The latest in the trend of Russian-released collections has taken the form of a new comp from the Tear Garden. While every album from the group is still in print, this collection is worth mentioning for a few reasons. The type is entirely in Cyrillic, so it should be noted that there are two previously unreleased songs included, "Good Evening Houston" and "Good Night Little Lights" (unlike the last Tear Garden compilation, A Bouquet of Black Orchids which came with nothing extra).
It's also limited to a numbered edition of 2000 for those who might be interested. As a compilation, however, it doesn't really pull together -my- favorite tunes nor do I feel it provides an accurate representation of the range of Tear Garden material. Congratulations to the collaborators for including "You and Me and Rainbows" which could easily be one of the greatest songs recorded in the 1980s, yet I'm always picky when it comes to comps, preferring that songs are assembled in some sort of chronology to show a nice progression, this one just seems haphazardly tossed together. New fans looking to experiment with Tear Garden stuff probably shouldn't bother with this collection. The two new songs are a bit of a departure, with the first being an upbeat heavily electronic number, while the second is is more of an experimental downtempo percussively chiming piece. If you can't live without every release, by all means pick it up. The artwork with all these pictures of moss is actually pretty interesting and it's always neat to have a CD in your collection with completely different writing. That plus collections always seems to get me more familiar with songs I might not have been keen on before, as they're taken completely out of context with the rest of the albums they were originally released with.
samples:
 
Read More
