A Brief History of the Twentieth Century

This 1990 compilation captures Gang Of Four better than any of their albums. With 20 tracks in 76 minutes, it allows you to track their evolution from their 1979 debut album Entertainment! (six tracks are included, kicking off with the astonishing “At Home He’s a Tourist”) to the simultaneously funkier and noisier Solid Gold and the Another Day/Another Dollar EP (“To Hell With Poverty!” and a sandblasting live version of “What We All Want” are particular high points). At that point, the tension between Jon King’s Marxist-adjunct-professor vocals and Andy Gill’s searing, post-Wilko Johnson guitar, and the tighter-than-punk-but-not-quite-funk of bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham, defined the group. Later, on the smoother, poppier Songs Of The Free, Allen was replaced by Sara Lee, whose vocals were a thrilling counterpoint to King’s hectoring, and their newly R&B-tinged songs mutated into something one might hear from an angrier Human League. The standout track from this era, “I Love a Man in a Uniform,” is a typically brilliant Go4 juxtaposition of political, capitalistic, and sexual tensions, foregrounding a poisonous irony atop an irresistible groove. More than many other bands, Gang Of Four can be understood just by scanning their song titles — “We Live As We Dream, Alone”; “A Hole in the Wallet”; “I Will Be a Good Boy”; “Paralysed” — but the best of their music, almost all of which is here, has a nerve-jangling energy that’ll make you want to crank the volume and run in circles.