Customer Reviews

Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the Cough. And the selections here are all first rate. But when they only put out three CDs before calling it quits, a best of hardly seems justified. What would've really put a fine cap on their career would be a rarities disc. Or why not release the rare promo live album available with the "Rolling" CD single? In bandleader Mike Doughty's in-depth liner notes, it sounds like he helped put this one together against his will so maybe it's out due to contract obligations after all. Ultimately, a Soul box set with their three releases and rare stuff would do them more justice - but there probably isn't the demand. Doughty even admits he's not much of an archivist...so stuff like the different mixes from Irrestible Bliss he mentions might be lost to the ages.

This disc is really meant for the uncoverted, wondering what the deal is with this band. Hardcore Cough fans will probably pick this up like I did. But the few rarities here are easy enough to find. For the hardcore, it's really only Doughty's telling track by track notes detailing the band's inner workings and ultimate disintegration that make it worth picking up at all.

A Soul Coughing retrospective that includes some unreleased tracks, as well as tracks heard on other compilations (Unmarked Helicopters, for one). Mike Doughty includes excellent liner notes in the form of track-by-track "behind the song" type stories. It's so good to hear some of the best SC work on one disc... a definite must-have for all Soul Coughing fans, as well as a good intro for all of those who are unfamiliar with their work.

Yes, it would be nice to see a 2-disc set, but when a band only releases three albums, you take what you can get. The selections on the album are the ones I'd make (though I'd trade "Down to This" for "Janine", I don't think I'm in the majority), and M. Doughty's liner notes are worth the price of the album as it stands. Yeah, die-hards probably have heard all of this before...but it's still worth investing in.

Soul Coughing was a fantastic band. I was lucky enough to see them live twice, and both experiences were unique and exhilarating. When I heard of this compilation, my ears pricked up, but the tracklisting left me a bit disappointed. What's good about it is that it divides the honest, heartfelt and poppy side of SC with the wacky, rap-spoken-poetry cartoony side relatively equally. What isn't good is that, given that the demographic for this CD is hard-core fans, I would have appreciated a more expansive retrospective. If you're aiming a release at die hard fans of a defunct band, how about 2 discs, huh?

My main complaint of this disc comes near the end, encompassing the "El Oso" and B-Side selections. "St. Louise" is possibly the weakest song on "El Oso", and compared with the sexy groove of "Fully Retractable" and the frantic "Blame" and "Monster Man", the choice is quite a head-scratcher. The B-Sides, mostly available on other recordings, are spectacularly disappointing. The X-Files inspired "Unmarked Helicopters" remains available on the soundtrack for that show, which I already own (remember, die hard fans). The last two tracks, a remix of a song already found on the disc and a live track, are great but awfully lonely considering the fact that they are two of only four extra tracks.

Rhino Records could have taken a hint from Smashing Pumpkins, releasing a limited edition 2 disc set full of extras and whatnot, but this one disc release is likely all we'll hear from Soul Coughing from now on. For a band as capable and with such a wide variety of sounds as Soul Coughing, more could have only been better. If there is an expanded version released someday, you can count on that last star being filled with yellow pixels, too.

To be fair, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the explanations of each song, written by lyricist Mike Doughty, and discussing the track selection and sequence while I listened was fun, too. The liner notes mention Doughty's battle with substance addiction numerous times, and I'd like to point out that it's going to be very hard kicking Soul Coughing. Another disc would have been a nice methadone stopgap, though.

Few bands are as criminally overlooked as Soul Coughing, but in their short career they managed to craft some brilliantly fractured pop that went sadly unnoticed by mainstream listeners. Paving the way for like-minded bands like Cake and the Bloodhound Gang, Soul Coughing was the beat poetry antidote to the heavy-handed grunge that was clogging the airwaves when they first arrived in 1994. The six tracks from their first album are some of the best songs in the band's canon, showing what an impressive impact they made with a simple formula. Samples from old 78s, Warner Bros. cartoons, and answering machines created a moody backdrop for the jazzy rhythm section and M. Doughty's cigarette-scarred croon, resulting in charming gems like "True Dreams of Wichita." Featuring their biggest single ("Super Bon Bon"), the tracks from Irresistible Bliss are marked by a maturity in their songwriting and much broader soundscapes crafted by the band. The beautiful "Idiot Kings" receives its much-deserved place among the more popular tracks, although leaving off "Soft Serve" is ridiculous when a useless B-side like the Propellerheads' remix of "Super Bon Bon" makes the cut. The very best tracks from their final release, El Oso, are represented in possibly the best track picks on the whole album. Sonically experimental and bordering on electronica at times, these songs show a maturity that was sadly cut short by the demise of the band. A few key tracks are missing ("Is Chicago Not Chicago" is inexplicably left off) and the B-sides are mostly filler (with the exception of the gorgeous "Unmarked Helicopters"), making for a few complaints from longtime fans. http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ But to anyone looking to discover the sound of Soul Coughing, there is no better source than Lust in Phaze, an album that manages to capture the band's hipster charm and cool soundscapes while also featuring the variety of material they were capable of.

