Search - Various Artists :: Brit Box: UK Indie Shoegaze & Brit Pop Gems

Great collection, mixes the familiar and the almost-forgotte

David Sheridan | Fanwood, New Jersey USA | 01/14/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This box got lukewarm reviews from the UK press, perhaps trying to protect their own turf in reaction to a US label releasing a definitive UK collection. They're wrong. The Brit Box is a great set of a lot of the best music to come from the British Isles from the mid 80's to the late 90's. Most of the standard-bearers are here - Smiths, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Stone Roses, Suede - plus some people who made some inroads in the States but kind of faded away (Kula Shaker, Elastica, Cornershop) and then some great tracks from bands who got lost in the trans-oceanic translation like Dodgy, Gene, Silver Sun, etc, that round out the collection nicely.



But as is always the case with thematic box sets, one can have some fun debating the roster or even track selections (great to hear the Shop Assistants again, but why not the brilliant A-side of that 45, "Safety Net?"). The liner notes bemoan the fact that the UK went from the Sex Pistols to Spandau Ballet within 4 years, and these bands are supposed to be the backlash against that. Then why include the Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen, whose debuts predated the miserable early 80's UK dancepop/exotic video/fashion bands? New Order, for all of their stellar pedigree, are a strange choice in a way...by the time their fellow Mancunians were inventing Brit Pop, they were kind of into their Ibiza electronica period. And Nick Heyward?



Why no Fall, Muse, Pastels, Woodentops, Yeah Yeah Noh, Nightingales, Marc Riley and the Creepers, Microdisney, Half Man Half Biscuit, Biff Bang Pow, Fuzzbox, Pop Will Eat Itself...and especially (let's hope it was just a licensing problem), why no Radiohead?



But I admit that's all nitpicking. Burn your own 5th disk if you want. Fans of indie rock and Brit Pop will love this, and younger listeners into the Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, the Fratellis, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, the Kooks, etc, will enjoy hearing where their generation's music came from too. This is one of the best box sets I've heard in a long time, I'd give it 4 and a half stars if half-stars were in the ratings key."

Not bad and a bit underrated

Barack Obama | Washington DC | 12/28/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Brit Box has taken a beating from music critcs who have derided it for not being representative enough of the British indie scene, not including enough of the right songs, and not including some defining artists of the scene. I'm not here to do that. Instaed, I'll focus on the music that is on the box. So let's break this bad boy down one disc at a time.



DISC 1:



A lot of good stuff here. This disc includes the classic Smiths song "How Soon Is Now," plus classics from the Stone Roses, The Cure, The La's, The Charlatans, Happy Mondays, and Echo & The Bunnymen. The Primitives' "Crash" was a great find for me, and "April Skies" may be the Jesus & Mary Chain's best song. I'm not big on Inspiral Carpets, but that's just nit-picking.



DISC 2:



Also pretty good. Aside from Ride, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub being represented with some of their best stuff, I found some great tracks in Catherine Wheel's "I Want To Touch You," and Curve's "Coast Is Clear." "Shoot You Down" by Birdland is classic, as is "Trip & Slide" by Bleach. I don't like Thousand Yard Stare, but it wasn't enough to ruin the disc for me.



DISC 3:



Not as strong as the first two discs, but still worth hearing. Disc 3 is front-loaded with great tracks by Suede, Swervedriver, New Order, James and Superstar. Then it hits a bit of a dry spell, even though great tracks by Oasis and Pulp (plus "Speeed King" by These Animal Men) are in the middle. The disc has Supergrass and Menswear towards the end, and it closes with a rampaging "Stutter" by Elastica. Overall, I have few complaints here, except that I can think of four or five other tracks off Parklife that I would have chosen besides "Tracy Jacks."



DISC 4:



This is where it starts to come apart. The Britpop scene was changing, and not as much great music was being made in that style. Personally, I think the box set's producers should have limited this set from 1984-1996 instead of taking it through to 1999. There was plenty of great music made during that time to fill 4 discs.



Anyway, about the music on disc 4: There are good songs on here, and they're mostly saddled at the beginning. Ash's "Girl From Mars" is great, and so is Sleeper and Kula Shaker. However, this disc drags after track 6, with very little to pick it up. Silver Sun's "Service" is good, and there are superb tracks by Mansun and The Verve. "Oh Jim" isn't a bad closer. Yet after the high level of quality throughout discs 1-3, the last disc is a bit of a letdown.



I won't do much complaining about what isn't on here. Apparently, the producers of this set weren't able to license Slowdive. Apart from that, I think the biggest omission is Depeche Mode; some Violator-era tracks would have fit in nicely on this set.



Yes, the Brit Box could have been better. But it's not as terrible as the music press has made it out to be."

Shows why some succeed and some don't!

D. Wright | 08/02/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Following on from their various Nuggets releases covering the 60's and 70's, their 70's punk box, No Thanks and their alternative 80's box, Left Of The Dial, Rhino release a 4 disc box covering the British alternative/indie music scene which succeeded the scene explored on their Left Of The Dial Box.



