To say that Orange Juice are an overlooked band is truly an understatement. Even in the indie stakes, they have been neglected, and apart from "Rip It Up", never really registered in the public consciousness. But listen to anyone from The Smiths to Franz Ferdinand or Interpol, and the template of frenetic sub-funk guitars, inventive bass lines and an emasculated disco beat that Orange Juice pioneered are all well and truly in place. So where did it all come from? The Glasgow School gives some indications. Even before You Can?t Hide Your Love Forever, Orange Juice had created some gloriously timeless singles but much overlooked for Postcard Records. These singles; "Falling & Laughing", "Blue Boy", "Simply Thrilled Honey" and "Poor Old Soul" are all included here, along with their attendant--and equally indispensable--B-sides which capture a rawer version of the band that those in the know would come to love. On top of that is the band?s stab at a debut album (albeit one that remained unreleased), christened "Ostrich Churchyard". A boon for anyone who cherishes their by-now scratched vinyl, and a good pictorial document of a band who would unwittingly define what the indie sound was all about. --Thom Allott
Review by Andy Kellman
Orange Juice's three albums, along with compilations of various shapes and sizes, have floated in and out of print throughout the years. This hasn't made it convenient for anyone curious about the band, whether the interest was sparked by Haircut 100, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, the unlikely mainstream success of Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You," the history of post-punk, or the birth of indie pop. The Glasgow School, released in 2005 by Domino, contains the band's four singles for Postcard, the bulk of Ostrich Churchyard (a disc released in 1992, containing early versions of what would become 1982's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever), a Stars on 45-style version of "Simply Thrilled Honey," and a crude cover of the Ramones' "I Don't Care." For a lot of people, the material here (dating no later than 1981) is where Orange Juice begins and ends. The band signed to Polydor soon after the latest song on this disc was recorded, and they promptly gave their sound a coat of shiny wax -- so they helped invent indie pop, only to abandon it before their first album. Though the notion extends throughout Orange Juice's discography, they were nothing if not fearless. What other way is there to describe lyrics like "I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn's/I was hoping to impress/So frightfully camp -- you laughed," or their wholly convincing (if occasionally gawky) way of bouncing the jangly folk-rock of the Byrds off the fat-bottomed disco drive of Chic, all the while creating an identity all their own? Both the singles and the Ostrich Churchyard takes are as crafty as they are crude, and if you can't get past the amateurishness, there's plenty of winsome attitude to win you over. This disc serves as proof that, along with Josef K, Associates, Altered Images, Simple Minds, Cocteau Twins, and the Scars, Orange Juice helped make Scotland a very productive resource during the post-punk/new wave era.
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