Rating: 5/5
Review:
A terrific collection
This is a really good collection. Kirsty MacColl was a terrific songwriter and a great performer of her own and other people's material, and much of the best of her is collected here.
I think MacColl's greatest strength was her ability to produce a hugely enjoyable song which is often both lyrically and musically extremely witty but still conveys genuine, important emotions. There's A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop is the classic example (and remains one of my favourite pop records ever) but there's plenty else - in the excellent England 2, Colombia 0, for example - and, frankly, anyone who can write a song called Don't Come The Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim (which is brilliant) deserves everyone's attention.
Her covers, too, show a real intensity, always leavened and somehow deepened by a twinkle in Kirsty's eye. Ray Davies's Days and Billy Bragg's A New England are both masterpieces, in my view, and others are very good indeed.
The remastering on this album seems very good to me, with excellent sound but the original feel of the tracks preserved. I suspect that if you're looking at this page then you're already a Kirsty MacColl fan and don't need any encouragement from me, but for what it's worth I warmly recommend this as a fine collection of great songs by a great writer and performer.
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