THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

10cc's style of progressive pop with cheekily comedic touches is, over the course of their career, a rather hit and miss affair. Like much other comedy, when the jokes work, it's great, but when they fall flat it's all rather embarrassing.

On The Original Soundtrack, however, the band are on magnificent form, with even the rather cheesy Life Is a Ministrone being more endearing than annoying. On top of that, they are a little more adventurous here than they would be for much of their later career, opening the album with the theatrical Une Nuit a Paris (parodying multi-part prog epics by spuriously suggesting that the song is split into several parts, "One Night In Paris", "The Same Night In Paris" and "Later the Same Night In Paris"), and then having it segue into the shimmeringly beautiful and uncharacteristically sincere I'm Not In Love. Perhaps their finest hour.