STACK Feb Issue 124

83 / 90

Led Zeppelin
Physical Graffiti
Six albums into one of
the most popular reissue
campaigns of recent years
comes the guvnors’ landm
mothership, precisely 40 years after its
first descent and freshly stocked with, er,
Brandy & Coke. That’s the opening cut on
this round’s bonus disc: an “initial rough
mix” of the Stevie Wonder-inspired funk
slam we’ve known since ‘75 as Trampled
Under Foot. Jimmy Page’s shearing lead
guitar overdub is palpably absent here,
and an early instrumental version of
Sick Again and the indelicate stomp of
Everybody Makes It Through (later In the
Light) are intriguing works in progress.
If the other four alt-mix curiosities are less
essential, maybe that’s because Page’s
remaster is so definitive over the original
15 tracks which, for those who came in
late, roped in a handful of earlier album
outtakes to comprise the most fulsome
overview of Zeppelin’s fully audacious
parameters, from blues, metal, folk, funk
and country to, well, Kashmir.
Warner Music
Roxette
The Rox Box
Forty-six million albums!
Twenty-five million singles!
If ever a greatest hits set
deserved an exclamation
mark, The Roxbox! is it! The 78 (!!)
tracks kick off with the superhero
Swedish soft-rock duo’s first, synthy-
slick single of ‘86, Neverending Love.
The fourth disc updates the 2006 issue
with tracks from their recent reunion
albums, Charm School and Travelling.
To the casual ear it climaxes early with the
business half of their global breakthrough
Look Sharp!, and fully two thirds of
Joyride – which rode a wave so high in ‘91
that over-excited punctuation would have
been gilding the lily. Stealthy schlock-
pop veterans since the late ‘70s, Marie
Fredriksson and Per Gessle’s formula
was so flawless by this time, that even
their demos (Cry , Love Spins) sound
like finished product. Additional fan-bait
across these four discs include a fistful of
B-sides, soundtrack tunes and an acoustic
cover of the Beatles Help! — recorded at
Abbey Road!!! Warner Music
• Judas Priest Defenders of the Faith
• JohnnyWinter Live from Japan
Coming Soon
visit
DID YOU KNOW? The Go Betweens are immortalised in Brisbane by The Go Between Bridge, connecting West End and Milton.
MUSIC
T he Queensland Uni English
class in which he first met Grant
McLennan was called EN103.
The following semester’s drama unit
was EN170. Robert Forster’s attention to
portentous minutiae from 39 years ago
is fair warning of what to expect from
this overdue and apparently exhaustive
reissue series. Volume 1 spans only the
Go-Betweens’ first three albums of 1982
to 1984 – Send Me a Lullaby, Before
Hollywood and Spring Hill Fair – each
remastered and repressed on vinyl for
the first time since. They’re appended
with a newly compiled LP of non-album
singles and four CDs (71 tracks!) of
rarities reaching back to ‘78, all loaded
into a big green box with a 112-page
book. This covers the first third of a story
that began with EN103 – the core duo’s
first furtive steps through a shared
teenage fascination with books, film and
music – and ended with McLennan’s
premature passing in May 2006. So cue,
for now, languorous McLennan classics
Cattle and Cane and Bachelor Kisses,
comically maladjusted Forster love
songs Lee
Remick and
8 Pictures,
and absolutely
everything
that slipped behind the busted
band room sofa of those fetchingly naïve
early years, from the impenetrable
off-mic murmur and bark of The Clowns
are in Town to the plinking and tumbling
surrealism of The Sound of Rain
and the jaunty domestic reportage
of Secondhand Furniture. The bridge
between the odd couple of Oz pop
remains a conundrum for the ages:
knowing Dylan-cum-Patti Smith wordplay
with aesthetic pointers ranging from
French new wave cinema to the NME
– with perfectly brittle glue from the
skeletal rhythmic counterpoints of Lindy
Morrison and Robert Vickers. Forster’s
notes lead a slew of essays by friends
and fans and a detailed history amply
illustrated with handwritten lyrics and
awkward photos of one of the least
likely legends of the global rock
underground. Domino/EMI/Universal
22 FEBRUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
This month Michael Dwyer bathes again in
the striped sunlight sound of The Go-Betweens.