Customer Reviews

Crystal Days 1979-99

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A couple very good reviews on this box set already in here, but I thought I would throw my two cents in the ring. A great box set for the Echo fan. Cool pictures and a lot of unreleased stuff here. I bought this in Chicago at an in store appearance and the band said they were very proud of all this stuff and were amazed when they heard the final product because they used some high speed equipment to remaster these old recordings that were thought to be lost. I am amazed by these guys each time I hear this music. They have really grown musically, but retain that great sound they've always had. The new releases are just as good because they keep that same sound they've had since Urgh! A Music War. Good stuff here and well worth the price. Not easy to find in the stores anymore so you may need to order it online.

An awesome package! When I first saw it set on the "New Releases" rack, I said to myself, "Oh, great. All the songs I already have packaged in a pretty book." Upon further inspection, I was amazed to find that there are nearly forty songs/versions I'd never heard. Peel Sessions! B-Sides! Live performances! Outtakes! Well worth the price. I'm listening to it right now, and I know that this is going to be my main spin for the rest of the summer. E&theBMen are so amazing, especially the early stuff. Saw them in 85, having only heard "Seven Seas". I was immediately hooked. Not too fond of the recent stuff. Thankfully, though, this package is bottom heavy, that is, most emphasis is on the early and mid period Echo. If you are an Echo fan, you must own this. If you are calculating its worth by counting the songs you already have, forget it. Even the album cuts have been re-mastered beautifully.

If you're trying to decide whether to buy this, here's how it works. Do you already own Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine, and Ocean Rain? If not, buy them. They are classics, and you can get the four of them together for less than the price of this set. If you love those four discs and want more, then buy this. It has good digital recordings of the original Bedbugs and Ballyhoo, Over Your Shoulder, and Angels and Devils, which are among their best songs and aren't otherwise available on disc. Plus the long version of Silver, and a few other goodies that have been out of print for years. There also are some good live numbers on disc four. The songs from the first four albums that appear here sound perhaps a little cleaner than on their original CDs, but if you are thinking of buying this set just to get upgraded sound on those numbers, I predict you will find the difference small for the price. Much of the rest of the stuff here is junk that's fun to have but not as much fun to listen to -- alternate takes or unreleased songs that were suppressed all these years for good reason. There also are a few tracks from the recent comeback albums, about which the less said the better.

Basically there is about one disc worth of stuff you will listen to a lot, and three discs worth of stuff that has some curiosity value but that you probably won't listen to very often (assuming you own the first four albums). All in all, not a great value but an absolutely necessary and delightful purchase for the big fan. The annotations inside are sometimes interesting but nothing reveletory.

Being a Bunnymen fan since the 80's I've always longed for some of the rarer b-sides that this set has to offer. Unfortunately though, it falls short in delivering most of the peel sessions and some of the live versions still found on vinyl. I feel that much disc space was wasted on the more common songs still available on the back catalogue which deem most of it as a greatest hits + b-sides set. The common songs basically take up 2 discs worth and are very redundant if you already have most of their back catalogue. I would have liked to see a disc devoted to all their peel sessions and maybe a complete live show on another disc instead of live snippets thrown together. All in all though, still a must have for new fans(greatest hits) and old fans (rarities) alike.

If your main interest in reading the reviews is to find out just what you get beyond the tracks from the five original albums, read on:

This set offers spectacularly remastered versions of nearly every non-album track from the band's original run. Everything sounds great, including the four primitive songs from the very early drum-machine period.

There's 90 minutes of non-album studio material from the period up to/including "Ocean Rain." This includes the two most essential/otherwise unreleased songs from the Peel Sessions.

There's another 45-50 minutes of studio material from the post-"Ocean Rain" to '87 break up period. In addition to the singles/b-sides, there are three strong outtakes of original songs from the grey album's earliest sessions, which were much fiestier than the eventual album. Add to this one song in live form that never got a studio take plus a wonderful bunny-ized version of "In the Midnight Hour," and you've got a very solid unreleased "album."

Finally, there's another hour of devastating live material, only a bit of which has been released. A huge chunk of the famous covers set is here.

If you remove all the album tracks you already have (and I have only a few quibbles about what was left off), you still have three full/nearly-full discs of music. Then there's the lengthy booklet with song by song commentary, which is great. It's an overpriced set, but now that I've bought it, I have no regrets.

