Kilimanjaro

by

The Teardrop Explodes

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I picked up (and reviewed) The Teardrop Explodes' Wilder first, and was floored by how good it was. This is easily that album's equal, if not its better - I can't decide just yet. On one hand, this album is more energetic and driving than Wilder; Wilder, on the other hand, is more varied and more subtle.

The Teardrop Explodes had a lot of musical assets, and all are on display here - Julian Cope's vocals are gripping, the melodies quirky but very hooky, the lyrics worth some thought, and the production (credited to the Chameleons, mostly) and instrumentation inventively off-kilter and interestingly textured. Especially great is the use of a horn section, which is employed in unusual ways, and adds a really distinctive element to the band's sound. Sound-wise, the result is impossible to describe, but I'll note that the music mixes psychedelic rock, dance music, and early-80's British post-punk (and, as a previous reviewer noted, some Tijuana Brass, too!) In sum, this album still sounds completely fresh after twenty years, a remarkable achievement for a twenty-year-old record, and especially remarkable for a record that was a product of the New Wave post-punk early 80's, when sounds dated quickly, it seems. "HA HA I'm Drowning" "Sleeping Gas" "Went Crazy" "Treason" and "When I'm Dreaming" stand out, but there is not a weak song in the original set of 11, and only a couple of weak ones on the bonus EP. Highly recommended.

So you're fan. You bought singles, and Kilimanjaro on vinyl, then you bought the CD with the bonus tracks. Of course you also bought, 'Piano' when that was released in the early 90's, and the 'BBC sessions' CD.

So you come to buy this thinking plenty of unheard bonus tracks right. Wrong! if you have aforementioned Cd's, all you get for your [...] bucks is the last 3 tracks on disc 3 from a mike read BBC session that didn't make it onto the 'BBC sessions' CD. Thanks Mercury/Universal for trying to squeeze yet more blood from the consumer stone. To make matters worse, the material would've fit neatly onto 2 Cd's, and they also managed to miss the 'from the shore's of lake placid' Zoo compilation tracks that were on 'Piano', meaning you still need to keep it. The Zoo singles are all mastered from vinyl, they sound marginally better than the 'Piano' versions but not much.

The music as we know is of course fantastic, but really, such a shoddy release for the die hard deserves nothing but contempt.