When I got into rave in the mid-90s I stopped having favourite bands because that's not what rave is about. Then one day in 1999 after a year or so of opening myself up to music that wasn't rave I declared my favourite band was Alisha's Attic.
At that point in time my collection simply consisted of their 2 albums to that point. First I bought their 2nd album "Illumina". It had an excellent lead single "The Incidentals", a far inferior 2nd single "Wish I Were You" but it was easily the 2nd best track on the album and the final single from the album was "Barbarella" which I've never really been able to decide I like it or not. The rest of the album is very much album filler.
Then I acquired their much better debut album "Alisha Rules The World". The title track plus their debut single "I Am I Feel" are excellent. 3rd single "Indestructible" is pretty average and 4th single "Air We Breathe" had little impact though the album version is better than all their singles.
The album had 6 more tracks that were actual songs. "Intense" was one I never liked, "White Room" is pretty average if I'm honest, "Stone In My Shoe" is one I have to be in the right mood for and "I Won't Miss You" has some very welcome breakbeats in parts but overall is nothing special.
However it's the final 3 tracks that really make the album. "Just The Way You Like It" was my initial favourite, then we have the already mentioned album version of "Air We Breathe" and we finish with "Adore U" which became my favourite and indeed it was whilst listening to that track that I declared them my favourite band.
In the 18 months or so that followed I really did go over the top. I bought all their singles, promo singles and any other rarities I could find in their discography. I joined the fan club and made a website called "Adore Alisha's Attic" named after my favourite song of theirs.
Back to that point in time, we're talking about a band with just 6 songs where I could say I really like this. Taking my favourite "Adore U" as an example, could I really say that's better than my favourite rave records? I would say no. In-fact even at the time I could name non-rave records that I preferred.
So back to the original question, why Alisha's Attic?
Well one thing I've never given any thought to before but something I've realised recently is that they were the first all female music act I bought anything by. I might of had the odd DJ Rap tape in a rave tapepack but the fact I can't even remember if I did have a DJ Rap tape tells you I never bought a tapepack because of DJ Rap.
Basically they were the first music act where I could say I both like their music and find them attractive. The latter placed less importance on the music in a way. I never liked their final single "Pretender Got My Heart" but I went out and bought it anyway.
Once their 3rd album flopped and they got dropped from their label and called it a day I was seeing the error of my way, sort of. I say sort of because Alisha's Attic stopped being my favourite band but taking their place was the Honeyz, the 2nd all female music act I bought music by.
Much like Alisha's Attic, the Honeyz glory days were already behind them when I properly got into them. Unlike Alisha's Attic though, their 2nd album is pretty good.
When Alisha's Attic released their final album "The House We Built" I recall one review quoting "being the modern day Shakespear's Sister is nothing to be proud of".
It wasn't the first or last time comparisons between the two have been made. I even recall one of the many Alisha's Attic fan sites that used to exist having a section about other music acts Alisha's Attic fans like. One was Shakespear's Sister and they put in brackets next to it (well obviously).
As some of you will know, I went through a phase of being a big Alisha's Attic fan to the point that one of the fan sites that existed was mine. Yet I've never liked Shakespear's Sister and after hearing songs of theirs from reviewing the Top 30 from 30 years ago plus the Top of the Pops reruns, I still don't.
At the time I would have rejected any claim that Alisha's Attic had any resemblance to Shakespear's Sister, but if I'm honest there are similarities.
First of all both were female duos. Doesn't sound like much, Guns n Roses and Take That were both male groups for example. If you look at the history books though you'll find there weren't that many female duos who have been in the Top 40. In fact there are just two female duos who have had over 5 Top 40 hits ever at the time of writing. As you may have guess, those were Alisha's Attic with 8 and Shakespear's Sister with 6 (OK it was Siobhan on her own for their last one).
