Röyksopp - Melody A.M. (2001)

1) So Easy; 2) Eple; 3) Sparks; 4) In Space; 5) Poor Leno; 6) A Higher Place; 7) Röyksopp's Night Out; 8) Remind Me; 9) She's So; 10) 40 Years Back/Come

Nordic cool, chill yet with a lively energy. Defining the turn-of-millennium sound and time warping there over and over again - and there's great songs too.

Key tracks: "Eple", "Sparks", "Poor Leno"

A lushly produced debut album from an European duo circa the turn of the millennium, with one foot firmly in electronic music and the other taking steps towards different horizons, spearheading a trend that was more focused towards the lounges and living rooms than the dancefloors, and who would soundtrack countless "chill mix" compilations. Quick - am I talking about Moon Safari by Air, or Melody A.M. by Röyksopp?

While the two albums are kindred spirits, the big difference between them is where they’re placed in time. Moon Safari, despite its obvious retro affectations, sounds timeless and you can’t nail down its sound to a particular decade as it takes ideas from across decades. Melody A.M. meanwhile is the spirit of the millennium, inextricably linked to the rise of the chill electronic beats that were the hottest thing around, and the Nordic cool often accompanying them as they moved across Europe in particular. If you were around at the time, it’s the kind of record that will always take you back to that period. This was the sound that was playing everywhere around, literally in the case “Eple” which featured in seemingly every single advert break and public space. As a result, all the songs on Melody A.M. act like little time capsules in their own separate ways. “Sparks” is a runaway Moby song from his own millennial peak years, Erlend Øye’s vocals on “Poor Leno” and “Remind Me” echo the brief spotlight that Kings of Convenience had during the same time period, “Röyksopp’s Night Out” is a 1-to-1 readthrough of the club-friendly production fashion of the time, et cetera.

Melody A.M. wouldn't hold up as well as it does if it didn't sound so incredibly fresh though, which is an unbelievable thing for an album that's seemingly so tied to its year of origin. It's the ideas behind the songs that are completely timeless however, and there's nothing better to demonstrate this than the aforementioned “Eple” itself - Röyksopp’s signature song anywhere that isn’t the UK or the US. It’s a song that without fail will always take me back to my school years in the small town I lived in, but listening to it decades later as a grown man in a big city, it hasn’t aged a day: the sound is still fresh like a sharp apple, the synth blip melody is immortal in its instant infectiousness, and its lighter-than-air groove never goes out of fashion. It’s a song that has not just survived its omnipresence of the period, but which sounds like it could take over the world any day now again - and it always brings a genuine smile on my miserable face and warmth in my Northern heart in just how effortlessly gliding it is. It's a little masterpiece that doesn't roll over like a revolution, but plays in perfect harmony no matter the season or the year.

You can more or less lump the rest of the songs in a similar category: great tunes that sound as current now as they have ever been. "Poor Leno" and "Remind Me" are among the most finely arranged synthpop cuts of the 00s, filled with ache and longing over an impeccably cool production job loaded with charming instrumental details; I love the guitar on "Poor Leno" in particular, flicking from chicken-scratch disco to an ethereally floating melody. Øye's subdued vocals too fit so perfectly to the smooth synth backdrop that it's here where he's in his natural element, rather than with acoustic ballads, and the more laidback album version compared to the potentially more familiar single remix demonstrates it the best. "Sparks" is gorgeous and wistful, music for watching the rain cover everything outside the window when you're stuck inside. "So Easy" is amusing as an opener for their first album because it feels like the song that Röyksopp took as their signature sound; it's the song they've tried to recreate the most throughout their career and one of the few songs here that look forward to the rest of the duo's discography, when they'd abandon the more lounge-like aspects of this record. But they never bettered the formula from the ghost-like choirs and steadily swaggering bass of "So Easy".

In fact, the only one I’m not too fond of is “Röyksopp’s Night Out” which is the odd one out in several ways. It seems to be intended to be somewhat of a peak or a waterline for the record - the extended jam that crescendos the steady climb of energy coming towards it and leads into the more laidback last set of songs. But it’s the one song that’s most clearly gone past its use-by date with its reliance on very of-its-time beats and sounds and it stands out in that respect, which I wouldn’t mind so much if the song itself did anything noteworthy during its seven and half minutes. It’s not even the fact that it’s instrumental and so far all the songs I’ve praised bar “Eple” incorporate vocals to varying degrees, because the other instrumental cuts like the blissful “In Space” (one of the most gracefully lovely songs on the record), or the closing duo of the extremely Air-like lounge cut “She’s So” and the ambient closer “40 Years Back/Come” are still strong.

The overall good news therefore is that that even if you can't relate to the very specific memories of some random internet old fart who reviews music, Melody A.M. is still a great record. I'd hesitate to call it essential, even if it somewhat feels like it - it would certainly well deserve a slot in a Nordic-specific edition of the 1,001 Albums You Must Hear book - but if anything, it's perhaps slightly overlooked, certainly further away from its home. It belongs in the hallowed set of records that manage to sound both effortless and relaxing, as well as directly engaging and energetic; one for both ethereal headphone moments and to fire up a room party. It's an album I perhaps struggle to write in any kind of 'objective' sense because how closely it reminds me of where I was when I first became aware of it - but then, no other albums bearing this sound have survived this long. Of all the records that bore this sound in the early 00s, I can't remember any other one as clearly as this, which leaves Melody A.M. a practical example of survival of the fittest - especially once Röyksopp themselves moved on pretty swiftly to different places once they had their doors opened, never repeating this trick again. And I appreciate and acknowledge that I've banged on about the album's place in time to an uncomfortable and practically repetetive degree, but it's literally the primary aspect that hits me the most when I listen to Melody A.M. - and not in a nostalgic sense at all, but like a pure sensory memory, a real metaphysical sense of being there. Music can transport you to different places and while there are so many albums I connect more to on a personal level, Melody A.M. is one of the most vivid time machines I can think of.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Gold Against the Soul (Deluxe Edition) (2020)

