Just got back from my second viewing of the final Lord of the Rings movie. I saw it on boxing day with some mates, and just went again this evening with my cousin. So awesome.
Anyway, I got some new CDs recently, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 by R.E.M. and Japanese Whispers by The Cure. Both are pretty melancholy albums, which may go some way to explaining why I was under-enthused about them when I got them home to have a listen. It's not that I don't like them, I just felt let down by a few minor things.
The R.E.M. one is good, it's just that there is a whole lot of live tracks, and having not ever really been a huge R.E.M. fan (I do love them though, their song Everybody Hurts has probably helped nearly every living person through a rough patch in their life), I prefer to hear the original, or 'radio edit' versions that I'm familiar with. There are plenty of original tracks though too, so its not really a complaint, but for example there is only live renditions of The One I Love and Drive, I would have liked the radio versions too - live versions often strike me as a little more 'flat'. The other thing that annoyed me about this album was the packaging. It shits me when CDs don't ship in standard cases, because they become a hassle to store and retrieve (not that it's a big deal since I store my music on my PC anyway). Now that the whining is out of the way, I should say that I am really pleased to have this album - it has plenty of great tracks, my favourite at the moment would be Bad Day. One of the CDs actually came with the video clip for Bad Day in MPEG format, which was great - it's a cool clip. Star Me Kitten is a track that I'd never heard before, its kind of cool.
The only reason I was disappointed with Japanese Whispers was that it only has 8 tracks, and I wanted more! When I was at the CD store I was going to get everything by The Cure that I could find, as it was they only had this album. So it was a bit of a bummer to only get 8 tracks. It does have The Lovecats and Let's Go To Bed though, so I'm happy enough for now. Will have to hunt down some more of The Cure another day.
John.