I had reviewed the excellent new Shriekback album in December as I had helped to crowdsource its recording sessions and got in on the early end of distribution. Now the band have it for sale to the rest of humanity and that is the operative word here as the album brims with the sort of deep emotional resonance they are no strangers to. The suite of the last three songs may go down as their finest hour yet as we can see from the new video just released for “The Fire Has Brought Us Together.” Courtesy of the lens of the band’s favorite videographer, Howard Davidson. Play it right now, unless you are mad.
The CD comes with a DL for £10.00 [$13.01, today] but immaterial girls and boys may opt for the DL only at £7.00 if that’s the way you roll. Click now and click often.
– 30 –
Post-Punk Monk 
I am not mad! That was great, can’t wait to get the CD!
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I have to agree with the final three tracks. Some dazzling aural beauty!
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Shriekback have somehow figured out how to do what most 80’s indie acts failed at: to not just remain consistent, but actually get better and better with time. From Cormorant onward, I consider this the best era of their existence.
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desertcurmudgeon – I have had immense difficulty in obtaining CDs of “Glory Bumps” and “Life In The Loading Bay,” but once I do, the Shriekback Rock G.P.A.® begin’s in earnest! I love the first five, then skip ahead to “Naked Apes + Pond Life” with the two latest among my favorites. I was just listening to “Cormorant” recently. A very different vibe.
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I consider Glory Bumps one of the weaker offerings in their latter day catalog, but Life In The Loading Bay is gorgeous. Regardless, rounding out the eighties with the atrocious Go Bang left them in an odd place where they could only get better from there!
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desertcurmudgeon – It seemed like they bought the farm with “Go Bang.” And that response made sense at the time! But I was happy to see them sticking their nose above the parapet a few years later with the eerie beauty of “Sacred City.” Not forgetting the handful of new and strange, but interesting, experiments of “The Dancing Years.”
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I actually consider ‘The Dancing Years’ as a way to have fulfilled their Album deal with Island. The group did not really exist any more at that time and most likely the new re-recordings had to be made as they / Barry could not license the original versions from Y then.
That said, it’s still a good compilation with plenty of highlights.
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slur – That theory holds a lot of water. The new recordings had Adrienne Loehry of Andrews’ post-Shriekback project Illuminati singing on the re-recordings. Since all of the re-recordings were Y-Records material, I’d say you were spot on. I thought the new versions were interesting enough and something new to chew on that got me to buy a greatest hits album easily enough. With those cuts, the remixes, amid the live material, there was not a lot of repetition there on “The Dancing Years.”
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