 

CD1: 1) Sleepflower; 2) From Despair to Where: 3) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh); 4) Yourself; 5) Life Becoming a Landslide; 6) Drug Drug Druggy; 7) Roses in the Hospital; 8) Nostalgic Pushead; 9) Symphony of Tourette; 10) Gold Against the Soul; Bonus tracks: 11) Donkeys; 12) Comfort Comes; 13) Are Mothers Saints; 14) Patrick Bateman; 15) Hibernation; 16) Us Against You; 17) Charles Windsor; 18) What’s My Name (Live)
CD2: 1) Sleepflower (House in the Woods Demo); 2) From Despair to Where (House in the Woods Demo); 3) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) (House in the Woods Demo); 4) Yourself (Live in Bangkok); 5) Life Becoming a Landslide (House in the Woods Demo); 6) Drug Drug Druggy (House in the Woods Demo); 7) Drug Drug Druggy (Impact Demo); 8) Roses in the Hospital (House in the Woods Demo); 9) Roses in the Hospital (Impact Demo); 10) Nostalgic Pushead (House in the Woods Demo); 11) Symphony of Tourette (House in the Woods Demo); 12) Gold Against the Soul (House in the Woods Demo); 13) Roses in the Hospital (OG Psychovocal Remix); 14) Roses in the Hospital (51 Funk Salute Remix); 15) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) (Chemical Brothers Remix); 16) Roses in the Hospital (Filet-O-Gang Remix); 17) Roses in the Hospital (ECG Remix)

Got the b-sides, got the demos, got everything you could have from this era plus some fancy photos - not much to complain for once. Maybe a little less volume...

Key tracks: "Donkeys", "Are Mothers Saints", "Hibernation"

(This is a review of the deluxe edition of Gold Against the Soul, for the review of the actual album please click here)

Gold Against the Soul is a LOUD and HARD album, with lots of BIG RIFFS and SOARING SOLOS and CRUNCHY BASS and BELLOWING VOCALS. When preparing for the, uh, 27th anniversary reissue of the album (because by this point the Manics team isn't even pretending to have any reason or rhyme to their reissue schedule), this seems to have been the leading thought behind the project because rather than the subtler remaster job favoured for the prior albums, for this one they've turned the volume to the max. The deluxe edition of Gold Against the Soul is loud, so that you barely need to touch the volume knob to get that full-on cranked-to-11 hard rock effect reverberating through your entire apartment. Sure, the album could maybe have used a little bit of a volume boost because as with many early 1990s releases it doesn't have the most volume, but the extreme lengths taken with this reissue are ridiculous. There is a pretty solid remaster job underneath there somewhere too, but it's sometimes hard to appreciate when the music is pummeling out of your speakers.

It's kind of hilariously apt for the album's flirtations with hair metal and 80s hard rock, but it's honestly a little too much. But at least they've not touched the album's tracklist this time.

But the fans are here for the bonuses anyway, and in that regard the band have started to settle well into a standard format of b-sides on one disc, a demo runthrough of the entire record on the next and filling the gaps with miscellaneous material where apt - and it's honestly a good format. The most important part i.e. the b-sides all follow the main album in reverse chronological order, and are a great side companion to the main disc, showing the band trying out some new ideas in this generally transformative era. The melancholy torchlight song "Donkeys" and its wonderfully metallic bass as well as the dark, jagged and anxious proto-The Holy Bible roadsign "Comfort Comes" are the two fan and band favourites, and both are classics. "Are Mothers Saints" and "Hibernation" are my favourites of the lot, with the latter's effortlessly melodic nature coming across practically breezy compared to the heavy-hitting main album, and the latter not only being the era's sole primarily acoustic song and full of a gentler kind of beauty as a result, but it's also a curiously atypical piece of storytelling lyricism from the Manics that even now stands out. "Patrick Bateman" is a ludicruous chugga-chugga metal attempt that marries some genuinely great melodies to ridiculous attention-baiting lyrics ("I fucked God up the ass!"), what sounds like a children's choir backing James and a headbanger finale - it's a ridiculous song, but I love it in all its daftness. The Generation Terrorists -esque "Us Against You" is the obvious runt of the litter and sounds like a left-over from the previous sessions still awkwardly clinging around, and the two covers at the very end are serviceable but not particularly exciting.

Meanwhile the demos are once again interesting in their own way, as earlier Manics demos are wont to be. One of the key recording cues for Gold Against the Soul was emphasising the band's live sound after the clinically produced Generation Terrorists, and so not only are all the demos here full-band run-throughs rather than acoustic James solo spots, but they're all pretty close to their album versions in arrangement. The band arrived to the sessions with a clear idea in their heads, and so there aren't really many surprises in that regard: the biggest difference is with "Gold Against the Soul" having a bit more of an obvious swagger, and the somewhat hilarious Impact Studios demo of "Drug Drug Druggy" with woah-woahs, piano and handclaps in the verses giving it an almost baggy kind of feel (as an aside, the two demo versions of "Drug Drug Druggy" and the alternative tracklist found in the liner notes where it's pushed right near the front of the album give an intriguing perspective on the band obviously thinking this was one of the key tracks of the album, which is a wild idea). But it's the details where the differences lie. There's a lot of alternative lyrics throughout, and while the final album would have some orchestral embellishments and ongoing hammond organs throughout, on the demos James sticks some additional vocal harmonies in their place to some really good results for us fans of both James' vocals and vocal harmonies in general. It's a neat set of demos once more, doing what demos at their best do for the fans - they give some additional insight to the album, even if they're clearly more interesting from a contextual perspective than as something you'd actively want to listen to.

