Kirsty MacColl Titanic Days 1993, Free World 2023

Great news for vinyl lovers. For Record Store Day 2024, Kirsty MacColl's Titanic Days was reissued on (green, not that it matters) vinyl. While she made several great records, this has always been her finest work in my view. This is the record's first appearance on vinyl.

From my From Croydon To Cuba review: Produced by then husband Steve Lillywhite, Titanic Days has it all: bright love song You Know It's You, tales of very bad men (to which MacColl seems drawn, at least in her lyrics) Titanic Days, Can't Stop Killing You, and Bad, and the sentimental melancholy of Soho Square. The airy, dreamy Angel and Tomorrow Never Comes are beautiful. Lillywhite's production and the backing of crack musicians help realize MacColl's most consistent songwriting, and her performances are both cool and riveting.

I also recently discovered that a new double vinyl best of set titled Free World was released in 2023. It is a thoughtful collection that doesn't bring any new surprises, but collects most of the essentials, and it's available on (yellow, not that it matters) vinyl. There are too many compilations of Kirsty's work, and some are not really hits collections, but this one is a good selection of songs, spans her career, and gets most of the important picks right. Of course if you are a big fan of Ms. MacColl's work, you probably have most of these songs, and if you're a casual fan, maybe you've got one of the decent single CD overviews. So I guess this is mostly for those of us that would want to hear these songs on vinyl rather than CD. Most of her work is available on original vinyl releases (and recent vinyl reissues) of the individual albums.

Perfect (or near perfect)

It's not very often that a record is perfect. What's perfect? You can listen to every song, and enjoy every song. The performance, songwriting, singing and production make a cohesive whole, a record that is of itself and unlike quite anything else (except maybe one of the other records on this list). There aren't too many of these for me, and many of them are from the sixties and seventies. I tried to stay a little more current with this list.

Many of these records are rockers. This first list is the rockers. Fast and furious, hot guitars, tight band, great songs. Often the best effort by the artist or band, these are the only reason the rest of their work is a little disappointing.

The Proclaimers Persevere 2001

Matthew Sweet Girlfriend 1991

Semisonic The Great Divide 1996

John Mellencamp Whenever We Wanted 1991

Sloan Between The Bridges 1999

The BoDeans Home 1999

Tom Caufield Long Distance Calling 1987

The Connells Still Life 1998

Gomez Split The Difference 2004

John Hiatt Bring The Family 1987

Del Amitri Some Other Sucker's Parade 1997




The rest of these are less rockers and more something else; blues, country, folk, mellower rock, and in one case too eclectic to be any one of those categories. But they are no less perfect, with every track a winner.

Dwight Yoakam This Time 1993

Boz Scaggs Come On Home 1997

Lucinda Williams Car Wheels On A Gravel Road 1998

Erin McKeown We Will Become Like Birds 2005

5 Chinese Brothers Let's Kill Saturday Night 1997

Freedy Johnson This Perfect World 1994

The Jayhawks Hollywood Town Hall 1992

Al Kooper Black Coffee 2005

Shelby Lynne I Am Shelby Lynne 1998

Kirsty MacColl Titanic Days 1993

Kirsty MacColl From Croydon To Cuba... An Anthology 2003

Kirsty MacColl had a rather strange career, but produced several unusually good albums, and she possessed a killer voice and a keen sense for songwriting. This three-CD set does a nice job of touching all the bases in a varied career, and throws in several rarities that are top notch, for that sort of thing.

Each of her five full-length albums (1981-200) is well represented, and many non-album singles from her early career appear. A few have never been released on CD. Tracks recorded for her second album, Real, that was never released, are also included.

Some of the early material is a bit too eighties synth-heavy, but most of the songs are the classic perky pop with intelligent lyrics that are the hallmark of her early pop period. There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis, A New England, He's On The Beach and They Don't Know all all great singles, and offer an interesting glimpse into the pop sensibility and humor that infuse her entire output.

Her work throughout the nineties included three fantastic albums. Electric Landlady (1991) was a fine blend of folk, pop, rock, and even a bit of rap on Walking Down Madison. He Never Mentioned Love, All I Ever Wanted, My Affair and Walking Down Madison are all strong songs, all with hook-laden choruses and memorable melodies. My Affair is an early example of her love for Latin music, later fully realized on Tropical Brainstorm (2000).

Tropical Brainstorm was her last album before her untimely death, and it is a perfect blend of Latin rhythms, great songwriting, and Kirsty's wonderful voice. Mambo De La Luna, In These Shoes?, Celestine, Alegria, and England 2 Columbia 0 are all just plain classics.

Between those high points came Titanic Days (1993), her high-water mark, and one of my personal favorites. Produced by Mark Nevin as her marriage to former producer and husband Steve Lillywhite was falling apart, Titanic Days has it all: bright love song You Know It's You, tales of very bad men (to which MacColl seems drawn, at least in her lyrics) Titanic Days, Can't Stop Killing You, and Bad, and the sentimental melancholy of Soho Square. The airy, dreamy Angel and Tomorrow Never Comes are beautiful. Nevin's production and the backing of crack musicians help realize MacColl's most consistent songwriting, and her performances are both cool and riveting.

The Anthology does a fine job of representing her entire career, from They Don't Know (the original that Tracy Ullman made famous) to In These Shoes?, a hilarious tale of dangerous love. It includes (as does Galore) the classic Fairytale In New York with the Pogues. It is well worth your dollars or pounds or euros.

For the uninitiated, there is a newer single-disc Best Of that is a good choice, although in trying to cover everything on one CD, you miss some good stuff. The 1995 collection Galore might be a better single-disc choice. If you love it, you can buy Tropical Brainstorm and have most of her best output. Personally I couldn't do without Titanic Days, but that's an odd place to start, because it is such a singular record.

The collections What Do Pretty Girls Do? (BBC recordings, and not bad) and The Essential Collection and The One And Only (both early Stiff records collections that are not complete career overviews) are for devout fans only. Avoid them unless you must own everything.