REVIEW: Gene – Yours For The Taking best of

I remember Gene being indie heroes on the BBC Radio 1 Evening Session with the likes of Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley whetting their appetite the instant a new track was announced. The weekly music papers also had a field day what with band members resembling Morrissey and Paul Weller, plus the band’s music having influences ranging from The Smiths, The Jam and The Small Faces all these ingredients lead them to feature on festival line up regularly, the front pages of the weekly and monthly publications.

The band’s debut album Olympian is now celebrating its 25^th anniversary which has activated the band into action with them releasing a smart looking best of available on coloured vinyl. Featuring 22 tracks pressed on 2 180g LP’s the best of features as you would no doubt expect all of the bands well know hits including Sleep Well Tonight, For The Dead, We Could Be Kings and Fill Her Up. The music on show still has that cutting edge, released today you’d expect the young guns of today Blossoms or even Artic Monkeys to release the equivalent, meaning the likes of Rossiter, Mason, Miles and James were onto a good thing and still are.

The band members feature on the obligatory sleeve notes as does respected journalist Keith Cameron with a smattering of archive pictures of the band, ticket stubs and various other bits of memorabilia it all makes for this collection being firmly centred on remembering and celebrating their past achievements, nothing wrong with that as their material rightly shows them to have been a class act alongside the likes of Blur, Pulp and Oasis, their memory lives on in this superbly crafted best of.

Yours For The Taking can be purchased via the following link