Giant Steps [CD]

The timely reissue of this album makes me realise just how much I miss the Boo Radleys right now. An audacious 17 track odyssey that is as diverse as it is utterly spellbinding. The twisted genius that is Giant Steps takes its cue from all manner of influences (power pop, dub reggae, 60s Merseybeat, 80s jangle-pop, dark electronica, psychedelic, scuzzy garage rock, Beach Boys harmonies, chamber music, freakout noise, grunge pop, etc....) and runs rings around all of the competition. Suede, remember, were the huge breakthrough story of 1993 - a year before the hype of Britpop caught the nation's attention. But they would surely sell their souls and their crushed velvet blouses to be as dazzlingly inventive as this. The Boo Radleys were regarded as the runts of the post-Valentines shoegazing pop litter. But like the ugly ducklings of folklore, their subsequent blossoming into fully-fledged swans caught everybody by surprise. The transformation from their previous (debut) Creation album Everything's Alright Forever to this magnum opus in the space of just a year was remarkable: a huge leap in songwriting, arrangement, production and, above all, confidence. Listening to both albums in succession it is hard to believe that they are the same band! Martin Carr's noisy guitar sound is just about the only constant remaining from the past whilst the other components, in particular Sice Rowbottom's assuredly angelic vocals, were a massive improvement. You could hear what he was singing this time around without the need for his voice to be hidden beneath dense layers of distorted guitars and fuzzy static (as was the case with the previous album).

Bursting with fantastic tunes and schizophrenic twists and turns, the whole album is an absolutely staggering tour de force that doesn't flag in quality until the final track The White Noise Revisited fades out. It's futile to pick out specific highlights because the whole album is best appreciated in one sitting, as all of the songs run seamlessly into one another with no gaps. It's THAT complete and rewarding a listening experience, hopping between genres and moods with consummate ease. Needless to say, such was the sheer sonic scope of this album that no less than four singles feature on it: I Hang Suspended, Wish I Was Skinny, Barney (...And Me) and the godlike Lazarus itself! All of them killers!

Goodness knows how the original shoegazing / Dinosaur Jr - aping Boo Radleys of yore would have come up with an achievement as magnificent as this, but come up with it they did. And they were never the same band again from this moment onwards: flirting with the pop mainstream in their own genius way (1995's Wake Up!), confounding expectations again with the 1996 successor C'mon Kids (even more out-there and brilliantly chaotic than Giant Steps, if that was possible!), and then returning to grandiose pop constructions with their [sadly criminally-overlooked] 1998 swansong Kingsize before calling it a day the following year to make way for solo projects (guitarist/songwriter Martin Carr with his Brave Captain project) or semi-retirement from the music scene (vocalist Sice, even though he did eventually resurface with a new band, Paperlung).

The original album has been reissued with two further discs of b-sides from the entire period. And yet even here, there are surprises aplenty as the band really flex their eclectic / experimental muscles to the max. However, I feel I have to point out a slight oddity as far as the track choice of CD2 is concerned, as the first 8 songs (from the Adrenalin and Boo! Forever EPs) were issued in 1992 and were released as companions to their *previous* album Everything's Alright Forever, not Giant Steps. This kind of spoils the continuity somewhat, especially bearing in mind that the three original 1992-issue Lazarus B-sides (At The Sound Of Speed, Let Me Be Your Faith and Petroleum) don't appear until 4 tracks into CD3 - and these should really open this second disc before the I Hang Suspended EP follows on....

....anyway these are minor gripes from the point of view of a shameless obsessive! Many of the b-sides here show another, even more adventurous, side to the band than the already outstanding songs on Giant Steps have amply demonstrated. What remains is for anybody who did not catch the Boo Radleys the first time round [and whose only exposure to them is *that* hit single from 1995] to get hold of this excellent value 3CD package and indulge in a serious bit of catching up with one of the most downright inventive [but sadly underrated] bands of the last decade. This is quite simply an essential purchase. You really will be pleasantly surprised, I promise you! ......... Boo! Forever? Too bloody right!

Fate delivers a cruel hand and none more so than in the case of Liverpool's "Boo Radleys" named after the character in Harper Lee's classic novel "To kill a mockingbird". The band seem forever destined to soundtrack TV AM, holiday programmes and anything in particular where a shot of the sun poking through the clouds requires the jolly strains of their Top Ten horn fuelled hit "Wake up boo". It is a song which appears so regularly it has started to grate although not as much as the equally ubiquitous but truly appalling "Walking on sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves.

Yet it all looked so different at one point especially when Martin Carr and his fellow band members released the new wave monster "Giant Steps" in 1993 on Creation records, a truly inspired signing by Alan McGee. It is hard to imagine the sheer impact and effect of this album at that time. The NME compared it to the White Album and it beat tough opposition by winning the Best Album in end of years polls in Melody Maker and the now defunct "Select" magazine who were particular champions of the band (Let us remember that 1993 also saw the release of "In Utero" by Nirvana, Bjork's brilliant debut which was NME's first choice - please note Amazon- and Belly's fun packed "Star"). Did "Giant Steps" deserve all this lauded praise, do bears defecate in woody areas?

Giant Steps ambitiously took its name from John Coltrane's great album of experimentation and like that work it was hugely audacious, inspired, original and mind blowing. Starting with the sheer adrenalin rush of "I hang suspended" with its backwards loop introduction breaking into a vividly glorious guitar anthem which with hindsight could rival the Stone Roses "I wanna be adored" as a one of the great opening songs of any British album and for good measure also incorporate a likeness to "Waterfalls" from that classic debut album. It is followed by the lovely pop song "Wishing I was skinny" with an angelic vocal by the bands singer Sice and surely a slice of pop heaven that in a perfect world would top the charts for 9 months. In terms of other highlights "Leaves and Sand" has that quiet/loud Pixies quality about it; "Take this time around" prefigures Brit pop; "Barney (and me) is an utterly melodic glory; "Thinking of Ways" could have been on "Surfs up" and then there is "Lazarus". This is a song that builds like a pyramid containing an almost reggae dubstep bass, guitars looping around with brass instruments, a vocal to die for and enough invention to frighten Brian Wilson to the core. It is a song so massively ahead of its time that you smirk quietly about all the efforts in vain by Oasis to ape the Beatles when this band was actually pushing forward the boundaries opened by the Fab Four with far more skill at least 18 months before them. To hammer the point home this wonderful and mammoth 3 disk release of b-sides, rarities and curiosities contains no less than eight re-mixes of Lazarus with the St Etienne one being truly outstanding but none of the others less than interesting.

The truly great factor about this album was like Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" no one really expected it or saw it coming (probably including the band themselves). Prior to this the Boo Radleys were seen as a bunch of run of the mill shoe gazers and the albums which followed Giant Steps never lived up to its greatness (how could they?). In 64 minute original this album covers just about every musical base you can imagine and is a veritable cornucopia of sounds, influences and more sounds. For producing "Giant Steps" the Boo Radleys should be hallowed in British rock history, children throughout our cities and towns should regularly chant their name, Martin Carr should have an airport named after him and you dear Amazon readers should buy it in such quantities that you kick-start our fragile economy through a boom in album sales. Absolutely essential.

Ok, so I had the album I'd seen the band I'd even sought out the promo of Lazarus the tracks of which feature on disc 3) I have the greatest hits compilation. So why buy this?

Well if you don't have the various Lazurus mixes it's worth buying just for those. For me I didn't have all the tracks available here. It's a reminder of how good music once was and a continuation of my accelerating trend of buying back catalogue. Great band and a great album.