Originally released in May 1996, Walking Wounded was something of a watershed album for the duo, on which they fully embraced the dance sound that could hardly be further from the acoustic jazziness of their first album Eden, which came some 12 years earlier. However, far from being a calculated move to boost their popularity, the change in sound was a gradual and organic process, that began the previous year with Tracey’s highly successful appearance on Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’, on which the Bristol band rightly suspected that her ‘desolate’ vocals would perfectly suit their wonderfully weathered electronic sound. They were right.
The real ‘dance revelation’ though came with Todd Terry’s remix of Everything But The Girl’s ‘Missing’ single, which became a massive worldwide hit a few months later, having undeservedly stalled at No.69 when released in its original incarnation. So against this backdrop of events, it is perhaps not as surprising that the band produced a full-on Electronic dance album like Walking Wounded. Anyone hearing the album for the first time would possibly be astonished to discover that the band were not always this way, so natural is the sound.
Beginning with a trio of hits‘Before Today’ sets the mood with its drum and bass stylings, giving way to Top 10 hit ‘Wrong’, which also appears here in three remixed versions and a live version, the Todd Terry mix again being a hugely successful collaboration. ‘Single’, another subtly chart-friendly track, makes up this opening salvo.
The real highlight though remains the title track; the lead single and the first EBTG single since the ubiquitous ‘Missing’, it no doubt found itself under pressure to perform in the charts and I am sure it would have been a relief to the duo when it flew at No.6 just ahead of its parent album’s release. The song is perfection, with minimal but dramatic synth lines combining perfectly with the drum and bass beat and Tracey’s wonderful vocals, which further demonstrate her extraordinarily versatile style. ‘Walking Wounded’ is represented here with additional remixes from Omni Trio and Dave Wallace; both are good but neither approaches the majesty of the original.
Beach Boys references, samples of obscure films, samples of not-so-obscure prog rock trios -- whether or not one faults Saint Etienne for being style-over-substance cultural archivists, they did release some of the best dance-pop singles of the '90s. The dancefloor aspect hasn't leant itself to a timeless sheen to each one of them, but truthfully, people who find nothing to like about the group -- not a single song -- probably don't like pop music. And God only knows thousands of broke Saint Etienne fans vehemently disagree with the axiom that record collectors shouldn't make records. Throughout the '90s, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs, and Sarah Cracknell kept one foot in the past and the other in the present, making musical jigsaw puzzles out of sounds old and new. For many, Saint Etienne has provided a gateway into '60s pop, reggae, Northern soul, and techno. Smash the System, a swollen update of the Too Young to Die singles compilation, demonstrates their niche. Barring one song, this package contains everything Too Young to Die features and picks up where it left off, patching on the two singles from 1998's Good Humor (the compilation ends chronologically with 1999's Places to Visit EP). But wait -- there's more. In addition to the 14 A-sides, a hodgepodge of album tracks and rarities -- seven of which are taken from Japan-only compilations -- are selected to fill out the remainder of the two-disc set. As a place to start, one could do far worse. However, due to the sheer volume of decent-to-great Saint Etienne material floating around, there's no way that two discs could possibly give listeners everything they need.
When the Scottish pop band Orange Juice split up in January of 1985, it didn’t seem too likely that they would become one of the more influential bands of the era. Yes, their early singles on the tiny Postcard label Generated some excitement, and they had a bona fide chart hit with the 1983’s single "Rip It Up," but their career had mostly come to a sputtering halt outside the lens of the public eye. One Short year later, with the rise of C-86 and the early indie pop bands, the brightly scrappy attitude and scruffily melodic sound of early Orange Juice suddenly became popular again. Fast forward to the mid-'90s and Belle & Sebastian, then Franz Ferdinand and more, to see that the Orange Juice legacy lives on as strongly as ever. The songs of Edwyn Collins (and those of James Kirk) have been required listening for a large number of great pop bands. Thanks to the release of 2005’s The Glasgow School, which made all the band’s early recordings widely available for the first time, even more bands were able to draw inspiration from the band and their sound. In 2010, all the band’s recorded output was finally made easily accessible.
