Embrace - Dry Kids (A B-Sides Compilation)

I know most ILMers think this band is abysmal. In fact there is no way to put up a convincing argument otherwise. Always thought that they were one of my hidden guilty pleasures where I would never be able to express my love on a message board for an album called Drawn From Memory. However around the beginning of 2005 I discovered ILM where you could talk about a band, for example, like Moose. Where not only some members know of them post shoegaze phase but also expressed their love for those later albums. A music board where you can write a few paragraphs on why you love this/that and where others can share in your glee. A music board where 8 words don't consists of a review, or a bit of a snap at my other music board, where general topics have taken over the music threads where that vast music knowledge doesn't come to the surface like it once did. OK I admit it, I Love ILM!

The Good Will Out, their debut, was their most popular album but I found it spotty. I happened to really be drawn to the B-sides from this period and found that I liked them much more then the album itself. Loved their second album as stated above with those 12 B-side songs, excluding a bad cover, being every bit as good as the album itself. So when I read that Hut Recordings was going to release a very cheap B-sides compilation, I was pretty ecstatic. Could this be their Sci-Fi Lullabies where fans will say that it's as good if not better than any of their albums?

Now the bad news, If You've Never Been was a horrible album and I wrote off this band forever after trying to get it. Apparently Hut did too and dropped them soon afterward; in fact no B-sides from this era are on this new compilation.

So even when Out Of Nothing was getting favorable reviews, with new record label Independiente, and fans seeming to like them again I could care less. Mainly because my music taste had changed, where it took the news of Atlantic Records singing them in the U.S. that finally convinced me to download the album. I enjoyed it more so than I ever thought possible the few times I got around to playing it.

Now the dilemma, when I heard these 17 songs were coming out on Hut I was more than pleased. As it turns out many of my favorite songs from the era mentioned above are sadly missing from this compilation. On a strange twist of fate more songs are from the Independiente era than the Hut era but it's coming out only on Hut Recordings. Since I haven't heard any of those B-sides I will venture out and buy this Import at Amoeba Records in the near future.

Anyone else excited about this Embrace release here on Halloween? A band I didn't think I would publicly admit to liking let alone starting a thread for them but this compilation sounds so promising and is only one thread, I blame Amazon UK.