Ranking: Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins – the most important albums
Essential
Orange Juice: You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever (1982)
The tragedy of this band was that it was only after their breakup in 1984 that they were counted at the top of not just one, but two genres: post-punk – Simon Reynolds immortalized it in the title of his standard work “Rip it up and start again” – and of course shoegaze . Edwyn Collins presented himself as a timid gentleman without peer; “hesitate” could be his most used word. “Falling and Laughing” documents poverty of contact, but also the comfort that music offers, “Avoid eye contact at all costs” and “Only my dreams satisfy the real need of my heart”. For their debut, Orange Juice re-recorded the raucous singles released on Glasgow’s Postcard label. Wind players now opened up new worlds for them. Collins also saw himself as a soul singer – his friends reportedly laughed at the thought of him covering Al Green. When they heard “LOVE Love,” no one laughed anymore.
Orange juice: Rip It Up (1982)
The title song, their only UK success: eighth place. The sensation was the new drummer Zeke Manyika. The Zimbabwe native wrote and sang on “A Million Pleading Faces” and “Hokoyo.” Orange juice an African-rhythmic touch that has never been heard before in post-punk. “I Can’t Help Myself” unfortunately went down in the charts. Journalist Simon Goddard sensed injustice: Why wasn’t this Four Tops tribute a hit, but Phil Collins’ Supremes cover, “You Can’t Hurry Love”, which was released at the same time, was?
Orange Juice: The Orange Juice (1984)
Producer and London dub pioneer Dennis Bovell put Collins in a constant rush of heat in tropical songs like “Scaremonger” and “What Presence?!” He never sang more destructively, more hungrily. While “I Guess I’m Just A Little To Sensitive” reflected Edwyn’s early Glasgow understatement, pieces like “Out for the Count” prayed for the end: Collins was actually served because no one wanted to hear his music anymore . The “The” in the album title is a desperate attempt to establish the Orange Juice brand as a synonym for the band.
Ranking: Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins – the most important albums
Edwyn Collins: Gorgeous George (1994)
“The singer from Orange Juice!” whispered some who knew Collins from before, even those who didn’t know him but wanted to have a say. In 1994 many people thought it had to be Britpop. He was 35, “A Girl Like You” Top Ten in 15 countries. Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook played the vibraphone, the rhythm sampled Len Barry’s “1-2-3” from 1965 – Collins combined avant-garde and history. Reminiscent of the OJ single “Flesh of my Flesh,” “If You Could Love Me” was out of this world. Only “The Campaign for Real Rock,” which mocked music’s fashion victims, revealed the resentment that had been nurtured over the years.
Ranking: Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins – the most important albums
Rewarding
Orange Juice: Texas Fever (1984)
A mini album with six songs that still had an enormous range. From the rockabilly humor of “The Day I Went Down To Texas” to the polite etiquette of the romantic “A Place In My Heart”, which makes it noticeable how Collins gently taps the woman he loves on the shoulder: “If I May Be So Bold As To Make The Assertion, That Your Only Lover Is Just An Aversion.” In “Punch Drunk” he left the microphone to someone else for the last time: guitarist Malcolm Ross, a founding member of his “Postcard” colleagues Josef K, then employed at Aztec Camera. “Bridge” anticipated the frustration, the arrangement with the failure: “For You May Say I’ve Yet To Find My Voice / I Wouldn’t Change It For The World / Not For Your World”.
Edwyn Collins: Doctor Syntax (2002)
The cover shows the poet Mikhail Lermontov, the title immortalizes a comic by William Combe and Thomas Rowlandson. The reference to artists from the late 18th and early 19th centuries perhaps seems a bit too artificial, too trying in contrast to this music. But Collins managed something that no one would have expected of him: a melancholy lounge record based on synthesizers and loops, he sounded like Angelo Badalamenti with a computer – as if the jingle-jangle guitarist Collins had never existed. Consequently, the album credits primarily identify “programming” as a quasi-instrument. You first have to have the courage to simply call a song “The Beatles”, the most beautiful is the ambiguous line “I Me Mine / Brian Epstein”.
Edwyn Collins: Losing Sleep (2010)
The first album recorded after the two strokes. Collins still suffers from speech and movement disorders, but he can sing almost as well as before. And everyone came, sang along, composed along, played along. Companions like Johnny Marr and Roddy Frame, as well as followers like Franz Ferdinand, The Cribs and Romeo Stodart from the Magic Numbers. Collins himself picked up the harmonica. The highlight is the love song “In Your Eyes”, the duet with The Drums hipster Jonathan Pierce. The album cover symbolizes peace: It shows Collins’ drawings of the bird world.
Ranking: Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins – the most important albums
Continuing
Orange Juice: The Glasgow School (2005)
In the noughties, Orange Juice reissues were rarities. Bright spot: these early shots for “Postcard”. The Ramones cover “I Don’t Care” paid homage to unexpected idols, “Holiday Hymn” would have deserved its place on a studio album.
Big Gold Dreams: A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989 (2019)
The postpunk triumvirate? Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera. The compilation for the documentary of the same name also includes pieces by the Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain, as well as Simple Minds, then Johnny & The Self Abusers.
Weak
Edwyn Collins: I’m Not Following You (1997)
After the “Gorgeous George” comeback, Collins’ protest album immediately went over the top. He parodied the disco genre via vocoder in the Mark E Smith duet “Seventies Night,” later rhymed “Paris” with “Embarassed” and railed against corporations that – Neil Young could have done that to him – never acknowledged him would take: “Adi Dassler, Have You Heard The News? Gonna Stomp All Over Your Three-Stripe Shoes.”
Film: “The Possibilities Are Endless” (2014)
Edwyn Collins was able to say two words after the strokes, “Yes” and “No,” plus the sentence that would describe his arduous rehab and hope: “The possibilities are endless.” Documentary of an admirably unpretentious pop star, now with a disability, supported by his wife and manager Grace Maxwell and their son William.
Precious items
Cover songs & rares
Moscow Olympics
Cold War? Orange Juice cheered the 1980 Summer Olympics, shouted “Moscow!”, the melody is worthy of an official anthem.
Blocks on 45
For radio presenter John Peel they were arrogant “blokes”, Orange Juice returned the favor with this BBC session recorded for him.
Flesh of my flesh
All maxi versions of the single are exciting. “Here’s a penny for your thoughts / Incidentally, you may keep the change” – brilliant opening line!
Poor Old Soul
The song with the most new recordings, from “Postcard” versions to “Pt.1” and “Pt.2” to the one sung in French.
Pale Blue Eyes
After the Orange Juice split, Collins felt his way back with a cover of his favorite band The Velvet Underground. Duet with Paul Quinn from Bourgie Bourgie.
My Beloved Girl
Stand-alone single, 1987. The sound was reminiscent of the open-road optimism of friend Roddy Frame, who released “Love” at the same time.
Hellbent on Compromise
The title of his second solo album reads like an involuntary peace offering – the 1990 record is difficult to obtain.
Get It On
This T. Rex cover, a duet with Boy George, can be found on the 1996 sampler “Duos Taratata Vol. 2”. Exactly, you don’t have to listen.
The Gospel According To Tony Day
People laugh at Bowie’s “Laughing Gnome” single from 1967, but Collins turns its weird B-side into a bitterly serious funeral march.
We Can’t Stop What’s Coming
Signs of life from Orange Juice drummer Zeke Manyika: On The The’s 2017 comeback single, he drums for old friend Matt Johnson.