Put together in part by Edwyn Collins, the Box set …Coals to Newcastle is beautiful to look at, wonderful to listen to, and basically a dream come true for Orange Juice fans who weren’t able to get a hold of the original albums or the Japanese CD reissues. Even if you did own either of those, Coals is still worth seeking out for all the extras. The six-CD/one-DVD set contains all of the band’s recorded output: the early singles, the three studio albums, the Texas Fever EP, a full complement of B-sides, a handful of demos and different mixes, a disc of BBC sessions, two videos, live footage from the Old Grey Whistle Test, and a very '80s concert video (Dada with the Juice) that the final incarnation of the band made. The Glasgow School is included as the first disc, and it’s still amazing to hear all the singles and demos cut in that short period of time (between 1980 and 1981) all strung together. Songs like "Blue Boy," "Falling and Laughing," and "Lovesick" bubble and pop in a brilliant mix of wise-ass punk and off-kilter disco, at once creating and defining a new kind of pop. The joy and energy that radiate from these tracks is life-affirming. While common wisdom states that the Postcard singles were the artistic high point of the band, the three albums and EP that the revamped (and shifting) band produced are perfectly good, even sometimes great. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a better early-'80s pop album that their debut, You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever. Hearing the discs one after the other with all the assorted B-sides, live cuts, and spare tracks, you can see that the progression the band makes from lo-fi kids thrashing about in the studio to polished pros working with esteemed reggae producer Dennis Bovell does nothing to detract from the humanity and soul in the songs, and especially in the voice and vision of Edwyn Collins. Add to these discs the uniformly excellent BBC sessions, and you have a full picture of one of the most Important and enjoyable groups of the modern pop era. …Coals to Newcastle is everything an Orange Juice fan could have hoped for and a simply thrilling example of how to put together a box set.
A compilation CD released by Geffen featuring artists on their roster around 1996. It features music from Sonic Youth, Beck, The Roots, XTC, Southern Culture On The Skids, and many more, This Is The Last Post Of The Year So Have A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year, Aid00
One of the most striking elements of Costello's songs has always been the scathing, precise social commentary of his lyrics. Never one to shirk away from issues, the early period of Costello's work sees him addressing topics from mercenary warfare ('Oliver's Army') to wife-beating ('Watching The Detectives').
It is a mark of his talent that these songs still sound strikingly relevant today. Check out 'Clubland' for a cynical sussing of club-culture 15 years before Jarvis became 'Sorted (For Es and Whizz)' or 1978's '(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea', a depiction of exploitative Warhol-style production of fashion models.
Musically as well as lyrically, Costello's considerable ability was quickly in evidence. From his debut My Aim Is True, 'Watching The Detectives', with its dubby bass, fragmented guitar figures and skittering percussion, created a White reggae sound much imitated by The Police.
In 1978, with collaborator and producer Steve Nieve, Costello formed The Attractions (Steve Nieve - keyboards, Bruce Thomas - Bass, and Pete Thomas - Drums) for This Year's Model. In the process, a unique sound was created that was both restrained and innovative.
On the spunky pop of 'Pump it Up', for example, The Attractions provide a dumb-ass punk three-chord riff and a Doors-esque organ sound as backdrop to Costello's rapid fire Subterranean Homesick Blues lyrics. Elsewhere The Attractions create accompaniments that are both beautiful and subtle ('Shipbuilding'), and swirly, frantic and poppy ('Lipstick Vogue').
Viewing this collection as a whole Costello's musical diversity is apparent. From the snarly, spiky pop on Armed Forces to the more laid-back calypso soul on tracks such as 'Everyday I Write The Book' from 1983's Punch The Clock, Costello's music managed to evolve while staying true to a deeply rooted artistic vision.
Costello's work away from The Attractions, such as the critically overlooked but intriguing 1996 album with the Brodsky Quartet, All This Useless Beauty, displayed an imagination and taste much lacking during the time. Away from the security of The Attractions, Costello still created some excellent material, including 'Brilliant Mistake', the track featured here from his 1986 album with T.Bone Burnett, the superb King Of America.
While his solo outing from 1991, 'Mighty Like A Rose', was somewhat less than impressive, 1994 saw him reunited with The Attractions for Brutal Youth, a well received return to form. Costello manages to consistently sound contemporary while resisting the remix-one-stop-career-fix option, in favour of the discipline of hard work and strong songwriting.
While such 'Best Of' collections can always be criticised for missing certain favourites ('Less Than Zero' is particularly conspicuous by its absence), this CD contains a vast array of classic tracks. It is an essential purchase.
