Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 05/09/05
Label: Polydor

Everyone acts all surprised that Ian Brown turned out to be the talented one in The Stones Roses. But there's a very simple reason why the first album was boss and the second a wash-out. All the songs on "The Stone Roses" were co-written by Brown and Squire. Most of "The Second Coming" was written solely by Squire. Do the math.

Confirming that playing skill is often the enemy of great rock'n'roll, Squire went on to anaesthetise us with The Seahorses (and without them), while Brown's solo career has been a gushing font of drama, amusement and maverick genius. From its title downwards, this best-of does a fine job of capturing the man's very essence - not to mention his moments of triumph - while excising that self-indulgent streak from history.

The story begins, of course, with 1997's solo debut "Unfinished Monkey Business". That album might have documented the frustrating struggle between an ever-fertile imagination and technical ineptitude, but, as "The Greatest" reminds us, it yielded a brace of mesmerising singles in "My Star" and "Corpses in Their Mouths". Also recorded here is the period when, following his imprisonment, Brown lost his mind amid a haze of skunk smoke and started making hilariously off-kilter records like "Dolphins Were Monkeys", a brave attempt to rewrite evolutionary theory. Sadly we'll have to rely on our memories for a record of his baked appearance on the Jo Whiley show (or of those fluorescent tracksuits).

"The Greatest" peaks exactly halfway through when it revisits "Music of the Spheres", the 2001 album that yielded not just "FEAR" (the sheer intelligence of which still astounds), but also the underrated "Whispers", in which Brown sounds uncharacteristically menacing ("I hear a lot of whispers… about YOU"). It's later, though, that we encounter Brown's very finest solo effort: last year's "Keep What You Got", the chorus of which ("Keep what you got by giving all away") sums up its singer perfectly: it makes no logical sense, yet its meaning is crystal clear.

At the back end, "The Greatest" loses its way completely amid selections from inessential recent album "Solarized" and some dreadful new songs ("Return Of The Fisherman" offers only comedy value). But somehow, this only adds to its charm. Like we say, there's no place for logic round here.

It's not Brown who's trying to get the Roses together, y'know. It's that other guy, the one no one cares about any more...

    by Niall O'Keeffe