Return To A Northern Town: Real Gone Preps Dream Academy Anthology with Previously Unreleased Tracks

The Dream Academy announced itself to American listeners in 1986 when “Life in a Northern Town,” the first single off the British band’s first album, made it all the way to No. 7 on the Hot 100.  More than twenty years later, the strength of The Dream Academy’s music was made clear when country-pop duo Sugarland took the song back to the Top 40, this time on the country chart.  The trio, consisting of Nick Laird-Clowes (guitars/vocals), Kate St. John (piano/accordion/saxophone/various) and Gilbert Gabriel (keyboards/vocals), only recorded three albums  and a clutch of singles, but their innovative blend of pop, folk and electronica – sometimes classified as “dream pop” or “sophisti-pop” – has allowed the band’s small catalogue to endure.  On July 29, Real Gone Music unveils a 2-CD anthology of the music of The Dream Academy.  The Morning Lasted All Day: A Retrospective has been sequenced and remastered by Nick Laird-Clowes, and presents the band’s hits, rarities, previously unreleased tracks and even one new recording.

Laird-Clowes states, “I wanted this to be a definitive ‘best of’ that would also include a few key unreleased rarities for the people who really know our work.  I’m thrilled that I found some tracks that I think sit easily beside our best work so that any listener could enjoy the collection as a seamless whole.” All told, the collection features 24 tracks on 2 CDs drawing on all three albums recorded by the band between 1985 and 1990 with such well-known as co-producers including Hugh Padgham, Patrick Leonard, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, and Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham.  The Morning Lasted All Day, which takes its title from a lyric in “Life in a Northern Town,” includes such favorites as “The Edge of Forever” which appeared in the comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and two versions of “Power to Believe.”  The latter song appeared in another eighties comedy, Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

After the jump: what will you find on this new set?