As the Brit Box begins with the Smiths 1984 release How Soon Is Now (one of their very best songs!), several artists are represented on both this and Left Of The Dial: the Smiths, Cocteau Twins, The Cure (who seem to be on every compilation ever released that covers their lifetime!), Echo and the Bunnymen, Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses - in the latter's case with even the same song, She Bangs the Drums - feature on both sets. What makes this different however from both the 80's and 70's alternative boxes, which featured half American and half UK acts, is that as you'd expect from the title, it is 100% British.



Rhino are an American company and their releases are primarily aimed at the US market, sometimes only being available as expensive imports; therefore the liner notes, extensive and excellent as Rhino's always are, sometimes read oddly from a UK listener's viewpoint. More significantly perhaps is the fact that sometimes songs are featured because they were better known in the US to the exclusion of the more obvious choices.



I was a big music fan in the early 70's when I was in my early teens, but although I was about 18 at the height of punk, I was never into that music at the time, and again at the time, the early 80's New Romantic scene did little for me, so I actually lost interest in listening to new music almost totally and for years shut my ears to everything but the 60's and 70's greats. Probably the only band I really gave much of a chance to at the time were the Bunnymen themselves, and that was only probably because they sounded like The Doors! I therefore missed out entirely on the Madchester and Shoegazing movements during their lifetimes. It was only probably midway through the Brit Pop scene when hearing bands like Oasis and Supergrass' catchy Alright (which seemed to be everywhere at the time) on pub jukeboxes, that my interest in contemporary music was revived. I remember both Oasis's first two classic albums had been released before I actually caught up with them and the rest of the current scene. I then retrospectively began to get into music once again with a vengeance, buying dozens of cd's per month for years. (I'd originally held out against buying a cd player for years!) The Stone Roses, who I missed out on at their height, have since become one of my all time favourite bands.

Although I am now into middle age I now still keep in touch with what's happening and my interest in music is as great as it was when I was 14. I can't understand why I spent most of my 20's and 30's ignorant of modern music - maybe the 80's has a lot to answer for!

So it is from this perspective I come to this box set.



Some of the artists on discs 3 and 4 are responsible for reviving my interest in music, whilst the ones on disc 1 I discovered retrospectively. Most of the bands on disc 2 were still unknown to me, or only vaguely known as names and no more. So bands such as The Pale Saints, Mighty Lemon Drops, Trash Can Sinatras, Curve and Chapterhouse I was hearing for the first time, having vaguely heard OF them but little more. A good many of the artists on these discs I hadn't even heard of at all even now. Amongst the obscurities and one hit wonders there are of course many of the 80's and 90's best known indie/alternative names from the Bunnymen and Smiths of the 80's to the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Charlatans from a few years later, to Suede, Oasis, Blur, Pulp of the Britpop years. Most of these bands are represented by well known songs which have already turned up on countless compilations: Live Forever, Common People, The Only One I Know, etc. The major exception to this is Blur, who instead of Parklife or Girls and Boys get Tracy Jacks, an album track, which seems odd. Maybe it's something to do with the American focus of the set? I'm quite glad though that the Boo Radleys, New Order and James are represented by something other than Wake Up Boo, Blue Monday and Sit Down respectively as those three songs seem to turn up everywhere. I'm also glad the Inspiral Carpets brilliant This Is How It Feels is included.



Although this is a massively comprehensive compilation covering nearly every band you've heard of, and many you haven't who were recording during these 15 years, there are a few notable omissions owing to either licensing or space restrictions. Easily the most important band not featured are Radiohead, but there is also no sign of the Stereophonics (who I personally don't care much for anyway), or the House of Love, who were a decent and relatively unsuccessful band from that odd period which preceded Britpop at the turn of the 90's. Most of the bands from this period - Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine were commercially unsuccessful. Even the Stone Roses themselves, as important and influential as they were, didn't have that many big hits.

The other main movement from this period apart from the Roses/Happy Mondays Madchester scene was Shoegazing and many of the bands who embraced this movement take up disc 2. To be truthful Shoegazing wasn't commercially successful simply because it mostly wasn't very good. The endless dreaming droning which often obscured any melody becomes quite hard going after about five minutes; and Ride, a band who I thought had some potential if they hadn't have buried their vocals and melodies under layers of droning guitars, epitomise this. They are represented by Vapour Trail, one of their better songs however.

It could be argued that this box set tries to do too much, as the Shoegazers actually had very little in common with the much more catchy and commercially successful Britop bands who succeded them so soon afterwards. The only group who really straddled the two movements were Lush, who became much more pop orientated towards the end of their career and by then could be classed as Britpop, although they are represented here by For Love, one of their earlier Shoegazing type efforts.



Ultimately this is a worthwhile and interesting box set covering 15 years (half the 80's and all the 90's), which in pop music terms is more than a generation; it is therefore unsurprising that we have such a variety of styles.

However I think what it really illustrates, and I think this is true of any era, is that most artists are commercially successful because they are good and record memorable tunes, and the ones who aren't successful mostly quite simply aren't very good. This is as true in the 80's and 90's and today as it was in the 60's and 70's. Other than the Velvet Underground, who truly were 'ahead of their time' I can't think of many bands and artists who were really good and totally unsuccessful.

There are of course a number of artists who were successful despite not being very good! One only has to think of the Spice Girls for an obvious example!"