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Nov 23, 2010 Orange Juice By Anthony Lombardi

With their sly, earnest recordings for the Postcard label at the dawn of the 1980s, Orange Juice—for most intents and purposes—created the blueprint for indie pop that would prove massively influential over the next 30 years. From The June Brides and The Field Mice to The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian, bands both scurrying the edge of obscurity and reigning as indelible legends have benefited incalculably from following the trail of crumbs left by the Glaswegian group. Melding a skittish, jittery post-punk energy with a boyish, melodic pop sensibility, Edwyn Collins and Co.‘s prescient design for the proceeding decades of alternative pop has dispelled the common notion of being merely artifactual: historically important for its impact yet retaining little of the freshness present at the time of its release once removed from context. In fact, the keening, off-kilter songs that form Orange Juice’s discography have only grown in charm over the years, revealing an endurance of multifaceted quirks and wit that time has been unusually kind to.
Spanning the nervy, rough and tumble singles and B-sides collected on The Glasgow School-featuring the crown jewel of the set, “Falling and Laughing,” a spangled livewire of bruised emotions and jangly, angular guitar chords that stands as one of the towering singles of its era—through their latter, admittedly less epochal yet still reasonably interesting sophisti-pop LPs, Coals to Newcastle (a seven-disc box-set) pays a marvelous, overdue justice to these seminal Scottish lads. With this lavish, all-encompassing set, Domino has bestowed not only a much-deserved recognition to one of the greatest alternative acts of all time, but a wonderful service to music fans in general. (www.dominorecordco.com)

Author rating: 9/10