PARACHUTE

FREEWAY MADNESS

SNAPPER

The second of three tranches of three Pretty Things reissues in gold numbered limited editions begins with the group’s most celebrated album, SF Sorrow (1968), often cited as the first ‘rock opera’ and the model for The Who’s Tommy. It’s remarkable chiefly for its conceptual prescience. Parachute (1970) is a fair-to-middling concept album about city and country. Freeway Madness (1972) picks up where Parachute left off, and is about equal in quality. These albums, all three of which come with bonus tracks, are very much for fans.

Marmalade

KALEIDOSCOPE

BOTH CASTLE

Once they’d parted company with Brian Poole, the Tremeloes not only matched their beat output, they outstripped it. This selection will appeal to lovers of the Bee Gees or Paul and Barry Ryan. Hugely influenced by The Beatles, the Trems were more than mere copyists. “Willow Tree”, “You” and a version of “Good Day Sunshine” indicate the general direction. They played with the experimental mood of the era before going into cabaret, but their toytown psychedelia sounds great now.

Another entrant in the excellent Psych-Pop series, Marmalade (originally called Dean Ford And The Gaylords!) graduated from the cheesier pop side of the time into a pretty fair hippie act with CSN&Y leanings. Fixed somewhere between the irksome Dave Dee style and Badfinger, Marmalade did punk rock (“Hey Joe”) and freaked out politely in the manner of the Moody Blues. Tuneful and never too taxing, Kaleidoscope is a colourful summary of their fine cut preserve.

TRAVELOGUE

BOTH VIRGIN

Of all the post-punk industrial groups, The Human League were always the closest to pop. Their 1979 debut, Reproduction, remains musically futuristic but lyrically dwells on the past (“Almost Medieval”) and inadequacy (“Empire State Human”). Bonus tracks include the original “Being Boiled” single and the Dignity Of Labour EP.

Travelogue, released in 1980 and recorded before the departure of Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware to form Heaven 17/B.E.F., contains still highly pertinent commentaries on the increasing commodification of pop in “The Black Hit Of Space” and “WXJL Tonight”. Extras here include the “Holiday ’80” EP and the League’s brilliant foray into avant-disco, “I Don’t Depend On You.”

In the wake of Jam Master Jay’s murder, there have been effusive tributes to Run-DMC, and rightly so. These combative, dressed-down homies did knock down walls the way they did in the video for “Walk This Way”, establishing a strangely logical and enduring coalition between hip hop and heavy metal. They were also responsible for stripping away the degrading sequins’n’starsigns bullshit that hampered early rap. Their street-tough approach on “It’s Like That” reconnected rap with the sidewalks, while their minimalist backbeats established the early template for hip hop. Grandmaster Flash had been the last of the ’70s funky show people. Run-DMC was where it really started.

Cuts like “Sucker MCs”, “King Of Rock” and “Can You Rock It Like This?” were formidable exercises in muscle flexing and turntable technique, ripping the cut like no one else. “Peter Piper” was a brilliant piece of rap virtuosity, while “My Adidas” set the new sartorial tone.

Run-DMC were rap revolutionaries on various fronts. In 1987, at the height of their powers and having conquered MTV, they blew the Beastie Boys away on their joint UK tour. Yet, by 1988, as this collection demonstrates, they went into steep decline. There were other acts on the block?Eric B & Rakim were slicker, Public Enemy were dropping polemical bombs, NWA upped the gangsta ante. Meanwhile, Run-DMC gave us “Mary, Mary”. Their work was done and the world was done with them. They’d built the chassis for hip hop but it would be for others to provide the interior and upholstery. Cruelly, they were dispensed with, and the ’90s would prove a grim decade for the band. Run became suicidal, DMC battled alcoholism. Sadly, it’s taken Jam Master Jay’s death to remind us of Run-DMC’s achievements.

