Review: The Creation's 'Biff Bang Pow: The Singles'

Some bands were born to make artful albums. Some were singles acts through and through. Monster mods The Creation were the latter, slamming out one killer seven inch after another from 1966 through 1968. Their one LP, We Are Paintermen, was basically a singles comp, and not an especially well programmed one. Filling out the platter with middling covers of "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Hey Joe" that made no one forget Dylan or Hendrix didn't help either.

So a box with the singles and nothing but the singles is the ideal presentation for The Creation's big chord bombs, pounding drums, and cascades of bowed guitar, all red with purple flashes. Demon Records first released one in 2014, the imaginatively titled The Singles Boxset. That set contained 11 seven inches, two of which contained three tracks each. It not only made room for all of the singles The Creation originally released in the sixties but pretty much every other complete recording they made too. That includes the US version of "How Does It Feel to Feel", the outtake "Sweet Helen", and those two covers from We Are Paintermen. These four tracks didn't make the cut of Demon's latest Creation singles box, Biff Bang Pow: The Singles. The covers aren't really missed, but the two Creation originals are tougher omissions, since the feedback-streaked US version of "How Does It Feel to Feel" slays the UK one and "Sweet Helen" is a pretty good song too. 

Biff Bang Pow also differs in that instead of housing each single in its own sleeve, it contains five heavy-weight gatefold sleeves with paper inners. The Singles Boxset utilized a lot of the graphics from The Creations' original sixties picture sleeves, mostly not bothering to match them with the right records. Biff Bang Pow uses all new graphics but the inner gatefolds are adorned with black and white images of the original picture sleeves, as well as band photos, ads, and other memorabilia. The black vinyl or the 2014 set has been replaced with thick vinyl in a cavalcade of colors, and yes, that includes red and purple. 

For sound comparison purposes I only had Edsel Records' 1982 comp How Does It Feel, a great platter of songs, though one that crammed eight onto each side. So Biff Bang Pow easily clears the hurdle of besting the Edsel LP's audio. These mono singles are louder and more dynamic, more open, alive, and crunchy, with thumping bass and clear highs. That's just what you want when spinning rock and roll as thumping as "Making Time", "Nightmares", or "I Am the Walker". This is the best I've ever heard them sound.