Hatful Of Hollow (180-gram)

A Fantastic album. If your even remotely interested in The Smiths, this is a must for your record collection. A great listen from start to finish

I don't know why it took me this long to discover just how great this band is but I guess it's better late than never! I grew up listening to all kinds of pop music when this band first made the scene but for some reason I was much more interested in what the other bands at the time were doing completely overlooking The Smiths. Now, years later, I finally know why this band is still held in such high esteem decades later while many of the other bands I listened to at the time have faded into relative obscurity. Generally speaking most 80s music have not aged well but listening to The Smiths and especially this album today I am amazed at just how great the music still sounds after all these years - a true sign of an all-time classic band. Having heard all their albums though, I've discovered that while I liked much of the first, second and last studio albums I only truly enjoyed the third album from start to finish and so in order to get those tracks and the great singles I got the "Queen is Dead" and this great album too. Granted there are other compilation albums like "Louder Than Bombs" for example but "Hatful of Hollow" is that unique compilation album that is a classic all in itself. Like Queen's and the Little River Band's original greatest hits albums for example, the tracks have a nice flow and order to them and to change them in any way would cause the overall listening enjoyment to suffer significantly. Every track seems destined to be present and in this precise order and album length making it rank among that rare compilation albums that are classic albums themselves. Even if you have every Smiths album and single you would still want to listen to this album from start to finish again and again. As a big REM fan I can't help but feel that The Smiths are like the REM of Manchester given the similarities in the songwriting style as well as the group's composition with both Peter Buck and Johnny Mar being the great guitarists to complement the eccentric vocal stylings of Stipe and Morissey. Smiths fans are in for a real treat here as this mini-lp replica sleeve (mlps) release is not only very well designed and assembled from good cardboard material but the sound quality is also very good. Also included is a 24-page booklet containing all the lyrics in both English and Japanese. By the way, the mlps version of "Queen Is Dead" is also very good and well produced. As for this mlps release, "Hatful of Hollow" comes very highly recommended!

A compilation album by one of the three or four most important alternative bands of the 80s. It’s incredible. 10 of the 16 songs are live takes from the John Peel and David Jensen shows. I can’t tell the difference in sound between those songs and the other six which were presumably recorded in a studio. Production is low key and allows the songs to breathe and feel natural. Pretty much the opposite of the sheen on an album like “Hysteria” by Def Leppard. So many great songs. Morrissey’s got an amazing voice and jangly guitarist Marr is economically brilliant. The rhythm section of Rourke and Joyce is magnificent and bassist Rourke is particularly impressive. This is a band that understood and appreciated the power of the bass guitar. There’s no synthesizer, keyboards, piano, or harmonica. This is stripped down guitar drums bass rock and roll. I like all the songs. There are many standouts. Some are “William It Was Really Nothing,” “What Difference Does It Make?,” “This Charming Man,” “How Soon Is Now?,” “Hand In Glove,” “Still Ill,” and “Reel Around The Fountain.” Except “How Soon Is Now?” which is almost seven minutes long no song is lengthy. There isn’t a down spot on the album and, though this is blasphemy to many Smiths’ fans, I prefer it to their supposed masterpiece “The Queen Is Dead.” The sound here is more authentic and bare. You can feel the incredible unity and strength of a band very early in its recording career. The 10 songs from the shows were recorded in 83. The Smiths released their first album in Feb of 84. They released this about nine months later. The insert is clutch and has easy to read lyrics for every song. No tiny type or lyrics written on backgrounds that make reading difficult. There’s a great pic of the band and two of Morrissey. The jewel case came with a small crack. Unfortunately par for the course with Amazon. I saw them three times. Twice on “The Queen Is Dead” tour and once on the “Meat Is Murder” tour. A very powerful live act and their breakup after only four studio albums is tragic. They released two excellent compilation albums later in their career which I used to own - “The World Won’t Listen” and “Louder Than Bombs.” Morrissey went on to mixed solo success and took at least one very long break between albums. Marr has been active and in a few bands that had some success. Sadly Rourke is dead. Given Morrissey’s personality, a reunion tour or even show is most likely impossible. They were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at least once but didn’t get in. This was an amazing band that only made great records. This album rocks hard enough for classic rock fans and has enough differences from the norm in both lyrics and music for alternative fans. This band should have been huge and most likely would have been. Listen to this and find out why.

