Adam and Eve by Catherine Wheel

Adam and Eve, Catherine Wheel's fourth studio album, came out on Mercury on 29 July 1997, with Bob Ezrin producing, and it closed a chapter: it was the last record with original bassist Dave Hawes, and so the last by the band's first lineup.

The Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft outfit had started out wrapped in shoegaze haze and toughened up with every record since, and here the swirl and the muscle meet in the middle. The guitars still billow, but the songs are sturdier and more patient, big-hearted rock with a melancholy streak, and "Delicious" glides along on a slow-burning hook. It barely dented the Billboard 200, which says more about 1997 than about the album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.