The Bluetones - The Early Garage Years Album Review

The Bluetones
The Early Garage Years
Album Review

The Bluetones hit the scene at the perfect time, with Brit pop being the biggest craze of the 90s. Releasing the amazing Slight Return smashed them right in the middle of it amongst the likes of Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Supergrass.

Now most bands release a Singles, Best Of or B-Sides album, where The Bluetones have already done The Singles have decided to take a different direction. The Bluetones release The Early Garage Years, which is full of early demos, home recordings and a couple of limited editions.

The album kicks off with three demos starting off with Are You Blue Or Are You Blind? You are given the chance to hear a classic in its rawness and pure state. You are given an insight to why there was so much excitement around this band at the time even with the two lesser demos Talking To Carry and Can't Be Trusted.

Naturally The Bluetones had to find a way to fit in Slight Return, and they did by putting the UK/Japan 7" Limited Edition on. There isn't much that needs to be said about it that hasn't already been said. In short this is why they were so popular in the 90s and have a piece of the pie when it came to the good old Brit pop bandwagon. It seems that The Bluetones had to add some favourites in just to make this album look that bit more appealing, and by chucking tracks on such as No11 (Bluetonic) the Joe public that were not sure might just see this track and think why not.

The album spirals away into nothingness finishing off with three lots of however many home made track recording. Why they are still in that format may give out an indication that they weren't actually good enough at the time to make the cut, so really in all reality they are not going to make the cut now.

The best things about the home made tracks and the demos are the fact that you can tell that they are not professionally produced. You can hear that rawness, the static and scratching sounds in the background of the songs.

For a real Bluetones track this will be good just to reminisce, but anyone that hasn't really heard of em well it will not really have much meaning to it. On the other hand if you haven't heard of The Bluetones then you must be either wet behind the ears or have been walking around with your head up your rear for the last ten years or so!

Mark Moore