Sulk (album)
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| Studio album by The Associates | ||||
| Released | 14 May 1982 | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Studio | Playground in Camden Town, London, England | |||
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| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Mojo |  |
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| Record Collector | |
| Uncut | 9/10 |
Sulk is the second studio album by Scottish pop band The Associates. It was released on 14 May 1982 on their own Associates imprint of Beggars Banquet Records for the UK and throughout the rest of Europe on WEA Records and in the US on 4 October by Sire Records.
It stayed in the UK Albums Chart for 20 weeks, reaching number 10, and it was crowned the album of the year by the critics of UK music magazine Melody Maker. Although it was the group's breakthrough record both critically and commercially, it was to be the last album recorded by the original pairing of Alan Rankine and Billy Mackenzie, as just four months after its UK release Rankine acrimoniously left the band when Mackenzie pulled out of a planned North American tour at the last moment. Subsequent Associates albums were effectively solo records by Mackenzie, aided by hired musicians.
Signing a distribution deal with WEA Records at the end of 1981 on the strength of the demos for "Party Fears Two" and "Club Country", Associates were given a £60,000 advance by the record label. Having spent half of the advance immediately on block-booking a studio for an indefinite period of time, the band moved into individual rooms at the Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn in London, including an extra room for Mackenzie's pet whippets, which he fed on smoked salmon ordered from the hotel's room service. The band also spent large amounts of money on other items such as clothing and drugs. In a 2007 interview bass player Michael Dempsey recalled that "we were all ridiculously profligate. But it wasn't entirely ridiculous to be doing things that way because Bill would coax money out of record companies in a kind of mesmeric way. He thought that the more money we owed them, the more obligation on their part to make this work to get their investment back." Rankine claimed that the excessive spending actually influenced the sound of the album: "If we hadn't spent the money, the album wouldn't have got made in the way it did. It was mental, but there was also a self-assured cockiness, because we knew we had these songs."
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