The Portable Galaxie 500 is an excellent introduction to this enormously talented yet criminally underrated band of the late 80s - a band whose minimalist, textured sounds has influenced countless others since.
Included are a handful of tracks taken from the three studio albums that Galaxie 500 released coupled with one track each from a live album and a rarities album. The CD also comes with a multimedia clip of "Blue Thunder."
The song selection is pretty good, though it stands to reason that with a compilation such as this some fans will feel upset that a particular favourite didn't make the cut. The truth is, however, that Galaxie 500 were such a consistently good band that in order to do them justice you would have to include most of their recorded output, and, really, that's what the box set (if you can still get it) is for.
Buy this album and then use it to discover Galaxie 500's other releases.
The Portable Galaxie 500 looks like this:
Originally written for Defunkt magazine and limited to 150 words.
Reviewed on Tuesday, 7 June 2005