(A special shout-out goes to the demo of "Sleepflower", where the band clearly raided the nearest kitchen for its cooking pot percussion breakdown)

The remixes that take up the final section of the second disc aren't much to write about. The Chemical Brothers remix of "La Tristesse Durera" is a fairly throwaway generic 90s rock band remix, and that's about as much as anyone can say about it. The four "Roses in the Hospital" remixes are a creature onto their own: for some reason a group of remixers all decided that what the song needs is a little bit more funk and groove, and we end up with four nearly-identical remixes heavy on early 90s hip hop beats and funky swagger. They are incredibly dated time capsules, and for that reason alone there's something endearing to them even if they're hardly among the band's best remixes.

The big talking point with this particular re-release was its hard-cover, coffee table book format which gives access to countless high resolution prints of previously unreleased behind-the-scenes photos from the band's court photographer Mitch Ikeda. I'm not entirely sold that they're worth the bother that I can't fit the box in my actual music shelves (it sits all on its own opposite them, in a spare slot in a trusty Ikea Kallax that's the only shelf tall enough to deal with it), but they are a genuinely cool little visual diary of this particular period: not just the recording sessions but the moments in-between and the band's (in)famous first tour in Asia. Listening to the bravado of the album it's easy to forget that these were a group of young friends getting a taste of rock star life, and the casual and candid shots are a great contrast to the posing of the official promo footage. I still would prefer some track-by-tracks and wider written insight, but I'm more positively surprised by the photo-heavy approach for this one than I initially expected to be.

It's definitely an overpriced package (but that's my fault for buying new) and I'd ideally not want to blow my speakers up whenever I play it, but after a lot of trials and tribulations the Manics are finally hitting a comfortable groove with these reissues in their content. For the kind of fan who's even remotely interested by the ins and outs of Manics recording periods, this is absolutely worth it to get the b-sides and to some extent the demos. Gold Against the Soul itself remains one of the band's most underrated records and a flashy re-release isn't going to change the minds of those who aren't already converted, but despite its non-canonical stature this set has been treated with enough care and attention that it makes for a good appendix in a completionist collection - even if, as per usual, there's a caveat or two.

Rating: 8/10

Sufjan Stevens - A Sun Came (2000)

 
1) We Are What You Say; 2) A Winner Needs a Wand; 3) Rake; 4) Siamese Twins; 5) Demetrius; 6) Dumb I Sound; 7) Wordsworth's Ridge; 8) Belly Button; 9) Rice Pudding; 10) A Loverless Bed (Without Remission); 11) Godzuki; 12) Super Sexy Woman; 13) The Oracle Said Wander; 14) Happy Birthday; 15) Jason; 16) Kill; 17) Ya Leil; 18) A Sun Came; 19) Satan's Saxophones; 2004 Reissue Bonus Tracks: 20) Joy! Joy! Joy!; 21) You Are the Rake

Home recordings, silly family fun and somewhere deep within, the promise of a good start. Heavy on the potential, drowned out by its novelties.    

Key tracks: "A Loverless Bed (Without Remission)", "A Sun Came", "Joy! Joy! Joy!" (I know it's a bonus track)

A Sun Came reminds me most of all about the miscellaneous demo collections you end up hearing whenever artists (or their labels) clear their vaults. Miscellaneous home recordings, early releases under different monikers, obscure demo tapes and shelved debuts that were scrapped - some released officially years later, others surviving through leaks, and by and far aimed at and digested by hungry fans who are more interested in their historical context than actual quality. A Sun Came strictly speaking isn’t such a release - it is Sufjan Stevens’ canonical first album and was released properly as such (albeit with limited circulation, and there seems to be some debate whether it was 1999 or 2000). But in spirit, it is absolutely the kind of ragtag release where you get to see glimpses into the early stages of an artist who is on the cusp of something great, but who's still mainly just playing and around recording any possible idea from the comforts of his bedroom.

That’s not to say this doesn’t sound like Sufjan because it absolutely does. His voice is unmistakable and just as magical as it would be later on, and while the recording quality is a little more rudimentary you can already hear him nudging his way into the maximalist territory he’d claim as his own a few years later. But rather than leaning towards the more elaborate and emotional nature of his cornerstone works, the main driving force behind A Sun Came is the unpredictability and, in lack of a better word, whimsy that would eventually lead towards the sudden stylistic switches, the balloon unicorn stage costumes and the Christmas box sets. It’s also curiously his most insular work: it’s an album so littered with in-jokes, historic home recordings of Sufjan and his family members and collaborations with some of them that it feels like you’re missing out on something if you’re not among his confidants. It somewhat goes back to these being home recordings, and in a very literal sense of that as well. It’s like Sufjan’s writing songs for his family and with his family, and that the rest of us get to hear it too is like unintentional happenstance.

