Album News, Tracklist — July 24, 2011 at 11:04 am

The Housemartins look back with ‘Happy Hour: The Collection,’ new 20-track best-of

Although they only issued two studio albums during their mid-’80s career, The Housemartins — the UK’s self-proclaimed “fourth best band in Hull” — this week will be anthologized with at least their fourth best-of album, although it’s not quite clear whether the new set features any previously unreleased material.

Due out Monday in the UK, the 20-track Happy Hour: The Collection follows 1988’s posthumous greatest-hits collection Now That’s What I Call Quite Good, plus the more recent The Best of the Housemartins (2004) and Soup (2007), a joint best-of combining The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, the follow-up band formed by singer Paul Heaton and drummer Dave Hemingway after the Housemartins’ break-up (which also led to bassist Norman Cook going on to launch Beats International before finding massive global success mining beats and samples as Fatboy Slim).

The label Spectrum Audio UK says that, aside from hits such as “Happy Hour” and “Caravan of Love,” the new collection “also includes some choice B-sides and live tracks.” But because the tracklists released so far for Happy Hour don’t identify the live songs or their origins, it’s not yet possible to determine whether there’s anything new or unreleased on the set.

 

Tracklist: The Housemartins, Happy Hour: The Collection

1. “Happy Hour”
2. “Caravan Of Love”
3. “Build”
4. “Me And The Farmer”
5. “Think For A Minute”
6. “Flag Day”
7. “Bow Down”
8. “There Is Always Something There To Remind Me”
9. “We’re Not Deep”
10. “I Can’t Put My Finger On It”
11. “I Smell Winter”
12. “Johannesburg”
13. “Get Up Off Our Knees”
14. “Rap Around The Clock”
15. “Pirate Aggro”
16. “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”
17. “Step Outside”
18. “You’ve Got A Friend”
19. “The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death”
20. “Lean On Me”

 

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4 Comments

  1. Jesse
    July 25, 2011 at 10:24 pm  ·  Reply

    Any Housemartins comp that excludes Five Get Overexcited is no “Best of.”

    • Spacemoth
      July 9, 2012 at 11:38 am  ·  Reply

      Well, to me that’s not such a great loss. It’s easily their worst ever single. Omitting SHEEP (not once, but TWICE – the other time on the recent ‘SOUP’ compilation which also included the Beautiful South’s hit) on the other hand, is simply unforgivable!

  2. Craig
    July 26, 2011 at 8:51 am  ·  Reply

    The audio quality on all the compilations has been well…. crappy at best. Any chance this new “Collection” is any better? Or, just more of the same!

  3. Spacemoth
    July 9, 2012 at 11:39 am  ·  Reply

    Well, to me that’s not such a great loss. It’s easily their worst ever single. Omitting SHEEP (not once, but TWICE – the other time on the recent ‘SOUP’ compilation which also included the Beautiful South’s hits) on the other hand, is simply unforgivable!

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