I remember buying this thinking "what an awesome idea". On paper a 7" boxset sounds fantastic - a nice variation on the LP - but in reality it means I have to get up eleven times rather than just once to turn the records over. Not that I'm complaining (well, just a little) because I do like this boxset a lot. See Through This and Leave is a cracking album and one I've been enjoying for more than 10 years now.
I'm reasonably sure the first time I heard of The Cooper Temple Clause was because they were supporting Muse on a tour. A lot of people at school were into Muse and went. I wasn't a Muse fan and so ignored The Cooper Temple Clause too. Somehow I ended up hearing them and realising they were actually pretty cool. I think I saw the video for Let's Kill Music (a song I still often put on mixtapes) or heard Panzer Attack on a free Kerrang! cd. I picked up the cd with a bonus disc of early songs for a bargain £9 in my local MVC not long after it came out. About a year later I was in Nottingham having visited Lancaster University the day before (university visits were always about record shopping in new cities for me) and found this boxset version for an even more bargainous £7 (everything in Selectadisc was cheap). I had already decided it was enough of a classic to warrant two copies, so picked it up.
The music is still exciting today. They were undoubtedly an indie band but had way more balls than most of the others at the time. The songs were heavy, messy and noisey (all things I enjoy) and there was a lot going on. Even listening to it now you notice hints of instruments that weren't there before. Did You Miss Me? makes for a fantastic start and has a brilliant level of arrogance to it (that certainly wouldn't have worked so well on anything but a debut album). The album had more than it's share of singles, but the two closers are truly the gems of the record; The Lake is a brooding beast and Murder Song explodes twice into the perfect, powerful outro the record deserves.
The band had a fair innings. Their second album was a sleeper-hit with me - it took a few years before I really got it and now I consider myself a big fan of it too. My friend Matt and I went to see them at university, one of the very few things we did with the "Rock Society", who we'd signed up with after cynically scorning everything at Freshers Fair but feeling we really should try. Neither of us could get on board with university societies, but the very occasional organised trips to gigs were a bonus. I bought a few singles from the third album but was even less into that at the time. Matt bought it and I enjoyed hearing it, although many years on and I'm yet to buy it. The band eventually called it a day a short while later. If they were to do what Hundred Reasons and Hell is for Heroes have done and reformed to play their debut album ten years later in full, I for one would be very excited. Man, 2002 was a strong year for music.
The box is numbered (#1387 for me) which is a nice touch. I'd have put the cd sleeve notes on the six 7" sleeves rather than the plain white sleeves they are in. To be honest, even the cd sleeve thrown in with the box would have been better than nothing at all. I once saw a Michael Jackson album on six 7" square picture discs where they made the picture of the cover when arranged in order; that was pretty cool. Still, what this boxset lacks in features like that, it makes for in being a truly excellent album.
Format: 6x7" boxset, numbered
Tracks: 11
Cost: £7 new
Bought: Selectadisc Nottingham
When: 20/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: None
mp3s: No
