Getting Off Their Cloud

Volume 2 follows the format of the first, packaging the singles in CD-sized facsimiles of the original sleeves and including the different track pairings issued in the UK and US. It's irritating having to put a new CD on after every two tracks (or a whopping three in the cases of "Satisfaction", "Get Off Of My Cloud" or "Paint It Black"), so my white label review version, shoehomed onto two discs, will do me nicely. Although unfortunately it doesn't come with the matching booklet, the tantalising designer-bait designed to lure in the completists.

In some ways this second volume is less interesting than the first, lacking such curiosities as the 5 × 5 or live EPs, but it does depict the Stones developing at a cracking pace. Pretty much every track is some sort of collectable nugget, although you may have collected them already on previous compilations. There's not much left unsaid about the likes of "19th Nervous Breakdown" or "Let's Spend The Night Together", while Jagger/Richards click into Elizabethan troubadour mode for "Ruby Tuesday", "As Tears Go By" and "Lady Jane".

Then psychedelia hoves into view, with the droning harmonies of "Dandelion" sounding very Mamas & Papas, and "She's A Rainbow" hinting at ambitions on a Pepper-ish scale. Loads of great, if hardly unfamiliar, music, but the packaging... do we really need it?

Rating: 3 / 10