ARCHIVES
ARCHIVES .
November 20-26, 2003
cover story
It's A Setup
More music that comes in boxes these days.
The Details
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The Deal |
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| Bright Eyes Vinyl Box Set (7 LPs) (Saddle Creek) |
Besides a couple “bonus songs,” mostly this is a collection of the Saddle Creek releases already available from lovably depressed indie sideshow Conor Oberst. |
The box misses the opportunity to collect the rare and raw cassettes he made when he was a wittle kid, but it makes sense to compile the Oberst oeuvre now, since he’s probably been happy since Winona Ryder shoplifted his heart. | |
| Guided By Voices Hardcore UFOs (5 CDs, 1 DVD) (Matador) |
A complete GBV set is not physically possible. This is a house-cleaning collection: the Watch Me Jumpstart documentary DVD, the first album (on CD for the first time) and a disc each for best-of, live, unreleased and singles/B-sides material. | Bob Pollard (and his rotating wingmen) used to be indie’s most reliable creator of short and strange rock songs. But these days GBV is making repetitive (but catchy) four-minute epics and fits nicely on a double bill with Cheap Trick. This set only illustrates the lateral evolution. | |
| Gary Numan Mutate Special Edition (3 CDs) (Jagged Halo) |
It’s not a best-of, exactly. The songs span the length of Numan’s Tubular career, but these are the 2002 industrial/electronic versions of the old-synth/new-wave near-classics. | If you haven’t been paying close attention, you might be surprised to find out the guy who wrote “Cars” was the illegitimate forebear of Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. Are we supposed to thank him? | |
| Nat King Cole The Classic Singles (4 CDs) (Capitol) |
One hundred of the legendary vocalist’s hits are plucked off the old 45s and 78s, remastered and repackaged — with daughter Natalie added to each track. Kidding. | This is everything most people remember about Ol’ Brown Eyes’ post-jazz era — swoony pop classics (“Unforgettable,” “Mona Lisa”) produced by Nelson Riddle and Les Baxter and sometimes backed by an obnoxiously angelic chorus. |
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