R.E.M.
Monster CRAFT
Anniversary edition of the
difficult ninth album.
The 25th anniversary R.E.M.
reissue campaign reaches the
record which, after mega-
millions of sales for Out Of Time
and Automatic For The People,
found the group at least partially
trying to reconnect with their
roots. At the time, some
listeners were resistant to its
noisiness (the band hadn’t been
this loud since Document), and
sales dipped accordingly, but its
stature continues to grow, via
the glam/garage sleaze of Crush
With Eyeliner, the pomp soul of
Strange Currencies, and Michael
Stipe’s impassioned plea to his
friend Kurt Cobain, Let Me In.
Most of the 15 previously
unheard demos on the first
bonus disc pass by with little
fanfare, and probably won’t get
more than one or two plays from
all but the most ardent R.E.M.
fans, but the inclusion of a full
concert in Chicago from the
subsequent tour (the band
having opted to stay off the road
for their previous two albums) is
perhaps the first illustration of
the ease with which they took
on the mantle of arena rockers.
Live, earlier material, Welcome
To The Occupation and Me In
Honey especially, benefits from
an increased aural muscular
density, while several songs from
Monster itself pack a greater
punch than the studio versions.
QQQQQQQQQQ
Terry StauntonMarillion
Afraid Of Sunlight RHINO
Extensive repackage of
inspired mid-90s album.
It’s hard to
believe that
Marillion
delivered this
album in
a comparative hurry, to facilitate
their departure from long-time
label EMI, because Afraid Of
Sunlight is quite breathtaking.
Now reissued in four-CD/
BluRay and five-LP deluxe sets,
the original album still resonates
supremely. The band deal with
subjects such as the downside
to celebrity, uncontrolled
arrogance, and self-destructive
instincts, all as relevant now as
in 1995. There are also some
surprising twists, as Marillion
channel the Beastie Boys on
Cannibal Surf Babe and reference
Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound
during Beyond You. Most
purposeful of all is album closer
King, which strips away theglamour of fame. Guitarist Steve
Rothery delivers one of his most
striking solos, and the
presentation builds to
a bountifully cluttered climax.
These editions have remixes,
extensive sleeve notes and a live
performance from ‘95, while the
BluRay features a documentary.
But the album stands proud in
its own right.
QQQQQQQQQQ
Malcolm DomeThe Police
Every Move You Make:
Studio Recordings
POLYDOR/UMC
All five studio albums, plus
bonus material.
The early stuff
is dynamite;
the later stuff
veers on self-
indulgent.
That’s one take on The Police,
but it is misleading. Sting, Andy
Summers and Stewart Copeland
were always too focused on
blond ambition to waste too
much studio time – although the
trio reached a critical peak with
the release of their second and
third albums, 1979’s Reggatta
De Blanc (Message In A Bottle,
Walking On The Moon) and
1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta (Don’t
Stand So Close To Me), they never
slipped beneath a certain level.
You can hear the trajectory on
Flexible Strategies, the bonus CD
of non-album tracks which
comes with this reissue of last
year’s vinyl box set. The killer
tracks – a frantic Visions Of The
Night, the deadpan part-
instrumental Friends – come
from those two years. Before,
they could be too try-hard punk:
afterwards, the jazz-fusion
inflections heard on 1983’s
Synchronicity (Every Breath You
Ta k e) got a little hard to bear.
This set collects all the Police’s
studio recordings – all five
albums, plus the bonus disc. All
the CDs have been remastered
at Abbey Road Studios and are
packaged in gatefold digipak
wallets housed in a lift-off-lid
clamshell-style box.
QQQQQQQQQQ
Everett TrueSimple Minds
40: The Best Of UMC
‘Hey, hey, hey, hey!’ And
other delights.
Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill
have come a long way since they
formed their first band together
as Glaswegian teenagers in 1977.
As the name clearly indicated,
Johnny & The Self-Abusers were
punk rockers, with Kerr theKing Crimson
In The Court Of The Crimson King
Audio Diary 2014-2018 PANEGYRIC
50th-anniversary reissue, with alternative
mixes and out-takes plus live recordings.R
eleased in 1969, In The Court Of The
Crimson King (An Observation By
King Crimson) is a cornerstone of
prog rock. That year, it eclipsed in its
scope and ambition both Abbey Road by
the dying Beatles and the debut album
by the nascent Led Zeppelin. It was
a demonstration that rock had the
potential to mature, to meld with other
genres. Pastoral and dystopian by turns,
ranging in tone from 21st Century Schizoid
Man to I Talk To The Wind, driven by the
guitars of Robert Fripp, coloured in by the
woodwinds and Mellotron of Ian
McDonald, it confidently takes on
elements of folk, jazz and classical, topped
off by just a smidgeon of pomposity (one
can’t imagine An Observation By The Anti-
Nowhere League).
The out-takes included on this reissue,
although intriguing, particularly for
Crimson-heads, demonstrate just how
finished an article the album was
practically from the get-go, how quickly
set. A solo vocal version of Epitaph gives
an undivided sense of the quality of Greg
Lake’s vocals. The 5.1 stereo remixes of
the album, meanwhile, help make
a nonsense of the half-century that has
passed since the original recording.
So definitive was In The Court Of TheCrimson King (8/10) that the group had
difficulty following it up, and arguably
never quite matched it. Even with
shifting personnel, however, with
Robert Fripp, the only constant, at the
helm, they did successfully navigate the
anti-prog eruption of punk, and in our
own time, when things are neither
fashionable nor unfashionable but simply
are, for those who want them, they have
consolidated successfully as an
accomplished live unit.
Audio Diary (7/10) comprises five
batches of live recordings from 2014-18,
though they sound in many ways all of
a piece; a band who, despite occasional
leaden moments, cover ground, sea and
air in their music. These tracks take in the
full span of their career, ranging from the
stop-start virtuosity of Hoodoo to the
Ummagumma-like stasis of Starless, to the
polyrhythms of Larks’ Tongue In Aspic,
back to a 2016 version of 21st Century
Schizoid Man delivered, as ever, like a ton
of psychedelic bricks. There’s also
a version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, always
a moving experience. Fripp played guitar
on Bowie’s original, a mark of his reach
and influence beyond the bounds of
King Crimson.
David StubbsDGM (^) A
RCH
IVE
S
REISSUES
90 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM