“There Must Be A Better Life” is the name of the first song of this 119-track box – and it doesn’t take 20 seconds to inhale the longing pop of the British with all its flavors without Alan McGee singing a line. A few onomatopoeia in the echo, the melodies that give you basic trust, guitars from the picture book of psychedelic beat – Biff Bang Pow! played their way out of the shoegaze class C86 both forwards and backwards.
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McGee had formed the band around the same time as his Creation label, which would become famous with Primal Scream and Oasis. In both cases, the namesake was the London beat band The Creation, who once had a song called “Biff, Bang, Pow” in their repertoire. In retrospect, this six-CD box set looks like a panorama recording for Creation, it would have been easy to only populate a label best-of with BBP! songs. You could think of them simultaneously with the Mersey beat of the sixties and the television personalities, “The Happiest Girl In The World” recalled the light-footedness of Paul Weller’s Style Council, a psychedelic rock track haunted by creaking guitars like “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds.
The rich reference world of the British melancholics elevated their songs to instant favorites of guitar pop fans, but in the end this band surprised us again and again with a dreamlike feeling for melodies. Here comes their complete work, flanked by unreleased demos, live material and overlooked tracks.
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