While in their home town, I was looking for any Viva Saturn, but to no avail. While checking the Rain Parade section, though, I was pleasantly surprised. First, I saw that for the first time ever Crashing Dream was available on CD, but I also found this one for the first time on any format.
Here is a posthumous compilation of Rain Parade's finest odds and ends. Mostly demos, it's a great look into their later work for the Emergency Third Rail Power Trip purist, as the stylistically similar album art should imply. The first ten tracks show the band in preparation for Crashing Dream before Island records cleaned up their sound a bit. Personally, I think most of the album version are better, but these are worth hearing, even if you agree with me. Though, perhaps this could only be said about such standouts as "Mystic Green," as this collection's version of "Gone West," despite its invasive synthesizer is better than the proper album's. Additionally, this includes two tracks (including a title number) from that album which, at least in this context, stand up to the others.
The last nine tracks of this collection are the only available examples of Rain Parade's last days and the unsurprising change of pace. Here the band's final sound was one much darker and indeed for the most part heavier than any previous phase. While at times they remain slow and more comparable than ever to David Roback's post-Rain Parade project Opal, even more are rockier than one would have previously though possible, with the live "Got the Fear" sounding a bit like early Built to Spill. However, this should not be a surprise considering how much Rain Parade's Paisely peers had changed by this point (1987), and these rough demos are better than anything The Bangles or The Three O'Clock released that year.
Rain Parade - Demolition (1991)
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