As quaint, and in its own way adorable as that sounds, from a purely musical perspective it’s not quite so. A Sun Came is a hodgepodge of a record - as said, its closest resemblance is to compilations of material not originally intended for wider release, and the picture it presents of Sufjan at this stage is someone who's still noodling around with concepts and sounds more than anything else. The vast amount of hushed folk ballads throughout is familiar territory - and the best part of the record - and the noisier excursions to an almost slacker rock like territory are unexpected but intriguing, and both together could make an uneven but promising debut. Where it starts getting into a flimsier territory are the abundance of interludes, skits and scattershot side paths it takes. Among the worst are the spoken word segments consisting of home recordings of li'l Sufjan and his family, which are fairly short but all quite annoying, and the clear novelty filler like the terribly aimless "Rice Pudding" and the absolutely abysmal free jazz dreck of "Satan's Saxophones". Some cuts are more developed but still resemble mere ideas in search of actual songs: "Demetrius" is like three songs playing all at once with no clear winning direction and it becomes a mess, and the aforementioned Middle Eastern excursion "Ya Leil" does in no way support its near six-minute length. I’m not a completely joyless monster and the lo-fi irony-groove of “Super Sexy Woman” is more in line with the off-kilter sense of humour that makes e.g. the Christmas box sets works, but even then it's nearly three minutes long with a joke that lasts for about one. 

 
You strip all the filler out and you are left with a solid (and noticably shorter) debut release by an artist-in-works, but I'd be wrong to say it'd still be a particularly strong record. A lot of what's left is very aesthetically pleasing - you honestly cannot go wrong with the combination of Sufjan and an acoustic guitar, and simply in sonical terms it's thoroughly captivating to listen to. But as songs you'd remember, they don't go that far - though I'm not sure if it's just because all the clutter around them makes it harder for even the good things to stick. It's not to say that it all passes through without attention: the title track is a deadly gorgeous little acoustic melody piece, and "A Winner Needs a Wand" features a richer arrangement that hints towards where Michigan and subsequently the rest of Stevens' career would go towards. I also have a particular affinity towards "Jason" and "A Loverless Bed", which sound like Sufjan's attempts to mingle with the more familiar lo-fi indie rock sound of the day; "A Loverless Bed" in particular sounds so much like a Sparklehorse song it throws you off time and time again. Once again, enjoyable songs - but I'd be forcing myself to come up with anything more of interest to say about them.

The copy I own actually does a practical disfavour to itself by including two bonus tracks at the very end, recorded years later and acting as a gigantic neon arrow pointing towards the brighter future. "Joy! Joy! Joy!" is a quirky synthpop jam that dresses up the original album's erratic sense of humour into a far more fun form (it even has a spoken word segment reminiscent of the main album in the middle, and it works). "You Are the Rake" on the other hand is a 2004 re-recording of "Rake", keeping the original composition's core intact but presenting a more confident performance and arrangement, with a little polish on it and a small choir behind Sufjan. They're the best two songs on A Sun Came, and they're the bonus tracks. Which sounds bad to even say.

But that's just how it is, and the fact that the two bonus tracks are dated later than the rest of the record is more or less why they’re better - because Sufjan got better and he started to focus on creating actual records. I appreciate home demos, silly goof-offs never intended to see the light of day and lo-fi jams from acts I like with a glimmer of intrigue like any fan would, but I don’t generally get a lot of actual musical excitement out of them - and A Sun Came is a collection of such things, even if not openly so. Calling it sloppy or rudimentary in comparison to Sufjan’s later works is beside the point, because apart from the few most obvious throwaways you can definitely hear the intent behind the music and Sufjan’s obviously talented by this point already. From a wider musical perspective his aim’s still a little wobbly though, and as a result the album fires its shots all over the place and you’re left searching around for pieces of shrapnel of something solid. Listening to A Sun Came is akin to browsing through a photo album of childhood photos, with both all the potential and the embarrassments right there on display.

Rating: 5/10

Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition) (2018)

CD1: 1) The Everlasting; 2) If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next; 3) You Stole the Sun From My Heart; 4) Ready for Drowning; 5) Tsunami; 6) My Little Empire; 7) I'm Not Working; 8) You're Tender and You're Tired; 9) Born a Girl; 10) Be Natural; 11) Black Dog on My Shoulder; 12) Prologue to History; 13) S.Y.M.M. / Nobody Loved You [hidden track]
CD2: 1) The Everlasting (Live Rehearsal Demo); 2) If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Dave Bascombe Mix); 3) You Stole the Sun From My Heart (Live Rehearsal Demo); 4) Ready for Drowning (Live Rehearsal Demo); 5) Tsunami (Studio Demo); 6) My Little Empire (Live Rehearsal Demo); 7) I'm Not Working (Home Recording Demo); 8) You're Tender and You're Tired (Studio Demo); 9) Born a Girl (Alternative Version); 10) Be Natural (Live Rehearsal Demo); 11) Black Dog on My Shoulder (Live Rehearsal Demo); 12) Prologue to History (Live Rehearsal Demo); 13) S.Y.M.M. (Studio Demo); 14) Nobody Loved You (Live Rehearsal Demo)
CD3: 1) If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Massive Attack Remix); 2) If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (David Holmes Remix); 3) The Everlasting (Deadly Avenger's Psalm 315 Remix); 4) The Everlasting (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Remix); 5) You Stole the Sun From My Heart (David Holmes Remix); 6) You Stole the Sun From My Heart (Mogwai Remix); 7) Tsunami (Cornelius Remix); 8) Tsunami (Stereolab Remix); 9) Montana/Autumn/78; 10) Black Holes for the Young; 11) Valley Boy; 12) Socialist Serenade; 13) Buildings for Dead People

They’ve messed around with the tracklist again, but otherwise the album gets the re-release it deserves.

