Released upon the 25th anniversary of
Nuisance,
Menswear's era-defining 1995 debut, the quadruple-disc
Menswear Collection gathers essentially everything the Brit-pop band did:
Nuisance, the long-buried second album
Hay Tiempo, the lion's share of B-sides along with a bunch of rarities, remixes, outtakes and demos.
Menswear's career proceeded at the speed of a supernova, with the band appearing on the cover of Melody Maker and on Top of the Pops before their records hit the market, so it makes sense that part of the appeal of
Menswear Collection is its velocity. There's not much prehistory -- just a handful of demos for
EMI, unearthed here for the first time -- but there's a lot from after
Nuisance, not much of it released outside of Japan at the time. This includes the 1998 album
Hay Tiempo, a record steeped in '60s psychedelia, folk, and country-rock that served as a logical progression from the mod mania of
Nuisance. This box helps put that evolution in perspective, which means that it also punctures the notion that the group was a flash in the pan. True,
Nuisance crystalized the giddy gold rush of Brit-pop, but
Menswear possessed strengths that extended outside of the scene, as evidenced by
Hay Tiempo and its surrounding sessions. Maybe that music didn't get heard at the time, but it's more than welcome having it preserved here in a set that is not just a fan service, but a document of a perpetually misunderstood band. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
![Give Up [Deluxe]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0098787104523_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Give Up [Deluxe]")
