The Singles

As evidenced here, experimental doesn’t mean inaccessible. This is music from the past that, while only looking forward, is still daring the present to catch up.

As an entry level to this magnificent band, this more than suffices.

While The Singles fails to represent Can’s adventures in untethered improvisation and oceanic drift, if you wanted to hand somebody one record that told them what Can was, you could do far worse. [Jul 2017, p.67]

The Singles is as good a starting point as any, as it highlights the diversity that spanned the band's entire career. All the classics are present and accounted for. [No. 144, p.54]

Ultimately, though, as a collection that welcomes the near misses and the questionable latter-era caricaturing, The Singles is real and admirable testament to the full Can story.

This parade of audacious flops is a powerful introduction to this great band's pleasures, should you need one. [Jul 2017, p.104]

A late-career lapse into gimmicky covers of “Silent Night” and “Can Can” aside, this compilation is a marvellous confirmation of pop’s fringe possibilities.

Taken as whole though, The Singles is a strangely satisfyingly testament to the belief that most great musical ideas--even those delivered with such wilfully uncommercial and unconventional intent--can still be boiled-down to fit on one side of a 7” slice of plastic.

For all of their serious, avant-garde inclinations, Can could be awfully fun to listen to, and this alternate universe hit parade is a sterling demonstration of the group at its most immediate, energetic, and enjoyable.

The music is the story, and The Singles, whether it’s filling in the gaps or just presenting the band’s legacy in a slimmed-down package, is all about the story.

Here is Can, warts and all. [Jul 2017, p.49]

On seminal albums like Monster Movie and Tago Mago the songs flow and breathe in a very different way than the shortened pieces here. Those unfamiliar with Can would be wise to start with the albums, then come to this collection and enjoy the peculiar window it offers, which is full of fun surprises and brief snippets of Can’s genius. Fans, though, needn’t think about it before snapping up this necessary release.

To hear tracks like ‘Dizzy Dizzy’ or ‘Halleluwah’ hacked down to mere Can-ettes for the humble 7” format feels a little like trying to make sense of a vast painted canvass simply by focusing on, say, the top left corner. Once you get over that, with singles typically being the most accessible or marketable moments in a band’s trajectory, this collection represents a superb introduction to the Can catalogue for anyone lacking the willpower or patience to trawl their albums or the goldmine of material presented on 2012’s essential ‘The Can Tapes.’