Double hipness - the associates

With the computer battery counting down this will have to be a super speedy whip through. Reactions to this collection of demos and bits of discarded songs culled from here and there in tribute to Rankine and Mackenzie (the musical odd couple that somehow made wrong things sound so right) has been pretty mixed. Even though I snaffled this off ebay with some trepidation (who wants to be thought a complete obsessive after all that they resort to buying albums of demos, tsk) it was with some excitement that it turned out to be okay - more than okay. Meandering through sick cabaret (Billy's touching way with a lyric already evident even in early demos, rhyming things such as gangrene and vaseline) through to early takes on favourites such as 'The Affectionate punch' and 'I never will' the early incarnation of 'Party fears two', which are interesting as an insight into the song-creation process. At the risk of sounding pedestrian (ticking clocks are for once no good for creativity) It is also notable for the inclusion of Billy and Alan's aborted reunion in 1993 which resulted, for me at least, in a few songs of note, including the wonderful 'Edge of the world' which here is more guitar heavy and in my opinion the better for it. The collision of the more mature sound (the craziness of early years is lacking possibly because of that history) from both resulted in something promising but that is how it must stay, merely as a promise not achieved or going anywhere (as many of the songs included here found their fate). After all that, its probably most useful as a piece of musical curiosity which otherwise might have been lost.