Key tracks: Of the bonus material, “Prologue to History”, “Valley Boy”, “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (David Holmes Remix)”

(This review is for the 20th anniversary reissue of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, for the review of the actual album please click here)

This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is one of my favourite albums of all time. I absolutely love the albums before it and they all feel personal to me, but this is where it gets really intense in the chronology of the band's discography. Manics' reissue strategy has been haphazard and borderline random in how they choose which albums to re-release in fancy boxes (and what kind of boxes...), and it took This Is My Truth a long and winding road before it got its turn. Five deluxe box sets into the "series" and the album finally got a fancy anniversary set in time for its 20th birthday - and it's the first time where the re-release features an album that I fawn endlessly over and actually want a big fancy box set out of. The good news is that if you love the album like I do and you subscribe to the idea that there's more to these than just getting more money off fans, they really did do it justice for most parts here

But to tackle the controversies first, the Manics have once again messed around with the tracklist with one of their reissues and this time with even less logic behind it than on the Send Away the Tigers reissue. "Prologue to History", the b-side to "If You Tolerate This..." has long since been canonised by the band and the fans as the great lost single that somehow ended up as a b-side: it's a powerful, impassioned tour de force that breaks down the band, Nicky Wire and the world around them piece by piece, set to a thrill ride of a rock backing, with James' most intense guitar-revvings of this particular time period. It was originally left off the album because it would have stuck out like a sore thumb amongst its layered, introspective melodies - a fact which is adequately proven here as for the album's 20th anniversary, it now makes an appearance in the official tracklist. Even more bizarrely, it has replaced the fan favourite "Nobody Loved You", a decision that's one of the least obvious changes to make if you were to touch the original record. While both songs count among the most guitar-heavy cuts of the era, it's not a smooth replacement. "Nobody Loved You" may also be loud and serves as the album's last burst of sound before its somber ending, but it's also an emotional purge much like the rest of the record; the more sardonic "Prologue to History" on the other hand is a really awkward fit musically between the orchestral finale of "Black Dog on My Shoulder" and the ambience of "S.Y.M.M.", and tonally even worse. At least "Nobody Loved You" gets to cameo as the hidden track at the end, rather than being erased from history like "Underdogs" on the Send Away the Tigers reissue, but messing around with established tracklists in such a clumsy fashion really isn't doing wonders with these reissues.

Everything else about this reissue is exactly the kind of treasure chest this record deserves, however.

Disc 2 does the Manics reissue standard of providing various alternative archival recordings of the entire album. For This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours these are actually really interesting, given the album was the first time the Manics truly used the studio environment to its full extent. The demos then give a glimpse to a rawer version of the record, with a sound closer to the preceding Everything Must Go where you can really trace the lineage between the two albums. Most of the demos are "live rehearsal demos" i.e. the band playing it in their practice space, and the songs are played through with less whistles and bells, louder and more prominent guitars and in some cases alternative vocal melodies and arrangements. "The Everlasting" and "Be Natural" are particularly interesting in this regard, appearing in a more dynamic rock anthem form, and "Nobody Loves You" alternates between incredibly sparse verses and apocalyptically crashing choruses. The studio demos are more polished in sound but are just as fascinating, particularly "You're Tender and You're Tired" which has some notable arrangement changes. We also finally get the famous "Tsunami" demo that Wire always referred to as one of his most treasured archive cuts, and while Wire's overhyping of it has also oversold its difference compared to the final version, it does present a more dynamic, rocking version of the song which they've effectively adopted as their live arrangement these days. Finally there's a neat barebones home demo of "I'm Not Working" featuring James experimenting with an electric sitar and some alternative lyrics, proving that even the album's most production-heavy song can work hauntingly with all that left out.

There's also a couple of alternative takes. "If You Tolerate This" was a studio creation to begin with so no demo exists, and so what you get here is an alternative mix. It's mostly the same but a little shorter and snappier, with the only big difference being a repetition of the chorus over the wordless vocals of the outro. It's not a patch on the original but "If You Tolerate This" is still my favourite song of all time and even in this form it's as close to perfect as a song can get. The alternative version of "Born a Girl" is mainly just a rougher take, but it does have a more noticeable rhythm; a metronome (or a programmed snare rim tick) appears a few times to keep count and James sticks to its beat with his guitar and melodies even when it fades away. Neither are mindblowing, but they're different just enough to keep your interest - and together with the particularly intriguing set of demos, it's a set of rough takes that does genuinely act as a small treasure trove for the big fans of the album, showing sides previously unseen.

The third CD is the real treat, though - especially the further five b-sides located at the end of it. "Valley Boy" is a drop-dead gorgeous melancholic anthem with one of James' greatest ever guitar solos, and "Black Holes for the Young" is a suave, organ-lead duet with Sophie-Ellis Bextor that exudes class and elegance atop its swirling melodies - and the two are the closest to their mother album's sonical landspace. "Montana/Autumn/78" is another grade-A rocker that was left out because it just didn't fit sonically with the album but which is a veritable beast far beyond simply a b-side, especially with that pogo-inducing chorus. "Socialist Serenade" and "Buildings for Dead People" take a turn towards more extroverted politics away from the introspective touch of the main album, while also hinting towards the rawer sound of Know Your Enemy: the former drips with sarcastic venom as it brashly stomps around with its looped drums, and the latter is a gritty, distortion-heavy and devilish riff-monster. All five are great and far, far beyond in quality to what you'd expect from album outtakes. Manics had launched onto their golden period, and it affected even the discards.

