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Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing

Soul Coughing - Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing Audio CD

A fair review of the Soul Coughing "Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Soul Coughing reviews here, or go back to the Soul Coughing tabs.

Band: Soul Coughing
Title: Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing
Rating:

Release Date: 2002-03-19
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Bus To Beelzebub 2: Sugar Free Jazz 3: True Dreams Of Wichita 4: Screenwriter's Blues 5: Janine 6: Blueeyed Devil 7: Buddha Rhubarb Butter 8: Unmarked Helicopters 9: Super Bon Bon 10: Soundtrack To Mary 11: Lazybones 12: Paint 13: Collapse 14: The Idiot Kings 15: Rolling 16: St. Louise Is Listening 17: $300 18: Circles 19: Super Bon Bon - (Propellerheads radio edit) 20: Casiotone Nation - (live)

not much new but great material

So, like, if the album material wasn't as hot as it is, this record would get much lower marks. OK, so Soul Coughing only did 3 discs and they get a 20-track best of? Well, 16 of the tracks are from the 3 records, and all we get apart from that are a murky live track, a mediocre Propellerheads remix, and a couple of tracks released for other things (the X-files, for example, although the great Soul Coughing track 16 Horses for the X-files movie is excluded from this release for some reason). But it is. Soul Coughing was one of the most unique and interesting bands of the entire 1990s, and this is a good assortment of their work. Wisely, the bulk of the material is taken from Ruby Vroom (about half the album, actually), with less tracks coming from the more inconsistent drum-n-bass-heavy finale El Oso.

If you already have the band's three studio releases, it's completely unnecessary except for the song-by-song liner notes and recollections by frontman M. Doughty, which are remarkably frank. (Doughty will tell you, for example, which drugs he was taking at the time that are directly responsible for such and such a song's lyrics. ) If you don't have their records, you should probably get them, but if you're more of a casual fan and don't want to shell out for three discs than this is a pretty good selection of their best cuts, and worth picking up.

lost in phaze
anyway, the only thing i can remember from it was the feeling that i had to pick up the soundtrack just to get my hands on underworld's 10 minute techno slab 'moaner'. isn't batman and robin a rubbish movie? no really, doesn't it just feel like one long explosion?? maybe it was at this stage that i started to move away from mainstream cinema (bear with me here, i'm going somewhere with this). also there (buried on the movie, i think, under the sound of revving motorbike engines) is a track by soul coughing called 'the bug'. my first introduction, enough to get me hooked.
three albums later and they chose to call it a day. now i have those albums and picked this up mainly for 'unmarked helicopters', my decision. best ofs are a funny thing though, and it sometimes feels that releasing one after three albums is a rip off. what separates this one from a run-of-the-mill 'hits' effort is the tracks chosen for it, since in the main i think they've done an excellent job. album by album then. . .
debut 'ruby vroom' is represented well, though i would have ditched 'janine' and 'true dreams' in favour of 'supra genius' and 'uh zoom zip' (doughty almost rapping at one stage). for those of you who question his prowess as a lyricist (and i doubt anyone reading this does), witness the bile he injects into 'screenwriter's blues'. as caustic a monument to the lure of stardom as you could wish for - you will NEVER hear the word "fly" pronounced with more venom
'irrestistable bliss' is probably my fave sc album. was amazed and gratified by the presence of 'super bonbon' and 'soundtrack to mary', tracks which are almost too good for a best of. would have swapped 'the idiot kings' for 'how many cans?', if only to hear mr doughty sing "fire".
'el oso'. heresy perhaps, but i never rated 'circles' (the liner notes would suggest it was a throwaway 'hit' to get the record company off their backs) - swap for the haunting 'incumbent'. good to see the presence of 'rolling' and '$300' (see comments on 'super bonbon' above), and thank god too for the absence of 'so far. . . '. i mean its got an acoustic guitar in it, which makes it ideal 'best of' material, right?
so there you have it. call it almost or nearly (those words are probably a microcosm of the band's career) the perfect best of. also could have done without a completely superfluous remix, though good to hear the live version of 'casiotone nation'. a poor substitute for being there perhaps, but them's the breaks.

Soul Coughing still rocking!
Worked out great!. Bought it for 4 songs for a video.

Well Kept Secret
The music is very mature, creative, and never boring. Buy this CD as an introduction to a well kept secret in the music world. The lyrics thought provoking, the music hypnotic at times. Great rhythems and bass lines. One can;t help but make some comparisons the Dave Matthews Band, mostly their non radio material.

Excellent band, but for newcomers only
Sure, it's missing a lot of essential songs ("Soft Serve", "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago", "I Miss The Girl", etc. As an introduction to an excellent, highly underrated band, this album is not half-bad. ) but short of downloading it's the most comprehensive SC collection you'll find on the market. But I personally would recommend probably the most commercially successful album of theirs to start off with, Irrestible Bliss. That album will be enough to indicate whether you like this band or not.

For fans of the group - you're not really missing much if you don't pick up the album. There's some nice liner notes, a remix of "Super Bon Bon" and a live "Casiotone Nation", but nothing else that makes it worth purchasing. It would have been made more appealing if they gathered the band's soundtrack contributions and added a bonus disc of B sides if they were available (like they did with the Smashing Pumpkins best-of album).

In summary: Not a bad place to start if you want to check out one of the most innovative bands of the '90s, but few selling points for members of the Five Percent Nation.

You can see a complete list of all Soul Coughing discography, or go back to the Soul Coughing tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.