Hot Chip’s brand of dazed and fizzy alternative dance & synthpop has been their signature plate that’s decorated with various coats across different records, gaining them the widespread attention that has persisted ever since. Now 25 years in as a band, they’ve assembled their essential tracks within Joy in Repetition, celebrating the songs that stood out in their storied discography.
Like it or not, Hot Chip has formed an affinity for groovy repetition in their sound. Started back in 2000, each subsequent record always provides an addition to their kinetic alternative dance rollicks. Refining mid-tempo bliss and shuffling synthpop bops across The Warning to in Our Heads, dabbling further in house tones on Why Make Sense, injecting ethereal atmospherics…
Category: best of
It feels strange to be reviewing a ‘best of’ release in 2025 — and stranger still to be old enough to cover reunion releases from bands of your youth.
How We Choose to Remember It is a reminder that millennials are getting older — but more importantly, that Rilo Kiley’s songs still hold up effortlessly. Having gone their separate ways in 2013, ageing American indie-heads rejoiced at news of the band reuniting to headline the Just Like Heaven festival this summer. To mark the occasion, Rilo Kiley are releasing an eleven-track introduction to their back catalogue.
Is it needed? Of course not. But there’s something charmingly old-school about a concise snapshot of a band’s output — and no doubt a vinyl full of bangers will appeal to many.
…features the 2018 remasters by Chris Thomas for tracks from the first three albums and brand-new remasters for the singles from ‘Get Close’. The 16-track compilation includes all the band’s hit singles up until ‘87, such as “Brass in Pocket,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong.”
The Pretenders burst on the scene in the early ’80s with one of the most compelling presentations of rock & roll ever seen. This collection, which highlights their A and B sides up until the mid-’80s, shows that Chrissie Hynde and co-conspirators were true masters of the rock single.
Tracks such as “Brass in Pocket,” “Middle of the Road,” and the highly underrated “Message of Love” are spectacularly performed, written, and produced. The early band, especially with…
Chicago IX, originally released in time for the Christmas shopping season in 1975, was the band’s first greatest hits album. Originally released on the Columbia label in both stereo and quadraphonic formats, the collection brought together 11 songs spanning 1969’s Chicago Transit Authority through 1974’s Chicago VII. Rhino revisit Chicago IX: Chicago’s Greatest Hits in a gold-hued edition to mark its 50th anniversary. It’s been expanded from 11 to 21 songs, and its purview has been expanded, too: it now goes all the way through 1980’s Chicago XIV, and even stretches back to fill in some missed tracks from the period covered by the original compilation.
Rather than Robert Lamm’s Chicago (II) classic “25 or 6 to 4,” the new edition opens…
Chris Rea’s 1988 compilation, New Light Through Old Windows, will reissued in June. The ‘best of’ was unusual in that Rea re-recorded most of the songs (hence the title) and it also featured a brand new song called ‘Working On It’.
New Light Through Old Windows capitalised on the success of Chris Rea’s previous studio album, 1987’s Dancing With Strangers, which had reached number two in the UK, and the re-recording of ‘On The Beach’ was released as a single, reaching No 12 in the UK. The collection went triple platinum, peaking at No 5 in the UK album charts and paved the way for the massive success of 1989’s The Road to Hell. For this reissue, the compilation has been remastered and is issued on CD and as a 2LP set pressed on recycled black vinyl.
Rhino assembles a single-CD, nine-song ‘Gratest Hits’ from Grateful Dead, marking the band’s 60th anniversary with the original studio versions of such classics as “Truckin’,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Touch of Grey.”
…The last attempt at a single-disc best-of for the Dead arrived in 2003 with The Very Best of Grateful Dead, a 17-song, single-CD anthology. Gratest Hits is considerably shorter at just nine songs; eight of those (all except “Scarlet Begonias” as originally heard on From the Mars Hotel) appeared on The Very Best of. Nearly half of Gratest Hits (“Friend of the Devil,” “Box of Rain,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Truckin'”) has been culled from 1970’s seminal American Beauty, one of two landmark LPs in an Americana vein released by…
…The new reissues feature remastered audio.
Wasting no time in the wake of the Gallagher brothers sudden 2009 implosion, Sony released the deluxe Time Flies 1994-2009 retrospective in the summer of 2010, just in time for the 15th anniversary of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
The driving idea behind Time Flies is to collect all 27 of Oasis’ British A-sides, a simple idea that would seem to fit one of the great singles band, but sticking to the singles winds up leaving many great songs behind, including their manifesto “Rock & Roll Star,” “Champagne Supernova,” the lovely “Talk Tonight,” and Noel and Liam’s duet “Acquiesce,” among many tremendous B-sides, “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” and “Champagne Supernova,” to name a few.
The Pet Shop Boys reissue Discography: The Complete Singles Collection, their 1991 ‘best of’, on 2LP blue vinyl.
The collection was the band’s first greatest hits and was released between 1990’s Behaviour and before 1993’s Very. It features all the band’s UK singles up to that point (in proper seven-inch form) except ‘How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?’ That single was a double A-side with Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You) and only the U2 cover/mash-up is included.
Discography was also home to two new songs in ‘DJ Culture’ and ‘Was It Worth It?’ Both were released as singles (before and after Discography, respectively).
This collection was issued as a 2LP set on black vinyl at the time, but doesn’t appear…