''Masque'' is the fifth regular
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
by
the Mission which was released in June 1992 on the
Vertigo sub-label of
Mercury Records.
Production
The album included a number of outside collaborators, including
Martin Allcock,
Anthony Thistlethwaite and
Miles Hunt.
Reception
Peaking at #23 in the
UK albums chart, ''Masque'' failed to repeat the commercial success of the Mission's previous two official studio albums and marked the beginning of the Mission's decline in popularity; it was also the band's last album to achieve a UK top 40 position, until the release of ''
Another Fall from Grace
''Another Fall from Grace'' is the eleventh studio album by The Mission.
Wayne Hussey has described the album as a lost link between The Sisters of Mercy's '' First and Last and Always'' album and The Mission's own first album, '' God's Own M ...
'' in September 2016. ''
AllMusic'' suggests that the band's change in musical direction was to blame for the album's weak reception, writing that ''Masque'' "doesn't sound like the Mission, but rather like a band trying to find its direction."
[ '' PopMatters'' discussed the album's reception in a review of the band's subsequent '']Aura
Aura most commonly refers to:
* Aura (paranormal), a field of luminous multicolored radiation around a person or object
* Aura (symptom), a symptom experienced before a migraine or seizure
Aura may also refer to:
Places Extraterrestrial
* 1488 ...
'' album, writing, "Some argue that Hussey started to wander off the path with '' Neverland''‘s predecessor, ''Masque'', but this writer ain’t one of ’em. ''Masque'' features co-writing credits from the Wonder Stuff’s Miles Hunt, as well as the Waterboys’ Anthony Thistlethwaite; it’s the least pretentious and most stylistically-varied album of the band’s career. Plus, it features a fair amount of fiddle, which is rarely a bad thing."
Track listing
Except where noted, music by Adams, Brown, Hussey
All words by Hussey
# "Never Again" – 5:05
# "Shades of Green, Pt. 2" – 3:59
# "Even You May Shine" (Adams, Brown, Hussey, Thistlethwaite) – 4:41
# "Trail of Scarlet" – 3:43
# "Spider and the Fly" – 4:49
# "She Conjures Me Wings" (Adams, Brown, Hussey, Thistlethwaite)– 2:48
# "Sticks and Stones" – 4:45
# "Like a Child Again" – 3:38
# "Who Will Love Me Tomorrow?" (Miles Hunt, Hussey) – 4:09
# "You Make Me Breathe" – 4:36
# "From One Jesus to Another" – 3:50
# "Until There's Another Sunrise" – 5:33
;2008 bonus tracks
# "Beautiful Chaos" - 5:04
# "All Tangled Up In You" - 6:27
# "Atomic" (Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.
Born in ...
, Jimmy Destri) - 5:13
# "You Make Me Breathe (The Barn Mix)" - 7:18
Personnel
;The Mission
* Craig Adams – bass guitar
* Mick Brown – drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
* Wayne Hussey – vocal
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production i ...
s & guitar
;Additional musicians (from liner notes)
* Mark Saunders
* Joe Gibb
* Anto Thistlethwaite
Anthony "Anto" Thistlethwaite (born 31 August 1955, Lutterworth, Leicestershire, England) is a British multi-instrumentalist best known as a founding member (with guitarist Mike Scott) of the folk rock group, The Waterboys and later as a lon ...
* Martin Alcock
* Adam Birch
* Kelly Hussey
* Bev Perrin
* Penny Thompson
* B.J. De Haan
* Ric Saunders
* Arabic orchestration on "Sticks and Stones" scored, arranged and conducted by Jaz Coleman, performed by Aboud Abdel Ali
References
Sources
*
{{Authority control
1992 albums
The Mission (band) albums
Albums produced by Mark Saunders (record producer)
Mercury Records albums