Bumper package expands on all the joys of the janglemasters, making us all feel eternally young at heart. (And possibly old.)

Release date: 24th November 2023

Label: Cherry Red

Format: CD

God, I loved this album, and the band, back in the day, their ragamuffin folkie image, coupled with stellar powerpop tunes, absolutely a tonic to the 1984 charts and, naturally, to Top of the Pops, their appearances alway lifting my (young) heart. So what could be better than a 39 year reminder?! (OK, and also a 30 year reminder, given Young At Heart developed them a second life, as did the band, when VW used it to sell cars……)

It is astonishing to believe this was their first album. Actually, it was their only album, other than in Japan, if you discount this year’s surprise issue of all-new material, In The 21st Century. (Sadly, it seems most folk did.) Active, first time around, in the first half of the 1980s, they exuded all the jangletastic energy and exuberance of fellow Weegie’s Aztec Camera and Orange Juice. Based around Bobby Bluebell, aka Robert Hodgens, who wrote most the material and all the hits, and the McCluskey brothers, David and Ken, they busked their material around a fair number of producers ahead of gaining the necessary traction with Sire records and getting the green light to record. The downside of this was that the better and earlier version of opener, Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, was ditched for a supposedly cleaner and spikier version. Plus, later single, Cath, was foreshortened. Here they are present and correct, as the band had originally wanted. Mind you, being Cherry Red behind this release, there is also the welcome insertion of a bevy of tracks produced by Elvis Costello. Oh, and a second disc, with numerous remixes and extended versions, a few single b-sides and other orphans.

First thing to say is just how good the original version of Everybody’s Somebody’s etc is, the inherent folkiness of the band dialled up a notch, with the harmonica and chunky guitars joined by background fiddle. The bass, high in the mix, comes from one Laurence Donegan, who later made a Commotion of himself with Lloyd Cole, and who, on completing the album recording, left, before the hits. Then it is everybody’s favourite, Young At Heart, with Bobby Valentino’s fiddle to the fore. (Diplomatically, no mention is made of the later battle he had to stake a claim to the songwriting credits, the extensive notes merely stating he helped to write the song!) Unlike much else in the charts at the time, as an old folkie, well, younger then, it was just so grand to see and hear the instrument on early evening prime time TV. (Whilst we talk authorship, until now I had no idea the song was also credited to Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahy, with whom Hodgens was then stepping out with. Or that it appears on the first Bananarama LP.)

I’m Falling, a McCluskey K. co-write, with its scrubbed guitar lines, the infectiousness of the tune and the accessibility of the vocal is perfect. The more delicate, string-drenched Will She Always Be Waiting follows. This was the first of their E.C. productions, and had been spared for the original release, the McCluskey bros harmonising as only siblings can. Some Sweet Day, from the same Costello sessions, was not included until now, and offers more melodic charm. It could be a song from a decade earlier, if with better production. Listen close and you can hear the producer adding in his dulcets, never able to resist. And, if you are wondering, the producers elsewhere were Colin Fairly and Bob Andrews, the Bob Andrews being, presumably the Brinsleys and Rumour one.

Cath, with the rhyme of path and laugh with Cath, pairings of genius, benefits from the extra length, the harmonica a plaintive backnote throughout, and the mandolin solo a further bonus for the lovers of unorthodox instrumentation in rock and pop. Red Guitars, despite it’s ba-ba-ba-di-ba chorus is a hymn to socialism. If you add in Syracuse University, next up, Lou Reed’s alma mater, I gather, but if the song was originally to pay tribute to the Walk On The Wild side hitmaker, it turned into an anti-guns and anti-war diatribe, both songs part of their escalating social conscience.

The near acapella Aim To Love, one of the EC productions, gets shoehorned in here. With muted and distorted fife and near inaudible drums, it sounds more typical of the producer than of the writer. As does, frankly, the full on horn and organ Northern Soul assault of Learn To Love, which, I now understand, features Eddi Reader as the background banshee. Sort of out of character, but totally terrific. By complete contrast come South Atlantic Way and the Patriot Game, in this order, rather than reversed as was/is the received wisdom. South Atlantic Way, incidentally a McCluskey’s song is a direct comment on the Falklands, standing well on the same sentiments, thirty years on. The layering of thrashing guitars fits well with the clarion call vocals, the simple repeated guitar motif a masterstroke. As for the Patriot Game, what can be said, it still arguably as capable of being misunderstood as when it was first written, by Dominic Behan. Behan, brother of Brendan, was a family friend of the McCluskeys. But listen to the words; rather than a paean to the “auld IRA”, it is a warning, for young men, in getting involved in old men’s arguments. As a version it is stellar, and, for me, their pinnacle.

That’s the ending of the (tweaked) album, with four tracks added, the first of which is the McCluskey’s song Forevermore, another EC production, along with All I Ever Said, an altogether Merseybeaty song. Fall From Grace is there more for completeness I guess, a song, where all the constituents, plus french horn, are present but not in the right order. Happy Birthday is a rarity, culled from a flexidisc attached to Stand And Deliver magazine. It’s OK, but, let’s face it, not a patch on Cath, then reprised in all its 12″ glory.

The second disc hoovers up as many alternative versions as it can, together with a few further orphans, but, to be fair, this all extra, this first one being, really, all you need or want. That’s maybe unfair, as Sugar Bridge, a 1983 single, is rather jolly. Then it is nearly all other versions of the singles, the album version of Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool and another version, inexplicably, of the Happy Birthday flexi-disc track. Elsewhere, Forever Yours, Forever Mine (Evermore) and H.O.L.L.A.N.D. feel to revisit old ground. Smalltown Martyr seems to have crept in from the wrong band altogether. An exception is Tender Mercy, the maudlin bittersweet flip, on several versions, of Young At Heart.

Amongst the revisits and prevists, another exception is around whether you had ever wondered how Will She Always Be Waiting would sound without all those luscious strings? The answer is almost surprisingly good, with a different slant to the vocals, Hodgens rather than the McCluskeys, I believe, with some organ and twang garnishing the strummed guitars instead. The final disc two gem is an unexpected take on The Ballad Of Joe Hill, to file alongside The Patriot Song, adding banjo as it fades, and about as far from their cheery jangle as you can get.

I would go as far as to say this is my re-release of the year, if too late for the ATB listings. As ever, Cherry Red has done it up proud, with an interesting and informative set of notes, which include Hodgen’s memories of those heady days. A perfect stocking filler for any indie kid of the 80s with a heart left intact.

As a bonus, were anyone tempted by my talk of ‘new’, here’s the single from this year’s Songs From The 21st Century, with wonderfully mawkish and ironic lyrics, Gone Tomorrow. Still with Hodgens and the McCluskey, with Ken McCluskey being the dapper fella in a trilby, toting a goatee.

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