Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs.
The Church
RELEASE: Further/Deeper
BACKSTORY: The Church’s 25th studio album (and first without Marty Willson-Piper), released in Australia last year, gets a belated American release this week. Tracks include “Pride Before a Fall,” “Delirious” and more.
BUY: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
RELEASE: Junk Culture: Deluxe Edition
BACKSTORY: OMD’s fifth album is reissued this week in the U.K. in a 2CD set that finds the original album remastered and supplemented by a disc of the era’s B-sides, remixes and five previously unreleased songs and demos.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk
Art of Noise
RELEASE: At the End of a Century
BACKSTORY: This new 2CD/1DVD set, out this week in the U.K., collects music and films that date from 1995 to 2000, and is comprised of mostly previously unreleased material. The DVD features two complete concerts.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk
The Go-Betweens
RELEASE: G Stands for G-Betweens: Vol. 1, 1978-1984
BACKSTORY: This Domino Records 4LP/4CD box set includes the band’s first three albums, a fourth LP with early 7-inch singles collected and four CDs of unreleased demos, radio sessions and an unreleased concert form 1982.
BUY: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Stiff Little Fingers
RELEASE: Still Kicking
BACKSTORY: The punk legends this week release, in the U.K., a live CD/DVD set recorded in 2004, featuring the tracks “Suspect Device,” “Back to Front,” “Guitar and Drum,” “Alternative Ulster” and more.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk
Excited about the new Church CD, wishing I hadn’t got the Go-Betweens albums used, and damn it, why another live SLF album?!!? I think the live CDs outweigh the studio releases.
Thinking “outnumber” was a better word choice there, though I’m sure if placed on a scale, outweigh would also be true.
The OMD cd apparently has some errors, so beware.
Having bought The Church’s new album some months ago (I’m a fan of 35 years with all their releases in my music collection) I can confidently say that “Further/Deeper” is one of their best albums, containing several absolutely classic cuts. It is hard to think of any other band, so deep into their artistic lives over so many decades coming up with anything half as good as this set of songs.
All Music Guide got it right awarding this great band more four star (or higher) album reviews than any other band on the planet other than The Rolling Stones (who have been around 17 years longer than The Church!)
I know I’m gushing, coming over like the band’s PR (which I’m not!) but it can’t be helped – the album really is that good! Wait till you hear the last track – “Miami” – an absolutely stunning epic up there with the greats that these guys have produced.
Love the website – thanks for all your work keeping us informed of all this great music.
David Bricknell
Melbourne
Australia
David,
Happy to hear this, though I didn’t doubt it would be brilliant. The band has been taking an unfair amount of stick due to Marty’s departure, I feel, so the vindication is very pleasing to read.
They’re still beautiful, bay-bay. Nobody can take that away.
Leaving the unfortunate politics of the lineup change aside, it is a surprisingly good record. And it’s not every day the word “ziggurat” turns up in a pop song.
Universal are replacing disc 2 of the OMD release to address some, but not all, of the errors identified by fans – see superdeluxeedition.com for details.