The long list of remixes wouldn't otherwise be too exciting but this particular era was actually pretty good with them, and among them is the title holder of the best Manics remix i.e. the David Holmes remix of "If You Tolerate This", which turns the song into a ten-minute instrumental, dreamy epic that retains the original version's wistfulness and melancholy but moves it into a more cinematic territory. The Stealth Sonic Orchesta remix of "The Everlasting" is another winner, as the Stealth Sonic Orchesta remixes tend to be in their synth-orchestral ear bliss. The Cornelius remix of "Tsunami", the Deadly Avenger remix of "The Everlasting" (the better out of the two they did, the other which is the only non-inclusion on this reissue) and the David Holmes mix of "You Stole the Sun From My Heart" are also of note, and there isn't a single bad rework amidst these which is a rarity for remix sets.

You may note that the set doesn't include the DVD which the prior reissues have, but I honestly don't miss it either - they were always a neat one-time watch but otherwise left unused, and I'm much happier that we got more audio material in its place. The packaging is is a gorgeous coffee-table sized big book which just about leans on the acceptable side of filling up shelf space - and the grand size makes all the additional photos and artwork within really stand out. If you're into the physical feelies side of these kinds of reissues, then you can't really be disappointed by this, because it simply feels good to hold and own. And given the personal significance of this album to me, it's suitably celebratory. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is one of Manics' most significant albums and while they took a long time to get around giving it the reissue treatment, it is absolutely worth it. Even with the tracklist tampering, I'm not hesitant to award it the same points as the original album, because of just how good a fan package this is on top of a still-phenomenal record.

Rating: 10/10

Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster (2009)

 

1) Bad Romance; 2) Alejandro; 3) Monster; 4) Speechless; 5) Dance in the Dark; 6) Telephone (feat. Beyoncé); 7) So Happy I Could Die; 8) Teeth

A reissue bonus disc so strong it broke free and became its own era. This is where Gaga's journey really starts.

Key tracks: "Bad Romance", "Dance in the Dark", "Telephone"

The Fame Monster was originally intended to be - and in some regions packaged as - just a deluxe re-release bonus disc for The Fame, arriving just a little over a year after its parent album, as was the trend in the late 00s music industry. But think about that, really: this was written and recorded during a really short time period (especially considering how much the promotional circuit for The Fame stretched after its success) and it was originally intended just as some token extras to pursue people to buy the album again. But something massive had happened with Lady Gaga within that year and The Fame Monster is far beyond being just an extension of its parent album and in fact, acts more as a re-establishment of who Gaga was. You could consider The Fame Monster as the real debut album by Lady Gaga as we know her now - and the fact that it’s long since broken away from its associations with The Fame and rebranded itself as an independent album further fuels that.

We can probably thank "Bad Romance" for that, which turned out to be the best possible song to relaunch yourself with. The RedOne production style familiar from The Fame is there bridge the gap, but everything else on "Bad Romance" is far more fearless and ambitious than anything available on the debut, and that applies most of all to Gaga herself. She’s gunning down the song with drama and surreality as she switches between voices, tones and languages on the fly, culminating in the middle eight and final chorus where she moves from obsessed to pleading as she belts out the words until they melt together. Bowie had always been her primary inspiration (check out that lightning facepaint all over The Fame) and while musically the two stars are light years apart, her performance here absolutely channels Bowie in its versatility and its mix of humanity and strangeness. She is the monster and “Bad Romance” is where she breaks out of her cage - and it’s a legitimate anthem as a piece of music as well. It’s a thundering pop song that posits itself on top of the world and has every right to be there, and it’s not just Gaga’s signature song but also a wake-up call to everyone who dismissed her after The Fame - a notification that she’s now taking control of where she’s heading.

The Fame Monster is Gaga's re-invention as a creative force after the tameness of The Fame and the thing is, "Bad Romance" isn't even the best thing on it. The most impressive, bombastic event? Absolutely, without a doubt. But she tops it at least twice afterwards, with "Dance in the Dark" and "Telephone". "Dance in the Dark" was never released as a single but it's hard to believe that was the case, given how absolutely essential to the Lady Gaga experience it sounds and how huge it acts - uniting so many of her common threads within one roof in a way that makes it a cornerstone in her discography. It updates and reinterprets the themes of "Just Dance" from The Fame - dance to distract yourself from your existential crisis, and set it a tightly-wound heavy-hitting beat - but it brings out those darker undertones more obviously to the surface and serves them with more grit and edge in the production and with some brilliant melodic hooks. It is, beyond anything, the superlative secret gem of The Fame Monster. Meanwhile "Telephone" is simply a straight-up banger, relentlessly and ruthlessly riding its dancefloor onslaught of a beat, vocal manipulation hooks and frighteningly effective chorus until it leaves you breathless. Beyoncé features but never overshadows, and unlike many big name star collaborations there's some actual chemistry to their vocal interplay, instead of simply riding on the novelty of celebrity billing. If "Bad Romance" is the reinvention and "Dance in the Dark" is the soul of Gaga's new flair, then "Telephone" is her showing that she can still write a straight-up club jam and make it sound as vital as anything else. And I say "at least twice" because I'm also tempted to include "Alejandro" in that top billing, which reinterprets the tropical twangs of 90s europop in Gaga’s own language, and pulls off a surreal kind of sensuality and lushness while its drums shuffle in almost military-like precision.

