The Greatest Review Ever of the Most Overhyped Indie Album of the Past Two Decades and That Includes Even Oasis' Second

I like this album just fine. Wouldn't listen to it these days, of course - but equally, if a track came on my iTunes, I'd be chuffed. I still reckon Neil Kulkarni's nailed it, but entirely, here. I'm also in agreement that their second is superior. Here's an excerpt from his Quietus review. (A wiggle of the ET country shorts to Stevie Chick for hipping me to this article.)

...listening as fresh as you can right now, queerly, the record The Stone Roses reminds me most of from '89 is Straight Outta Compton. Three good tracks and a right barrel-load of shite afterwards. A similarly malign influence over a few goodies and a whole lotta baddies ever since.

But make no mistake, for those first three songs — 'Adored', 'Bangs The Drum' and 'Waterfall' — those bands that came at the wake seem minuscule. Undoubtedly the Roses were blessed with things they didn't, couldn't pass on. Blessed with a drummer on a lil' three-piece kit who just fkn KNEW, a bassist who'd listened, a guitarist just the right side of wanky who could write anthems and a singer who sounded like he cared and was smart, Sure you can hear the roots, you can hear a familiar lexicon of listening and learning in the years before they came together as four — it's listening that's well-obvious perhaps (Stones, Love, Beatles, Byrds, Zep, dub, northern-soul) but it's listening that's been absorbed, amplified, attempted at with a unique slant and spirit.

Reni's chops aren't showy, but they pump every moment with energy and hope, enabling and animating everything else as a drummer should. Mani is the kind of bassist you could follow and lose yourself in to the exclusion of the rest — then when you snap back and hear the whole he disappears into the melody, sits back for the hooks, does only what's right. Squire lashes together licks from his library and they're good licks and it's a good library. Let's think about the little numbers awhile, down to the fractions, the important ones. Nearly every band since '89 that's in any way attempted to equal these three tracks, the precise feel of them, has failed to remain as intact, fragile or as believable. And on those three, Ian Brown — who will never be better than The Late Show — Ian Brown pitches it just about right — he sounds like a nobody who hopes to be a star. Ever since, the likes of Liam Gallagher have got it just wrong (sounding like a somebody convinced they're a star already) but for these three songs, for all the ambition of the lyrics, Brown's voice has a grain of hopelessness amidst the hope, a glum forlornness his more macho forebears have seemingly never twigged or been able to recreate...

The Quietus.