Alan McGee's Creation Records was one of the most influential and consistently interesting labels of the '80s and '90s, cranking out classic songs and albums while giving the world some of the biggest bands of the era (the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Oasis). Cherry Red's 2015 box set Artifact: The Dawn of Creation Records 83-85 focuses on the very beginnings of Creation's run, compiling singles, live tracks, demos, and Peel Sessions and putting them in a handsome package. The first two discs gather up (almost) all the singles released between 1983 and 1985, beginning with the Legend!'s raucous "'73 in '83." Along the way there are classic tracks by McGee's own Biff Bang Pow! ("There Must Be a Better Life"), the Loft ("Why Does the Rain"), the Jasmine Minks ("Think"), and Meat Whiplash ("Don't Slip Up"). The first JAMC and Primal Scream singles are here too, along with two brilliant singles by the Pastels and obscure releases by the Moodists and the X-Men. The sheer amount of quality indie pop on display is staggering. McGee and his crew were great talent-spotters and the label's aesthetic was spot-on, capturing the best aspects of '60s pop and '70s punk while sounding smack up to date. The third disc is a grab bag of rarities, obscurities, and live tracks highlighted by a wonderfully jangly single by McGee's pre-Creation band the Laughing Apple; three live songs by a band that was very inspirational to McGee, the Television Personalities; and excerpts from the Alive in the Living Room album, which captured Creation bands (and others) playing at the club McGee founded. The fourth disc is one that will have collectors frothing at the mouth, composed as it is of all previously unreleased demos by a handful of bands, including lots of Jasmine Minks tracks, sounding scruffy and alive with youthful vigor. The Biff Bang Pow!, Legend! and X-Men tracks are all fun, while the Moodists' takes on "Train from Kansas City" and "Guess I'm Dumb" show that they knew their way around a cover version, but the crown jewels are the three tracks that Meat Whiplash recorded for their never released second single. The fifth disc is another one for the hardcore Creation fans. It's made up of Peel Sessions, with a handful of live Loft tracks added as a bonus. The Loft are the stars here, sounding like a great lost band as they run through their perfect jangle pop repertoire with sophisticated flair. The Meat Whiplash session is noisy thrills and the Bodines deliver frantically energetic versions of their classic tunes "Theresa" and "William Shatner." Overall, the box set is nearly perfect. The music itself is consistently brilliant, the rarities are impressive, the curation very well considered, and the bright sound fairly jumps out of the speakers. Fans of the label, and indie pop in general, will be pleased that so much care was given to Creation's thrilling early days and should waste no time adding Artifact to their collections.
La Folie is a welcome album in the Stranglers' oeuvre, mainly a collection of tight, punchy songs that often suggest the forthright approach of American new wave bands. With one exception, the songs are shorter and more pointed, harking back to the comparative conciseness of some of the tunes on the band's first two albums, Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes, though acidic lyrics still predominate. "Non-Stop" is a typical example, featuring a half-spoken vocal that suggests Lou Reed, a Cars-influenced organ sound, and a bouncy, dance-derived drum beat; this particular song is atypical, however, because it employs a blues-oriented progression. An interesting excursion is encountered in the song "Golden Brown," a subdued, jazz-influenced number with purring vocals, a coolly executed synthesizer/harpsichord backing texture, and a periodically stumbling beat. Only the plushly understated title track suggests the sprawl typical of the group's immediately preceding releases. This fine album is well worth purchasing
The five-disc, six-and-a-quarter-hour long edition of Underworld’s 1994 debut (well, debut in the form that most people would recognize as Underworld, with Rick Smith and Karl Hyde teaming up with Darren Emerson in the wake of Underworld mk I’s collapse) is the kind of thing you’d never recommend to someone interested in checking out the band for the first time. Lengthier than some bands’ entire discographies, replete with alternate versions and collector detritus (really amazing collector detritus, but still), it is an embarrassment of riches for fans but a very heavy meal for the neophyte. The album itself, justly a classic, sounds great here, but the much more digestible two-disc Deluxe Edition is an easier place to start (and boasts the same remaster, which to the band’s credit sounds fresher and sharper but not painfully louder nor brickwalled into oblivion). That version’s second disc compiles some of the early and important singles and the previously unreleased songs from the bigger version, a smart approach if not actually one that culls the very cream from the (much) longer edition, although it does have the advantage of not taking a quarter of your day to listen to. Or is that an advantage?
If nothing else, getting and devoting oneself to this kind of actually-deluxe edition allows the kind of deep dive that many of us seem to find hard to manage or justify in 2014. Editions like this one often work best when you come to them already intimately familiar with the original work, allowing material like the live rehearsal recorded in the band’s home studio (that would be disc 5) to function both as a pleasure in its own right (that 18-minute “Spoonman”!) and a new way of approaching and understanding work you’ve loved for years. The bonus material here has been IntellIgently organized and, with one or two minor exceptions, very intelligently chosen (and given taste, we probably all disagree which of the 41 tracks here are those exceptions). If this isn’t everything of worth Underworld had in the vaults from this era, it certainly feels like it sometimes, a mark of how satisfying (and yes, exhaustive) it is.
