Sandie Shaw
Album: 6 Sandie Shaw Reissues
Label: Salvo
Tracks: 138
Website: http://www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk

This collection of well-presented CDs provides a welcome chance to re-evaluate, in fresh digitally remastered form, a mighty proportion of the recorded output of this surprisingly underrated singer, here collected together on a uniform series of well-filled CDs, and much of it appearing in this format for the first time. The first five discs span the initial phase of her career - the years of her major fame, 1964 to 1969, through almost to the end of her contract with Pye in 1972 - then the sixth disc, Hello Angel, covers her renaissance, 1984 through to 1988.

Essex teenager Sandra Goodrich - the 17-year-old "Dagenham Diva" - burst barefoot onto the receptive pop scene as a trendsetter par-excellence in 1964, and the first of the CDs, Sandie, presents her original debut LP in its entirety plus ten bonus tracks (the five non-album hit singles and their B-sides including There's Always Something There To Remind Me, Girl Don't Come and Long Live Love). Sandie's then at times distinctly strident vocal tone betrayed her inexperience, but this was offset by her impressive range (check out her sensitive treatment of Love Letters), and by the time of album number two, Me, her delivery had mellowed somewhat. Even so, the choice of material sometimes left something to be desired, and Oh No He Don't and other cod-Caribbean misjudgments really ought to've been relegated to the cutting-room floor. On the other hand, Sandie's cover of Downtown was no disgrace, and she proved she could make a believable fist of motown and soul-pop fare like Baby I Need Your Loving. But by the time of late-'67 album number three, on the heels of Eurovision and mainstream success, the standards had taken over, and lusher orchestration was becoming the name of the game, with occasional novelty numbers like the infamous Puppet On A String creeping in. However, it was more a case of Love Me, Please Love Me, as Sandie entreated repeatedly, and the theme of very many of the songs she tackled was loving and leaving and breaking up, to which emotions Sandie was to prove more than equal in expressing - most especially, it invariably turned out, on the B-sides.

Album number four, The Sandie Shaw Supplement, arose out of the TV magazine show she hosted in summer 1968, and punched straight in with a new sophistication, signalling her coming-of-age (and arrival as a Woman) with a vengeance and an even more compelling sense of identification with the songs, on a set of covers ranging from a beefy Route 66 to a plaintive Homeward Bound, a raunchy Satisfaction to a tender Aranjuez Mon Amour and an honorable What Now My Love. The album is usefully topped up with eleven single (A- & B-side) cuts from 1968 and 1969, which veer from confident covers (Harry Nilsson's Together) to unfortunate incidences of character-over-acting (Show Me) and slightly irritating bonbon (Monsieur Dupont).

If …Supplement contained some finely judged covers, then its successor, Reviewing The Situation, was even more striking, taking in anything from Rolling Stones to Dr. John, Bee Gees to John Sebastian, Bob Dylan and Donovan to Beatles, all credibly and thoughtfully reinterpreted by Sandie (check out her wispy rendition of Lay Lady Lay, for instance, or her delicious take on Led Zepp's Your Time Is Gonna Come, or her cocky invocation of Sympathy For The Devil). Yeah, Reviewing The Situation proved Sandie was cool, and the album has deservedly attained the status of cult classic. Here, the reissued disc's ten bonus cuts include assorted singles and outtakes, among them a savvy version of The Fool On the Hill and the two curios Frank Mills and Junk (which had only surfaced as recently as the 2004 EMI compilation), together with other tracks that have lately been unearthed from the vaults - but stop short of the final four singles Sandie recorded before her Pye contract lapsed. The final disc here, Hello Angel, takes in the original 1988 album, cast into perspective by the Hand In Glove single and sides with The Smiths, and the various sides cut for Polydor in the mid-'80s. The LP in particular contained some remarkably mature songwriting from Sandie herself as well as a couple of enterprisingly chosen covers; it also found her in superb voice and included a significant quotient of tremendous, career-topping performances.

Sandie's output may have been pop, but for the most part it was quality pop. And this set of CDs constitutes a real feast for Sandie Shaw aficionados, not least because each of the discs comes complete with excellent presentation: original sleevenotes alongside new essays in suitably lavish booklet.

David Kidman