Between 1974-1976,
the Glitter Band released a total of nine singles on the U.K.
Bell label, running up seven Top 20 hits, one American club smash, and emerging, at the end of the day, with two bona fide classics -- their debut,
"Angel Face," and, precisely midway through the sequence,
"Goodbye My Love." All have now been recycled so many times that there can barely be an interested soul in the world who does not own the entire catalog in one permutation or another. Far from screaming its own redundancy from the rooftops, however, this collection distinguishes itself by returning to the original source -- all nine singles, all nine B-sides, presented in strict chronological order. We can get the hits out of the way with barely a second glance; from the sublime (the aforementioned giants) to the ridiculous (the glitter-by-numbers
"Let's Get Together Again," "Just for You"), the sequence encompasses a surprising array of directions and some remarkably consistent visions as well. Flip over the
Beach Boys-esque "Love in the Sun" and find the band returning to the well of their inspiration, with the delicious
"I Can Hear Music." Dig beneath the yearning
"The Tears I Cried" and find the superb
"Until Tomorrow." And upend the gratuitously irritating
"People Like You, People Like Me," a last-ditch attempt to return to the glitter sound after some more adventurous efforts had failed to chart, and marvel at the instrumental
"Makes You Blind," a squelching, pulsing slab of
electro-
disco-
hard rock which came within a hair's breadth of breaking the American chart. As you'd expect from any compilation which takes half its weight from B-sides, it's an inconsistent collection. By and large,
the Glitter Band's A-sides represent the peak of their powers; with only a handful of exceptions, the B-sides don't. But
glam rock was a singles-driven phenomenon, and bands didn't come much glammier than the
Glitters. No matter what the songs are like, this is history as it happened. ~ Dave Thompson
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