10CC

During/After

UMC

I AM fairly certain I hated Donna by 10CC when it was a 1972 hit, and three years later, reviewing the band's album The Original Soundtrack, the NME's Charles Shaar Murray, while conceding its brilliance, said he hated it too. We were both wrong. Donna now stands as an early classic of art-rock, and if this retrospective has an obvious flaw it is the absence of more from the album that contained I'm Not In Love. Perhaps 10CC were never especially likeable, but they were fun and clever, as the "During" disc of hits from 1972-1978 makes grinningly clear. What fun these smart chaps were having in their Stockport Strawberry Studio, with sound certainly, but also with witty wordsmithery. Masters of the surprising middle eight and the smile-inducing outro, Gouldman, Stewart, Godley and Creme were a remarkable group until they parted ways, and while the "After" disc tracing their respective trajectories thereafter contains some gems, it never reaches those heights again. There is also a four-disc version adding 32 "Before" recordings of the team before they became one, and only you know whether you need that. Today's pop kids, however, would surely be baffled by some of the hits from their heyday. Result!

Keith Bruce