Enter The Vaselines

Enter the Vaselines serves as a timely reminder of the old ways we found music: for Cobain, one dreams, as a record in a bin somewhere, and for the rest of us, a recommendation from a friend, a cassette loaned around like a dirty one-hitter.

So much of the music here — stripped-down mixtures of pop and punk, with a Big Star emphasis on the pop side — merits a listen or two, its forgiveable that you’d get some redundancy in this completists’ collection.

Anyone who owns the 1992 Sub Pop compilation The Way of the Vaselines might be thinking there's nothing for them here, but beyond the re-mastering adding significant depth to Dum Dum (the difference it's made to the EPs is negligible to my admittedly rather damaged ears) there's also a second disc of previously unreleased material.

Now, 17 years removed from the original stateside release of the band’s music, this expanded reissue (buttressed with an additional disc of decent live tracks and a few cool demos) gives an entirely new generation of pop fans an excuse to dive into the group’s music.

With their dirty mouths and pretty faces, pop perspicacity and knack for making a bloody racket, there's no question the Vaselines were worth rescuing from obscurity.

For those of you who already own "The Way of the Vaselines," this 2009 upgrade’s imperativeness to own is strictly based on your own personal allegiance to the music of Kelly and McKee.

Here, they sound polished and crisp, which is a remarkable change from other issues of these recordings. Presumably the band is happy sounding this way, but it often feels a little too clean.

The original sound of "The Way" has been greatly cleaned up here, and a few songs’ endings have been elongated slightly.

This collects all that, plus demos and live tracks, into a demonstration of how a fabulously obscure Glasgow indie group became one of the most influential of their time. [Jun 2009, p.105]