Numero Group (2024)
Boys Life was a band that I originally discovered while writing for my college newspaper. In my dealings with Cargo records, they sent me a review copy of Departures and Landfalls and I was immediately taken with it. While I tended to prefer the poppier strains of that wave of emo, something about Boys Life really connected with me. Or I guess it's more accurate to say that Departures and Landfalls connected with me, for whatever reason, I never hunted down their other records the way I did for most bands of that era.
Luckily, Numero has done the hunting for me. Which is a relief as that first album in particular was very rarely available and when it was always seemed to be priced outside of my comfort zone. This box set solves that problem by gathering up both Boys Life full lengths along side of every other song from their demo and various 7"s. There's even some live tracks as a bonus.
It's those first two albums that are the biggest draws for me and both sound fantastic as part of this set, I've been kicking myself that it took me so long to finally hear the self titled one as it's really great and something I really should have been listening to for years at this point. The singles/demo part of this box set is also outstanding. A lot of those early songs did end up on the first album, but typically different versions, so I enjoy having access to everything. Plus there's still a solid amount of songs not on either full length. The live material is nice to have, but I'm not really a live record guy, so it's probably the bit I'm least interested in.
Of course, Numero comes correct with outstanding packaging on this release. Everything is given the extra primo good treatment and the accompanying liner notes really are more of a book than just notes for the albums. If there was a label to tackle this project, I couldn't think of a better one than Numero. There are so many bands I'd like to see them give this sort of treatment to; Seaweed, Christie Front Drive, No Knife...but they could start by doing Chisel, who thus far have only had one of their LPs reissued on Numero Group. Gimme a box!
Boys Life – Home Is A Highway
https://boyslife.bandcamp.com/album/home-is-a-highway
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