The Cure ‎Join The Dots (B-Sides & Rarities 1978>2001 The Fiction Years)

The Cure Join The Dots B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001 The Fiction Years

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Wisely, the Cure decided to start fresh upon signing with their new label in 2004 by cleaning house, remastering the old albums, and bringing their fans Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities, 1978-2001. Not only is it the ultimate companion to the official releases, but it is, in a way, the new-super-deluxe-updated version of that cassette release of Staring at the Sea. Every B-side is included, in order, with cleaned-up sound, liner notes, and explanations by the man who made it all happen. All tracks, from "10.15 Saturday Night" (the B-side to the debut single "Killing an Arab") to covers of "Hello, I Love You," "Purple Haze," and "World in My Eyes," to entries from the Bloodflowers singles, are an indication that while the Cure made both strong albums and singles, they were not afraid to experiment along the way, and more importantly, they didn't let pride keep them from not making them available to those who were willing to look for them. Their growth as a band can be fully tracked in the songs here. The wild development on disc one (which includes the B-sides from the Staring at the Sea cassette, the B-sides from the Boys Don't Cry re-release from 1986, and the Japanese Whispers B-sides, as well as the extremely rare "Lament" [flexi-disc version]) is easily their strongest and most diverse era, with Smith growing artistically and musically in leaps and bounds from track to track. The rampant growth eventually gives way to the dark and heavy pop of the B-sides of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration, and Mixed Up on disc two. While the songs are strong on this second disc, they manage to have less of the wild, experimental abandon that disc one has. the Cure began to find a real niche by this point, and by disc three, the dream pop of the late '80s had developed into the stadium-sized gloom and doom that characterized 1992's Wish, their critical and commercial peak. Eventually the band's output would become more sporadic, and the level of consistency would be more of a trademark of the band than the experimentalism of old. Disc four, which covers the time from Wild Mood Swings to Bloodflowers, is the "weakest" of the collection, but there are still great moments to be found, with many remixes that give the original tracks a new interpretation. There are those who would argue that the band grew, and others would argue that it fell apart, yet there is no denying that the majority of work on Join the Dots is extraordinarily strong. It admittedly may be a bit too much for someone who isn't quite a big devotee of the band, but it's a veritable godsend for those who've been waiting for this for years. No jumbled, out-of-order track listings, no glaring omissions (it's safe to say that the reissues of the albums will take care of any extra tracks, mixes, and miscellanea lying around) -- it's exactly what a rarities/B-sides collection should be. Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities, 1978-2001 is proof that, while the band may falter from time to time -- as most do -- the Cure have, unlike most, really been paying attention to their fans' needs over the years.

Oasis The Masterplan

Oasis The Masterplan

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The UK is most definitely one of the greatest countries in terms of music. So much classic bands that helped to build up the genres that we know these days, that even if you don't like some of the bands from there, at least you should be grateful for the impact they have in everything you listen. One of the most well-known bands from there is Oasis, a pop rock band that was one of the pillars from the Britpop movement, which was massive in their country and has a monstrous legacy. The frontman duo, Noel and Liam Gallagher, are some of the most arrogant people in music, but these guys definitely know how to make a tune. After the massive success of their first albums, "Definitely Maybe" and "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?", which had some of the most famous UK's stadium anthems, the third album "Be Here Now" was considered a failure by many(even if I don't think so) because of its length, overproduction and nonsensical, cocaine-fueled lyrics. So, after Oasis found themselves trapped in a hole, they decided to put their b-sides together and released their first compilation, "The Masterplan", which turned to be one of the best Oasis albums. It starts with "Acquiesce", a full-mode rocker that bounds between Liam's verses and Noel's chorus that works so beautifully that is hard not to ask yourself how they didn't used this vocal duo attack more often. Other rockers like "Fade Away", "Headshrinker" and "Stay Young" are the usual anthemic stuff that Oasis mastered so wonderfully in their early career, with memorable lyrics and noisey, gigantic guitars that create a sense of confidence that is exciting to see in a band that is so young, but at the same time is so strong and magic that it sounds like a experienced band. But while the rockers are awesome, everybody knows that Oasis's best songs are the ballads, and here they're the best that you could imagine. The emotional vocals of Liam in "Listen Up" and "Rockin' Chair" are a pleasant surprise that shows his best vocals in the band's history, and how he is a great vocalist sometimes. But, the best ballads are the Noel ones. "Half The World Away" and "Talk Tonight" are acoustic numbers that shows how simple and rewarding Noel's songwriting can be, with sweet choruses and catchy lyrics. But, the album's masterpiece is the title track, that is close to be the band's best song. Its soothing first verse, beautiful violins and piano, powerful chorus and masterfully composed lyrics shows why Oasis is such a big deal. Their influences are obvious here, with Beatles-esque songs like "Underneath The Sky", and a cover of "I Am The Walrus" that is a little unnecessary, but it is a good one anyway. The Smiths-esque "Going Nowhere" is pretty good, but it really doesn't go nowhere, feeling a little weak compared with the rest of the album. The instrumental "The Swamp Song" is forgettable, and it prejudice the flow of the album too. But the overall instrumentation of the album is beautiful, with great solos, buzzy guitars and a great use of multiple instruments that gives the characteristic Oasis sound to the songs. Oasis's passionate, anthemic and confident sound comes into full circle on "The Masterplan", focusing on their grandiose energy that makes simple songs become so uplifting and exciting that in a few listens you will sing along to the entire album. Its rock dynamics together with pop tendencies blend together so well that almost everyone can enjoy it, liking rock music or not. It is a document of a band that was once in the top of the world. Oh, and did I mentioned that it's only a b-side compilation? Yeah, that's hard to believe.

