Hello - Keep Us Off The Streets / Again

Glam-disco fusion best appreciated in single-size bites.

Hello enjoyed their moment on the chart spotlight, in Britain at least, with 1974-75 singles Tell Him and New York Groove, both of which appear on first album Keep Us Off The Streets. In Germany their star continued to shine through to ’77, the year before the release of longplayer number two, Again.

Neither album has any great pretension, the singles on the first being augmented with covers of rock classics such as Shakin’ All Over and Let’s Spend The Night Together. Again features more band-penned material and only two covers, one a disco-fied version of Jeff Beck’s Hi Ho Silver Lining that shows how they’d just leapt from one bandwagon (glam) to another.

If it’s the Hello hits you want, you’d be better off purchasing The Glam Singles Collection on the same label. On the plus side, the packaging is typically enjoyable, there are copious bonus tracks on both titles, and Mark Brennan’s sleevenotes reveal one first-LP song was co-written by Ultravox’s Chris Cross, brother of drummer Jeff Allen. You can’t get much more fascinatingly trivial than that!

7T’s | GLAMCD 30 / GLAMCD 31

Reviewed by Michael Heatley
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