“yaz”
Yaz
The Best of Yaz
Mute/Reprise
It’s a little strange to me that a band that only released two albums to begin with should be honored with a retrospective disc. Don’t get me wrong, Yaz are deserving of the honor – if nothing else, because of Vince Clarke’s stature within the pantheon of electronic music gods – but there wasn’t a lot of filler on those two albums, to begin with, and with the advent of CDs, Mute could probably just as easily re-released the two albums on one disc. The Best of Yaz is a great introduction to the band, but once you’ve heard it, there isn’t a lot more to go hunt down. All the stuff you’d expect to hear is here – great, distinctive electro-pop dance hits like “Situation” and “Don’t Go” that sound as fresh today as they did when originally released in the early 80’s, Alison Moyet’s distinctive voice growling out the leads with the same power and ferocity. There are also a few new remixes from the likes of Todd Terry, Club 69, and Richard Stanner with Julian Gallagher, as well as the original US 12-inch mix of “Situation,” but that’s not a lot more than hardcore fans will already have. Classic material in a fairly pointless repackaging, but a good sampler for newbies.
