Unwrapping the Brit Box

My favorite monthly magazine is a British publication called MOJO. If you care about rock music in 2009, it's practically the only magazine worth reading. However, reading it as an American means donning your thinking cap, for one needs to frequently translate British slang (larky beano, anyone?) and rack one's brain remembering bands that were a blip on the US radar but huge in the U.K. Blur, Pulp, Suede - even Oasis didn't make much of a dent in the eardrums of American listeners.

If you feel, as I do, that some of that music might be worth exploring, check out The Brit Box: UK Indie, Shoegaze, And Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium. Plenty of familiar tunes here to help you get situated: The Smith's ubiquitous ""How Soon is Now?", The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and Echo/Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar" (their anti-U2, "We're so serious about our art" prose in the accompanying booklet now prompts quite a chuckle, IMHO). You may not recognize The Sundays and The La's, but you know their slightly flaky pop songs, "Here's Where The Story Ends" and "There She Goes."

Once you've waded into that warm, cozy pool, dive into deeper waters and try these tracks, which caught my attention:

• "Lorelei" - Cocteau Twins
• "Step On" - Happy Mondays (covered quite well by Def Leppard on their "Yeah!" album)
  
• "Stay Beautiful" - Manic Street Preachers
• "In A Room" - Dodgy
• "Something 4 the Weekend" - Super Furry Animals
• "Service" - Silver Sun
• "Kite" - Nick Heyward (remember him from Haircut 100?)
• "Sleeping In" - Menswear
• "Alright" - Supergrass
  

Overall, I was a little iffy about The Brit Box. I checked it out specifically to hear tracks by Spacemen 3/Spiritualized, and wow, was I underwhelmed by those. To be fair, this is billed as "BritPop" and pop it is indeed - very few tracks have the snap and crackle of rock music. Apparently I am too aggressive to make it as a shoegazer. The opening salvo in the souvenir booklet reads, "British pop music never recovered from The Beatles" and the collection supports that view, rather than refuting it. The booklet is nicely done although the bile directed at Kurt Cobain and U2, amongst others, tastes of sour grapes. Some of these songs sound disarmingly similar to the artists on the receiving end of the sneers. Still, if you feel like British music in the 1990s passed you by in a (ha ha) Blur, check out The Brit Box. You'll find it shelved with our oversized CD sets.