Dubnobasswithmyheadman has at this point been canonized and picked-over enough that there’s little enough to add, but in the context of all this other material it’s kind of amazing all over again that Hyde, Smith, and Emerson came up with such a fully-formed sound and emotional tone from all these disparate directions they might have taken. While the supplementary material is great, there’s only maybe one example of a track so good you might wish it had made the cut instead (that would be the immortal “Rez”, especially ever since their live album indelibly connected it and “Cowgirl”). Interestingly enough, most of the less dancefloor-friendly songs here are found on the original LP, like the lithely downtempo “River of Bass” and the plaintive, sparse “Tongue”. On the album they serve to give the likes of the dark, cathartic “Dirty Epic” and the propulsive, buzzing “Spoonman” greater impact through contrast, but as the other four discs here prove, Underworld could have easily made an album that would have been much more conventionally club focused (and it would have also been astounding, but perhaps a little less distinctive).
Those four discs cover, in order, non-album singles and b-sides (including two songs they released under the Lemon Interrupt name), remixes, previously unreleased material (mostly rough versions, with some worthwhile new songs) and the aforementioned rehearsal tapes. While any fan who owns a significant number of Underworld releases will find some duplication, the band appear to have generally tried to avoid that common pitfall (“Bigmouth” and “Big Meat Show”, both of which appeared on the recent 1992-2012 The Anthology, only appear here on the rehearsal tape for example) while still being definitive. There are definitely some oddities, especially for fans that weren’t around when some of this material was originally released (“Dirtyguitar”, for example, contains elements of both “Dirty Epic” and “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You”, not two songs you’d necessarily think to combine), and some revelations even for longtime fans: the sublime outro to “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You” appears to have been composed by adding the guitar riff from the fine, previously unreleased “Can You Feel Me?” to what’s tagged as the “After Sky” version of the former here, and more than once you can hear Karl Hyde trying out different lyrical and vocal techniques on the way to the assured, stream of consciousness sloganeering he fully pioneered on the original album, an approach that’s still one of the most striking things about Underworld’s work.
Whether due to the material available or preference, “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You” and “Dark & Long” get most of the spotlight here, with both songs showing up in six and seven different versions, respectively, across the five discs (although four songs from the original release only turn up on the first disc here). Normally just over two hours worth of those two songs might run the risk of tediousness, but the range from (for example) the pulsing, subdued album version of “Dark & Long”, the featured-in-Trainspotting synth washes of “Dark & Long (Dark Train)”, and the 20-minute, beatific “Dark & Long (Thing in a Book Mix)” are transformed enough that including them all doesn’t feel redundant or lazy. Of course, this is a band who once released a 65-minute US single half composed of versions of the same song that plays better than a lot of contemporary electronic albums.
The songs and versions included here are of such uniformly high quality that it’s a bit of a shame that they aren’t spread out a little more evenly, admittedly; the two alternate versions of “Cowgirl” that are here, for example, are among the best bonus material here. The “Irish Pub in Kyoto” mix is an instrumental take that occasionally sounds like a factory in a videogame (in the best possible way), while the previously unreleased demo (tagged, as everything on disc 4 is, with information that presumably means more to them than us, in this case “(Alt Cowgirl C69 Mix From A1564)”) sees a subdued Hyde working through a set of lyrics about a cowgirl “under a branded sky” that did not make the album version at all. It’s further in that Hyde appears to almost stumble on a few lines that would wind up either repeated or just looped in the released version (“call me I feel like flying into” appears here only as part of a longer monologue, for example) over tumbling drums that have a looser feel than the seething LP version. The result is something that is almost totally unlike “Cowgirl” despite being unmistakably the same song; in the old days they could have thrown it on the b-side as a “part two” and it would have been a cult favourite.
At the risk of turning in a review as long as the BOX set, there isn’t room to dig through all of this wonderful material to describe how many similar cases there are in this edition of Dubnobasswithmyheadman. But over and over again these discs subtly unlock new angles on the original, the way the instrumental “Dirty Ambi Piano” version of “Dirty Epic” makes those foghorn synths in the back almost holy. Six hours and fifteen minutes is a lot of time to spend contemplating an album once, but this set argues in the strongest possible terms that Underworld Mk II’s first effort is well worth it;
