The Boo Radleys, Classic or Dud?

And is Sice the least charismatic rock frontperson ever?

As I see it, the very earliest stuff (even _Ichabod and I_) is quite good, but _Everything's Alright Forever_ was a low point, sorta there and no more outside of a couple of songs. But after "Lazarus," strength to strength from there on in. And the singles were all just packed with some amazing B-sides and remixes; I went ahead and made a grand four CDR comp out of them all, plus a lot of the random rarities.

About the B-sides, I managed to get 2 extensive D90s of their excellent b-sides (which were often better than the rest of their material (seek: Blues for George Michael, Vegas, Sunfly II, Wallpaper, Almost Nearly There)... how in god's name did you get 4 CDs out of that? I thought i had almost all their rarities (then again i never included remixes or live edits - maybe i should)... I think the Boos were forgotten about because younger people (21 and under now) remember them as that band who did that Wake Up! song that used to play every morning before school and annoy them (actually, it was that song and Leaves & Sand that introduced me)... over 21s remember them as an excellent band who went pop and didn't do much after their Ride-era Everything's Alright Forever... Luckily, I never really gave up on them. I always thought the choice of A-Sides they brought out were abysmal though (Destroy: It's Lulu, Free Huey (ugh!), Barney & Me, What's In The Box) actually, I only bought the singles for the awesome b-sides where Martin Carr seemed to be able to do what the fuck he liked. I think they were a little scared of getting their experiments heard and so released their most straight-ahead tracks on single.

Kingsize is good and their most straight forward album although Carr was pretty apathetic about the recording compared to the others.

Just heard Ichabod and I recently and was surprised how excellent it sounded, possibly even better than Everythings Alright Forever.

Martin Carrs new stuff as Brave Captain is also excellent and also really prolific, a mini album, an album, a 10" single and a cd single so far and the stuff is great. Good live too if you can catch them.

One of the best of the 90s.

Shit - I even like Wake Up.

That said, their best track - Skywalker - was the free giveaway single on C'Mon Kids. Drum'n'bass scuzzed up rock. Made you kinda wish the rest of the album was that good. Oh yes, those were the days.

Search: Giant Steps, Everything's Alright Forver
Even the weakest disc (C'mon Kids, IMHO) is pretty damn OK. Destroy nothing but your preconceptions.

search: everything the boo's ever made except for the weird remixes
destroy: nothing but your silly head Mr Dud!

Have come to the sacrilicious conclusion that 1) Wake Up! is the best album, and 2) Wake Up Boo! is the best thing they ever did by a million silvery skyscraping miles. I like the Boo Radleys.

Albums:
Wake Up! > Giant Steps > Everything's Alright Forever > Kingsize > Ichabod & I > C'Mon Kids

Singles Choices (Era):
Giant Steps > Everything's Alright Forever > Wake Up! > C'Mon Kids > Kingsize

B-Sides (Era):
Wake Up! > Everything's Alright Forever > Giant Steps > C'mon Kids > Kingsize

They followed their best album with their worst album and lost all their momentum. Hell, they lost all their momentum right after "Wake Up Boo!" by releasing "Find The Answer Within" as the 2nd single. They should have gone with "Reaching Out From Here", and then "Wilder". And yes, "Free Huey" is their worst single -- if not song -- ever.

Their B-sides were always hit and miss. Hell, the ones from Giant Steps could be squalling noise for 2 minutes and then jolt into something beautiful. If I can remember correctly, 3 years ago, I made 3 CDR's just from their B-sides myself. One is good b-sides, one is remixes, and one is crap b-sides. I'll have to go digging through some boxes later today.

All that said, I don't especially miss them. Hence the cdr's buried in boxes.

One of the best bands ever - as well as the above there are loads of ace b-sides and other stuff.

Love 'em to bits and always will. BOO Forever people.

And your problem is?

1. Martin, Doom! It's Seven O'Clock
2. I Hang Suspended
3. What's In The Box (See Whatcha Got)
4. Take The Time Around
5. Almost Nearly There
6. Wake Up Boo!
7. There She Goes
8. Lazy Day
9. Zoom
10. Hold On Brother
11. Ride The Tiger
12. Skyscraper
13. Stuck On Amber
14. Does This Hurt?
15. Memory Babe
16. Wish I Was Skinny
17. Reaching Out From Here
18. Kingsize
19. Wilder

Feel free to rant or rave over my choices.

