When this album was released in 1987, times were good for the major record companies (Siren was a label owned by Virgin before they started buying train sets and model airplanes). If you were in London at that time and were beautiful then a record deal would surely be yours. Misty Oldland and Kay Montano were (and probably still are) beautiful and they got the full treatment here. In fact, if my often flawed recollection is correct, the promo video for "Sugar Mummy" was directed by no less than fashion photographer Terence Donovan.
On no, not another vanity album, you might be thinking. True enough, this album didn't exactly sell by the truckload but it is nonetheless an interesting curio that does stand up well to musical re-examination. Hushed, breathy harmonies are the order of the day and, given the time period, the essential drum machine is also present and correct. It is classy though, and the songs are actually quite good with the sensitive production by Sean Oliver (from Rip, Rig and Panic - a band worthy of rediscovery) and Nick Froome helping establish the atmosphere that was otherwise so sadly lacking in eighties' music. Songs like "Sugar Mummy" and "Sometimes Black Sometimes White" would make a grown man sigh, for example. Other tracks like "Problems" are more pedestrian but the end result is never less than listenable.
This album was Oldland Montano's fifteen minutes of fame. As far as I can tell, Kay Montano never released anything else and Misty Oldland continued on as a solo artist gaining a bit of success in Europe. There was even a CD version released of this album a few years later that is something of a collector's item these days. The Time Has Come is an album that I don't play that often but it is one that I have come to enjoy more and more with the passing of the years.