I think I just felt, deep in the very bottom of my heart, a little jump. It’s been buried there for a good amount of years, but just the mention of All About Eve made it jump. At first, at least for me and All About Eve, it was Julianne Regan, the beautiful, alluring singer of the band, awash in black and purple and Paisley. Looking exactly like I wanted the girls at school to look (when they weren’t at school) she could have warbled along to Kylie songs for all I cared.
As it was the former Gene Loves Jezebel bassist had this dark and rich voice, that drew you in and dragged the emotion out of you. Joined with Andy Cousin and a revolving cast of band members from 1984, the band made this intoxicating mix of folk, goth and Cocteau Twins like pop music, that heralded four albums and a Bucketload of chart singles, before disappearing from the scene a decade later.
So the news that Universal Music group are reissuing the band’s first two albums as double cd’s on September 29th caused my ticker to, well, miss a tick. The two records, 1988’s self titled debut and the following years Scarlet and Other Stories made the top ten upon their release, and the former in its new edition features the original album plus 12” singles, B sides and extended mixes from the singles ‘Our Summer’ to ‘What Kind of Fool’.
The Scarlet and Other Stories package covers the original album along with extended remixes, B-sides, the Wayne Hussey session from 1990, two previously unreleased acoustic BBC radio sessions plus a host of Live recordings from Glastonbury and headline shows in 1989.
Enough for both the old hands and the new breed to fall in love with All About Eve – for some of us at least, all over again.
This is great news. Looking at the tracklistings no unreleased songs have been found in the vaults so old fans will have to make do with the extended songs and live versions. New fans will have a great time discovering these expanded editions. Would be great to see the other two albums reissued but I think there are problems with the record companies and so these will probably never be reissued or expanded which is a great shame.