The Creation

Creation Theory

EDSEL. CD Biff, bang and pow: producer Shel Talmy’s other pop-art titans anthologised (again). Hot on the heels of Numero Group’s 46-track retrospective, Edsel ups the ante to 79 tracks and a DVD (Eddie Phillips interview plus TV performances and reunion shows). Extras include Mark Four cuts from 1964, aping American rock’n’roll, but these only make more astonishing the inventiveness of 1965-66, when Phillips would rival Townshend as a six-string innovator/abuser. The bulk of The Creation’s tracks come in brutish mono and ear-opening stereo (though the superior binaural Painter Man from 2014’s singles box set is mysteriously absent). Recorded in 1987, Psychedelic Rose was shelved (who wanted middle-aged Sunset Strip hair-metal when GN’R were hot?); while 1996’s Power Surge (released on Creation) sounds like a decent bovver-boy-era Slade album. Whichever package you buy, though, it’s the 1966-68 tracks you will return to again and again.