There were two periods in Julian Cope’s career when he bothered the pages of Smash Hits. The time before The Teardrop Explodes imploded in a shambles of drugs and petty squabbling. And, the St Julian and the soon to be perennial Shut-Your-Mouth-song, period.
On the cover Cope poses cruciform in a junkyard dressed head-to-toe in black leather. He dubbed the band the “two-car-garage band”. It’s a statement of intent. The intent to pummel the listener with non-stop power-pop classics. And, by god it does. The Shut-Your-Mouth-song may suffer slightly from over familiarity, but there is a reason for that power of endurance. It’s just a damn fine air-punching tune. It’s not the album’s stand-out track. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with another nine of the same stature.
This was Island Records deciding it could sell Cope as something other than his first two critical smash solo albums. It was also the 80s, so everything MONUMENTALLY MASSIVE. While these songs may lend themselves to that sized production. If you’re feeling charitable, you could describe this as remarkable example of the gated snare. (You might want to keep those remarks to yourself in polite company, though. Remember when all metal bands used compression to make themselves sound heavy? And then Metallica made Death Magnetic…)
This has only been available in recent years through a strange burn-on-demand arm of Universal. For some reason (if anyone has a theory on the timing, hit the comments) it has been reissued as a two disc set. A collection of all the recordings for that time. No tinkering, no remastering, just all collected together for the fist time (in this country. You could get all this as a Japanese import for years).
The second disc plus together the b-sides and extra 12” tracks from the period. The first half of these are the usual pleasant grab-bag of slightly more off-kilter stuff in a similar vein to the album proper. (This is how it used to be done when such things as b-sides existed.) And, there’s some brilliant stuff in there. Including the more ragged (beat-stomper ‘I’ve Got Levitaion’), wistful (‘Mock Turtle’) and experimental (‘Warwick The Kingmaker’). And, while ‘Transporting’ hints where he’s going, it works together with the other stuff.
The rest is the 12” filler. Live tracks and some remixes that will only really please completists or scholars o the period.