Kim Wilde

In the very early '80s, New Wave shared alot of the same raw, frenetic spirit that the Punk movement demonstrated before MTV and groups like Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls homogonized the genre for mass-consumption. Thankfully, Kim Wilde's 1981 debut album that hit stores Stateside in 1982 still possesses that youthful punk rebelliousness. It has more in common with CBGB's-era Blondie than mid-80s MTV.Kim's father Marty and brother Ricky were heavily-involved in the writing and production and it's obvious they wanted their little girl to come across in a favourable light--and boy, does she! This is a terrific debut album that perfectly serves as a time-capsule for music in 1982, yet remains varied throughout.The Pogo-inducing "Chequered Love", "Young Heroes" and "Falling Out" are as energetic as they come, and it still baffles me how the anthematic-opener "Kids in America" failed to crack the Billboard Top 10 (it went #2 in the UK and Top 20 in Canada). But the rave doesn't stop there: "Water on Glass" is the album's catchiest number and New Wave-pop perfection; the reggae-tinged "Everything We Know" features an irressistibly moody vocal; "Our Town" takes a depressing tale of a dead-end life and makes it sound positively celebratory, and there's even a cheeky Ska-flavored comic tale about a personal-ads sex trade worker in "2-6-5-8-0".While I was expecting the sound quality to be much better on this release (the new Kim Carnes reissues fare much better sonically), it's great to have this terrific debut album from Ms. Wilde upgraded nontheless.Most will only know Kim from her 1987 chart-topping Supremes remake "You Keep Me Hangin' On" but IMO that's one of the weakest things she's done. To truly appreciate her, you need to start here.Kids In America 5/5Water on Glass 5/5Our Town 4/5Everything We Know 5/5Young Heroes 5/5Chequered Love 4/52-6-5-8-0 4/5You'll Never Be So Wrong 5/5Falling Out 4/5Tuning Out, Tuning In 4/5

Good price good delivery

A++++

I have to say that the French company that is coming up with these mini-lp replica sleeve designs (mlps) of older recordings is giving their more established competitors from Japan a right run for their money at least when it comes to mlps design and assembly. This release has been very well put together and ranks among the best mlps releases that I've ever seen. However, from a sound quality point of view the French do have some ways to go. This recording of what I believe to be Kim Wilde's best overall album in terms of the consistently good quality of all the tracks has been remastered and compressed so for those anti-loudness people out there you are not going to appreciate the increased volume at the expense of a greater dynamic range; in fact the compression is overdone resulting in muddiness in tracks like "Young Heroes" and the muddiness is especially evident in the last few tracks. If you are playing this in your car or on any other non-audiophile medium you are probably not going to notice this too much though and so audiophiles beware!Otherwise, this is great punk rock ala The Go-Gos, Billy Idol, Blondie of the early 80s era. In fact, I only accidentally stumbled upon Kim Wilde when as was unfortunately so common in those days in Singapore when I was a teen the only access we had to pop music was through bootlegged copies as original cassettes were so hard to come by then. A few of the tracks on this album ended up as filler to complete my bootleg copy of The Go-Gos debut album and lo and behold I actually found myself liking the Kim Wilde "filler" more than most of the songs on The Go-Gos album! I think it is a shame that Kim Wilde remains so underrated as many of the tracks here are really very good representations of the 80s punk rock genre.So here in this unique mlps release of her best album we have a mixed bag because while the mlps itself is well designed and there is no faulting the quality of the songs the sound quality with muddiness on too many tracks due to over-compression in order to increase the volume and hence reduce the dynamic range while acceptable to most ears will certainly not please the audiophiles among us. However if sound quality isn't too important to you then this is a great release to add to your sonic library collection.(Mostly) recommended!

Awful sounding cd, very thin sounding and dull. Poor mastering and original cd sounds much fuller. I actually checked my settings, I thought a pass filter was on.Packaging is nice, music is still enjoyable, but skip it if you have previous copy.