"Eventually WP must have despaired of making their unique brand of music and turned to a more commercial (?) talking heads/pere ubu approach that we begin to glimpse on "Queer" and "Kansas" which are enjoyable nonetheless, but Legendary Tales is strong from start to finish even if the added DVD tracks are a bit murkier than the tracks from the original LP. If "Heart of Stone" hearks to Neil Young, it's anti-Young: a drowning man's plea amid self-absorption: "follow me and spread the word of all the people who go unheard." I don't know of anyone to whom to compare this, certainly not those in the 4AD stable--at that time, the WP seems a band apart. Livelier and less pretentious than Nick Cave's work, although with some inpenetrable lyrics at times, I'm reminded a bit more of the Mekons without the country but with the drunken flippancy, or Shriekback with a rougher edge. Recommended wholeheartedly."
The best Press you can get on CD.
R. Cross | Ypsilanti, Michigan USA | 06/07/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This EP collection is easily the best Press you can get. Deep, Driven, Depressing. Musically even much better than later works by them. I have a couple times had "Favorite" songs on this disk, only to start liking other songs "more." It's that deep! Truly sad in a way that a band with so much promise turned so vile...er..."musically evolved?" While TWP had a shining moment or two in the future; (Rotten Fodder - Standing up straight),(The Wedding - Bird Wood Cage),(Sucker - Queer), It's best just to get this and live in a time when people made dark atmospheric music that was good. Can you imagine seeing the tour when these guys opened for Nick Cave! O sweet lord. And by the way Elisa Staneff, your first review states that Neil Young lyrics where 'Lifted' from heart of gold. Now I've heard this before and am growing sick of it, Please point out these lyrics...did Neil say "The sound of music and lighted gardens"?"
Eccentric Post-Punk
elisa | 11/20/1999
(2 out of 5 stars)
"This release is a collection of EP's The Wolfgang Press released in the mid-eighties. The music has great variety and can best be described as a soulful cross between Bauhaus and early Talking Heads. Singer Michael Allen fits the profile of the typical British eccentric and sings with a pronounced English accent. The EP's are in chronological order and trace the band's evolving sound from post-punk pop to more horn-oriented sounds and then to a funkier sound which in later years would become a more club-oriented sound(with eccentricities intact). Allen's singing may be an acquired taste for some but is nevertheless an effective emotional tool in the same manner as Nick Cave's for example. Overall a highly recommended release."
Excellent CD
R. Cross | 09/09/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Wolfgang Press are for sure one of the best indie bands of the 80's. This album is very touching, and some people find it very dark as well. The best tracks on the album are Ecstasy, and I'm coming home(Mama). With an incredible mixture of sounds and instruments, W.P's music is really unique and...independent!"
CORRUGATED, CAVERNOUS
elisa | Los Angeles, CA | 03/10/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Out of the ashes of Rema Rema came the Wolfgang Press, fronted by Mick Allen, as long-faced and gangly as Nick Cave, but with a thick London accent and bleached whiteboy dreadlocks. The Wolfgang Press specialized in challenging industrio-punk dance music with occasional forays into symphonic, cinematic beauty (check "Ecstasy" on this album).After a truly obscure, wryly humorous debut album, "The Burden of Mules" (released in LP format only), the Wolfgang Press released several 12" EPs which were later compiled, some with new production by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, on this CD. Liz Fraser has a guest appearance on the hilariously straight-faced cover of "Respect"; "Heart of Stone" lifts lyrics from Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" and turns them into a droning, howling art-punk epiphany. "My Way" borrows from Frank Sinatra. "Sweatbox" is cavernous industrial dancefloor fodder; "Fireeater" builds from eerie beginnings to a corrugated take on the blues standard "Take Me to the Water" (also borrowed by U.S. art-punks Talking Heads)."The Legendary Wolfgang Press..." is a darkly brilliant, ecclectic album that should be in any music connosieur's collection. Let it grow on you and these industrio-art-punk-dance boys WILL get your booty to shake."