Never, Never Land

Today Belgium finally saw a new release of The Sisters of Mercy material. Three releases even.

Actually, they are just reissues of their three legendary albums (though that does sound a bit fan boyish, doesn’t it), but what an all over pleasure it was to get hold of them! Carefully made digipacks, with nice little booklets containing a proper story about how the albums came to be written by someone who does seem to know something about it all!

The tracks themselves are not too bad either. First and Last and Always is finally done justice and is restored to its original glory as it is remixed from the original masters which means we finally got rid of the hideous Japanese mixes previously released on CD. The bonus tracks are some B-sides and a long version of Some Kind of Stranger, the last one sadly is a bit of a letdown. Whereas the album version is heart tearing from A to Z this one starts with a long guitar solo (which is not bad, not at all) accompanied by a rather dodgy drum pattern. No longer does it have the crying, weeping, wailing, heavily emotionalised sound of the guitars at the beginning. A damn shame indeed, but luckily the other edition of the track is still on there.



Floodland is strong as ever as you expected. Once more the additional tracks are the ones to be of interest. Not only does it finally bring the touching cover of Hot Chocolate’s Emma to a broader public, so it is no longer kept to the in crowd and enthusiasts only. It also finally brings the full length version of Never Land. This epic song was always one of the strong holders of the album but this version makes it no less than glorious. Over eleven minutes and not one second too short, extra lyrics – to put the whole of the song into more of a perspective – make it more intimate, more impressive than it has ever been before. Above all the words ‘the internet is allergic to truth, reason and humour’ have proven to be absolutely true. Andrew Eldritch’s words of the addition of ‘(a fragment)’ to Never Land on previous track listings to be merely philosophical and connected to Goethe’s Faust rather than having to do with it being an excerpt have proven to be false. Listen to this mix, this just is no demo, not in any way.



Sadly Vision Thing was sold out already (it seems like only three of each were stocked in the entire city of Antwerp), but obviously I will get back to you about that, as after all:

I want more!



On a completely unrelated matter: A couple of weekend ago I went to see Lambchop. Another long-time favourite of mine, they proved to be worthy of my appreciation. Lovely supports (mingling with their Lambchop’s own stage-crowd and joining in on most Lambchop songs), great songs, and above all Kurt Wagner appeared to be a true gentleman. Shy, but very nice and kind nevertheless. Would not mind to get to see more of this band either!