There were hundreds of Britpop underlings in the 90s. For every Blur there was a Menswear. For every Oasis there were about nine Casts. But if you’re willing to get ridiculously chronological, you could argue the sound of John Power and his crew was actually far truer to the original, Merseybeat-driven Britpop of the 60s than any of their arch-eyebrowed contemporaries.
Across a whopping (and wholly over-zealous) 25 tracks, Cast at the BBC were everything from scratchy Scouse tunesmiths, to actually rather good pop writers and melancholic meanderers before the inevitable failed comeback (they recorded a session for Steve Lamacq as late as 1999 at a time when they weren’t actually coming back from anything, it’s just no one was paying attention anymore). Fine Time remains, well, just fine, and Walk Away could easily have sat comfortably on the second La’s album, had there been one. Even Beat Mama is jaunty enough to warrant a revisit.
But there’s just too much here. Granted, it wouldn’t have been a true ‘sessions’ disc if the chaff had been sliced off, but surely Universal would be more successful with this set if they’d slimmed it to what would have been, cruelly and ultimately, a sound one-disc best of.
