Carnival of Light

Carnival of Light was named after a lost song by the Beatles and reached 5 in Britain, 32 in Australia, 38 in New Zealand and 24 in Sweden. John Leckie produced and mixed all of it except How Does It Feel to Feel?, a cover of the Creation that George Drakoulias produced and mixed. Nigel Godrich was among the engineers, and Jon Lord played Hammond organ on Moonlight Medicine. Strings, horns and a cathedral school choir appear on individual tracks. The three singles were Birdman on 18 April 1994, How Does It Feel to Feel? on 13 June and I Don't Know Where It Comes From on 12 September.

Gardener's songs make up the first half and Bell's the second, and Bell would not let his songs be interspersed with Gardener's. Where the early records came from jam sessions, each of them now arrived at the studio with songs close to finished. Bell later said the band got indulgent. Select called it another fantastic British album in the old tradition, and NME gave it 7 out of 10. By the end of 1994 the band called it Carnival of Shite, though in 2022 Bell said he had made peace with it and named Moonlight Medicine and Birdman among its good tracks.