Alisha's Attic weren't always Alisha's Attic though. Their first crack at music came in 1988 with the track "Sugar Daddy" which was something you could imagine Bananarama (the group Siobhan left that same year) doing in their Stock Aitken & Waterman era. The name they went under for this was Keren and Chelle. The question is why Keren instead of her actual name Karen? Could it be to do with the fact Bananarama had a member called Keren?
Siobhan's husband at the time was Dave Stewart who was also involved with Shakespear's Sister as songwriter and producer on some of their songs.
Then in 1996 Siobhan and Dave Stewart divorced and the 3rd Shakespear's Sister album never got released due to lead single "I Can Drive" flopping. This basically marked the end of Shakespear's Sister.
That same year Alisha's Attic finally broke through and were given their break by none other than Dave Stewart who produced their debut album.
It would be naive to think that filling the void left by Shakespear's Sister wasn't part of the agenda. Both made pop music but had a gothic image. Some may have thought Shakespear's Sister were actually sisters given the name, Alisha's Attic really were sisters.
Why then did I like Alisha's Attic but not Shakespear's Sister? Well one thing I've not really covered is the actual music. The most notable difference is that Alisha's Attic could sing, Siobhan Fahey couldn't. Yes Marcella Detroit can sing, but aside from "Stay" she didn't do much singing as far as I could tell.
There were similarities musically too, but not that similar. If you like a certain genre it doesn't mean you like every single record that's ever been made in said genre. In the case of Alisha's Attic, just because I was a fan didn't mean I liked every song they ever made.
There are a few Alisha's Attic songs I've never liked even when I was a big fan. Thinking about it, they tended to be the ones which sounded similar to Shakespear's Sister.
This year is 20 years since Alisha's Attic was introduced to the world. Those who have read earlier posts will know I was once a big fan.
At the time they released their debut hit, "I am I Feel", I wouldn't listen to anything that wasn't rave so I wasn't a fan from day one. I did secretly like it at the time though. I recall one morning when waking up to my radio alarm clock it came on and I waited till the song finished before getting up. I thought it sounded quite similar to "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morrissette which I also secretly liked.
Then their follow up, "Alisha Rules the World" came out and I quite liked that one too. It was a few months until their third single, "Indestructible", which I heard on the O-Zone and then "Air we Breathe" came out in the summer of 1997 which I saw them perform on the Pebble Mill lunchtime show, but neither single really had much impact on me at the time, I just tend to have a good memory of where I was when I first heard many songs. So I pretty much forgot about them for a while.
In September 1998 they came back with the single "The Incidentals". By this time I was more open to non rave music and liked this song. I remembered thinking their older stuff being quite good too and maybe this should be a band I start listening to. I said that about several other bands too though so didn't straight away. Then in April 1999 I was in MVC in Derby and they played "Barbarella" more than once and also had it on a listening post and I considered buying it, but didn't. I discovered the following week it only reached number 34 in the charts which I was quite surprised by.
Finally in June 1999 I was on a day trip in Lincoln and decided to buy an Alisha'a Attic album. I had two choices, either the first album "Alisha Rules the World" or the current album, "Illumina". Wanting to live for now and not what used to be, I went for "Illumina".
Admittedly though, on the whole I was quite disappointed with the album. It started with "The Incidentals" which was definitely the best track on the album. The second track "Going Down" was listed as one of their singles on the sticker on the cover but was never released, but I didn't think much to it. It never really picked up again until "Wish I Were You", the second single from the album, although there was a track in between called "Resistor" which would later grow on me. After an interlude called "Me and the Dolphins" came "Barbarella" and then the rest of the album was instantly forgettable.
Shortly afterwards someone told me their sister owned "Alisha Rules the World" and gave me a copy of it. This was much more like it and actually got better towards the end of the album. Also, the track "Air We Breathe" which never had much impact on me as a single would become one of my favourites on the album. I would often listen to the album and loved it so much that I declared Alisha's Attic to be my favourite band on a cold night in late 1999 whilst listening to them on my Walkman.
