4 out of 5

Label: Numero Group

Produced by: Adam Luksetich, Ken Shipley, Rob Sevier (reissue producers); Heba Kadry (remaster)

It’s… almost everything. It’s… almost perfect.

Look: if you’re a 90 Day Men fan, you should buy this boxset. I have my criticisms, but I also wouldn’t hesitate in stating that at all, and furthermore suggest that, if you’ve got the extra dosh, spring for the edition with the bonus cassette. This is an ultimate collection, providing lots of Extra while also casting a new light on material you’ve maybe listened to bunches already, both via remastering of said material, and also via the lengthy – 50+ page! – “oral history” compiled by Tim Kinsella. (Although that history is part of my criticisms… but still.)

Casual fans need not apply, of course, as there are cheaper ways to get into the group, but sets like this aren’t made for the casual fan.

Numero Group has put together just a really brilliant package: designed by Farbod Kokabi and Rebeka Arce, the 5 LPs of this set fit inside the solid cardboard prism snugly, but not so tightly you can’t reach in to snag whichever album – this being a constant complaint I have with box sets. The color scheme of orange and grey chosen by Kokabi and Arce is perfect, encompassing the kind of discomfiting beauty of the band’s music, and I love that it’s carried over to the LP sleeves (which house inner sleeves with full bleed artwork from the original albums).

The thick booklet with the history is similarly sleek, thankfully going for a more eye-easy black text and off-white printing, but the font is well chosen and there are design elements that align with the other work. There are oodles of photos in the book (some in the margins; some full pages) and then credits for each album in the back.

The remasterings are interesting. Being so used to the originals, I think there’s a bit of rawness I miss from (It(Is)It) and To Everybody;, but Panda Park has some elements brought to the fore I didn’t remember, and the EP definitely gets a quality nudge. This is a good example of new masterings helping provide a different but not wholly altered listening experience, making it fun to own both old and new – again, a fan thing – and appreciate things from each.

The cassette features recordings from one of the band’s first singles (I think; I don’t own it, so these may be different recordings of the same songs) and archival stuff from that early era. It is, as suggested above, worth the additional price: you can find hints of where the band would go from here, but also giggle at how much they were influenced by Discord and Touch and Go, and then admire how those then-youngsters were making it their own thing. I’ve reviewed the cassette separately for a more complete rundown.

As to the extras included with the boxset, there are Peel session recordings from between the first two albums, and if you ever wanted a taste of how fascinating this stuff was live, this is a testament: you get a balance of the group’s punkier edges from their debut, and the slick prog that was emerging with To Everybody;, swirled together in a pretty fantastic, swaggering, emotive, 4-song set, recorded with the same fidelity as the albums, if not more immediate thanks to the live nature of it. Additionally, on the 5th LP – which has the EP, songs from their Box Factory single, and the Too Late or Too Dead extras, there are some outtakes from To Everybody; which are, er, probably not worth it if that’s all we were getting – they’re just instrumental interstitials, essentially – but I appreciate packing the runtime.

So… why are we missing two songs from a single they put out on Southern Records (She’s A Salt Shaker / Activate The Borders)? It’s kind of baffling. Why include all of this and then skip that? The fact that the set is beyond complete otherwise makes this one miss oddly frustrating. And then my nits with the history: I appreciate just how much work this was, compiling tons of interviews with the band and friends and putting it to a chronological sequence of sorts, but firstly bear in mind that that’s the entirety of this – non-stop “talking heads” as it were – and that it’s otherwise given no context. I feel like this is kind of fitting from a Joan of Arc point of view, and maybe I’m supposed to treat my fandom like an elitist pass where I don’t need the context, but it seems odd to not even mention what people were doing in the band, or to set the stage in any way, or to have little narrative breaks to mention another year in the history has passed or something. A lot can be intuited from the text itself, yes, but it also feels a bit impenetrable and then kind of a slog at points because it’s just an endless run of people saying “and then this happened,” “and then this happened,” and so on. Again – lots of work, and overall lots of value. Just not an ideal presentation.

(And if I’m really getting picky – there are some typos in this thing.)

Let’s circle back around on the important point, though: buy this, yon 90 Day Men fan. I suspect you don’t need me to tell you that, but if you’re wondering if it adds anything to your already complete collection – yes, yes it does. It might be almost perfect, but damn, that’s close enough to merit your dollars.