.

Take In The Sun is the first time we see that talent in full flight over the length of an album. Eleven tunes are collected into the album's forty minutes and the production, by Malcolm Welsford and Andrew Brough, lets the heavenly swirl of chiming guitars and the perfectly-pitched vocals do most of the talking on the impressive Take In The Sun.

While the ballads show the obvious melodic strength of Andrew's writing in "Tears Were Blue" and "Sunrise", there's room for a rockier edge in "Keeping You In Mine" and the surprising "Anybody Know". At the heart of what makes Take In The Sun so good is the album's spine-tingling pop quotient, provided by the title track and singles "Circus Kids", "Save My Life", and the latest, "Welcome To My World".

Behind the striking angelic voice and the huge 'wall of jangle' guitars created by the album production, many of Bike's songs are hung on the rhythmic sway that has always helped convey the bittersweet edge of so many of Andrew's words.

credits

released February 20, 1997

The album was recorded over a number of months through the summer of 1997 with a Bike line-up featuring Andrew Brough on guitar and keyboards, Tristan Mason on bass guitar and drummer Wayne Bell. The rigorous standards demanded by Andrew and Malcolm Welsford brought polished performances out of everyone involved in what became one of the largest recording projects undertaken at York Street.

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about

Bike New Zealand

Andrew Brough’s abrupt departure from Straitjacket Fits in late 1991 paid dividends for fans of his soaring, sixties-kissed pop ballads – a vital element of his previous group’s sound – when he re-emerged onto the national stage in the mid-1990s as BIKE. ... more

discography

Take In The Sun

Feb 1997
Circus Kids

Jan 1997
Bike EP

Dec 1995

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