Saint Etienne ‎So Tough Deluxe Edition

Saint Etienne So Tough Deluxe Edition

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Although upon its release Saint Etienne’s second album So Tough marked the band’s chart high point, time has seen it fade from a cultural memory that has the mid-90s pegged as The Britpop Years. This is curious, for the 1993 record was created from a very similar palette to that employed by Britpop’s songwriters – an updated 1960s soundtrack to narratives of everyday London life – but to far superior results. Saint Etienne’s observations were keener, their aesthetic more refined and the very songs smarter than what was to come a year or so later. In part, this is because while Saint Etienne loved to find beauty in the mundane (“Bruce on the old Generation Game” and squeezy ketchup bottles in Kentish Town cafes) unlike the majority of their contemporaries they weren’t afraid to explore sounds from beyond the English coast, be it French pop, hip hop or global electronica. It’s perhaps because of this diversity of influence that So Tough still sounds skittish and fresh today. Leafhound echoes the piano sounds that characterised early 90s dance records, and Conichita Martinez has a European disco feel heightened by the repeated vocal and scrambled guitar lines that appear as if you’d suddenly stumbled across them on a short wave radio. You’re in a Bad Way still stands up as a bona-fide pop classic, while on the equally elegant Avenue, sumptuous “oooohs” suddenly disappear into a stately harpsichord interlude without creating a pretentious non-sequitur. It represents an ambition sadly seen from too few groups since. Calico, meanwhile, anticipates trip hop, and Junk the Morgue is a curious transatlantic cousin of Madonna’s Erotica. While Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs’ ability to combine the influences gleaned from their prodigious record collections made Saint Etienne ripe for a cerebral dancefloor, it was Sarah Cracknell’s versatile singing (breathy one moment, soulful the next) that was key to creating an overarching (but never overly arch) identity out of these disparate moods. It’s certainly more effective than Saint Etienne’s stylistic device of connecting each track with clips of dialogue from obscure British film or snatches of conversation, which feels hackneyed and dated, disrupting the album’s flow. Nevertheless, this is a minor quibble, and by rights So Tough’s reissue reasserts a forgotten treasure as one of the finest British albums of the 90s.

Teenage Fanclub ‎Grand Prix Australia Album

Teenage Fanclub Grand Prix

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For all of the brilliance of records like Bandwagonesque and the underrated Thirteen, at times Teenage Fanclub seemed little more than a showcase for the laconic melodic genius of Norman Blake -- fairly or not, the songwriting contributions of bandmates Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley suffered mightily by comparison, mere filler when stacked alongside Blake-penned marvels like "The Concept" and "Norman 3." That said, the superb Grand Prix is perhaps the truest group effort in the Fannies' catalog -- more than ever before, their democratic approach truly bears fruit, and it's indicative of the disc's uniform excellence that the first Blake composition, the lovely "Mellow Doubt," doesn't even surface until track three, by which time McGinley's "About You" and Love's harmony-rich "Sparky's Dream" have already firmly established the set's ragged-but-right tenor. While new drummer Paul Quinn fails to recreate the buoyantly reckless abandon of the sacked Brendan O'Hare, Grand Prix otherwise captures complete creative synergy -- in particular, "Don't Look Back" is Love's watershed moment, a gorgeously wistful love song highlighted by wittily lovelorn lyrics like "I'd steal a car to drive you home," as good a pick-up line as anything in the annals of rock & roll. Not everything works (McGinley's "Verisimilitude" goes nowhere fast) and Blake's contributions are still the highlights ("Neil Jung" and "I'll Make It Clear" are simply perfect pop songs), but Grand Prix is ultimately the product of a band at the peak of its collective powers, not as much a landmark as Bandwagonesque but every bit as good on its own terms.

Chapterhouse Blood Music US Album

Chapterhouse Blood Music

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This album brings a smile to my face everytime I listen to it. It is a great combination of shoegazer, pop, and emerging 90's electronica. While their first album Whirlpool is a better straight-up shoegazer affair (with better singles), Blood Music offers up such a joyous combination of styles that I personally like it better. Something about the carefree attitude of the band in cherry-picking elements from several genres is really refreshing. On Blood Music Chapterhouse are truly inspired in their attempt to carve out a sound of their own; something at the crossroads of genres that hadn't been really heard before. Many shoegazer bands eventually evolved into electronica later in life ending up radically different from their original sound. Chapterhouse on the other hand incorporated electronica into their lush guitar thing rather than opt for it over the shoegazer elements that made them (semi)-famous. The product is this excellent album. Differing bonus discs appeared on U.K. and U.S. versions -- the former consisted of a full remix of the album by techno duo Global Communication, while the latter included a couple of remixes from other acts, a sweet little number called "Frost," and the awesome "Picnic," a 15-minute ambient/rock piece that arguably was their best-ever number.

