Everything and More

A rarity even on its 1983 release, Dolly Mixture's The Demonstration Tapes has spent decades being passed around the indiepop underground on nth-generation C90 cassettes and low-bitrate mp3s. And so, in many ways, we've gotten the story all wrong: Dolly Mixture have long been held up as a distaff Television Personalities, purveyors of shambolic DIY pop produced on the cheap. In fact, the three-disc career retrospective Everything and More reveals the Cambridge trio as clever students of classic pop, casually updating lyrical and melodic tropes from '60s girl groups and '70s glam rock. (Heck, their debut single was a cover of the Shirelles' "Baby It's You" produced by a member of the Bay City Rollers!) But unfortunately, their obvious talents were hampered by poor business decisions and some just plain rotten luck. So they were kind of like the post-punk Badfinger, only without the suicides. Supplementing the essential The Demonstration Tapes with all of the band's 1980-86 singles (many produced by guitarist Rachel Bor's boyfriend, Captain Sensible) and a third disc of unreleased material that's up to the high standards of the other two, Everything and More sounds brand new. Free of tape hiss and lossy compression, the freshly remastered songs sound charmingly simple without being willfully naive, and the trio's off-kilter harmonies mesh more smoothly. Intriguingly, the little-heard later material finds Dolly Mixture moving into a sophisticated chamber-pop direction, with piano and cello predominating, that foreshadows later artists like Saint Etienne and the High Llamas. What could have been...