Fans will love this.
The catalyst for this release was Kieran Dargan's intervention in getting Harem Scarem to headline the Friday at this years' Firefest *. It started a snowball effect whereby Harry Hess and Pete Lesperance decided to re-record this pivotal moment in their career, as it was the twentieth anniversary of 'Mood Swings'. And they'd never toured the release properly outside of Canada – so why not make up for it now?
What you have here is effectively faithful, almost identical renditions or re-records of classic songs from a much loved classic band and a seminal album in their career. As Harry said "We did it right first time, and we like it the way it is. Now it's about sonics, the performances and living up to it. That was more the mindset".
Those who already have this album may question the point of buying it again. Well, there are several reasons. For starters there are three brand new songs that were written in the 'Mood Swings' style to fit in with this re-record, and then there is the DVD Re-making of 'Mood Swings' documentary accompanying the release, along with three songs broken down into individual audio tracks including the awesome 'No Justice' so that fans can re-mix or play along to them. Plus there are the subtle differences like the changed guitar sound on 'Jealousy' because Harry felt the original experimentation with that sound failed and wanted to make it fit with the rest of the record, and 'Just Like I Planned' changed from an a cappella version to an acoustic based solo vocal effort as Harry preferred to re-arrange it and do it differently. I could tell you that the harmonics on the intro to 'Had Enough' are ever so slightly different but to go through every nuance that I spotted would be churlish and just too damn boring at the end of the day.
Suffice to say that the three new songs in question do Harem Scarem proud and are bona fide top class gems! The first, 'World Gone To Pieces' is a dramatic, brooding Rocker with lovely use of harmonics with a typical trademark gorgeous melodic chorus – a possible future classic! 'Anarchy' has a riffy intro with an underpinning country style refrain before launching into a glorious and huge hook-laden chorus. With a Beatles style mid-section it's still very much a Harem song. And then you have 'Brighter Day', a reflective slower number with Def Leppard layered backing vocals and melancholic guitar and another great chorus in the grand tradition of Harem Scarem.
Fans will love this!
Carl Buxton
(* Firefest X)
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