Who are these boxed sets that anthologize the work of a band or artist across the decades intended to cater for? Is it the newcomer who wants an instant collection and expects to find the cream of their recorded output on one disc? Or is it the collector who has all the albums but is anxious to own digital copies of early singles and rarities, and hopes to find previously unreleased gold dust?
It seems the wary compiler has to steer a middle ground, whilst running the risk of alienating both parties. The cherry pickers don't want obscure early B-sides, the collectors resent buying loads of album tracks all over again to get to the goodies.?
Since this box set came out all the Bunnymen albums have been re-mastered and re-issued with bonus tracks. Many of the tracks that this set was criticised for omitting are now available on these re-issues, and from the lack of duplication in the majority of cases it would seem that they have been intended to complement the box set.
The set kicks off with their earliest release, Monkeys, with Julian Cope on keyboards, originally on a compilation called Street To Street - A Liverpool Album, and has both sides of the earliest Bunnymen single, on the Zoo label, The Pictures On My Wall/Read It In Books. It includes the magnificent 12" versions of Silver, The Killing Moon and Never Stop, and much loved B-sides such as Angels And Devils and Rollercoaster. There are a couple of Peel session tracks, alternate versions, tracks from a scrapped 1986 album and outtakes. The ten year jump to their 1997 reformation happens almost seemlessly and chronologically concludes disc three.
Disc four seems like an afterthought as it scatters a few more worthy rarities before presenting 50 minutes of concert material from 1982-1985, mostly previously unreleased, demonstrating what a fine live band they were.
Two important factors that can assuage the undecided buyer are the quality of the packaging and the price. Crystal Days is attractively packaged, with extensive notes and a track by track commentary from Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant. There are four discs, each with around 75 minutes of music, but value for money will depend on the current asking price and the number of tracks that duplicate those in your collection. Twenty-four of the seventy-two tracks come directly from original albums, exactly a third; perhaps slightly too many given that a few others have been on compilations such as Songs To Learn And Sing and The Cutter, but still leaving plenty for the collector to pick over.?
Since the cherry-picker should find that everything essential to him is here, I think on the whole the compilers have done a fair balancing act and done justice to the band.

I have all the original albums, pre- and post-reunion, so what lured me into spending quite a bit on a compilation? I only buy anthologies for rarities, live cuts, & demos, demonstrating my Pavlovian response to the bait the record companies and bands hold out after a cult band's done their classic work, disbanded, changed record labels, or won some legal battle over control of the tapes. Well, Echo's fits into the mold of Heart & Soul by Joy Division. Studio cuts mix with Peel Sessions, demos, concerts, alternate tracks, odds and ends unreleased, and cuts from the earliest recordings of a Northern late-70s' and beyond definitive band.

Unlike H & S, all of the studio cuts from the original albums are not included; obviously Joy D. had only two studio albums opposed to the original Echo's five. The shuffle runs in chronological order, and for my money the value emerges most in the Heaven Up Here through Ocean Rain period-- you hear the band toughen up for HUH considerably, recalling similar shifts in their peers The Cure, whatever Julian Cope was doing in and after the Teardrops, Siouxsie's more experimental period, and the more commercial yet still indie-ish U2 and Psychedelic Furs offerings.

I mention these peers to point out a common feature. While Robert Smith, Cope, Siouxsie Sioux, Bono, and Richard Butler shared with Ian a dramatic, attention-getting, and doomy sensibility expressed with ear-catching and off-beat singing styles, the post-punk aura of all these bands was enhanced by the tight rhythm sections and restless guitar work each of these artists were able to convey powerfully, if rather awkwardly or self-consciously at times, as they matured and maneuvered between post-punk, poppier hits, and darker excursions in the early 80s. This compilation places the Echo tracks familiar and novel into this context where they fit into the evolution of the whole British indie-rock scene, shoving away from the strictures of punk but also skirting the mainstream of pop. They rock, but they also haunt and moan-- usually convincingly.

This musical attitude can be heard emerging as early as Monkeys and Fuel on disc one; these both sound like other Northern English bands at the time, but you can feel the four Bunnymen clawing their way towards truth. I read a quote from Moby recently that echoed the observation either from Simon Reynolds in his recent Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-84 or Dylan Jones' IPod, Therefore I Am (both reviewed by me, and if you're reading this review, you'd like both books) that Heaven Up Here was an astonishingly crafted and unfairly neglected masterwork. The cuts here reveal the band cutting into the harsh beauty, wrenching out the grotesque from the dazzling, in the wake of Ian Curtis' suicide: an event that marked the existential shift of many of the bands I mentioned above. The earlier cuts from the Crocodiles era show here more of a Doors' influence than I have heard on the original album in context, but you cannot doubt that the young band means it, man, and will never be content with mimicry or imitation.

