Album review : THEN JERICO – Before The Future: 1984-89, 4 CD Boxset

Cherry Red [Release date : 23.08.24]

If ever a band deserved recognition it was Then Jerico.
And it still does.

Having performed a few acoustic gigs this year, founder member Mark Shaw has put together an electric show for the masses, and will be touring England’s O2 Academies later in 2024.

Meantime, as you would expect from Cherry, this is a comprehensive, extensively researched collection of the band’s material from the eighties. But more than that, the liner notes tell the story of the band’s inception.

It’s almost as entertaining and interesting as the music, describing how untrained musician/vocalist, Mark Shaw, auditioned musician after musician, formed bands, dissolved them, started again, auditioned again etc etc. Always searching, as if his dream line up remained just slightly out of reach.

Eventually, the band took shape, with Jasper Stainthorpe, Steve Wren and Scott Taylor, on bass, drums and guitar, and Shaw up front of course, and recorded the debut in 1987, First (The Sound Of Music), produced by Owen Davies and Shaw.

This 4 CD boxset :
CD1 : First, The Sound Of Music (1987).
CD2 : Bonus tracks, edits and extended 12” mixes of key tracks from First.
CD3 : Big Area (1989).
CD4 : From The Vaults, 11 previously unreleased tracks, demos and remixes (including the long missing ‘Big Area’ remix).

The band’s music, an energising mix of socio-political ideology and melodic dance rock confused some. Yet NME, Sounds, Kerrang and Melody Maker had nothing but praise.

The hit single, an anti apartheid polemic, ‘Muscle Deep’ is here in all its splendour. It’s not an easy lyric to vocalise effectively, but Shaw’s vocal confidence makes the song. It sounds powerful and not especially pop.

‘The Motive’, the first single from the album broke the UK (and several other) Top Twenty charts. Three different mixes of this song appear on CD2. Shaw’s underrated vocals work to expand this song from inside out. Exactly the style that remixers like.

The Big Area album came in 1989. Produced by Rhett (Eno/Roxy Music) Davies and Rick (Stevie Nicks/John Waite) Nowels.

As you would expect then, it’s burnished to an attractive shine, with the title track something of an aural panorama, a big anthemic pop song, laced with drama.

Second single ‘Sugar Box’ also got a lot of positive reviews at the time, and is featured here in the form of the original plus several imaginative remixes.

All that plus those “couldn’t make it up” liner notes.

Great value. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

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