Track Listing

1. Breakloose
2. Open Your Heart
3. Sweet 35
4. Trees And Plants
5. Red Deer Stalk
6. Dovecot Dub
7. Walk
8. Get Down Over
9. What Do You Do
10. I Did The Painting
11. My Girl Sits Like A Reindeer
12. Money In Your Talk
13. You Blue
14. Moonlight

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19347 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-04
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Essential for any La's fan, despite poor sound quality
This collection doesn't actually feature Lee Mavers as the lead vocalist and is very much Mike Badger's band. The theme for this album is early "60's", from the photos of the band in the booklet to songs such as "trees and plants" (which borrows the intro of Jailhouse rock) and the 12 bar blues songs "get down over" and "money in your talk". "My girl sits like a reindeer" features essentially the same music that was used on the track "Feeling" from the debut album, but the vocals on the track make this a completely different song. There a few 'loungy' songs such as "Sweet 35" and "You blue" with a slow rythm and spoken words which are well removed from the La's sound that most people will be familiar with. But the band is still capable of the sublime; "Open Your Heart" stands out as one of my favourite all time tracks, and the almost pleading tone of "What Do You Do" represents one of the finest moments of the 80's. Then there are the opening and ending tracks; "breakloose" and "moonlight". Breakloose is a raucus opener (and in fact there is an extra version of this at the end of the album) while Moonlight can be seen as an early prototype of the haunting melodies of "Looking Glass" and the later b-side "Who Knows". Being a huge La's fan, i'd say that there are 7 superb songs that are worthy of the name and until Mavers and Powers actually record some new material this is the closest you'll get to that second album. Thats the good, now let's talk about the bad. The recordings are either casette recordings or from four-tracks and inevitably sound muffled in places with a lot of background noise. Personally this doesn't bother me in the slightest but many people will feel that recordings of this quality have no place on a commercial release. The more cynical fans will also see this as an attempt to cash in on the La's fame with a bunch of inferior recordings. Without trying to sound cliched it should be 'about the music' and if you can tolerate less than perfect recordings (and let's not forget that half the La's debut album is made up of demo songs) then it's an essential album for any La's fan.

Simply a work of genius!
Lee Mavers is a complete genius, and with the La's he could have been on top of the world. Imagine if he was, the La's would have been in the company of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Manics and the Beatles as one of the GREAT British bands of the last 50 years. Listen to this and you'll agree with me.