Mostly Autumn must be one of the most underrated bands on the planet. I've only been into them proper for about the past 16 months, although I'd heard one album a few years ago. The current release is an attractively packaged, remastered anthology of their first ten years of recorded output containing just over three and a half hours of music. As such it represents excellent value for money. In my case I own most of the later albums but little of the earlier period, so in purchasing this album I expected to have heard most of it before. I was pleasantly surprised to find that almost all of disc 2 was new to me and a few songs of disc 3 (a couple I'd heard live but don't own).
The idea is that each disc is supposed to capture a different mood.
Disc 1 - Something for the Spirit
Disc 2 - Something for the Campfire
Disc 3 - Something for the Candlelight
Mostly Autumn can be described as a progressive rock band with a multitude of influences. Pink Floyd and Genesis are clearly discernible. But there are also celtic and folk elements and in some places they can sound like Fleetwood Mac or Led Zeppelin! However, somehow after a while you can detect a characteristic Mostly Autumn sound through all this even though each album tends to have a different feel from its predecessor.
Lead vocal duties are mostly shared between Bryan Josh and Heather Findlay either separately or jointly.They usually have one or two additional females in the rest of the line-up, which has varied a bit over the years. This makes them a bit different from most prog rock bands in that they are mostly all-male outfits. It also tends to make them less cerebral perhaps, not that this means the songs are all simple love songs though! But I would hazard a guess that Mostly Autumn would appeal to many people who are not prog rock fans.
Within the three discs you will find a fair number of Mostly Autumn "classics" but the release is not necessarily a "best of." Rather the songs have been chosen to run well together. You might describe the album as a "representation of Mostly Autumn spanning the last decade."
As is always the case with releases of this nature it is impossible to fully please all fans. There will always be some songs you think should be present and some not. And I don't dissent from that view. However, as a whole, the collection is excellent and a great advert for the band. If you haven't heard Mostly Autumn before why not give them a try?