Album Review: Scouting For Girls – Ten Add Ten: The Very Best of Scouting For Girls
2 min read
English pop-rock band Scouting For Girls are celebrating their 10th anniversary in the best way any well loved band can, with 10 greatest hits on top of 10 brand new tracks. In these 10 years they’ve had a record peak at number one, selling almost 1 million copies of it in the UK alone, they’ve had a smash UK number 1 single and played string after string of sell out tours, now we have a career spanning album.
The album opens with the career defining She’s So Lovely, one that everybody will know all the lyrics to. The hits half features other classic tracks like Elvis Ain’t Dead and It’s Not About You, again, tracks everyone is familiar with. These 10 tracks are all brilliant, as they should be- if they were anything less than great it’d be a failure of a greatest hits. However the band has already released a greatest hits album in 2013, making this addition feel rather unnecessary and almost a distraction from the new material.
Butterflies provides for an easy transition from the old into new. Feeling like it could have been recorded in 2007, it’s a laid back guitar heavy track built to be played on sunny summer afternoons, even now it’s Autumn, there’s room for it. The ‘opening’ track, isn’t straying too far from what Scouting For Girls are. Maybe it won’t win over new fans, but it is a true celebration of their musical career so far.
Dancing in the Daylight breaks the formula a bit, it’s a light, bouncy track built upon fanfare, Wonder of the World brings some layers of synth, although it’s not the most polished.
Whilst there is some diversity of instruments and proof of growth, it falls a bit short of the mark resulting in a less than gripping album. However One Woman later in the album is rather catchy and maybe the stand out of all the new tracks.
Great for new fans looking for an easy way in when the band already have 4 studio albums under their belts, and even better for the longtime fans getting 10 brand new tracks thrown into the mix. They’ve marked their 10th Anniversary with an intimate gig in London’s Bush Hall, with 10 challenges to raise money and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease and they’ve continued to please fans. A pretty successful anniversary it seems.
