Consumer Guide Album

The Only Ones: The Peel Sessions [Strange & Beautiful Music, 1991]
Like the rest of the series, their compendium preserves every song they chose to try out for Uncle John, the BBC, and the great unwashed, including second-raters like the indecisive "In Betweens." But except for "The Whole of the Law" (available on Epic's now-digitalized Special View), this hits the high spots. Because they always played better than the classic pop band they never really were, Peel's demand that bands lay down four songs in a day of recording--half-live, as it were--gets the part of their groove that studio polish glossed over. And such new-ones-on-me as "Oh No," "Language Problem," and "Telescopic Love" are why people think they were a pop band. A-