The Raw And The Cooked [Collector's Edition]

13 years on, this album still sounds remarkably fresh. Each track is different from the last, yet the album gels in one unique whole. Taking more traditional soul ("As Hard As It Is", "Tell Me What", "Good Thing"), jangly pop ("Don't Look Back", "Ever Fallen In Love?") and what was at the time contemporary dance ("She Drives Me Crazy", "Don't Let It Get You Down", "I'm Not The Man I Used To Be"), this album is a great collection of tracks, and highly recommended to anyone who likes good music. It took the band 2 years to produce, and there never was a follow-up but the results were worth it.

FACT: The video for "I'm Not The Man I Used To Be", released as a single Novemeber 1989, featured a young American dancer by the name of Sean "Puffy" Combs.......

Firstly, and as I always find with Edsel, the sound quality is amazing. This music truly benefits from the whole 'remastered' thing - differing tones of percussion jitter and shoot off everywhere, guitars trill and vibrate like mandolins in Greece, rubbery synths and compelling bass sounds lure you in.

There's so much here - it's like being given the album, a box full of memorobilia/collectible 7", cd singles/12" singles and a different sound system - all for the price of pizza? Sure somebody's favourite this or that is going to be left off (I wish Pull that Sucker Off and the Justin Strauss mix of She Drives were here) but overall track selection is great. I do notice a little variance in sound on disc 2 caused by nature of source materials - but, hey I'd rather a great track with a 'slight' (and it is slight) imperfection than to have those tracks eliminated entirely, this allows a more broad track selection as well.

The set seems to be laid out with disc 1 being the album/a couple great b-sides/some mixes - 2 of Ever Fallen - very pleased with those. Disc 2 is most of the Raw & the Remixed (great album in itself)/another group of later b-side like material (I don't care for this little grouping at all/sounds too American and if this was the direction they were headed in with the next album I'm relieved they stopped when they did - a very wise move) and then a very interesting group of remixes I personally had never run into - I should note remixes are usually just dull, repetitive meanderings to nowhere/these on the other hand have interesting use of voice/vocal acapella/tapes and the way they are structured seems to maintain for the most part the structure of the original.

In case you haven't noticed I'm impressed with these Edsel packages (no, I don't work for them). I/on my sound system find the sound quality and track selection to be exceptional. I've also noticed I can't get the Korgis 'Dumb Waiters' as an Edsel issue anymore; same with Blancmange's 'Mange Tout' -

Seminal album from 80s funksters; the breadth and range of this 1989 album is well, breathtaking, and it yielded no fewer than five top twenty hits. With Roland Gift's smoky soulful vocals married to David Steele and Andy Cox's frantic guitar playing, songs such as 'Good Thing', 'Don't Look Back' and the awesome 'She Drives Me Crazy' sound as fresh today as they did twenty years ago.