Robin Lane & The Chartbusters are one of the great also-rans of the new wave era: a group who always seemed poised for big things that never materialized. Their two albums for
Warner -- an eponymous 1980 album, followed by 1981's
Imitation Life, with the
5 Live EP appearing between the two LPs -- scraped the very lowest reaches of Billboard's Top 200 (indeed, the debut didn't even crack that chart, reaching 207), and they never amassed anything close to a hit, which meant they remained the province of true believers.
Blixa's 2019 compilation
Many Years Ago: The Complete Robin Lane & The Chartbusters Album Collection has a lot of material for those fans, including all the previously unreleased recordings from their scrapped 1984 LP
Heart Connection, along with demos, live recordings, and their first indie single. That laundry list makes
Many Years Ago sound a bit like a clearinghouse, which it is -- the producers are proud that this has everything, from stem to stern. Still, this is useful for those who have heard of
Robin Lane & The Chartbusters but never dug out one of their LPs. What's especially helpful is how it balances their clean, punchy studio work with muscular live recordings: the former feels tied to the time, whereas the latter contains some heft that transcends its era. In either case,
Lane & The Chartbusters feel like a bar band version of the
Pretenders, one that didn't quite have a facility for either musical or lyrical hooks, but could still raise an unholy racket. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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