This excellent compilation of John Grant's first band shows early signs of his future greatness
Before he was the king of mordant wit, John Grant toiled for ten years in tragically unsung Denver band The Czars. They released five wonderful albums of low-key loser rock and Grant's rich baritone brought real emotional weight to these songs of doomed romance spiked with barbed humour. Even The Czars name suggested faded grandeur and eventual failure.
This excellent compilation brings together 16 of their finest moments and they all hint at Grant's later gift for deftly-controlled spleen venting, pitch-black humour, and heavenly melodies.
He sounds like a sweet-voiced seventies singer with a festering grudge. Think Glen Campbell singing Randy Newman. Many of these songs, not least the extraordinary likes of Drug, which chimes with dulcimer and piano, have that Morrissey-like quality of being very, very serious and very, very funny at the same time.
But it's the killer Goodbye which may be The Czars' greatest song. It's a kiss-off to a wayward lover but also a rebuke to the music industry which Grant would soon abandon before being rediscovered years later to make his unheralded rebirth as a solo star.
These days Grant counts Elton John and Sinéad O'Connor as fans and he's just released a live album recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It's a heartening sign of just how far he has come and how, despite the odds, talent can often win out in the end.
Alan Corr @corralan