Forgot all about a few of these tracks, like "Hold On Brother" which is from the War Child comp, "There She Goes" from the So I Married An Axe Murderer OST, and "Almost Nearly There" which is a "From the Bench of Belvidere" B-side

I love the Boo Radleys again, now. Hurrah!

Cheers!

Search: Boo Faith and the early EPs compilation
Destroy: everything post Giant Steps

Not feeling it yet but thanks for sharing as I wouldn't have known otherwise.

I bought these last two CDs directly from the band but with stupid tariffs I will probably have to pass this go around.

New album is fantastic! Ultra-poppy but with a much odder edge than other recent fare.

YeaH this is by far the best reunion album so far

Wow, this is good! I have only heard part of it but pleasantly surprised. Can't wait to hear from dog latin, Mark G, kitchen person and TheNuNuNu.

I really like Keep on with Falling but might be the only one. I didn’t like Eight however but never gave it a fair shake.

Martin Carr album is also out today!

I've not much taken to the "new" Boos so far. It's a shame, as the Eggman album I truly loved like an actual Boos album, feel like digging it out next chance I get.

Will give both an ear if they get to Spotty.

Noted!

Been loving Wake Up lately, by the way. Man oh man, this band.

I'm also slowly becoming convinced that Brave Captain's "Go with Yourself" would appear on a shortlist of my 25 favorite songs in the world.

Wake Up is their Beatles album. I couldn't have loved an album more at the time. It's my least album that I have revised.

😀 revisited

Love this, "Everybird" revisited acoustically from a few years back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kovwtpD26ng

It's a shame, as the Eggman album I truly loved like an actual Boos album, feel like digging it out next chance I get.

Likewise, I bought it recently on Discogs and Eggman 'First Fruits' album is really really great. Need to check the new stuff

Love this, "Everybird" revisited acoustically from a few years back.

Yeah, I love that too, have watched it quite a few times.

I'm trying to listen to this new album and it's definitely got some fresh and interesting ideas.

But equally there are some really odd production choices. The stereo field is so wide it breaks cohesion - especially the drums which sound really really hard panned.

There's also a lot of distortion (which, I mean, shoegaze, fine) but it's applied really strongly on certain specific instruments at a time while others are quite dry and it doesn't bake into the mix very well.

Loads of mid-lo end on the drums too so everything sounds a bit boxy and muddled.

I don't usually notice mixing/mastering stuff or let it put me off but here it's so noticeable - everything's so loud and oversaturated it makes me think of Animal Collective's "Strawberry Jam" - also a perfectly good album that could have done with a little more restraint at the mixing deck. It's a shame it's so distracting - I can barely concentrate on the songs as it sounds like someone shining a car headlamp in my face.

(sorry to be down on it - it is their best record since reforming and there are some decent songs here)

I think their mastering needs a rethink

Re; Wake Up. Yes, it is their most Beatlesy album and I mean that in the best possible way.

Only song I'd nix is It's Lulu - facile and irritating. But other than that it's sort of perfect?

People get down on Wake Up as it was seen as their straight-edged 12-track Britpop sellout album after Giant Steps' genre-hopping expansiveness. But I think that's an unfair framing of it.

"Wake Up Boo", the song is a lot darker and more nuanced than its reputation as a happy-clappy radio pop song might belie. And the rest of the album has a yearning, misplaced melancholy to it that I think you only really get from certain Beatles songs. The album makes me think of cracks of light falling into converted lofts, white-painted hallways and little hidden rooms. The pale of morning wandering into your room like a hungover ghost following the fractured, tumultuous night of excess that was Giant Steps.

Wake Up felt very grown-up to me as a 15 year old compared to anything else I was listening to at the time - and that includes Blur, Radiohead, Pearl Jam etc - all those bands spoke to me and my teenage experience in some way, whereas Wake Up felt more like "this is a glimpse into what young adulthood must feel like" - houseshares, hangovers, hang-ups and heartbreaks.

