Unit 4+2 – Greatest Hits: #825 of best 1,000 albums ever!

Why is Unit 4+2’s Greatest Hits on my best 1,000 albums ever list?

It’s fun and rock and pop and a little quirky and very British Invasion.

What does Unit 4+2’s Greatest Hits mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?

Because I see so much of life through the prism of pop culture – which… makes sense, given that I’ve embarked on what I define below as an audacious and crazy project to rank 1,000 albums in terms of the best-est ever – when I listen to “Concrete and Clay,” Unit 4+2’s bona fide one-hit (wonder) back in the day (that day being 1965) – it sounds like the greatest song that never (yet) got inserted into a Quentin Tarantino song.

It’s fun and rock and pop and a little quirky and very British invasion.

Here’s “Concrete and Clay,” performed at someplace called The Barbican, which delightfully doubles down on all of the above points. They’re mostly performing at a construction site because, why… oh, the concrete, of course!

Pretty epic chorus, too, along these lines.

The sidewalks in the street
The concrete and the clay beneath my feet
Begins to crumble
But love will never die
Because we’ll see the mountains tumble
Before we say goodbye

I’m a sucker for the mid-‘60s British Invasion sound, so I can’t get enough of songs like “Too Fast, Too Slow.” Is it quite at the level of The Beatles, or even The Kinks or The Zombies? No, but what is?

At 40 songs, this greatest hits package plays really well if you’re looking for an afternoon of fun deep cuts. “I Won’t Let You Down,” for example, is pretty incredible, with nice subtle vocal harmonies on top of a swinging British ‘60s rock beat (that winks a little bit too at the emerging Beach Boys surf rock vibe?).