The other half of The Fame Monster doesn't bring the party down but it's clear they're playing second fiddle to their forerunners, though I say that with zero derision in mind. In particular, I really enjoy "So Happy I Could Die" and its only sin is how it feels a little safe and tame amidst everything else - it's by and far the most 'normal' song on the record and especially within the second half, though as a song alone it's still charming to the point that other pop musicians would fight to death for to have as a single, let alone a deep cut on their deluxe bonus disc. "Monster" meanwhile is the most obvious The Fame carryover, though still miles beyond the majority of the songs on that album, and while I really do dig its vocal effects and the back-and-forth between Gaga and the backing vocals, it's the sort of thing you would expect from a bonus track.

Meanwhile the closers of the two halves represent the furthest Gaga stretches herself stylistically on The Fame Monster, but it might just be a little too far. “Speechless” isn't actually too surprising - it's a big lighters-in-the-air classic rock anthem that she loves to indulge in, with big revving guitars around her piano and bombastic power ballad choruses that would have been right at home in a stadium in the 1980s. It's fine, but the problem with this particular strain of Gaga is that the she's seemingly able to only write one type of song within this style frame and once you've heard the best of its like (i.e. "Yoü and I" off Born This Way), the rest feel like demos on the way. At five minutes, "Speechless" also runs out of things to say well before it ends and through and through, it's the only real dip on the record. That's also partly because I genuinely have no idea what I think of "Teeth". It's a bizarre, ominously foreboding tribal stomp that's carried by a chant loop that cuts abruptly in a way that sounds downright unnerving, and it's  unlike anything else in Gaga’s discography. It's a baffling song, and I absolutely appreciate its inclusion in the sense that if you wanted to show there's more to Gaga than "Poker Face" then this definitely does that, and it takes a certain amount of guts to finish a run of dance pop songs with it. But I'm not sure I actually like it as much as I respect it, as even though it is catchy it's also somewhat aimless. It's like a scare jump - surprising and memorable in its shock value, but doesn't leave a lasting impression beyond that initial surprise. I still forget how it goes after its intro.

The 'problem' with treating The Fame Monster as its own independent beast is how, despite its new ambitions, it does still feel like an assortment of songs rather than a specific entity - experiments for Gaga to carve her own path, under the veil of its parent album. Even that wouldn't necessarily be as noticeable if it wasn't for its length, which is both The Fame Monster's curse and blessing. While it has some chinks in its armour it's still an exhilarating ride of one-ups and twists one after another, but in the small company it keeps, each time it stumbles it has all the more impact. Not to besmirch it too much - The Fame Monster is a great condensed entryway into the Gagaverse and everything she would go on to do has a line leading up to it from somewhere within these eight songs. Keep in mind that this is strong enough to effectively obliterate The Fame in its wake as Gaga's real beginnings - but maybe if it had been built from the ground up as a full album, we could be talking about a true classic.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers (10 Year Collector's Edition) (2017)

 

CD1: 1) Send Away the Tigers; 2) Welcome to the Dead Zone; 3) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough; 4) Indian Summer; 5) The Second Great Depression; 6) Rendition; 7) Autumnsong; 8) I'm Just a Patsy; 9) Imperial Bodybags; 10) Winterlovers; 11) Working Class Hero; Bonus tracks: 12) Send Away the Tigers (Faster Studios Demo); 13) Underdogs (Faster Studios Demo); 14) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (Demo - 60's Jangle); 15) Indian Summer (Cassette Home Acoustic Demo); 16) The Second Great Depression (Faster Studios Demo); 17) Rendition (Cassette Home Acoustic Demo); 18) Autumnsong (Faster Studios Demo); 19) I'm Just a Patsy (Cassette Home Acoustic Demo); 20) Imperial Bodybags (Faster Studios Demo); 21) Winterlovers (Faster Studios Demo)
CD2: 1) Leviathan; 2) Umbrella; 3) Ghost of Christmas; 4) Boxes & Lists; 5) Love Letter to the Future; 6) Little Girl Lost; 7) Fearless Punk Ballad; 8) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (Nina Solo Acoustic); 9) Red Sleeping Beauty; 10) The Long Goodbye; 11) Morning Comrades; 12) 1404; 15) The Vorticists; 16) Autumnsong (Acoustic Version); 17) Anorexic Rodin; 18) Heyday of the Blood; 19) Lady Lazarus; 20) You Know It's Going to Hurt

B-side manna for the collectors, but they retrospectively mess up the actual album even more than during the original release. 

Key tracks: Of the bonus material, "Welcome to the Dead Zone", "Boxes & Lists", "Anorexic Rodin"

(this is a review of the 10th anniversary reissue of Send Away the Tigers. For the actual album review, please click here).

In case anyone’s keeping tally, the Manic Street Preachers reissue series has been... erratic in its schedule. Rather than sticking to a chronological order, the band’s deluxe re-releases have followed a somewhat more random pattern, finding an anniversary year as and when it suits them. There is some logic to it: the critical favourite The Holy Bible got its turn first, then the popular classic Everything Must Go. Rather than make the logical and chronological step to re-release the international hit This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours next, the more cult-favoured debut Generation Terrorists got its turn first - but then, it’s also the one Manics album that actually needed a genuine remaster. Everyone was expecting This Is My Truth to get its due next but suffice to say it was a bit of a whiplash when out of nowhere, the 10th anniversary edition of Send Away the Tigers got announced.