Speaking of Wake Up, this is a good read:
https://www.musicradar.com/artists/it-was-too-successful-really-we-werent-cut-out-for-it-we-were-fish-out-of-water-how-the-boo-radleys-wrote-one-of-the-most-optimistic-radio-hits-of-the-90s-with-fresh-insight-from-its-singer

Been on a Radleys / Captain / Carr tear for a few days. I think I'm still nowhere near peak infatuation -- everything keeps sounding better & better & better! And I haven't listened to much of C'Mon Kids or Kingsize yet. Dog Latin's "and tomorrow the world" is dominating my listening time. Dog Latin wasn't joking, it kick as much ass as Giant Steps itself. Really cool for a new fan like me to have this available rather than needing to comb through the B-sides myself, which I'm sure would be fun in its own way, but the stature of having them all together like this, and beautifully sequenced already... it's like having a spiritual sister to Giant Steps as that record's follow-up. Kinda like Tull following Thick as a Brick with Passion Play. Except that here they're both double albums.

I will continue sounding my Herald of the Captain horn and proclaim again that Go with Yourself is as beautiful as the Radleys! Martin isn't a singer of Sice's stature, to be sure, but unschooled passion means a lot to me, and there's that special boost that you get when a good songwriter sings their own material. I really need to listen to the other Brave Captain stuff -- I stumbled on this free Carr sampler on Bandcamp and everything sounds fantastic.

Finally, I bought Crazy Faces, which sees Martin roleplaying a burnt-out middle-aged John Lennon for conceptual reasons, leaning into the mission with playfulness, energy, and sympathy. Great stuff, and sounds like it's bound to grow on me.

To clarify, by "Go with Yourself" in the post above, I mean the whole album, not just its epic title track closer.

Also -- Martin Carr and album closers!! Today it hit me how incredible Wilder is.

I'm saving the discography-ranking thread for next year, when I know all these songs well enough to follow the conversation.

Ah thanks TheNuNuNu, glad you're enjoying the comp. It's not ALL their b sides, mind you, just some faves I felt worked well - plenty more out there.

You're right about closers though. The only thing I'd say about the comp is it has, like, 5 closing songs at the end and it feels like they keep coming back for one last hurrah(!) I couldn't bear to leave any of them off though

I love that about it!! Especially the last two tracks -- you'd think that perfect penultimate song is as good & elegiac a closer as there could be, but then there comes another equally good song, it's mindboggling.

I did just discover "From the Bench at Belvidere", as good a Boo Radleys song as I've ever heard, and the also-wonderful Crushed, so: noted.

Belvedere, said it before:

It came out just before "Free as a bird" and if that had been the Beatles new single there would have been national rejoicing. But it was the Boos and there was a shrug at best from the general population...

Oh man, otm

Forgot about Belvedere. It is easily one of their best A-sides. Maybe the best after Lazarus?

Yeah, I'd say so.

I was listening to Belvidere today and going into raptures over Sice's voice. He's an amazing singer.

Oh, I didn't know that
Didn't know y'all were hurting'

Onwards & upwards!
Forwards, not backwards!

I love the Boos. I love Martin!

I had no idea what was awaiting me when I first heard Lazarus eleven months ago.

They're the best band from the 90s! I love watching you fall in love with them TheNuNuNu, proves I'm not crazy when I make a statement like I just did. If people go on the ride the rewards are immense.

What are your thoughts on those first three EPs? My personal starting point, also know as Learning to Walk. Those songs, outside the covers, are so, so, so good. And that was the start? Shakes my head at how brilliant those songs actually are.

Ichabod and I is technically the beginning but I don't count it. Those three EPs are shoegaze bliss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqOWLNHrHo

Haven't tried them yet! I'm only just branching out to C'mon Kids and Kingsize after long indulgence in Wake Up. I wasn't sure whether it's worth exploring backwards from Giant Steps too -- now I know.

Foster's Van is my fave from the early EPs

TheNuNuNu - the stuff from before Giant Steps is quite a different vibe, more noisy, hazy shoegazey stuff. But it's well worth your time.

The EPs collected on Learning To Walk are all good, if in thrall to MBV's Loveless (which is not a bad thing). There are some moments of brilliance throughout.

Then what I think of as their "proper" debut (as Bee OK says, the lesser-heard Ichabod & I is a non-essential curio), Everything's Alright Forever, sees them dipping their toes into more sonically adventurous territory with songs like Spaniard and Does This Hurt.

It's quite a career arc. To hear the LTW stuff next to Kingsize's in-the-box pop you'd think itt was two totally different bands

I just assumed you would have already heard Everything's Alright Forever . You need to go back first, I think C'mon Kids only makes sense when hearing what came before.

