Lali Puna

There's rarely a better time in a group's career to gather up all the loose ends than after the third album. This is the case with Lali Puna, who use two discs to compile remixes, B-sides, and other assorted parts of their back catalog. If it were condensed down to one disc, it would appeal to more than the most devout. Even so, it's commendable to present a rather thorough set like this before followers spend too much time and money obtaining all the original releases. Most of I Thought I Was Over That's highlights are on disc one, including a lovely cover of Slowdive's "40 Days" (from Morr Music's Blue Skied an' Clear tribute album), a collaboration with Bomb the Bass ("Clear Cut") that benefits from an active breakbeat, and a wonderfully lazy-traipse remix of Two Lone Swordsmen's "It's Not the Worst I've Looked." And though it would've been more appropriate to contribute a version of "Dancevision" or "The World Before Last" to the Human League tribute album Reproductions, their blippy and subdued take on "Together in Electric Dreams" easily improves upon the mawkish Philip Oakey/Giorgio Moroder original. (Tribute albums would be a lot more enjoyable if more groups took this route.) In the middle of all this is a pair of recordings from 2005: "The Failure of the Leading Sign Industry" is a mood-setting opener, and "Past Machine" is a driving Krautrock-inspired song that gets noisier as it goes along. The second disc is reserved strictly for remixes of Lali Puna tracks, offered by the likes of Boom Bip, Two Lone Swordsmen, To Roccoco Rot, Flowchart, and Dntel. Most of the batch needn't be heard twice, but there they are. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide