Railway Children
Formed in 1985 by Gary Newby (b. 5 June 1966, Australia), Brian Bateman (b. 3 August 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England), Stephen Hull (b. 7 July 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England) and Guy Keegan (b. 16 June 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England), the Railway Children started playing small gigs around the north-west of England. After a batch of demo tapes the four 19-year-olds found themselves being fted by numerous record companies, eventually settling on a contract-free agreement with Factory Records. A brace of graceful singles that fused 60s harmonies with the early 80s pop sensibility of Liverpool paved the way for the fine Reunion Wilderness in 1987, and the Railway Children appeared set to follow guitar-based contemporaries the Smiths onto greater things. The band signed to Virgin Records that same year, and suddenly sounded much neater for it. The expensive production polish eradicated the quartet's rougher edges, and with pivotal creative force Gary Newby content to have his instinct smoothed by studio techniques, Recurrence appeared in 1988 to an uncertain audience confused by the band's independent beginnings and the new, mellower sound. Although singles regularly entered the Top 75 of the UK charts and the Railway Children flirted with fashionable dance beats with particularly encouraging results in America, it was not until the start of 1991 that a re-released version of "Every Beat Of The Heart" took the band into the upper echelons of the UK chart and thus validated their efforts of five years. However, when follow-up shots "Something So Good" and "Music Stop' failed to emboss their new chart status, the band repaired to Lancashire to lick their wounds. Virgin released a compilation in 1995 of their finer moments. Newby returned with a new line-up for 1999"s Dream Arcade.
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Albums
- (1995) Listen On (The Best of...)
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