Reviewing an album a quarter of a century after its street date is a tricky proposition in some ways, particularly when the band is the product of a very idiosyncratic era, and even more so when they are most commonly thought of as little more than the unintentionally comical footnote to something much greater.

However, having only discovered Freur about three years ago, and after giving them a fair chance, I have to say that I've become oddly hooked. Despite the fact that I'd also dismissed them as little more than a laugh at first, and despite the fact that I'd always intensely disliked this musical "style", even when I was growing up and it was still in vogue, there seemed to be something here that warranted a second listen. Well, that second listen eventually became a third, which became a fourth, and so on, until I was finally able to admit that, despite Freur being very much a product of their time, I actually authentically enjoy listening to them.

I have read other reviews of Freur releases which baldly dismiss the band as being just plain terrible and ultimately noteworthy only for being the proto-form for what would eventually mutate into Underworld/Tomato, and I will repeat that that is unfair. If anything, I think they adequately demonstrated, during their brief tenure in this iteration, that any type of music, no matter how inherently "terrible" it may be, can be done well and made to be interesting. I've listened to the majority of Freur's discography by this point, and I must say that their tracks are surprisingly well arranged and structured, oddly well-produced and mixed for the time, unexpectedly experimental, and intentionally tongue-in-cheek. In fact, I might even go so far as to claim that there's a playful approach to structure and a "to-hell-with-it" attitude towards experimenting that's even lacking in the band's Mk.II and Mk.III incarnations. Not only that, but there's remarkably little filler material on here, as most of the tracks will actually provide a memorable moment or two.

So, to each their own as always. That said, if you can get past the essential (partly intentional?) cheesiness of this whole affair, and listen to it for what it is and nothing more, it might just yield a few pleasant surprises.

I've now spent several years listening to remarkably similar comments about Plaid - essentially the same comments about every single one of their releases - and I think the time has come for a brief review of my own. The long-awaited public availability of Greedy Baby and the resultant (and instantaneous) backlash in the press and popular media is incentive enough for me...

All I will say is that for a musical approach (I won't call it a "genre") which already, by definition, requires proper and repeated listening and assimilation, Plaid, like the Black Dog before them, have always been the most slow-burn, and quite possibly the most unusual. I know people who didn't "get" Spanners for eight years and suddenly just clicked one day, wondering why they had never understood what the Black Dog had been up to until that very moment. While the "people just don't understand it" comment may seem like a tired old chestnut at this point in time, it nonetheless applies here, and with recent advances in communications and the public proliferation of personal opinion, it has become all the more obvious and prominent. Plaid's music (and their albums in particular, for some reason - maybe just due to their sheer length) always makes people falsely believe there's just nothing really going on inside, and at first, pretty much every new track/EP/album sounds somewhat uninteresting and simple, even to old-timer, dyed-in-the-wool fanatics like myself, who know of this fundamental rule and still fall into the same old trap. This actually is, I feel, one of the main reasons why Plaid are so great, and it is also a conscious product of their approach. It is also why they really are every bit as "intellectual" and experimental as their contemporaries, and perhaps even more so. Their music stands up to far more repeated listenings, over a greater number of years, than anyone I can care to mention, and ultimately proves much more rewarding.

The thrust of my argument is that they have been slagged off incessantly by a great many people ever since they began making music, and most often for the same two or three rather contradictory reasons, and also most often after far too short a time to allow for the familiarity that their work demands as a precursor to appreciation. In other words, people - particularly people who know who Plaid are, who care enough to listen at all, and who therefore should know better - would do well to take the time to see what's really "in there" before commenting either way.

That said, after a full week of repeated listenings, and following an initial reaction of shock, surprise and, yes, even disappointment on certain levels, I am now enjoying Greedy Baby immensely, though I'm still not even past my initial reaction stage. Basically, however, I fear that this might turn out to be another eight-years-later sort of deal in the making for a lot of listeners, which would be unfortunate. I believe that, after having gone through so much to release this at last, they deserve better than a quick scan through the CD and a thoughtless one-note dismissive blurb where a reasoned review or comment should be. Listen to this one properly, as I think it might actually be worth your time. Though not everyone can like the same things in the same way, it's still sad when people miss out on something they might truly enjoy simply because it guards its secrets all too well.