As an introduction to an excellent, highly underrated band, this album is not half-bad. Sure, it's missing a lot of essential songs ("Soft Serve", "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago", "I Miss The Girl", etc.) but short of downloading it's the most comprehensive SC collection you'll find on the market. But I personally would recommend probably the most commercially successful album of theirs to start off with, Irrestible Bliss. That album will be enough to indicate whether you like this band or not.

For fans of the group - you're not really missing much if you don't pick up the album. There's some nice liner notes, a remix of "Super Bon Bon" and a live "Casiotone Nation", but nothing else that makes it worth purchasing. It would have been made more appealing if they gathered the band's soundtrack contributions and added a bonus disc of B sides if they were available (like they did with the Smashing Pumpkins best-of album).

In summary: Not a bad place to start if you want to check out one of the most innovative bands of the '90s, but few selling points for members of the Five Percent Nation.

I bought the Soul Coughing's LUST IN PHAZE being only familiar with a couple of the bands' "radio-friendly" tunes such as "Super Bon Bon" and "Circles". Curious to hear more I dived right into this compilation and nearly 80 minutes later was convinced that this was one of the most wildly inventive and original bands to be born from the mid-1990's alternative music explosion. Lead soul Mike Doughty is one of the most unique lyricists to come along in quite some time, weaving his strange tales of unusual characters and happenings in an infectious rap/spoken-word singing style that oftentimes rasps like a veteran chain-smoker's. He's backed up by three talented musicians which, over the course of LUST, taps into various music genres from jazz-fusion to drum & bass to twisted loops of cartoon soundtracks. The icing on the cake is a great live number placed at the end called "Casiotone Nation" which whips the audience up in a call-and-response chorus chant while the band brews a wicked groove.

Informative song-by-song notation by Doughty is filled with interesting tidbits about the meanings behind the tunes, as well as some insight as to why, after only three albums, the band imploded. LUST is an excellent comp for a band who deserved greater success and recognition.

Very talented writers and musicians. This is a good CD to purchase as an introduction to Soul Coughing.

OK, so Soul Coughing only did 3 discs and they get a 20-track best of? Well, 16 of the tracks are from the 3 records, and all we get apart from that are a murky live track, a mediocre Propellerheads remix, and a couple of tracks released for other things (the X-files, for example, although the great Soul Coughing track 16 Horses for the X-files movie is excluded from this release for some reason).

So, like, if the album material wasn't as hot as it is, this record would get much lower marks. But it is. Soul Coughing was one of the most unique and interesting bands of the entire 1990s, and this is a good assortment of their work. Wisely, the bulk of the material is taken from Ruby Vroom (about half the album, actually), with less tracks coming from the more inconsistent drum-n-bass-heavy finale El Oso.

If you already have the band's three studio releases, it's completely unnecessary except for the song-by-song liner notes and recollections by frontman M. Doughty, which are remarkably frank. (Doughty will tell you, for example, which drugs he was taking at the time that are directly responsible for such and such a song's lyrics.) If you don't have their records, you should probably get them, but if you're more of a casual fan and don't want to shell out for three discs than this is a pretty good selection of their best cuts, and worth picking up.

I've been listening to Soul Coughing religiously for years now and was thrilled when this disc was released (even though I knew I'd have almost all the material on it). Although all the songs here are well worthy of being here, I feel there are some songs missing that need to be here. Where are "Fully Retractable" and "I Miss the Girl", two of the funkiest Soul Coughing tracks? I am very pleased, however, that "Unmarked Hellicopters" was put on here despite not being on a precious Soul Coughing release. All in all this is a great disc, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good overwiew of soul coughing's music. However, I'm sure other die hard soul coughing fans will agree that there are some great tunes missing from this disc.