The Sweet, Action: The Sweet Anthology

Disc One: By Hanna

Glam Rock fans can be divided into two groups: the ones who think The Sweet were not actually glam because glam is an intelligent genre, and the ones who think The Sweet were the best Glam Rock band because they seemed to be in it for the money only.

I’ve always loved The Sweet for both reasons: for making utterly unashamedly commercial music in the true Bolan style, and for hating it. It’s a dichotomy that’s right in the middle of Glam Rock: partly authentic, partly parody, part exploiter, and part exploited, reaching a domain of ambiguity and uncertainty that make it interesting. Faux-philosophising aside, they were a great band, both as Chinnichap vehicles and as a real and separate rock band. Even when they attempted to be more metal later on they never lost their light touch and slightly sneering edge, keeping the Glam Rock tendency to parody and carrying it on into punk and later into hair metal. But let’s see what the “best of” can give us.

To read the rest of Hanna’s review of Disc One, go here.

To read Christian Lipski’s review of Disc Two, go here.

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