THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION

As an overview of Earth & Fire's career as a commercial band (note the caveat in that wording), this is superb - featuring virtually all their singles and most of their B-sides. However, much of the later music is anything but superb, unless you like disco/pop (the late seventies stuff) or soft rock/AOR (their late eighties comeback). And the era-defining epics "Song Of The Marching Children" and "Atlantis" are notable by their absence (though the former appears in its severely truncated B-side version), so one of the most important facets of the band's career is ignored altogether. But ultimately, attempting to summarise the career of a band like Earth & Fire (starting psychedelic, then going progressive, then finally turning to disco and pop) is a pointless exercise - what sort of music fan would enjoy listening to this from start to finish?