I got into the tangled mess that is Sad Lovers & Giants‘ discography – a shimmering and underappreciated intersection of post-punk and dreampop – a few years ago and it’s somehow gotten even knottier since. I tried to untie some of it but have no idea what is true and speculation regarding the provenance of the tracks on their 1982 debut Epic Garden Music, the 1983 follow up Feeding The Flames, or the 1984 compilation of non-album tracks In The Breeze.

Over the past 40 years, the tracklisting of various editions of each have overlapped and been reshuffled to the point that I don’t know that anyone knows that the proper, original, or best version of any of them is. It’s a saving grace that almost all the material from that era is great, so whichever one you choose to listen to you won’t lose, but if you’re someone who is trying to buy ideally one copy of these records… good luck.

I was reminded of how complicated it was when I saw that a new singles compilation covering those years – Singles Collection 1981-1983 – was coming out as a UK exclusive for Record Store Day this year. I’m usually an album over compilation guy just because, but I can’t really argue with the choices made for the 10 tracks – they’re all gold. But just to prove my point, if you compare with the tracklists to Epic Garden Music and Feeding The Flames on streaming, you’d think it’s just seven songs from the former and three from the latter. But if you look at the track listings for the original albums, not a single one of the songs is represented. Why? Why? But if there’s an upside, Singles Collection is a terrific introduction to the band – I made a playlist of all the selections and it slaps – and if it inspires you do dive into the band’s catalog, there’s editions of the studio albums that have almost zero redundancy!

Anyways, here’s one of their classic songs. It first appeared on their 1981 debut 7″ entitled Clé.