NIKKI SUDDEN
The Nikki Sudden Compendium (Secretly Canadian)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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Nikki Sudden's music always had this wonderful, wild abandon to it that defied the depressing and melancholic nature of the subject matter. It's strange to think how cheerful poverty can be portrayed-how many rich kids in the '80s ran off to become junkies and hang out with French prostitutes after hearing Sudden's "English Girls?" I bet it was more than one. I suppose that's what made his music so genuine, and able to stand the test of time so well-just like his equally genius contemporaries, Television Personalities, these songs all sound as though he lived them, and not as a depressed, lonely whiner, but as someone who always made the best of a situation and life in general, no matter how bleak it was. This wonderful and well-thought-out collection of Nikki Sudden's work includes selections from his solo records as well as material from what he did with the Jacobites and Nikki Sudden & the French Revolution, and offers a poignant sampling of his wonderful and important legacy.

© 2002 - Holly Day