From the same Sub Pop stable as fellow Seattlites Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden, The Walkabouts’ black strain of elegiac country roots and avant folk immediately branded them sore thumbs among grunge contemporaries.

With string-laden moodscapes more akin to noir cinema, they found European ears more receptive, releasing often superb albums through Glitterhouse and others. The breadth of their appeal is highlighted by the guests here?R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Mary (Madder Rose) Lorson, Brian Eno, the Warsaw Philharmonic?while the music, despite underselling classics Satisfied Mind (1993) and Setting The Woods On Fire (1994), captures perfectly their haunted experimentalism.

Not just the perfect antidote to the McCarthy witch-hunt era, Lenny Bruce destroyed the false moral majority. A jazz age counterculture hero, Bruce’s scattergun approach demolished smug ideas about race, sex and the politically-correct taboos we take for granted. His so-called ‘sick’ humour was the stand-up rap of its day?he took the N and F words and beat them to death with wit. His own life balancing on the edge, Bruce simply went further with berserk interior monologues.

This second volume of carefully improvised verbal mayhem includes “The Palladium”, which fuses dope, porn and disease into an abbatoir for scared cows.

Crazy and unique.

When the Aphex Twin consents to do a remix, only the na

REGATTA DE BLANC

ZENYATTA MONDATTA

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

SYNCHRONICITY

ALL UNIVERSAL (ON DUAL-LAYER SA-CD HYBRID)

Sting has been so jeered at, derided and reviled since going solo and amassing a fortune that, like one of the ecosystems to which he has drawn our attention, the global supply of bile is fast in danger of running out.

Sting has certainly become musically turgid and self-important in recent years. Yet none of this should retrospectively obscure the truth that The Police were an excellent band, their excellence either begrudged or taken for granted. Reviled by some for ripping off the punk-reggae hybrid initiated by the likes of The Clash or for bleaching their hair to obscure some dubious credentials, they were nonetheless responsible for some of the most effective, well-informed and silvery pop tunes of their, or indeed any other, era.

Bless old Joe, but when The Clash attempted reggae it was often like they were wearing lead boots. The Police prettily filtered through the lightness of reggae, lending their music a helium quality that elevated it to places their contemporaries could only envy. Meanwhile, they drew from punk its speed and economy. Outlandos d’Amour (1978) showcased hit singles “Roxanne”, “So Lonely” and “Can’t Stand Losing You”, but they peaked with 1979’s Regatta De Blanc, featuring “Message In A Bottle”, a faultless dose of existentialist pop, “The Bed’s Too Big Without You” and “Walking On The Moon”, both of which introduced heart-stopping air bubbles of dub into the pop mainstream.

By the end, Sting’s earnestness was weighing them down as he assumed the mantle of global pop star. But even 1983’s Synchronicity is worth having for “Every Breath You Take”, its obsessive menace misunderstood by Puff Daddy in his still-ubiquitous cover version.

Like their On The Floor At The Boutique mix disc from 2000, The Lo Fi Allstars’ AFT collection explores the diverse origins of their acid techno-rock. Similarly eclectic bands feature here, with alternative country chamber pop from Lambchop and neo-psychedelic indie from Mercury Rev snuggling up alongside the smooth urban soul of Bill Withers, funky hip hop from New Flesh, Balearic beats from AJ Scent and Detroit techno from Derrick May’s Rhythim Is Rhythim, all topped off with Al Wilson’s classic Northern Soul floor-filler, “The Snake”.

Like Lee Hazlewood, the smooth-toned country pop of Glen Campbell sounds more acceptable today than it ever did back in the ’60s, when the cultural battle lines were more rigorously drawn. At the core of his greatest work remain “Galveston”, “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman”, the most evocative trilogy of songs ever written around American place names. All came from the pen of Jim Webb and, without him, Campbell’s song selection was often less assured. But amid the schmaltz, there’s at least one more timeless classic in “Guess I’m Dumb”, probably the best non-Beach Boys song Brian Wilson ever wrote. Worth the price of entry for those four songs alone.

