Stray

For Stray Frame returned Aztec Camera to a conventional band line-up. Drummer Dave Ruffy had left to work with Sinead O'Connor, and the new rhythm section was bassist Paul Powell and drummer Frank Tontoh, with Gary Sanctuary on keyboards. The songs began to take shape while the band toured Love in 1988. Frame produced with Eric Calvi, and the album was recorded at Rockfield Studios and Power Plant Studios.

Frame named Johnny Thunders, the Byrds, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt and Vini Reilly as influences, and said he had fallen in love with the guitar again. Over My Head was his tribute to Montgomery, and Frame told The Scotsman in 1999 that The Crying Scene has a Johnny Thunders guitar solo. The title track samples the World Saxophone Quartet. How It Is began with a visit to Calvi in New York. Song for a Friend was first titled Song for K.J. Adams, after Kathy, his wife at the time. Of the title, Frame said it was a stray through all kinds of musical territories.

The album reached 22 in the UK. Uncut called it "the most inventive and durable Aztec Camera LP" in a 2013 review of the reissues, and in 2021 Rob Arcand of Pitchfork wrote that it felt uniquely nostalgic for the rock and jazz records that informed the band from the start. Good Morning Britain was its second single. A short US tour followed in late 1990 and an acoustic UK tour in mid-1991.