Search - Crack the Sky :: Best of the Rest

Necessary for the missing tunes only...

Worgelm | United States | 02/22/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Happily the missing songs from the Lifesong CTS "twofers" are here, but the rest of the material could have benefitted from more careful selection. While _Dog City_, _Photoflamingo_ and _World In Motion I_ were not great albums, they had some great, arty gems buried in the style of old CTS and some solid 80's hard rock. _Photoflamingo_ is represented well enough, "Last Time" is solid enough and the selection of the creepy "Only Lonely" was an inspired choice. But with "Too Nice For That" already represented on _Crack Attic_, it is unnecessary here. "The Other Guy" or the frenetic funk of "Is All We Know" would have been better choices. _WIM_ (unsurprisingly) gets completely shafted, but "Breakdown" or "All Fly Away" would have been appreciated. _The End_, a mid-80s CTS swansong of studio/live outtakes with crowd noise overdubs, is also ignored, despite having an excellent extended version of "Ice." _From The Greenhouse_ is a decent enough album, and given the target audience was a good choice, but the title track from _Dog City_ did the Floyd thing better. The compilers have chosen the cheezy "Mr President" to represent _DC_ instead. The other tracks, from John Palumbo's solo material, have badly dated, burying his songcraft under layers of icky 80s gloss like much of CTS's 80's output, and could have been excised in favor of getting deeper into some of the other CTS albums proper."