Which speaks a lot about the band’s opinion on the album’s importance to them. Following a couple of intentionally less crowd-pleasing records, Send Away the Tigers was their first taste of mainstream success in several years and gave them their last genuine hit with “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”. It did spawn a new generation of fans and the band consider it a motivational booster, but I don’t think anyone was clamouring for a celebratory reissue for it over some of the historic albums. And that’s without the personal bias, i.e. that Send Away the Tigers was more or less the band’s nadir and giving it the big box treatment over the actually great records is akin to putting makeup on a pig and trying to prop it up as your hot new date.

Which brings us to the most controversial aspect of this reissue. One of the bigger flaws of Send Away the Tigers is the obvious laziness that’s all over the record, from songwriting to production. “Underdogs”, the album’s unofficial lead single, became the poster boy for this at the time of its release: intended as a tribute to the fans, the fanbase was less than thrilled to have a hackneyed old man punk cut directed at them, calling them freaks, dodgily insisting that “people like you need to fuck people like me” and having a copy/paste edit so bad it became infamous. And so, on the tenth anniversary reissue, it’s just gone. Off the track list. There’s no mention of it in the liner notes and the promo material made little to no mention of its absence, like it had never existed. It has been replaced by the b-side “Welcome to the Dead Zone” and had they made an argument that ‘this is how the album was originally intended’ it may have flied, but “Underdogs” isn’t even included in the bonus material. A demo of it exists in the original’s place in the demo section of the record, and that’s it.

I’m not a big fan of “Underdogs” either, but there’s still something awkward about tampering with the tracklist of the original record to this extent. You can understand why the band would want to pretend it doesn’t exist, but it’s replaced one disingenuous problem on the album with another. It doesn’t help that, true to the album, even the switch-up has been lazy. “Welcome to the Dead Zone” is a great song and actually one of the best songs of this entire era, a starry-eyed mid-tempo anthem with a glimmer in its eyes and more heart than most songs on the album itself - but it’s not track 2. Swapping the songs one-to-one has been the easy way out but the album basically grinds to a halt right off the start because the flow is so, so bad now - a shining example of why sequencing does matter. So not only is there the problem that the reissue effectively blocks you from listening to the album as it was actually released, but the substitute version that’s given is too clunky to work as a listening experience as well.

At least the bonus material is good. The obligatory album demos offer little of interest beyond the mysterious “Underdogs” suddenly making an appearance (for what it’s worth, it sounds identical to the original version, just a little scruffier and without the edit blunder), and are mostly either slightly less produced versions of the album takes or James’ acoustic versions. The only item of major interest is the “60’s jangle” version of “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough” which actually works well as an alternative version of the song and in some ways, is more interesting than the album version. The real treat is the second disc, which gathers together b-sides and non-album material from this period. Even though I'm lukewarm about the album, the single bonus tracks for this period somehow managed to keep up with the band's usual standards in most parts and you could have made a much, much stronger album if some of these had been included. Of particular interest are "Boxes & Lists" which does the whole 'back to rock' shtick of the main album with actual conviction, the impassionate and almost angrily wistful "Anorexic Rodin", the atmospheric acoustic piece "Morning Comrades" and the "Disarm"-esque bombast of "Fearless Punk Ballad". The two instrumentals "The Vorticists" and "You Know It's Going to Hurt" showcase the band's growing fascination with wordless songs and how much their treatment of such has changed, the former coming in with some particularly jaunty angular guitars and the latter acting almost like a try-out at post rock. There's also the novelties of the band's cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella" (actually rather good and excellently Manics-ified) and their suitably cheesy Christmas song "Ghost of Christmas" (now a regular jaunt in my Christmas playlists), and the charity compilation cut "Leviathan" which dates a few years before the actual record but which signalled the return to guitars, and which has the stems of a really good song but which ends way too quickly.

Elsewhere, there’s also a DVD that features interviews, music videos, performances, behind the scenes footage and the other usual material, as well as the band’s 2007 Glastonbury show. I had somewhat tuned out of the band around this time and none of the live footage from this period particularly excites me as a result, but in terms of amount of material it’s a solid offering. The packaging has changed from the thick boxes of the previous reissues to a thin book format that's akin to the standard deluxe versions they've been releasing alongside their later studio albums, and the larger format is mainly used to present the original lyric sheets in the liner notes - as per usual, the new liner notes place more emphasis on visuals than any text beyond the obligatory introduction essay. It’s not as flashy as the previous re-releases just because it’s so like the band’s normal deluxe releases but that’s not really a criticism per se (apart from how this began the band’s decision to change the physical format for the reissues each time, ensuring none of them fit next to each other in one’s shelf) and in terms of bonus material, this is exactly what I personally seek out from a reissue - i.e. b-sides, accompanying additional studio material and if possible, some demos (even if they're not that interesting here). Which means that I do actually rate this a few notches higher than the original release - and why wouldn't I, because so much of the additional studio material beats what's on the album? The album itself is in a worse shape than ever ironically enough thanks to the sudden tracklist twists, but given it never needed a remaster to begin with, it ends up being almost like an afterthought on its own anniversary release. This is a completionist's dream for b-sides and so disc 2 will be a great addition to any Manics collection. Or your self-made digital rip compilation which throws away the superfluous acoustic versions (literally just the original album vocal and guitar tracks but with most other layers muted) and adds in "Welcome to the Dead Zone". Send Away the Tigers isn’t an album I particularly enjoy and I’m one of the people who think this was perhaps an unnecessary release at its point in time, but beyond that this is nonetheless a really good reissue.

Rating: 7/10