For fear of stating the pitifully self-evident, twenty years is a long damned time. Twenty years is 7300 days. Twenty years is 175, 200 hours. Twenty years is innumerable miles spent in the back of a van on tour, a ridiculous number of cigarettes, enough broken guitar strings to support a bridge (if they're woven together properly) and a slightly smaller but no less significant number of bass strings and/or drum heads. The number of lost or broken guitar picks to have passed through a touring band's hands in twenty years defies imagination; the number is comparable to the number of stars in the sky.
Twenty years is a long time to be in a band, and it only makes sense that – scattered between and beneath all the empty beer cans, heaping ashtrays, broken strings and broken picks there would be a few songs left behind. In 1999, Millencolin picked up some of those discarded moments and compiled them onto the first Melancholy Collection but, now, the band has done it again and illustrated that as the band has improved, so has the stuff they've discarded; this new Melancholy Connection is solid enough, in fact that it is easily able to stand up as a really good album in its own right instead of just being another souvenir for longtime fans.
Regardless of whether you know what to expect from Millencolin or not, there is a very real chance that any listener who checks out this Melancholy Connection will be bowled clean over as “Carry You” – one of the two new songs featured on this comp – explodes to open the proceedings. Here, singer/bassist Nikola Sarcevic shows no age as he damns the torpedoes and gives an inspired vocal performance while guitarists Mathias Farm and Erik Ohllson and drummer Fredrik Larzon chase along after him. It's a phenomenal intro to this set and really leaves the outlook bright for what might be coming.
Those hooked by “Carry You” won't be disappointed by what follows it. With particular standout moments like “Junkie For Success” (pulled from the 2008 Detox single), “The Downhill Walk” (which was a B-side in 2002), “Ratboy's Masterplan” (a 2005 B-side) and “Queen's Gambit” (taken from the Penguins and Polar Bears single) in place to really blow some minds and melt some faces at key points through this run-time, listeners will find themselves kept excitedly on edge throughout Melancholy and amazed by the fact that, while there is as much as ten years worth of time separating the recording sessions which yielded these songs, they all fit together surprisingly well and keep a consistent tone throughout.
For some listeners, the CD portion of this Melancholy Connection would be enough to generate interest in this set, but Millencolin has hedged its bets and elected to include a true gift for fans: a performance of their breakthrough album, Pennybridge Pioneers, played in its entirety, captured at Soundwave Festival in Australia in 2011, commemorating the album's tenth anniversary (yeah – the numbers don't line up for the logic and the band concedes that in the introductory spiel at the beginning of the film – so just go with it). To the credit of both the band and the film, Pennybridge Pioneers has never sounded better as the band launches into their set before an incredibly excited (and enormous!) audience, and years truly do melt away as songs like “Material Boy,” “Highway Donkey,” “Stop To Think” and “Right About Now” all charge forth hard and fast and with it made pretty clear that the band has gone out of its way to find the vision behind the music to faithfully re-present it. The heart and care obviously taken for this performance is intoxicating and those who see it will find themselves torn between wishing they'd been there to see it live and wishing they could have been there to see it when the sparks were first struck – it really is that good.
Between the CD and the DVD included, it can easily be said that this new Melancholy Connection is a valid inclusion into Millencolin's catalogue. This set not only sews up some of the loose ends left hanging over the last ten years, it also offers fans who had been with the band a stellar experience in its own right. It doesn't happen often that an odds-and-sods collection has the power to really get people (both old fans and new ones just turned on to the band) excited about a band, but The Melancholy Connection does just that.
Artist:
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Album:
The Melancholy Connection is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
