For years, I had always lumped in NYC\u2019s Book Of Love with all the New Wave dance trash of the \u201880s that I had always despised. I\u2019ll be the first to admit, I\u2019m not a huge dance fan but every once in a while there\u2019s a song that will catch me. But I never paid attention to Book Of Love because they always seemed so pretentious and self-serving. Doing covers of \u201cTubular Bells\u201d and things like that that always rubbed me the wrong way. Somewhere along the way, I heard a remix of a song called \u201cCandy Carol (Sugar Lips Carolling)\u201d and I was blown away; it\u2019s so breezy and wonderful. Then about a year or so ago, I picked up a CD in a bargain bin and heard \u201cTrouble In A Bubble,\u201d another song that was fantastic and great. So I picked up this first official greatest hits set and gave it a whirl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Touch Roses\u201d is just okay. It\u2019s catchy but it doesn\u2019t last. \u201cBoy,\u201d from the group\u2019s debut album, is amazingly catchy and great and is like a lost earworm. It\u2019s a song you\u2019d never heard before but one that gets instantly stuck in your head. Some songs sound amazing, but others still sound stuck in the \u201880s and don\u2019t really transfer, like \u201cLost in Your Eyes,\u201d which comes across like middling MTV New Wave and that\u2019s about it. \u201cHunny Hunny\u201d is very bland and seems like its only place is on dancefloor after 1 am, which isn\u2019t my idea of a good time.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting Faster\u201d is one of three new songs the band recorded after a seven year layoff, and while it picks up some of its ideas from what was then trending in the clubs, it doesn\u2019t sound very great and becomes kind of grating after a while. \u201cTry,\u201d another new track, has a more modern feel to it and isn\u2019t that bad of a song; it\u2019s actually more memorable than some of their mid \u201890s work. \u201cYou Make Me Feel So Good\u201d sounds like classic New Wave and is still a great underrated gem all these years later.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this is a middling collection of dance tunes with some real gems included. I still don\u2019t understand why Book Of Love got all this fascination and applause from people, but whatever. I\u2019ll still take Depeche Mode any day over all of Book Of Love\u2019s catalogue. [Note to Sire\/Rhino Records: Now that there are three collections devoted to Book Of Love, how about you guys some show love for the Judybats and Ocean Blue?]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10219],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-45369","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-book-of-love","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45369"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}