Liam’s Liner Notes Volume 20

Liam Carey reviews

LIAM’S LINER NOTES
V o l u m e # 2 0 0 5 N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 3

DIGGING DEEPER

Peter Gabriel‘s new Best Of, and the second such collection to date in a distinguished solo career spanning four decades, is the oddly-titled HIT. 1990’s Shaking The Tree : 16 Golden Greats did its best to round-up the former Genesis frontman’s bold and often esoteric work up to that point, but was rather too biased towards the admittedly magnificent So album – five of that record’s 9 tracks were featured. Thus, there was little room for much of Gabriel’s other solo material beyond the singles and a couple of almost token “world music” instrumentals.

Indeed, only on the CD edition of Shaking… were the full compliment of all sixteen selections included; the vinyl had just twelve. In the dozen years since the last retrospective, Gabriel’s commercial stock has taken a fall – 2002’s densely layered and lengthy UP troubled chart compilers for no more than a month – so HIT is probably a timely reminder of the quality in depth of his catalogue. It helps that this time we get a generous two full CDs’ worth of music, and a total of 30 songs. A lot of Shaking The Tree is reprised, it’s true, but not at the expense of essential later Gabriel classics such as Lov etown (from the Philadelphia movie soundtrack), The Tower That Ate People (from the Millennium Dome project OVO), outstanding cuts from1992’s US like Steam, Washing Of The Water and Digging In The Dirt, and a handful of tracks from UP.

There’s also space for the single edit of Growing Up, which never saw a UK release despite being on the schedules this summer, and Burn You Up, Burn You Down; an unreleased gem from the UP sessions. Walk Through The Fire, a minor hit single from the 1984 film Against All Odds, is still sadly nowhere to be found, and the Youssou N’Dour duet Shaking The Tree itself has gone AWOL for this compilation, but otherwise HIT is just about as perfect a Best Of as can be reasonably hoped for.

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LOG OUT

At long last, Robert Plant gets the Best Of treatment. Led Zeppelin’s treasure trove has been plundered time and again over the years, but until now the solo career of their vocalist had been criminally overlooked in that department. Seven studio albums and two triumphant collaborations with former Zep compadre Jimmy Page is not bad going for 20 years’ worth of labour, of course. Hit singles have proven a rare commodity (1983’s Big Log is Plant’s sole Top 20 entry) but some of those records – in particular Now & Zen from 1988 and Fate Of Nations five years later – were quite superb in fact.

Sixty Six To Timbuktu – so named because of the collection’s content, which travels from the singer’s pre-Zeppelin efforts in the mid-60s up to live recordings from his world tour this year at the place of the album’s title – is, as seems to be the norm at the moment, a double CD set selling for the price of a standard one-disc release.

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TRIPPING THE VELVET

Another overdue Best Of is released this week. Dirty Hits brings together all the Primal Scream singles than most people will remember (the pre-Screamadelica material is controversially shunned), from the Andrew Weatherall-created anthem Loaded right up to Miss Lucifer and Some Velvet Morning from last year’s Evil Heat (the latter newly re-recorded for this set).

Higher Than The Sun remains the most awesome example of amphetamine-fuelled sonic majesty that the early 90s music scene ever managed, and only Fools Gold by The Stone Roses can match it for showing where the wretched indie-dance genre could, and should, have gone. Throw in Kill All Hippies, Burning Wheel, Kowalski, I’m Gonna Cry Myself Blind….plus several others, and it’s obvious that Dirty Hits is simply brimming with brilliant singles.

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RELEASE ROUND-UP:

There are not one, not two, but three new albums by RYAN ADAMS released this month. Having had the much-vaunted Love Is Hell ditched in preference to the more accessible Rock’n’Roll for the honour of *proper* follow-up to 2001’s seminal Gold, Adams gets the first disc from those sessions issued on the same date, as a mid-price EP. Volume 2 of Love Is Hell is due in early December.

The public’s love affair with THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH appears to be on the wane, but Paul Heaton – having briefly dabbled in solo projects – soldiers on with his fellow bandmates and another female singer; their third since forming in 1989. Jacqui Abbot’s departure coincided with poor sales for 2000’s slightly self-indulgent double album Painting It Red, while Heaton-voxed singles never really do the business chartwise – and since Don’t Marry Her hit the Top 10 in 1996, most of them have featured his inimitable tones. Gaze, which came out last week, preaches to the converted, but sadly these days the converted number rather fewer than before. A genuine commercial force in the 21st Century is just one thing they ain’t.

LAMB‘s fourth album arrives this week; Between Darkness And Wonder follows the excellent What Sound from just over two years ago.

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FUTURE SOUNDS

The best music on the horizon:

• SARAH McLACHLAN – AFTERGLOW: No sooner is the wait for a follow-up to her Surfacing album mentioned in the last Liner Notes issue, than a new album appears. Afterglow is just out Stateside, and due here later this month.

• HOLLY VALANCE – STATE OF MIND Hot on the high heels of her debut album Footprints last autumn comes this more cohesive set of hook-laden electropop tunes. Footprints was a decidedly patchy record, with very few memorable songs, and lessons have no doubt been learned. It’s not original by any means – Kylie, Britney and Sophie are all blatant touchstones – but sales could be helped by the inclusion of a bonus DVD which features all her videos to date, including the wonderful promo for the should’ve-been-a-smash Naughty Girl single.

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