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Album reviews Music

Discs: NUGGETS

Rating: NNN


The second Nuggets four-CD set of rare garage rock “artyfacts” from the 60s redresses some of the oversights of the first volume, reaching outside the continental U.S. to grab classic blasts from the UK, Australia, English-speaking Europe and Canada. Nuggets II deviates from the original one-hit-wonder concept to draw heavily from hit-making acts like Them, Small Faces, Easybeats, Pretty Things and the Troggs. Stranger still is the inclusion of two tracks apiece by known artists while overlooking the outstanding songs by forgotten freaks you’d hope to discover on Nuggets. Even though everything that came out of Quebec has been missed, the Canucks represented — the Guess Who (It’s My Pride), the Haunted (1-2-5), the Jury (Who Dat?) and the mighty Ugly Ducklings (Nothin’) — outclass the majority of the stuff here, which, unfortunately, is slanted toward weedy English psych and freakbeat. Swell accompanying photos and great fidelity, but it’s short on revelations.

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