THE BEST OF STRAWBS

The pick of the crop

A double album which collects together 18 tracks from the Strawbs time at A&M records, plus one from Dave Cousins solo album "Two weeks last summer". The earliest albums are skipped over. With only "Song of a sad little girl" and "A glimpse of Heaven" representing the first three albums.

The inclusion of longer tracks such as "Autumn" ("Hero and Heroine"), "Down by the sea" and "Tears and pavan" ("Bursting at the seams"), and "Blue angel" ("Two weeks last summer") balance the collection well with shorter more accessible tracks like "Lemon Pie" ("Ghosts"), and the wonderful "Shine on silver sun" ("Hero and heroine").

The Strawbs albums after "Ghosts" routinely failed to match the quality of their predecessors. Thus, while tracks such as "Little sleepy" and "To be free" (Nomadness) help to complete the picture chronologically, the compilation would have benefited from them being replaced by other tracks from the band's earlier classic albums.

Nonetheless, this is a first class compilation.

The special inclusion in this compilation is ' Blue Angel' from Dave Cousin's solo Two Weeks Last Summer. Not to be confused with the remade version off Blue Angel in 2003. Another carefully put together album which has far more ' hits' than misses.