Rough Trade Us
2005
Early
About This Album
The U.S. misunderstood a lot of foreign bands during the '70s and '80s. Ask fans of Gang of "I Love a Man in a Uniform" Four or pre-stadium Simple Minds, and they'll be happy to bitterly confirm it. Ask the average music fan who came of age during Scritti Politti's mainstream peak and he or she is likely to recall a one-hit wonder (wrong), a Color Me Badd precursor that appeared out of thin air (wrong again and yet again). Cupid & Psyche 85's end-to-end brilliance is another argument, but when that album was on the charts, few stateside listeners knew that Scritti Politti had a history. Several years before "Perfect Way," Scritti were post-punks who made frail political songs with guitars as linear as a balled-up entanglement of holiday lights, a rhythm section as slantwise as it was dubwise, and boyish vocals as sweet as they were hesitant. Though the voice of central member Green Gartside would eventually lose the latter characteristic, it seems to have remained a part of his personality. This disc, a compilation of his group's first four singles/EPs, wouldn't exist if he hadn't been badgered so much. Reading his liner notes that double as a disclaimer, it's not hard to understand why, because he's not off base when he says, "It sounds like some anti-produced labour of negativity, kind of structurally unsound and exposed, by design and default.
Track List (try tracks 1,6,9 and 12)

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