The Smiths were one of those bands that, despite being heavily a fan of many of their contemporaries in the New Wave/Post-Punk scene of the ‘80s for many years, I inexplicably never gravitated to, even though everything I’d ever heard about them was that they were amazing, fantastic, one of the greatest bands of all time, and more along those lines… Well, that has changed. I’m still not quite sure what suddenly compelled me to finally give this band a proper listen, but long story short, as an avid listener of virtually everything within this particular sub-genre of music, somehow excluding until recently, The Smiths, they are that good. Having now listened to their entire discography a few times over, I decided to get Hatful Of Hollow, and The Queen Is Dead, after many days of careful reasoning, factoring in the amount of space I have for CDs at the moment, the amount of money I have to spend on CDs at the moment, which songs of theirs I love most, and similar criteria… Hatful Of Hollow is the earliest compilation album by The Smiths, consisting primarily of versions of songs from their first album, recorded live on-air for various radio programs. Each of these tracks differs significantly from the studio take, and personally, I prefer these versions, no offense to that legendary debut LP, which is great, regardless. Notably beyond this, Hatful also contains the first non-single appearance of “How Soon Is Now?”, which would later be added to the US edition of The Smiths’ sophomore album, Meat Is Murder, though I feel like it fits better here. Beyond that, the rest of their pre-Meat singles and b-sides, all of which are fantastic. In summary, this is an essential album, by an essential band of their era and genre. If you’re just getting into The Smiths, this is a great place to start, and if you’re already a Smiths fan, contemplating whether or not to pick up, go for it, unless the decision is between this one, and The Queen Is Dead!

Une jolie découverte d'un grand groupe de rock britannique. Le chanteur à une voix particulière mais si on se laisse embarquer, on passe un très bon moment. On y retrouve même la chanson du générique de "Charmed" ;)

Quando il nostro animo non sa che musica ascoltare, difficilmente si sbaglia con un disco degli Smiths che combinano nelle loro canzoni leggerezza e malinconia. Questo album in particolare, che è in pratica il loro secondo dopo quello senza titolo dell’esordio (pubblicati entrambi nello stesso anno 1984) ed è già una specie di “best of … “ raccogliendo una serie di singoli indimenticabili, almeno per la mia generazione che gli era contemporanea. Al di là del carisma (geniale quanto egocentrico) di Morissey e dell’anima roots di Johnny Marr che ne bilancia il romanticismo narcisista, restano le canzoni: immediate, spesso ironiche nei testi e nello stesso tempo di una presa lirica inimitabile. La voce salmodica del primo, che abbatte le regole non scritte dell’epoca sul “cantare rock”, e i riff tra Byrds e R’n’R del secondo, che si intrecciano alla perfezione e si fanno ballabili e contagiosi. Non sono certo l’unico a pensare che in HATFUL OF HOLLOW la coesione dei pezzi supera in qualità gli album veri e propri: così, tanto per citarne alcuni (ma ognuno avrà i suoi preferiti) «Hand In Glove»; «This Charming Man»; «Reel Around The Fountain»; «Heaven Knows I’m A Miserable Now»; «How Soon Is Now» e «William, It Was Really Nothing» ci rinfrescano la memoria sull’ascesa di una band che ha ben pochi uguali in quegli anni. In questa riedizione su CD, la foto di copertina in un bianco-nero minimalista resta sempre bella, anche se la grafica delle scritte è un po’ difforme da quella che ricordavo negli anni ottanta, ma ci sono tutte le informazioni essenziali e soprattutto i testi ben leggibili. Non sfugga l’ironia nella titolazione dell’album, che io tradurrei con “Un cappello pieno di nulla” quando invece è poi stracolmo di belle canzoni. Prezzo molto corretto. Da avere.