10cc
20 Years: 1972–1992
DEMON/EDSEL
7/10
Stockport weirdos get boxed up
While best known for unkillable 1975 smash “I’m Not In Love” – an exquisitely produced love song whose irony is painfully self-delusional rather than merely clever – 10cc specialised in oddball mini-operettas and prog-adjacent post-modern pastiches that sound like a normie Sparks or a less condescending Zappa. Their early doo-wop parodies have aged like fine mayonnaise, full of Spike Jones sound effects and juvenile jokes, but their studio and songwriting prowess swiftly began to rival their sense of humour from 1974’s Sheet Music onwards. Perhaps their finest moment here is 1976’s How Dare You!, also the final album featuring all four founding members. This 14CD set traces the band’s dramatic trajectory as they adapted their sound to new pop trends in the ’80s and ’90s, and even when Graham Gouldman was the last man standing, their defining cheekiness remains intact.
Extras 6/10: Two CDs collecting previously released single edits, alternate mixes and B-sides.
STEPHEN DEUSNER
THE AMERICAN ANALOG SET
New Drifters
NUMERO GROUP
8/10
Beautiful box of ‘first phase’ recordings by Texan indie dreamers
It was easy (though ill-advised) to pass over American Analog Set when they were first around, in the late ’90s and early noughties – they seemed to slip between a number of different micro-movements within indie rock, and listening back to their first three albums, compiled with extra material in this New Drifters box, you can hear some debts to the looping, fuzzy melodies of Stereolab, and the fragile slowcore of Bedhead. But American Analog Set had a few canny tricks up their sleeve: a subtly majestic capacity with melody (similar in this respect to Sooyoung Park’s song writing in Seam); a comfortable lushness in their production; a wry sense of humour. You can hear them honing their craft, too – by 1999’s The Golden Band, the songs are sparklier, the rhythms tauter. It’s a perfect soundtrack to hypnagogia: blurred, hazy, very bewitching.
Extras 7/10: Booklet with brief notes and photographs.