I wish all of Porcupine was here; this remains my favorite Echo album; its lushness angled against its bleakness makes wonderfully chilling art. Disc 2 blends this trenchcoated and windswept period of the band, bookended between their more accessible debut and their lush fourth LP, well, and is the most successful of the four discs in its cumulative clout. Ocean Rain and the s/t fifth album on Disc 3 share the obvious choices, and while they fit well, Disc 4's live and rare cuts are more hit-and-miss than their wise choice of covers might lead you to expect. Still, the Velvets' inspiration is heard to better effect here to balance the Doors' perceived influence, and the former band's feverishness feels more organic for Echo than the fervor sometimes overly gnomic Jim Morrison-ish lyrics that Will confesses have baffled even him!

Yet, at the end of Disc 3, too much (even if not that much in comparison) is given to the late-90s efforts. These are uneven, and while none are embarassing, they feel as if placed here to fill out the twenty-years-ago today sub-titular dates of the anthology. If Crystal Days had ended at the fifth album, more room could have been given to including the left-out cuts from the earlier fine run of LPs. This, to better effect, would have served as a commemoration of the band's signature work.

What's promising for Ian, Will, and mates if not for the limits of this collection is that their post-99 Live in Liverpool, Flowers, and Siberia all feature appealing original songs, and it's too bad that the band could not have waited another five or six years for a 25th anniversary collection that could have shown off to better effect the recent reenergized period of (half at least, in the fashion of what today bills itself as The Who) the band's masterminds.

About the packaging: the book's cleverly laid out, with commentary by Ian and Will (Les is quoted to sparing but good effect) mixed as side-bars with Mick Houghton's narrative. Good for the compilers to list a bibliography that credits one-time "rival" Julian Cope's "total recall" autobiographical account of the era, Head On. The Crystal Days "book" is bound within the box, and this creates a handsome library effect for the package to rest on the shelf. It also makes the box's spine more fraught, and the plastic trays for the four discs grip the CDs tightly, and they do not pop out easily when pressure's applied. This is dangerous, as they risk pulling out the plastic trays from the glued backing to the box ends. This problem made Heart & Soul a mess, as they feature the same flimsy construction. Come to think of it, Downside Up by Siouxsie & the Banshees also has a (suitably?) taut and rigid presentation. Maybe it's a post-punk aesthetic.

I was not a Bunnymen fan before purchasing this boxed set but it quickly changed my mind. While Bunnymen fans are intimately familiar with the many chart-making songs, many people like me have forgotten such but will be delighted upon again hearing. Plus, there are so many great songs which I was previously ignorant. And, I love the cover versions of hits such as Paint It Black, In the Midnight Hour, All You Need Is Love, and Heroin. While the price may seem high, you can occassionally find this collection or $32 - $33 and it is worth every dollar, especially since each CD has 16 - 20 tracks. There is so much good material that it would take pages to write reviews. Thankfully this collection allows the Echo to reverberate.

I bought the boxed set yesterday and listened to all 4 discs last night. The booklet and package are well-designed. The booklet gives a detailed account of the Bunnymen's highs and lows. The history doesn't seem to pull too many punches. The first three discs present tracks in chronological order. Even if you own the original cds, there are plenty of new tracks, alternate tracks and extended tracks on the first three discs to keep you interested. I wasn't all too impressed with the fourth disc, which is a hodge-podge of alternate takes and live cuts, but it's worth hearing at least once anyway.

I'm impressed with the flow of the first three discs. Sometimes hearing a classic track out of context, not surrounded by the songs that book-ended it on the original cd, can leave it sounding less stunning than you remember it. That's not a real big problem here. "The Killing Moon" actually sounds stronger then I remember it, following, as it does here, an early version of the song that would become, I believe, "The Yo-Yo Man".

I also liked how they fit a couple of U2 slams into the history of the band.

Being a Bunnymen fan since the 80's I've always longed for some of the rarer b-sides that this set has to offer. Unfortunately though, it falls short in delivering most of the peel sessions and some of the live versions still found on vinyl. I feel that much disc space was wasted on the more common songs still available on the back catalogue which deem most of it as a greatest hits + b-sides set. The common songs basically take up 2 discs worth and are very redundant if you already have most of their back catalogue. I would have liked to see a disc devoted to all their peel sessions and maybe a complete live show on another disc instead of live snippets thrown together. All in all though, still a must have for new fans(greatest hits) and old fans (rarities) alike.