Jakobinarina The First Crusade As Requested By Filip

Jakobinarina The First Crusade

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Few of the current indie brigade sound like they’re having much fun. Look at Razorlight, for example: in the midst of taking themselves ultra-seriously Borrell and co. seem to have forgotten about the inherent fun of being in a band and become mighty miserable. In complete contrast, Icelandic loons Jakobinarina are having a ball on their debut record The First Crusade. Led by firebrand vocalist Gunnar Bergmann and fuelled by a tangible frustration and desire to get out of the boring mundanity of their hometown (the tongue-twistingly named Hafnarfjörður), Jakobinarina’s debut album spills over with potential hit after potential hit, all grand ideas wrapped up in frenzied punk spirit. Taking aim at pop culture with a healthy dose of cynicism and biting lyrical barbs, the sextet are a refreshing antidote to the kitsch obsessed malaise of the new rave, no hoper set. From the opening prattle of the rabble-rousing ‘It’s Monday’, Bergmann is ranting like a madman about kick-starting a dance revolution and never really lets up for the next twelve tracks. While ‘It’s Monday’ isn’t quite the nifty toe-tapper it might fancy itself as, the following surge of ‘His Lyrics Are Disastrous’ certainly is, coming off like Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz fronting The Libertines (this is a more appealing prospect than it may seem in theory, promise). The band ratchet the ire and tempo with each progressive track but always with one eye on the melody - ‘(I’ve Got A Date With) My Television’ sounds like a futuristic bar-band and recent single ‘This Is An Advertisement’ is a deliciously drippy, self-deprecating pop trinket. While it’s far from infallible, The First Crusade is a raw, blustery cornucopia of firecracker indie-rock tracks that spit and seethe as much as they exhilarate. If they shaved two or three off (the sketchy intermission of ‘End Of Transmission No.6’ for one adds nothing of worth to proceedings), this would be a bubbling little gem of a debut. But we’ll forgive their occasional foibles and the suspiciously familiar melody lines sprinkled throughout because Jakobinarina make indie music sound fun again.

The Compact 2 Tone Story As Requested By Jbinjapan

Various The Compact 2 Tone Story

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Understandably, the Brits got the better box, the four-CD The Compact Two Tone Story, while the U.S. had to make do with the abbreviated two-CD The 2 Tone Collection. Compact compiled the A- and B-sides of every single released by the 2 Tone label, plus bundled in a bumper crop of rarities and live material, as well as George Marshall's definitive book The Two Tone Story. Obviously, Collection is going to pale in comparison to all that. However, one does get all the label's A-sides, and the flips as well in the case of double A-sided singles, with the sole exception of the two songs accompanying "Ghost Town." In their stead are Roddy Radiation & the Specials' "Braggin' and Tryin' Not to Lie" and Neville Staple's "Rude Boys Outa Jail," originally paired on a free single included with early copies of More Specials. There's also the Specials' "Raquel," the only other rarity here, which was the flip of the Dutch "Concrete Jungle" single. Since the majority of the singles' B-sides were culled off of studio albums, their omission is at worst inconvenient, but it does mean you have to shop elsewhere for the Selecter's live "Carry Go Bring Come" (the flip of "Missing Words"), as well as for a wealth of later B-sides. Then again, only the most fanatical will find these latter tracks much of a loss. Today, 2 Tone is synonymous with the genre it helped invent; however, in their later years the label left much of that sound behind, signing the likes of new romantic wannabes the Apollinaires and the Higsons, and Northern soul lightweights the Friday Club. Even the later Special A.K.A. material left much to be desired, as their chart placements reflect. But for all its eventual flaws, 2 Tone was one of the beacons of Britain's music scene, and at its peak a glittering success story of indie defiance and inspired creativity. Even in this truncated form, The 2 Tone Collection makes that glorious past come back to life.

The Soup Dragons Lovegod

The Soup Dragons Lovegod

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The Soup Dragon's only commercially successful release, Lovegod was a definitive album of a short-lived but blissful movement in alternative dance that began in the late '80s and ended in the early '90s. Lead with fellow Scotsmen Primal Scream and other proto-trip-hop bands like the Happy Mondays, the Charlatans U.K., the Stone Roses, and the Farm, the scene revolved around community--masses joined in various forms of often chemically enhanced euphoric states, dancing till breakfast and beyond. Like Primal Scream's Screamadelica, this album follows a path clearly cut by the Rolling Stones. Their hazy, blues-on-Ecstasy psychedelic grooves fueled the club-going shoe gazers swaying in place for what could have been forever, while at the same time uplifted souls (and soles) with money-maker shakers like "Backwards Dog" and a cover of the Stones' "I'm Free." Because of its combination of timeless rock influences and its preturntablism dance sensibility, Lovegod has aged well, losing little of its capacity for elation.