I Am the Greatest (A House album)
| I Am the Greatest | ||||
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UK and Irish cover art
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| Studio album by A House | ||||
| Released | 1991 | |||
| Recorded | 1991 | |||
| Genre | Indie rock | |||
| Length | 51:35 | |||
| Label | Radioactive, MCA, Setanta | |||
| Producer | Edwyn Collins | |||
| A House chronology | ||||
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| Singles from I Am the Greatest | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Q | |
| Vox |   |
I Am the Greatest is the third album from Irish rock band A House and features the fan favorite track, "Endless Art".
At the time of its release, I Am the Greatest was very well reviewed, but sometimes the album was also marvelled at for its very existence. After their second album, I Want Too Much, had been a commercial failure (despite critical plaudits) A House had been dropped by their record label and many doubted that they could continue. However, they refused to give up and, helped out by Setanta Records, produced an album almost universally assessed as a triumph: musically, lyrically, and perhaps especially in terms of the band's attitude, as A House refused to compromise their own idiosyncratic standards in the face of such limited commercial success, thereby somehow managing to reawaken music, at least according to some: "[t]he single Endless Art, is quite unlike anything else you'll hear this year, and the title track fairly quivers with indignation. 'Whatever happened to good music? Remember the days you could feel it, it was almost sexual...'" That title track was "unforgettable ... a systematic, blow-by- blow destruction of the music business and the state of the nation coupled with a dramatic determination not to give in".
City Limits was "mightily impressed with this headlong maelstrom of angst, bluster and corking ideas".Melody Maker said I Am the Greatest was "a gigantic musical achievement and an astonishing comeback, ... the ultimate KO". Irish music magazine Hot Press observed the underwhelming apathy that had greeted A House's previous efforts, and how often they had been paddle-less up commercial creeks, only to marvel that they had returned "with a record more cohesive and infinitely more glorious than anyone could have hoped ... one of the most cherishable pieces of black vinyl you could ever hope to own", an album which raised the possibility that "A House are the finest band Ireland has produced", deserving of a statue in O'Connell Street.
By 2004, Hot Press's enthusiasm had waned somewhat, although the magazine still ranked I Am the Greatest 29th out of 100 on their list of "Greatest Irish Albums". In the same year, a reader poll on the music website CLUAS put the record at 16th on an all-time list of Irish records.
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Wikipedia