No End In Sight: The Very Best Of Foreigner [CD]

Rhino for some reason decided to delete The Definite Collection" to pave the way for this one. The additions to this one are two new "Foreigner" tracks and a few live recordings. The omissions are the Mick Jones and Lou Gramm hit singles and a few album tracks.

The math is simple, this is an OK compilation but The Definite Collection was better. If you get your hands on that one, buy it and skip this one.

ReplayGain gives an album volume of ~99dB, with a couple of tracks exceeding 100, and all of them clipped. Foreigner's loud, poppish style can survive this somewhat, but if you're planning on listening to both CDs back-to-back expect to find your ears feeling a bit weary afterwards.

Which is a shame, since the selection of music is pretty good. The live tracks put a different spin on things; the second version of "Say You Will" being an acoustic performance, and "Starrider" getting some serious space to breathe from being performed live. The "Juke Box Hero/Whole Lotta Love" combination works surprisingly well and makes for a suitable crowd-roaring drummer-hitting-everything-in-reach frenzy to end on.

Ah, Foreigner, so unfairly maligned over here in the UK as a ballads band; they were so much more than that, especially back in ye olde days. The run of albums from their self titled debut in 1977, right through to their magnificent fourth album, 4, contained some of the finest melodic rock songs you are ever likely to hear, as well as some of the strangest. Not that that stopped them selling gazillions of records at the same time.

A new version of Foreigner has been doing the live rounds over the past few years, with founder Mick Jones the only classic member left. This 32 track, double best of CD probably contains all the Foreigner you'll ever need. Thankfully, it's in chronological order, so you can skip the less than good years when they arrive. Kicking off with five tracks from their debut album, including their debut hit single "Feels Like The First Time", this version of Foreigner was by far the most interesting.

With ex King Crimson man Ian McDonald in the lineup alongside former Spooky Tooth man Jones, they had an experimental edge to their classic rock fare. "Long, Long Way From Home" is still an utterly mad rhythmic affair with bubbling keyboards and staccato brass that still managed to get into the Top 20 US singles chart. And don't start me on "Starrider", a flute driven song that, delightfully, comes across as a refugee from a Uriah Heep session.

Five million sales later, and the format remained untampered with, as Double Vision had even better sales. However, songwise, it wasn't on a par with the debut, despite songs like the hits "Blue Morning, Blue Day" and "'Hot Blooded", both of which are here. Head Games was an album I had to hide away as a teenager, thanks to its delightful cover. The music continued the slide, despite five million sales, with only the title track and "Dirty White Boy" really standing the test of time. Mick Jones obviously realized something had to go, and that something was keyboardist Al Greenwood and co-founder Ian McDonald, who were sacked in a melodic rock putsch, with Jones and vocalist Lou Gramm seizing control.

And then came 4, their number one U.S. album; the high point of their career, and an album that contains two near perfect songs in the shape of "Night Life" and "Juke Box Hero". The five tracks culled for this compilation take us to the end of Disc 1 with "Waiting for a Girl Like You," before Disc 2 commences with "I Want to Know What Love Is". It seems like a symbolic sign that the glory days were over for Foreigner, as they started to mutate into just another band. Agent Provocateur, their concept album, just wasn't very good, with Jones and Gramm starting to drift apart. The four tracks on offer here, are pointers towards the career nadir that was Inside Information, an album that heralded the end of classic Foreigner.

However, Mick Jones still had a pile of good songs in him, a lot of which were unleashed on the great, lost Foreigner album, Unusual Heat, released in 1991. The only Foreigner album to feature vocalist Johnny Edwards, it's an absolute gem, second only to 4 in the Foreigner pantheon. Both tracks here - "Lowdown and Dirty" and "I'll Fight for You" are among the band's finest, with the latter, one of the great power ballads. But it was a flop, so Jones cut loose the remaining classic Foreigner members - ex Roxy Music bassist Rick Wills and former If drummer Dennis Elliott - and put a new lineup together with Lou Gramm returning on vocals.

It wasn't very good. Only the excellent "Until the End of Time" makes the cut here, but don't be fooled into thinking the album lives up to it. Sadly, Gramms well documented medical problems and his growing estrangement from Jones, slowly put an end to his time in Foreigner, and he left for good in 2002. But Jones wasn't done, and the 'new' Foreigner including ex Hurricane vocalist Kelly Hansen and former Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson have been playing live ever since, releasing a live album in 2006. This compilation sees its way out with so-so brand new track "Too Late", as well as a rather nice live acoustic version of "Say You Will" from the 2008 lineup and "Starrider" and "Juke Box Hero (interpolating Whole Lotta Love)" from the 2006 live album, with Jason Bonham on drums.

The studio sides have been remastered, and there does seem to be increased clarity on some of the earlier material. However, with Foreigner now having released more compilations than original albums, you have to wonder who is going to buy this. After all if you have any combination of Records, The Very Best of... and Beyond, The Platinum Collection, The Definitive Collection or any of the other ten or so compilations, then you won't really need this. However, if you do want a Foreigner anthology this is the one to go for.