Townes Van Zandt spent much of his last decade revisiting the masterful odes to loss, melancholy and America’s frontier history he’d etched in his earlier career. Bloody vendettas (“The Hole”), death bed blues (“Lungs”) and elemental wonder (“Snowin’ On Raton”) are recreated with steely resolve at a solo 1994 Irish show. Five previously unreleased sides recorded in 1996, just before his death, including a rendition of Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town”, make this a Zandtophile’s delight.

This disc consists of 21 covers of Beatles songs by American soul and jazz artists from the Atlantic and Warner stables in the ’60s and early ’70s. The approaches vary from the emulative to the freely reinterpretive, but the abiding impression remains that much of what The Beatles recorded only made sense when done by them. Among the more successful efforts assembled here are covers by Aretha Franklin, King Curtis and The Meters, but the abiding question is “why?”

As you’d expect from a Swedish duo who took their name from a Dr Feelgood song, these are not ballads in the conventional folky sense. Rather, at their best, they’re pomp-rock steamrollers, crushing the puny likes of Jennifer Rush with the mighty weight of their sentimentality. “It Must Have Been Love” was the standout tune in Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman for good reason, and “Listen To Your Heart” could easily have replaced it. A must for drama queens and pop aficionados alike.

Today the prospect of the leader of a top-selling British band leaving to embark on a series of genre-stretching musical adventures seems remote. What’s impressive about The Style Council in retrospect is their fearlessness and energy. Though prone to clumsy songwriting and faux-soul interludes, Weller’s new-found freedom is evident on “My Ever Changing Moods”. Meanwhile, the storming “Walls Come Tumbling Down”, the blue mood music of “Changing Of The Guard” and “It’s A Very Deep Sea”, and the proto-house of “Promised Land”, represent some of Weller’s best work.

A double CD highlighting the extraordinary songwriting talents of the Wilson sisters. CD 1 takes us from the pyrotechnic folk rock of “Crazy On You” and the Ice-T-sampled “Magic Man” through the kick-ass “Barracuda” on to the Zeppelinesque blues of the early ’80s, while CD 2 concentrates on their later MTV-friendly mainstream rock. It’s not perfect?there’s no “Mistral Wind” or “Rockin’ Heaven Down” to display vocalist Ann’s excessive best?but glorious nonetheless.

Even in the late ’70s, when his hard-rockin’ blues drew him to the New Metal fraternity, Gallagher’s acoustic numbers were usually the highlight of his set. And this, a series of rootsy acoustic outtakes, jams and collaborations, collected and sensitively mixed by his brother Donal and stretching back to 1974, sees him at his reverently wayward best. Featuring Martin Carthy, B

Ayers was simultaneously the most approachable and most inscrutable of jazz-funkers. This compilation correctly focuses on his ’70s work, and a strange world it is, too: blissful chord sequences and much-sampled rhythms whose utopia is constantly subverted by sinister undertows?the ominous strings defying the New World optimism of “We Live In Brooklyn, Baby” or the string synthesizer cutting like an icepick through “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”. Hyperactive disco classic “Running Away” earns its poignancy because the musicians are clearly running on the spot. “The Third Eye” even anticipates AR Kane’s stoned dream-pop. Marvellous.

One hundred million album sales later, The Carpenters remain the epitome of MOR cool, a title they hold thanks not just to the patronage of the likes of Sonic Youth but to Karen’s vocal genius and the fact she died aged 32, almost a shadow of her former self. Unlike the usual hits packages, this slimmer set features an early recording of “Nowhere Man” from 1967, TV soundtrack specials and two songs, “And When He Smiles” and “Leave Yesterday Behind”, that stand scrutiny with her best performances. Chuck in duets with Perry Como and Ella Fitzgerald (the latter conducted by Nelson Riddle), a sprinkling of Richard Carpenter piano arrangements and the net result is an artefact that transcends the normal medley collections.