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Performance and Cocktails

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Performance and Cocktails

Performance and Cocktails is the second studio album by Welsh rock band Stereophonics. It was released by V2 on 8 March 1999. The name of the album comes from lyrics in the album's first song, "Roll Up and Shine", just like the previous album's name, Word Gets Around came from lyrics in that album's final song.

The album was a surprise commercial success for Stereophonics but it received mixed reviews.

The songs were variously recorded at Real World Studios in Bath, Parkgate in Sussex and Rockfield Studios in Monmouth.

The cover photograph was taken by Scarlet Page in autumn 1998 at a football pitch under the Westway in London, and was inspired by an earlier Annie Leibovitz photograph of a couple kissing outside a prison. The British journalist Tony Barrell did extensive research in 2007 to find the female model in the foreground. In the Sunday Times on 11 November 2007, he identified the model as 23-year-old Lucy Joplin. In an interview with Barrell, Joplin explained that the "faraway look" in her eyes was the result of an evening consuming absinthe and opium, and that she was paid £75 in cash for the shoot.

Performance and Cocktails received generally mixed reviews. At AllMusic, Jason Damas criticised the album for not being as consistent as Word Gets Around; he did however praise "T Shirt Sun Tan", "She Takes Her Clothes Off" and "Pick a Part That's New", calling them the highlights of the album.

Brent DiCrescenzo from Pitchfork had a generally negative review of the album, comparing Stereophonics to Oasis and by summarising the album as, "Basically, what Performance and Cocktails boils down to is loud music engineered and crafted for Britain's summer festival circuit that practically guarantees a perennially muddy experience." Similarly, Barry Walters of Rolling Stone also compared the band to Oasis, stating, "[they] sound like Oasis trying to be Radiohead."

Performance and Cocktails gave Stereophonics three straight top five singles in the British charts with "The Bartender and the Thief" reaching number three, and both "Just Looking" and "Pick a Part That's New" reaching number four. The album itself was a success, topping the UK Albums Chart selling 119,954 copies in its first week and going on to become the fifth best selling album in the UK in 1999. Such was the album's persistence, that it re-entered the UK charts over four years after its initial release, reaching number twenty-five in January 2004.

With sales of over 2.5 million, Performance and Cocktails is the Stereophonics' second best-selling album (after Just Enough Education to Perform, which has sold over 3.5 million). The record has been certified 5× Platinum in the UK and Platinum in Europe. It has spent a total of 101 weeks in the UK top 100 charts.

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