Kent - B-Sidor 95-00 (2000)

CD1: 1) Chans; 2) Spökstad; 3) Längtan skala 3:1; 4) Om gyllene år; 5) Noll; 6) Önskar att någon...; 7) Bas riff; 8) Din skugga; 9) Elever; 10) Längesen vi sågs; 11) December; 12) Utan dina andetag; 13) På nära håll
CD2: 1) Livrädd med stil; 2) Verkligen; 3) Gummiband; 4) Att presentera ett svin; 5) En helt ny karriär; 6) Rödljus; 7) Pojken med hålet i handen (Hotbilds version); 8) Kallt kaffe; 9) Den osynlige mannen (Kazoo version); 10) Slutsats; 11) Rödljus II; 12) En helt ny karriär II; 13) Papin jahti [hidden track]

The b-sides for the first four albums; as it often is, uneven but with surprises in unexpected places.

Key tracks: "Chans", "Längesen vi sågs", "Verkligen"

Kent’s b-sides compilation arrives at the time and moment when you would have expected a greatest hits compilation to have happened, and it feels like a bit of a power move. Together with a few new songs, one which got the kind of retrospective clip show music video you normally reserve for promotional singles from best offs, B-sidor 95-00 sees Kent repackaging their career so far in their own terms, by highlighting the songs that rode off on the backs of their hits. And there were a good number of them: the 1990s were the golden period of single bonus tracks, particularly in the UK where they were an art form onto their own and often something bands were prided for: for these bands, a b-sides compilation could easily have been another hits collection. With Kent’s career so far being so very obviously inspired by their British counterparts, they had taken it upon themselves to carry that tradition in their own region.

The two discs of B-sidor 95-00 run in a counter-chronological fashion, so the first disc covers the b-sides to the mainstream hit singles from Hagnesta Hill and Isola, while the second disc features outtakes from the first two albums Verkligen and Kent. With that in mind, disc one is where you’d expect the big hitters to be but it actually feels rather... underwhelming? Or to put it in another way, it's  predictable. Not just in how it sounds, i.e. that the songs carry same slick guitar moves as their parent albums, but even in how they're presented: all the singles from Isola and Hagnesta Hill carried two b-sides (apart from "Kevlarsjäl", which was backed solely by "Längtän skala 3:1") and in each case they're a big rock song backed by a quiet, sparse mood piece next. The entirety of disc one after the first few songs (i.e. the new tracks) effectively plays out the same across the board and you end up feeling like you are constantly tracing steps back to where you just came from. Of course, this wouldn’t be the case if the material was strong enough to ignore but a lot of the songs on the first disc, and in particular those fleshed out full-band takes, feel a lot like underdeveloped or overall lesser versions of what Kent were releasing on their albums at the time. There are great songs within the bunch: in particular the beautifully growing "Längesen vi sågs" could have easily had a spotlight moment on an album and represents the kind of quality that you perhaps would have expected, and "Utan dina andetag" has a preciousness to its big 90s rock riffs which goes a long way explaining why it's become a legitimate hit in Sweden (it even got a spot on Kent's career retrospective best of collection - it’s apparently a very popular wedding song in Sweden?). But they’re one of the few that really jump out, and in fact I find myself enjoying those quiet mood pieces like "December" and "Om gyllene år" more than I do the big rock songs because they show something a little bit different in context.  

 

It is surprisingly the second disc which is where the compilation gets really interesting and exciting. I find Kent's first two albums to have been made by a band who were still clearly a work in progress: they're promising but uneven records, with the band still in the process of aligning their vision with their songwriting. And yet, these b-sides are so much more interesting than you would expect from this period in chronology. There's extensions to the band’s rock sound where they break away from the more self-serious approach on the records to something more relaxed, like the rough but big-hearted and beautiful "Verkligen" (one of my favourite things to come out of the second album’s sessions and a shame it never made it to the titular record), the scruffy riffing of "Livrädd med stil" and the stupid fun punk of "Kallt kaffe". Other songs find the band experimenting with electronic production long before it started appearing on the records, leading to excellently atmospheric cuts like "Gummiband" and "Att presentera ett svin", which sound like the works of an entirely different act to the one who recorded the A-sides. Some of the songs are obvious demos without the tag in place, but for example "Rödljus" befits from the rawer production which lends it a kind of warmth and intimacy that it might not have otherwise had. It’s so intriguing that it’s this earlier period where B-sidor 95-00 really shines, given the parent albums are among the band’s weakest (purely due to their more undeveloped nature) - it shows that Kent were holding back certain aspects of themselves away from the albums, where perhaps they felt they had to act in a more polished manner.

 

B-sidor 95-00 rounds itself off with a few new tracks as the bookends. “Chans” and “Spökstad" are two brand new songs which effectively bridge between the present and what’s next: slick and stylish production, a more programmed sound and an ear tuned for the hooks, as initially trialled on Hagnesta Hill. The sleepy ballad “Chans” is the better of the two, unfolding into a beautifully understated dramatic rise atop its ethereal keyboard layers. “Spökstad" is a preview of the upcoming Vapen & ammunition in sound and the more hit-oriented of the two songs, and it's a fine song, but perhaps suffers a little from the band effectively doing its shtick better throughout the next album. Meanwhile the end of the second disc sees the band returning to the two most obvious demos of the selection and fleshing them out years later. Kent end up treating the two songs pretty similarly, both climbing up to epic explosive finales with cymbal crashes and soloing guitars, and to be fair, they're a band who do that particular trick really well. "Rödljus" as established before already worked pretty well as a more stripped-down demo, so it's more "En helt ny karriär" that benefits from the re-envisioning as it gets to switch the placeholder drum machine into a full band, equipped to take the song where it was always destined to be. 

(There is also technically a fifth new song, the hidden track "Papin jahti" at the end of the second disc which is an improvisational comedy piece and not really worth anyone's time beyond the obvious novelty that it's meant to be - though it is fun for me to hear a Kent piece in Finnish, sung by the Finn-Swede drummer Markus Mustonen)

In the end, I suppose B-sidor 95-00 reflects the period it represents accurately enough. Kent's first four albums are a mixed bag, solely because they're like a live presentation of a band developing themselves: the rough start, the evolution, the realisation of their strengths, and figuring out their own sound bit by bit. For the first two albums Kent hid the fine-tuning of that development behind the scenes and away from the main albums, which this compilation brings out to light; with the next two records those ideas started getting the spotlight so the b-sides simply became more of what the albums offered, just not as well. It caps off one particular period of Kent's journey and empties the table before the next chapter, which is arguably why it feels so much like a curveball alternative for the standard career-so-far summary of a greatest hits compilation. But b-side compilations tend to always be either incredible or uneven, and B-sidor 95-00 is the latter. It warrants to dig deep though: that second disc is some of my favourite early Kent in full disc length.

Rating: 7/10