Therapy? Deluxe Editions

3 thoughts on “Therapy? Deluxe Editions”

1. As I have only recently discovered your great site Paul, and the fact that Therapy have a new album ‘Cleave’ coming out in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d give my review on these reissues from 2014.

   Both Troublegum and Infernal Love were remastered by Nurse producer Harvey Birrell, and both of these remasters actually appeared several months earlier in the bands’ self-released ‘Gemil’ box-set. Maybe it was coincidence but quite possibly Universal Records became interested in re-issuing these albums when they became aware of the box-set itself.

   Troublegum – nice collection which covers all the b-sides which came out back in ’94, and also includes all the tracks from their 3 EP’s in ’93 (Shortsharpshock, Face the Strange and Opal Mantra). The band had 6 Top 40 singles in that period, and all of them were released across multiple formats which allowed for various b-sides, live tracks and remixes – some of which have never been released on CD before. The only previously non-released tracks on this set are instrumental demos of ‘Turn’ and ‘Unbeliever’, and early demos for ‘Totally Random Man’ and ‘Knives’.

   Negative points would be the sequencing of the tracks – they’ve all been placed in order as they were released, so remixes are interspersed with studio tracks and live takes etc. It leads to a jarring listening without any flow. The band themselves were involved in these re-issues but seemingly dropped the ball here. The studio tracks (and some of the live tracks, admittedly) would have made a superb standalone album (CD2 in this set) had they sequenced it properly and relegated all the mixes and oddities to CD3. It also includes a “Kiddie version” of album track ‘Knives’ which is little more than a censored version for the US market and totally superfluous to the set.

   Infernal Love – released a year later in ’95 and another 3 Top 40 singles, and the vast majority of the b-sides from those are on this set. Conspicuous by its absence, however, is the cello version of ‘Stories’ which appeared on the UK b-side of that very single. Strange when you consider that 2 live tracks which only featured on a US single (‘Misery’) made the cut. Stranger still when you consider that a remix of an old track from ’91 (‘Innocent X’), which was released around this time on a compilation album on a different label, also made the cut! This set is worth grabbing though, simply for the 3 acoustic tracks which were only ever released on a Belgium only single (‘Bad Mother’).

   Negative points would be the aforementioned omission of the cello version of ‘Stories’, and the addition of the remix of ‘Innocent X’ which simply shouldn’t be here. However, my biggest gripe with this set is what they’ve done with the album itself. The original album tracks flowed seamlessly into one another like a radio broadcast (think QOTSA’s ‘Songs For the Deaf’ which was actually released 7 years later in 2002). This remastered version inexplicably has placed gaps of silence between each track! This is unforgivable as it ruins the flow of the album. I can’t pretend to know a whole lot about the mastering process but I know this should have been avoided.

   Basically – get these re-issues cheap, if you can, for the b-sides only. For the albums themselves, stick to the originals – they always sounded great anyway!

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3. Awesome collections, loved troublegum when it was released, really looking forward to these coming out, got them preordered

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