This is a career retrospective of The Verlaines material. Complete with their signature songs such as 'Death and the Maiden' and Doomsday, the nineteen songs cover six albums, one EP, two singles and their quarter on the vinyl classic Dunedin Double EP. New Zealand's Verlaines were one of the best bands to come out of that little corner of the world, and fans of NZ music know that that's saying something. Never an easy listen, Graeme Downes' songs are passionate, moody, tortured, hyper-literate, and driven, and that's just the lyrics. The music ranges from the raw post-punk of their early records ("Death and The Maiden" and "Pyromaniac" are quintessential NZ rock) to the measured, baroque-pop of albums like "Ready to Fly", to the more refined alt-rock of their later 1990's work. No one in pop or rock used classical music instrumentation and structure as effectively as Downes, and the result is a band with a truly unique body of work. While any Verlaines fan is likely to have some quibbles about some of the songs chosen, or not chosen, for this collection, it still makes a strong case for one of rock's most original bands.
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