VA - Our Brilliant Careers: Cherry Red Rarities, 1981-1983 (2023)

This assortment of 22 odds and ends released by the Cherry Red label in the early '80s contains, as the liners rightly note, "tracks not previously available on CD, or now deleted, or just pretty hard to find." But it's not solely of interest as a rarity compilation, for Cherry Red was one of the more idiosyncratic and high-quality indie rock labels of the early '80s, and this also functions as a good overview of the range of sounds the label explored at the time. Undoubtedly this will get much of its sales mileage from the pre-Everything But the Girl tracks by Ben Watt (all three songs from his 1982 debut release are here) and Tracey Thorn (her non-LP B-side "Goodbye Joe"), as well as two of the three songs from the first Everything But the Girl 7" ("Feeling Dizzy" and "On My Mind"). A couple of other names of some renown are lurking in the offerings by the Reflections (who included Alternative TV's Mark Perry) and Five or Six (with future Spring Heel Jack co-founder Ashley Wales). It's not easy to summarize the music on this CD in a single review due to the diversity, but generally it had a wispier and more melancholy flavor than most late new wave/early post-punk, sometimes in a particularly melodic or easy-on-the-ear ambient pop vein (as in the Watt/Thorn-affiliated cuts). That's just part of the Cherry Red aesthetic, however: the Reflections songs are as abrasive as you'd expect from a Mark Perry project, and the Nightingales and Five or Six play spiky early-'80s British indie rock that isn't easy to pigeonhole into anything (though it's not great, either). An interesting anthology, but it's diminished by some varispeed on a few tracks, whether these were flaws in the mastering of the original releases or this reissue.

Review by Richie Unterberger