Orange Juice's three albums, along with compilations of various shapes and sizes, have floated in and out of print throughout the years. This hasn't made it convenient for anyone curious about the band, whether the interest was sparked by
Haircut 100,
the Jesus and Mary Chain,
Belle & Sebastian,
Franz Ferdinand, the unlikely mainstream success of
Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You," the history of post-punk, or the birth of indie pop.
The Glasgow School, released in 2005 by Domino, contains the band's four singles for Postcard, the bulk of
Ostrich Churchyard (a disc released in 1992, containing early versions of what would become 1982's
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever), a
Stars on 45-style version of "Simply Thrilled Honey," and a crude cover of
the Ramones' "I Don't Care." For a lot of people, the material here (dating no later than 1981) is where
Orange Juice begins and ends. The band signed to Polydor soon after the latest song on this disc was recorded, and they promptly gave their sound a coat of shiny wax -- so they helped invent indie pop, only to abandon it before their first album. Though the notion extends throughout
Orange Juice's discography, they were nothing if not fearless. What other way is there to describe lyrics like "I wore my fringe like
Roger McGuinn's/I was hoping to impress/So frightfully camp -- you laughed," or their wholly convincing (if occasionally gawky) way of bouncing the jangly folk-rock of
the Byrds off the fat-bottomed disco drive of
Chic, all the while creating an identity all their own? Both the singles and the
Ostrich Churchyard takes are as crafty as they are crude, and if you can't get past the amateurishness, there's plenty of winsome attitude to win you over. This disc serves as proof that, along with
Josef K,
Associates,
Altered Images,
Simple Minds,
Cocteau Twins, and
the Scars,
Orange Juice helped make Scotland a very productive resource during the post-punk/new wave era.
–
Andy Kellman, Rovi