Omnivore Recordings' reissue program of Soul Asylum's early releases on Twin/Tone Records winds up with this good-value-for-the-money pairing of the band's final Twin/Tone releases, the 1986 album While You Were Out and the 1988 EP Clam Dip & Other Delights. While You Were Out was the second album Soul Asylum released in 1986; it wasn't the dramatic creative leap forward that Made to Be Broken represented over their debut, 1984's Say What You Will...Everything Can Happen, but it showed they were headed in the right ...
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Omnivore Recordings' reissue program of Soul Asylum's early releases on Twin/Tone Records winds up with this good-value-for-the-money pairing of the band's final Twin/Tone releases, the 1986 album While You Were Out and the 1988 EP Clam Dip & Other Delights. While You Were Out was the second album Soul Asylum released in 1986; it wasn't the dramatic creative leap forward that Made to Be Broken represented over their debut, 1984's Say What You Will...Everything Can Happen, but it showed they were headed in the right direction, and was their strongest Twin/Tone LP. For sheer energy, SA rarely sounded as sharp and fully engaged as on While You Were Out. Dan Murphy and Dave Pirner's guitars were locked in tight and fused melody with crushing attack, and drummer Grant Young and bassist Karl Mueller were at the top of their game. While You Were Out feels like a dry run for SA's best album, 1988's Hang Time -- there's less focus and more slop, but it leaves no doubt that there were few bands in the American underground who could match them. The band's final gesture to Twin/Tone, Clam Dip & Other Delights, was an odds-and-ends package housed in a cover offering a playful "tribute" to A&M co-founder Herb Alpert. In its original form as released in the U.K., Clam Dip offered four strong originals as well as two ragged but right covers (Janis Joplin's "Move Over" and Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero"). "Just Plain Evil" is an excursion into heavy rock, "Chains" turns Blondie's "One Way or Another" riff into something fresh, "Secret No More" would have fit right in on While You Were Out, and "P-9" is a fine acoustic number that allows Pirner to indulge his folkie side. After Clam Dip became a strong seller as an import, Twin/Tone issued an American edition with "Artificial Heart" and "Take It to the Root" replacing the covers; the former is a weak exercise in studio dawdling, but the latter is a fun bit of end-of-the-set rave-up. In either form, Clam Dip & Other Delights was a loving gesture to Soul Asylum's fans and a fine summing up of how far they'd come in just four years. Omnivore's two-fer edition features While You Were Out in full, all eight tunes from the two editions of Clam Dip, an alternate version of "Take It to the Root" that previously appeared on the cassette-only Time's Incinerator compilation, and four unreleased bonus tracks. The new mastering gives these recordings a noticeable sonic upgrade, the packaging contains some rare photos and artifacts, and Jon Wurster's liner notes are a splendid appreciation of what made SA great. Soul Asylum's early independent releases have rarely received the attention they deserve in the wake of their later major-label efforts, and While You Were Out/Clam Dip & Other Delights is a well-curated document of some of their best and most passionate work. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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