Also Everything's Alright Forever is a masterpiece. Much better debut than the likes of Moose, Catherine Wheel or even Slowdive. It hasn't been polled yet and have it in my queue and will be done within a years time, unless someone else does it first. I fucking love this band with all of my heart.

Dog latin is OTM too.

We should totally poll EIAF. I've neglected it of late and I wouldn't mind revisiting. Although I'm pretty sure I'll be voting for Spaniard

"does this hurt" rules, the breakbeat, the feedback, the reverbed vocals, the guitar roar yaow!

It'll be a perfect excuse for me to get into it!

C'mon Kids sounds wonderful even without context, but I'm all for extra context that'll make it sound even better.

As much as I really love this band I also overlook EAF even though I know everything on it is excellent. The poll would be a good reason to revisit.

Listening to Almost Nearly There followed by To a Galaxy Far, Far Away and thinking how these guys are basically my dream band... Big Blood, Happy End, the Boo Radleys -- my favorite genre of music is psychedelic folk-rock, and these groups are *exactly* how I want my psychedelic folk-rock to sound.

And Martin writes with his heart wide open! Alongside Giant Steps, And Tomorrow the World, and Wake Up on repeat, I've been blissing out to The Canton Hours, Martin's "oh never mind, I'm not actually going to finish this album" collection from last year. The arrangements are sometimes brilliant and sometimes on the dinky side, but either way, the songs are awesome.

The EPs collected on Learning To Walk are all good, if in thrall to MBV's Loveless

Hmmm, maybe Glider, etc? Even Everything's Alright Forever was apparently in the can before Loveless's late '91 release.

I believe Martin had heard an early version of "Loveless" which inspired "Losing it (Song for Abigail)"

ah interesting. some real hot “glide guitar” on that song for sure

Hmmm, maybe Glider, etc? Even Everything's Alright Forever was apparently in the can before Loveless's late '91 release.

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Thursday, 28 May 2026 02:39 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really good point. I'm getting my timelines mixed up possibly because early Boos is often described as "second wave" shoegaze.

But I was listening to EAF in the car yesterday and not only was it the perfect soundtrack for a hot hot day (it is inseparably a summer album for me), but I was struck at how much they'd developed their own sound by this point, away from their peers. There are specific effects and techniques, especially on the guitar, that feel peculiar to the Boo Radleys even at that stage in their careers.

Oh yeah, the UK/Euro heatwave keeps making the news here! Suddenly compelled to get my olde CD out for a... winter airing here.

Certainly didn't occur to me that they might have had inside intel, at least by EAF. *blushes* I guess they were suddenly on the same label, even, by mid-'91.

the lesser-heard Ichabod & I is a non-essential curio....The EPs collected on Learning To Walk are all good, if in thrall to MBV's Loveless (which is not a bad thing). There are some moments of brilliance throughout.

I suspect I'll be repeating things I've already said on this or other threads, but I can't be bothered to check. I don't think early Boo Radleys stuff sounds like MBV. I seem to remember them saying their big influence at the time was Dinosaur Jr? Ichabod & I was the first thing of theirs I bought and I liked it enough at the time (well, some of it - there's a few duds on there), but it's kind of impossible to listen to alongside anything else they've done because the production is so cheap/lo-fi/bad. It sounded good enough on a walkman on the way to college in 1990, but isn't great with today's technology. The two EPs from 1991 were a definite step up and I'd say that there are several *essential* tracks: Naomi, Everybird, Sometime Soon She Said, Foster's Van. If I'd had to describe their sound in 1991, I'd have said they were the most aggressively noisy band I had come across - layer upon layer of extreme distortion. I do remember thinking that Everything's Alright Forever sounded more MBV influenced, but I've just had a quick review of it now and the influence is much less than I'd remembered. What's more noticeable is the increased use of acoustic guitar. I think EAF would have been even better if they'd moved further away from the 'every song must have really loud bits' mentality.

Just remembered what I meant to say: I liked Icahabod *because* it was the first thing of theirs I had heard, but they unambiguously got better after that. If you are working backward from Giant Steps, it's unlikely you'd appreciate it - it sounds quite cheap and nasty by comparison.

Really wish someone would do the EAF poll, I can’t as you'll see next week. Love everyone's stories that they're sharing.

This is a ridiculous band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XB5gKmk-8

Here we go: The Boo Radleys - Everything's Alright Forever (Poll)