Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History

The Vaselines: Eugene Kelly, Frances McKee (vocals); James Seenan (bass); Charles Kelly (drums).
Additional personnel: David Keegan (guitar); Jamie Watson (slide guitar); Sophie Pragnell (viola); Aggi (keyboards).
Producers: Stephan Pastel, The Vaselines, Jamie Watson.
Engineers include: Gordon Rintoul, Peter Haigh, Ian Beveridge.
Recorded at Berekley St. Studios, Glasgow, Scotland; Pier House Studios and Chamber Studios, Edinburgh, Scotland. Includes liner notes by Eugene Kelly.
Personnel: David Keegan (guitar); Jamie Watson (slide guitar, steel guitar); Sophie Pragnell (viola); Aggi Wright (keyboards); Charles Kelly (drums).
Recording information: :ier House Studios, Edinburgh, Scotland; Berekley St. Studios, Glasgow, Scotland; Chamber Studios, Edinburg.
By every indication, and this is hardly refuted by this compilation of their work, the Vaselines were two Scottish singer-songwriters who regarded everything they did as a joke, who hardly knew what they were doing and didn't particularly care to learn--and who had a fantastic sense of a three-minute pop song.
They do a straight, jangly pop strum on "Rory Rides Me Raw" (about a bicycle, according to the amusingly helpful liner notes), tunefully amateurish pop-metal on "Monsterpussy" (sounding like a Scottish version of Shonen Knife), folk-rock on "Slushy," punk-rock on "Sex Sux," and low-fi electronic pop on "You Think You're A Man" (a cover of a song by the actor Divine), all with sunny harmonies and tongues darting furiously around their cheeks.
Nirvana turned three of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee's compositions into some of the most passionate and electrifying songs in their repertoire. Since most pop fans will have heard those versions first, the originals here, recorded with low fidelity and high camp, may be a bit off-putting at first: "Son Of A Gun" has a sunny keyboard line where Nirvana had extra guitar distortion, and "Molly's Lips," a paean to Scottish TV personality Molly Wier, is punctuated by bleats from what sounds like a bicycle horn. But what eventually comes through is that they simply have their own way about them, which was the way of the Vaselines.