''Melt'' is the second album from

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

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band Straitjacket Fits. It was the last to feature the original line-up of Shayne Carter, Andrew Brough, John Collie and David Wood; Brough was to leave before the third album, ''Blow''. The album reached no. 13 on the New Zealand music charts, and sold 40,000 copies in the United States. The album spawned three singles, "Bad Note for a Heart", "Down in Splendour", and "Roller Ride". Of these, only "Bad Note for a Heart" charted (reaching no. 25 in the New Zealand charts), yet the Brough single "Down in Splendour" was later listed at number 32 in 2001 on the

Australasian Performing Right Association APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwr ...

's 75th anniversary poll of New Zealand's top 100 songs of all time. The music video for "Bad Note for a Heart" won the award for best New Zealand music video of 1990. The album was seen as being truer to the band's sound than the previous album (''

Hail Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fal ...

''), and closer to the live sound and to the sound of the band's debut EP ''

Life in One Chord ''Life in One Chord'' is an EP by New Zealand band Straitjacket Fits, released in 1987. It was the band's debut release. All of the tracks from the EP were included as part of an extended version of their first full album, '' Hail''. The songs a ...

''. The album was described as "...a culmination of searing guitars that never collide and are always textured with the rhythm section's simple powerful backbone."

Production

The album was recorded at Airforce Studios in Auckland and Platinum Studios in Australia during July and August 1990.

Critical reception

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

wrote that "once the listener gets past the distracting production ... this is probably the Straitjacket Fits' strongest set of songs." ''

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference to ...

'' wrote that if the production "occasionally yields mush, it also results in brilliance: a swooping, swooning, swelling, surging, soaring (and all that) rush that beautifully captures the intensity of the band’s live shows." The ''

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'' praised the "gorgeous sweet-and-sour vibe—lush and abrasive, peppy and mournful, thrilling and sinister." ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' called ''Melt'' the band's best album, writing that "Down in Splendour" "shows off their exquisite vocal harmonies and twin-guitar interplay without losing any of the tension that would ultimately destroy the group."

Track listing

References

{{Authority control Straitjacket Fits albums Dunedin Sound albums 1990 albums