Various Artists: The Brit Box : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Brit pop was a pop scene because it was about moments, not career artists, so most of the best music came from people who had only one idea. Did Inspiral Carpets ever do another song besides "This Is How It Feels"? Who cares? The Brit Box tells the music part of the Brit-pop story, as scads of U.K. bands from the Smiths to the Stone Roses took off to make their own champagne-supernova splash. For every Pulp, Blur or Elastica, there was a brilliant one-shot like Rialto or Cast, plus a suckbomb like Sleeper. But the adventure made it all fun. It's all here -- a slew of shoegazer fan faves, with the still-dizzying guitars of Ride, Curve, Lush and Swervedriver, plus terrible bands with great names (Gay Dad), terrible bands with terrible names (Kula Shaker), great bands with terrible names (you may remember Oasis). There's the unjustly forgotten (the Divine Comedy), the very justly forgotten (Gene) and forgotten classics like Babybird's "You're Gorgeous." If you recognize one-third of the names here, you want the whole thing. But then, you probably also want a life.