Greatest Hits compilations are a strange beast. By rights you’d associate them better with Elton John or The Bee Gees rather than a once-great band that now continually bleats on about veganism and preaches rather than promotes a subject. Oooh, catty. This Mojo/Jive release is nothing more than a horrible cash-in with a DVD of videos stuck on the side to try and coin some extra revenue out of the band’s long suffering fans. How about a good new album rather than a re-hash of good memories gone by?
The disc itself is pretty much how you would expect – ‘Superman’, ‘Mable’ and ‘Here In Your Bedroom’ represent the older (and better years) very well, ‘San Simeon’ and ’99 Red Balloons’ are huge singalong hits while ‘Close Your Eyes‘ is probably the band’s best latter day effort. There are too many ‘new’ songs on here though, and for someone who thinks their older efforts far outweight their newer ones, that ratio just isn’t good enough. As a bonus we get ‘The Innocent’ – the corny post 9/11 ‘tribute’ with Good Charlotte and Mest – but I’d much rather have seen some more older songs. The lack of ‘Answers’ or ‘Chris Cayton’ is pretty criminal.
I’m not a fan of record label cash-ins and this is blatantly one. While the CD itself is pretty good, you’d be better just buying any of the first two or three Goldfinger CDs as they’re far more consistent than this. John Feldmann’s crew were once great, now they’re little better than good – and this record only serves to reinforce that point…
Mojo/Jive
Paul