Most of the essentials are here: upbeat anthems such as "Let Them Eat Rock," "Rabble Rouser," and "Highfalutin'"; that pinnacle of punning, "I've Got My Ascot 'n' My Dickie"; "Rock 'n' Roll Butler" and "Boudoir," each a perfect mixture of playfulness and toughness; heavy-hitters like "Who's Who of Love" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy." [How often does one get to say "heavy-hitters" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy" in the same sentence?] In some of their choices, however, The Upper Crust are maladroit. Let Them Eat Rock is well represented, but there are some grievous omissions from their greatest album, The Decline and Fall of The Upper Crust: "Vulgar Tongue," "Persona Non Grata," "Versailles" (which warrants inclusion for the off-rhyme of "Hall of Mirrors" with "fancy beers," if nothing else), and "Ne'er-Do-Well." One also can't help wishing for the band's highly amusing cover of "Back in Black," from the AC/DC tribute album Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be (Reptilian Records, 1999), in which the lyrics are pompously spoken rather than sung.

To make room for those deserving songs, Cream of the Crust could easily dispense with the musically and lyrically lackluster "Matron" and a few of the other tracks culled from Once More into the Breeches, The Upper Crust's least consistently riffalicious and witty album, yet the one that is favored to a small degree on the compilation. The only no-brainers on Breeches are "We're Finished with Finishing School," the disturbingly funny "Concubine," and "Heirloom," a quintessential piece of Crust verbal cleverness and rousing rock, mysteriously absent from this collection. Curiously, the men responsible for remixing and producing Cream of the Crust, Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, The Pixies, Hole, etc.), also produced Breeches and Let Them Eat Rock, but not the somewhat slighted The Decline and Fall of The Upper Crust.

The packaging constitutes another faux pas: out-of-focus photos inside the digipak, very little information. Whether straightforward or fabricated - like some of the profiles the band has provided over the years - some kind of retrospective would have been welcome and doubtlessly entertaining. The individual members, past and present, are a gold mine of intriguing factoids, while "Bumbles," their "faithful manservant" and liaison between his noble employers and the masses, is well up to the task of humorously recounting Crust's story, truthfully or otherwise. His reports of his "Masters'" doings are as hilarious as their lyrics. When anticipating the stir caused by Cream of the Crust's release, for example, he suggested that "like a delicate fart eased out beneath the dinner table, [it] may perhaps make its appearance with a certain discretion, but shall surely raise more than a few eyebrows before the company retires to the drawing room for brandy and cigars."

Although likely to raise a few eyebrows in consternation over its incompleteness (and over the fact that no label opted to release it), Cream of the Crust is a good representation of The Upper Crust's body of work, worthy of being lapped up for the improvements in sound and as an introduction to this band's exquisite style of "roque." Devotees and newcomers alike should be inspired to throw the horns - in the Crust manner, of course: with a raised pinkie.

written by Maud

Playing time: 57:45