EMF - The Best Of EMF: Epsom Mad Funkers (2001)

Regrettably, England's EMF had been seared with the curse of premature victory, sometimes belting out "Unbelievable" two or three times per show, and many assumed they'd be forever damned to run from their own success until the day they took off their long shorts and cut their hair. But Epsom Mad Funkers, an emphatic and touching tribute with new songs and a second disc of remixes, proves that what saved them from disaster was an anarchic instinct for just how to nail together the flotsam and jetsam of late-20th century chart music without sounding totally contrived. One moment you could get "Girl of an Age," the great, cherubic baggy anthem that never was, the next you'd be swimming about in megalomaniac, brain-rammed funk ("Perfect Day," "They're Here") or even a sort of facetious revelry, such as the live classic "EMF," which would rather stack up stylistic Lego blocks and smash them to pieces than try to mimic the picture on the box. For better or worse, nobody else sounded like this. They weren't the Happy Mondays, they weren't Take That -- in the end perhaps the only band in history to sound like both. Source: [AMG]

EMF featuring Tom Jones - Unbelievable



Track Listing CD1
1. Unbelievable
2. I Believe
3. Children
4. Lies [Jim's Mix]
5. Girl of an Age
6. Getting Through
7. They're Here
8. It's You
9. Perfect Day [Perfect Mix]
10. Glass Smash Jack
11. Shining
12. I'm a Believer (Emf and Reeves and Mortimer)
13. Incredible
14. Let's Go
15. Search and Destroy
16. Emf (Live at the Bilson)

Track Listing CD2
1. Unbelievable [Bambaattaa House Mix]
2. I Believe [Colt 45 Mix]
3. Children [Battle for the Minds of North Amerikkka Mix]
4. Head the Ball (Put Away in the Back of the Net by Apollo 440)
5. Lies [Dust Bros 12 Club Mix]
6. It's You [13 1/2% Extra Mix]
7. They're Here [D: Ream Mix]
8. Perfect Day (Chris and James' Epic Adventure)
9. The Light That Burns Twice as Bright [Mystic Mix]
10. It's You [Rad Rice Mix]
11. Unbelievable [Ralph Jezzard Remix]

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The Posies - Frosting On The Beater (1993)

Frosting on the Beater opens with a thick wall of distorted guitars and booming drums kicking up a very melodic fuss behind Ken Stringfellow and Jonathan Auer's creamy-smooth harmonies on the psych-tinged "Dream All Day," and the track's sweet-and-sour blend immediately announces this is going to be a very different affair than the Posies' major label debut, Dear 23. With noisy rock dude Don Fleming in the producer's chair, it came as no great surprise that Frosting on the Beater was a much harder sounding album than the introspective Dear 23, but surprisingly enough, Fleming also knew how to make the most of the band's expert pop songwriting; with the tempos and guitars turned, the tunes gained a needed physical impact that brought the melodies and hooks into the forefront, where they belonged. Just as importantly, the spot-on harmonies that were the highlight of Dear 23 were still very much in evidence, resting atop the piles of fuzzy guitar chords like a dollop of hot fudge poured over a big scoop of ice cream. And prior to this, who knew that Ken Stringfellow and Jonathan Auer could rock out so hard (and so well) on guitars? One could argue that the big guitar attack of Frosting on the Beater was simply the Posies' way of trying to cash in on the grunge sweepstakes that briefly turned their hometown of Seattle into the center of the rock universe. But one listen also reveals that it transformed a smart but overly precious pop outfit into a hard-charging power pop band that gained a wealth of strength without giving up any of their smarts in the process — not a bad bargain. Source: [AMG]

The Posies - Solar Sister


Track Listing
1. Dream All Day
2. Solar Sister
3. Flavor of the Month
4. Love Letter Boxes
5. Definite Door
6. Burn & Shine
7. Earlier Than Expected
8. 20 Questions
9. When Mute Tongues Can Speak
10. Lights Out
11. How She Lied by Living
12. Coming Right Along

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Sebadoh - Bakesale (1994)

With Bakesale, Sebadoh has trimmed down to Lou Barlow, Jason Loewenstein, and Bob Fay, with Barlow and Loewenstein taking on the lion's share of the songwriting. Maybe the change in personnel was needed, because Bakesale is their most accessible, concise work to date. Without the noise that usually envelops their records, the solid, unconventional pop songwriting of Barlow and Loewenstein shines through brightly. Source: [AMG]

Sebadoh - Careful




Track Listing
1. License to Confuse
2. Careful
3. Magnet's Coil
4. Not a Friend
5. Not Too Amused
6. Dreams
7. Skull
8. Got It
9. S. Soup
10. Give Up
11. Rebound
12. Mystery Man
13. Temptation Tide
14. Drama Mine
15. Together or Alone

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Yo La Tengo - Electr-O-Pura (1995)

After the noisy but dream-like drift of Painful, Electr-O-Pura found Yo La Tengo in livelier and more outwardly enthusiastic form; while they had hardly abandoned their more subdued and contemplative side, as evidenced by the lovely "The Hour Grows Late" and "Pablo and Andrea," they seemed eager to once again explore the grittier textures they'd unearthed on President Yo La Tengo and May I Sing With Me with tunes like the gleefully manic "False Ending" and the bizarre horn-blasted "Attack on Love." Yo La Tengo also served up one of the most perfectly realized pop tunes in their repertoire with "Tom Courtenay" (which not only name checks the Beatles, but boasts a tune the Fab Four would have been happy to come up with themselves), and revisited the concept of the noisy groove jam (which they pioneered on "The Evil That Men Do (Pablo's Version)") with the acetone-powered "False Alarm" and the joyous "Blue Line Swinger." Throughout, Ira Kaplan's simple but forceful guitar lines, Georgia Hubley's steady, subtly inventive drumming, and James McNew's solid, supportive bass add up to a group that prizes intelligence and imagination over flash, and makes it work over and over. Few bands have consistently better ideas than Yo La Tengo, and they make 14 of them work like a charm on Electr-O-Pura. (By the way, those incongruous comments about the songs were lifted from an obscure book on the Blues Project, and don't trust those timings on the back cover -- they're deliberately inaccurate.). Source: [AMG]

Yo La Tengo - Tom Courtenay


Track Listing
1. Decora
2. Flying Lesson [Hot Chicken #1]
3. The Hour Grows Late
4. Tom Courtenay
5. False Ending
6. Pablo and Andrea
7. Paul Is Dead
8. False Alarm
9. The Ballad of Red Buckets
10. Don't Say a Word [Hot Chicken #2]
11. (Straight Down to the) Bitter End
12. My Heart's Reflection
13. Attack on Love
14. Blue Line Swinger

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