My first experience with Ian Brown's solo output came in 1998, when his debut solo LP, Unfinished Monkey Business, was still somewhat fresh. I had a program on a small college station and tried to play the instrumental title track near the end of my show, but was forced to fade it out halfway through because it was too awful for words. Still, I was a Stone Roses maniac at the time and gave it another chance a week later, spinning "Corpses in Their Mouths" (in its entirety). Lyrics like "She smokes crack/ It's off the beaten track" notwithstanding, it was a pretty cool song, with a sort of slinky vibe, spaghetti Western guitars, and stylish production, and it somewhat restored my faith that perhaps one of the members of the Stone Roses might be capable of something great outside the band.
Three Ian Brown albums later (discounting a remix disc), I'm still hesitant to refer to anything he's done as "great," but he has managed a few choice tracks on each solo LP, and now some of the best are gathered in one place on The Greatest, a collection with a title that's presumably intended as a play on his reputation for arrogance (in his music if not his personal life). Also included are his two UNKLE guest spots, "Be There" and "REIGN", and obligatory new tracks, "Return of the Fisherman" and "All Ablaze". Everything is arranged chronologically, and even alternate or new versions of certain songs are slotted with tracks from the same album as the original recording.
"My Star" isn't exactly the most auspicious opener, with its horrendous faux Indian music intro, tired NASA samples, and hokey lyrics about astronauts and "space exploration," but the mellow detachment of "Corpses in Their Mouths" rights things quickly. The three Golden Greats cuts included are generally a cut above the material from the first album, especially the scientifically questionable "Dolphins Were Monkeys", which rides a funky, fuzzed-over Rhodes groove and employs busy production that makes it more difficult to understand what Brown is singing. "Golden Gaze" has the kind of fuzzy electro stomp you figure Led Zeppelin might have happened upon had they continued into the mid-90s.
The mid-90s are what I most think of when listening to this disc, in fact. Even the material recorded well beyond the close of that decade, like the three tracks from 2004's Solarized, sound wedded to those years, and it's pretty remarkable how consistent the production style is from album to album. This collection works almost as though the songs were all recorded in a one or two-year span-- Solarized opener "Longsight M13", for instance, with its anthemic stomp, vaguely Eastern melody, and bleepy effects, sits comfortably next to the heavily phased electro-Britpop of "Can't See Me", a song six years its senior.
The two UNKLE tracks stick out for their comparatively stark musical backings, but Brown's vocals, double-tracked as always, unite them with the other material easily. "Be There", a one-off single from 1999, comes across as too repetitive, but "REIGN", from UNKLE's unheralded second album Never, Never, Land, is pretty good, with a rough beat styled from some nice breaks and a well-chosen string sample. The song serves as a nice companion to Music of the Spheres opener "F.E.A.R.", one of Brown's best solo tracks with its well-scored string arrangement and slow, churning beat.
As the cherries on top, the new songs aren't terribly sweet. "Return of the Fisherman" is clumsy, stuffed with vocals that don't line up with the rhythm track and a chorus that rhymes "king" and "sing" over and over again, while "All Ablaze" is serviceable but hardly essential, closing the compilation with a bit of buzzy psychedelia overrun with wandering special-effects guitar. The Greatest is easily Brown's best solo release, as it should be, even if he doesn't always hit the mark.
