HEARING EARRING

On the surface, "Hearing Earring" may seem like an odd compilation. For a collection of tracks, it could have taken the best tracks from their previous discography which included 9 albums at the time this compilation was released. Yet, it compiles 8 tracks from only 2 albums (3 tracks from "Seven Tears" and 5 tracks from "Together"). So the burning question is, why would this compilation be necessary? Well, earlier that year (1973), the album "Moontan" was released, and this album was the band's breakthrough album in many countries since it featured their first big international hit "Radar Love". Suddenly, there were a ton of new fans that wanted to hear more of the Earring. Instead of delving back into 1965 (when their first album was released), the record companies wanted to just cull some songs that sounded somewhat similar to the direction the band was going when "Moontan" was released, and naturally, the two albums directly previous to that one was the safest and best bet to keep these new fans interested and appeased while waiting for a new album, and for some countries, beyond "Moontan", this was, at the time, the only other album available.

Overall, the selected tracks from those albums were pretty good choices. The result was a pretty strong album with songs that reflected the direction of the band. It is a bit strange that it has only been released in LP form even with many people demanding that a CD reissue be done. Besides having an excellent track listing (even the order is shifted around a lot and that even works well here), the album cover listed the songs not only in writing, but in raised Braille lettering, which was a pretty neat gimmick at the time. Many fans that had no other album to purchase at the time had high praise for this album, and for many, they were unaware of other albums that had been released.

The compilation actually does deserve high praise as it arranges the songs in a cohesive order and includes two of the mini epics (7-8 minutes) from the albums, the excellent "She Flies on Strange Wings" and the percussion heavy "Brother Wind". But, the album starts off quite well with the track "Jangalene" which begins with a long acoustic section which continues when the vocals come in and then half-way through, it explodes into a powerful rocker. Both "Avalanche of Love" and "Silver Ships" are also quite worthy of a "best of" compilation and work to strengthen this album. But the two previously mentioned longer tracks are the highlights here and are the tracks that people will keep going back to, however, the other songs support these well and don't feel like filler at all, but truly fleshed out tracks that even feature enough progressiveness to keep everyone happy.

This is quite an excellent compilation as it is and if you have a hard time finding any GE albums released before "Moontan", then this is the album you should look for, even though it will probably only be found in a "Used" condition. If, otherwise, you have no problem finding earlier albums or if you already own them, then it probably wouldn't be as attractive of a compilation. It does work quite well as an album however and substitutes well if you need earlier tracks from the band. It's quite solid, though it may not be as essential as it once was, however it is quite a strong album in and of itself.