By this point though, they had pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth. I wanted to own the CD of "Alisha Rules the World" but this was a time when CDs were around £15, an amount I was reluctant to spend on something I already owned. Then a friend of mine managed to get one on the cheap at a car boot sale and let me have it for free.
By the summer of 2000, I had done a bit of internet research and found out they were planning a comeback in September of that year. Then one day I was browsing second hand CDs at Cash Convertors and found a couple of singles for 50p each so bought them. One of them was "The Incidentals" which had a B side called "Not my Muse" and the other "Alisha Rules the World" which had a B side called "God Lives There". Both were very good tunes and not doing things by halves I decided to buy all their singles. This wasn't that simple as they had all been deleted so could not order from HMV etc so went shopping for music on the internet for the first time and ended up buying them all, money no object. I also went on to discover other rarities such as a mini album called "Japanese Dream" which had been released in Japan only, all of which I paid a fair amount of money for. I also became a member of the fan club and towards the end of the year started building a website about them which is now defunct.
Meanwhile, the plans for a new single/album had been delayed until 2001. Their new single was "Push it all Aside" which whilst not as good as the older songs, it was still quite good. Around the same time I managed to buy a promo CD for their third album, "The House we Built" which had 6 of the 12 tracks on it. Sadly though, "Push it all Aside" was the only one I thought was any good but I still had faith as their was another 6 tracks to come.
In April 2001 they played a free acoustic gig at the Kashmir Club in London, a small basement venue which was run by the former singer of the Cutting Crew. That night I got to meet Alisha's Attic themselves. It's often said that you shouldn't meet your heroes and its true. Don't get me wrong, they were nice enough people but they were just normal people, not the super humans I imagined them to me. On the other hand maybe it was a good thing to give me a reality check! That said though, it was an enjoyable night and I got to meet several other fans many of whom had their own websites and I'd spoken to via e-mail beforehand. One of them got the same train home as me and had the full 12 track promo CD which I listened to on the train. Sadly, the other 6 tracks weren't really up to much either.
A couple of weeks later, they played another gig at the same venue and I went again. This definitely lived up to the fact its never as good the second time, but the gig itself was probably to the same standard.
The second single from the album, "Pretender Got My Heart" was released in July 2001 and failed to reach the top 40 and then the album itself was released the following week reaching number 55 before dropping out the charts the following week. Then a couple of weeks later they inevitably got dropped by their record label, something I found out via a fan club letter.
Like I said though, I didn't think much to "The House we Built". In the interviews they were doing, they were talking about going to various places to find inspiration and how they went for an organic sound by recording it all in one take. My theory though is that they knew they were getting dropped after the album so took advantage of the opportunity to travel courtesy of the label and then record the album with minimal effort. I may be wrong, but the quality of the album would certainly suggest that.
I remember calculating I had spent around £350 on Alisha's Attics music, something I felt a bit foolish about. I asked a friend if he thought I should hold onto it in case its worth plenty in years to come. He said it wont, people will just forget about them. I tried selling some of it and managed to get £50 for a couple of CDs, something I almost certainly wouldn't get nowadays.
After they were dropped, they released a CD called "The Vaults" through the fan club which was several tracks which never made the albums. However by this point I wasn't all that fussed and at £15 I didn't bother, it just seemed like a final pay check to me.
These day's I still listen to the "Alisha Rules the World" album but the rest of my collection is at my parents house somewhere gathering dust.
But what happened to Alisha's Attic?
Well Shelly became a solo artist and later formed a band called Red Sky July with her husband, Ally Mcerlaine, the guitarist from Texas.
Karen is now a songwriter for several pop artists, some of which you can find on her Wikipedia page. One song on there she didn't write though is "Oh No" by the So Solid Crew, this was a song Alisha's Attic sued the So Solid Crew for because of its resemblance to "The Incidentals".
The song I've posted is called "Adore U" which is my favourite Alisha's Attic song and is the last track on "Alisha Rules the World. Enjoy.
