Anathema - Hindsight

Yes yes, I know you’re all probably thinking the same; “not another bleedin’ Anathema post!”, but tough shite! I’ve done a lot of listening to Anathema recently, and that’s how Lines In Wax works; I don’t randomly just pull reviews out of my arse, I generally try to write about what is fresh in my head to give a more accurate, in depth review. That’s why there isn’t any tangible order to the stuff I get through, and new and old releases are reviewed in no particular sequence. When I first started Lines In Wax I did posts alphabetically, that’s why most of the A & B section of the 7”s is almost complete, but you’ll also notice that when I started, I was purely posting images posts with no reviews, and posting multiple blogs per day. The reviews came afterward.

Annnnnnywaaaay, how I can ramble! Where were we? Yes, that’s it; Anathema’s Hindsight. This very fancy little CD package marked my first physical purchase of a brand new CD in an actual chain store (it was HMV) in an ungodly amount of time. I don’t like paying top-draw (read: over the odds) for CDs but this looked really shiny on the rack and with a tenner burning a hole in my pocket I couldn’t resist and caved.

Hindsight is beautiful, providing the listener with “MTV Unplugged” kinda versions of classic Anathema tracks. The opener, “Fragile Dreams” sounds absolutely epic on strings, and the acoustic version of “One Last Goodbye”, whilst a bit sappy, shows a whole new heart-wrenching side to an already cripplingly emotional song. “Are You There” sounds just as awful as the original, and songs like “Flying” and “A Natural Disaster” don’t really sound that dissimilar to their original recordings, which does get me thinking about the point of their inclusion, but I’m not really that bothered as these newer versions of both tracks sound absolutely fantastic.

All in all, if you’re an Anathema fan, you need Hindsight in your life, although to be fair you probably don’t need me to tell you that.