Send "The La's " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Do the La's really need a box set? This is a band that produced one self-titled LP in 1990 before their melodically gifted but cantankerous leader Lee Mavers declared he'd never release another record. Nevertheless, a few La's reunite live every couple of years, sparking rumors about new material...that never materializes. If nothing else, the optimistically titled and lavishly packaged Callin' All suggests that their record company has finally accepted what fans realized at least a decade ago: The cow’s run dry.Supposedly, Mavers has squirreled away songs in the intervening years, but he doesn't share his stash here. In fact, the band didn't cooperate in any way on Callin' All. How then does Polydor/Universal fill four CDs? There's about a disc and a half worth of material fans might legitimately want, including all of the band's singles and B-sides and some decent demos that never made it into the studio. Then there are six versions of the La's one big cross-border hit. With its hooks, jangle, and now-iconic guitar intro, "There She Goes" is an undeniable classic. The La's render it with such gentle, genuine wonder (about a girl or smack, to name the best-supported theories), that 20 years on the song still gets play whenever an evocation of non-specific longing is needed. And, admittedly, the overproduced album track has aged badly, making a demo or two welcome. But six? "Timeless Melody", the band's truest statement of purpose, appears eight times, "Son of a Gun" six, "I.O.U." four, and so on. The La's were a superb live act, and two of the set's discs round up concert and radio recordings. This might be cool if the same or similar material hadn't been available online for years for free or if the record company hadn't already released the definitive La's live collection, BBC in Session, in 2006. "Never before or since the La's has there been so much fascination and reverence for a band with so slender an output," journalist Will Hodgkinson opines hyperbolically in a glossy booklet padded with oversized photos and a month-by-month timeline of the band's active run. If this sounds like the bottom of the barrel being scraped, it is....full text |
| Bbc |
| The shamelessness is very nearly admirable. Indeed, it’s difficult not to perceive Callin’ All as a bleak joke at the expense of the music industry, satirising the accelerating panic and chronic lack of imagination that besets the business: a four-CD retrospective surveying the career, such as it was, of a band who only ever got around to making one album – and one which the group themselves affected to detest. The audaciously titled The La’s, released 20 years ago, was a competent, mildly diverting collection of tuneful skiffle redeemed by, and remembered for, one truly transcendent twinkle of pop perfection: There She Goes, a delirious and beautiful synthesis of the heartfelt exuberance of The Temptations’ My Girl with the exquisite melancholy of Big Star’s September Gurls. While La’s songwriter Lee Mavers surely deserves whatever he’s earned from that song, his case for staking a claim on four discs’ worth – one collection of A sides and B sides, one bunch of out-takes, two late-80s/early-90s concert recordings augmented by radio sessions – of anyone’s attention is rather weaker. It is, sadly, fairly easy to see through something when the material of which it is constructed is stretched so hilariously thin....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| The bizarre story of Liverpool’s The La’s is without equal. They are a band that formed in 1983 and, theoretically, are still in existence, and yet they have only ever released one studio album. They are also a band with more former members than there are numbers on a dartboard; many of those rarely lasting more than a few months. The reason for such personnel profligacy undoubtedly lies at the door of Lee Mavers, the band’s co-founder and singer-songwriter. Leading up to that eponymous debut, back in 1990, Mavers continually shuffled his deck of bandmates and producers (often having it forced upon him by record label pressure), and made them record and re-record tracks over and over again in an attempt to perfect every note so that each song mirrored the particular emotion he desired so badly. Even after it‘s release, it became clear that still all was not well. With Mavers’ self-doubt now stronger than ever before, and with him rarely appearing in public, producer Steve Lilywhite has tellingly suggested that the reason the band have never made another album is because, according to Mavers, they are yet to complete their first. Callin’ All goes a long way to documenting the ongoing story of this search for perfection in sound. There are rehearsal out-takes, unreleased, acoustic and radio versions of songs, b-sides, and a multitude of live versions to chew on. It’s a music geek’s wet dream but, with the band’s debut having achieving cult status, this release will undoubtedly pique the curiosity of more than just the fanatics. Mavers’ songwriting brilliance is here for all to see and remains an inspiration today – without The La’s we’d never have bands like The Kooks, The Arctic Monkeys or The Fratellis. There have been previous La’s compilations that have covered similar ground but you can’t argue with so many rough-and-ready, multi-hued versions of favourites from their debut and accompanying rarities. These are brilliant songs, that just don’t seem to age – tracks like ‘Liberty Ship’ (including the original demo that Mavers so cherished) and ‘Doledrum’, that channel the free spirit of The Beatles, and others like ‘Timeless Melody’ and ‘Son Of A Gun’ (check the balls-out acoustic version) which drip with Northern Soul. Then there are oddities like the marching band soldiering of ‘Clean Prophet’, the 60s rock chic of ‘Knock Me Down’ or ‘I Am The Key’ that simply swaggers along in true Stone Roses style....full text |
The La's lyrics
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