In the Eighties, there was a real snobbery about The Bangles. For a band with a genuine connection to the Paisley Underground, it was odd that the group was never quite accepted as cool. It didn't help that they had Top 40 hits, I guess.
Over the course of this 4-CD set from Chery Red, it's apparent that the band was one of the very best on either side of the Atlantic in the Reagan years. Watching The Sky - The Bangles Box Set collects the first three studio albums, a bunch of remixes, a few rarities, and I think all of that 2016 reissue of their recordings as The Bangs. Taken as a whole, this is an extraordinary body of work. Even when they were polishing their sound for mainstream audiences on their Top 40 hits, The Bangles never lost the clear jangle-pop and Beatles-y charms of their earliest sides. To say that this is essential is a tremendous understatement.
With All Over the Place in 1984, the musicians churned out Big Beat winners like "Hero Takes a Fall", a Katrina and the Waves song made better in "Going Down to Liverpool", and even a cover of an Emmit Rhodes's nugget in "Live", a classic from his band, The Merry-Go-Round. It's a brief record but every bit as pleasing as the rougher stuff, also collected here, from when The Bangles were still The Bangs. On 1986's Different Light we get the big hits, obviously: "Manic Monday" (written by Prince as Christopher), "Walk Like An Egyptian", the sublime "If She Knew What She Wants" (a Jules Shear cover), and even a run at Big Star ("September Gurls"). Heard nearly 40 years later, the album isn't nearly as cohesive as the first or third Bangles records. Still, it's got some amazing tracks on it, and I defy you to play this and not have "Walking Down Your Street" or "Not Like You" stuck in your head all day. These two, written by Susanna Hoffs with cowriters (including drummer Debbi Peterson on the latter), are proof that the band's best record isn't all just covers.
I worked in a college record store when Everything dropped in 1988, and I can say it was a huge release for us, selling well on CD, cassette, and vinyl. Even before "Eternal Flame" was released as a single, this was one of the big albums of that autumn for our shop along with Green and Rattle and Hum. I mean, if you were at a loss for what to play in the store, Everything was one that would likely please record store flunkies and customers the same. In fact, the more you played this beyond the big singles like "In Your Room", the more interesting it became. There's the Lowen & Navarro-pennded "Something to Believe In" with vocals from bassist Michael Steele, and the soaring "I'll See You Free", written by Lowen, Navarro, and Hoffs to offer evidence of new depths to the Bangles' approach. And even with two fantastic records released before this, Everything served up what might be the perfect Bangles song in "Waiting for You", one of the great should-have-been-a-hit singles of the whole decade.
Watching the Sky - The Bangles Box Set, in addition to bringing us all three studio albums from the Eighties, serves up a bunch of remixes which are, frankly, not needed except for us Bangles completists. This is such a fun set, and a handy one in that it's got pretty much everything The Bangles recorded in the Eighties, and it's such a good reminder of how wonderful this band was. I think even fans took them for granted as they got bigger and bigger. The hits may have obscured just how many fantastic deep cuts were on the albums themselves, and just how wonderfully adept these four women were at adapting Sixties styles to an era where New Wave was really looking elsewhere (macho anthemic rock, gnarly noise stuff, or Brit synth stylings). The Bangles, classicists in a sense, did a lot with their chance at stardom, and they released at least three albums which are masterpieces of American pop. Absolutely essential.
Watching the Sky - The Bangles Box Set by The Bangles is out now via Chery Red.