Sub Pop
2009
Enter The Vaselines
About This Album
Kurt Cobain made plenty of mistakes in his life, but loving the Vaselines was not among them. Nirvana covered three of their songs, and as Kurt might tell you if he were alive today, from 1986 to 1989 the Vaselines were the best pop band around. Sub Pop was smart enough to cash in on the Nirvana connection, and in 1992 released the career retrospective The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History. From the stomping, singalong opener "Son of a Gun" to the distorted and nasty "Let's Get Ugly" 17 tracks later, this collection was the Holy Grail of indie pop. In 2009, hot off of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee's reunion (and appearance at Sub Pop's 20th anniversary bash), the label remastered the studio recordings, added a second disc of demos and live performances, and retitled the whole thing Enter the Vaselines.

The Vaselines' music is unfailingly amateurish, almost completely silly, occasionally quite perverted, and always about sex. It has the simplicity and ear-grabbing melodies of the best bubblegum, the loud and semi-competent guitars of punk, and some of the attitude and lo-fi sound of their noise rock contemporaries like the Jesus and Mary Chain. They also had a charmingly unschooled vocal approach (Kelly sounding cool and tough, McKee sweet as pie) with a fleeting acquaintance to pitch but tons of humor, attitude, and style.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,3,4,6,8,9 and 10)

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Disc 2

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