Rusty Demo Songs

I'll start the review by saying that I think fresh body shop has an inspiring musical talent and finding he'd released another album was music to my ears. So, does this album feel like his previous offerings that so many of us are fond of? Within seconds of hitting play I found the answer to be yes as I was struck by a fresh sounding song which left me in awe. Though the whole album could be lumped under 'alternative', there are more rock-y moments, more punk-y moments, more heavy moments and alternatively many breath-taking intimate moments, such that this album is more diverse in style than his last three combined. This isn't only the best 'demo' ever compiled, infact it's one of the best albums I've ever heard.

Two months ago or so, the alternative band Gorillaz released their "D-Sides" album, a compilation of B-sides and leftovers from the recording sessions of their second studio album. The thing is, these B-sides and leftovers sound just as good as - if not better than - the album itself! The only thing that ruined it was a boring and awful remix CD that came with it.
And just like that, this "leftovers compilation" album is packed with plenty of powerful and - mostly - varied songs, from insanely melodic pop songs like "Another Day Without Sun", "Scarify", and "Bad Fluid", to heavy power chord string-snappers such as "If I Could", "Fruit Of A Bad Tree", and "Alone With Myself", to solo piano or guitar performances like "This Taste" and "Am I Here", to the usual fresh body shop 'pop rock with a twist' repertoire like "Not That Good", "Deep In The Abstract", and the fantastic "The Self Hate Song". My most favorite song, "Aeromind", definitely stands out as a dense, airy, possibly Celtic-influenced song, with Pedro singing in an accurate way that I've never heard from him before.
A couple of times there's notable background crackle (hence "rusty" demo songs, probably), and most songs suffer from the same bad voice mixing that's heard in "make this end" - maybe all of them do, but it's not notable in the solo piano/guitar songs. The abundance of 'guitar/piano plus the singer' types of songs on the first half of the album begins to irritate alightly, and the guitar rhythm in "This Taste" sounds exactly the same like the one in "Another Day Without Sun" - given that was just five songs ago, it feels really awkward.
All of these issues are forgivable, though. Basically, these are demo songs, some obviously recorded before "make this end", and it was even admitted in the description that 'the sound is shitty'. The fact that some songs sound a bit the same can also be understood, and shouldn't be even cared for, since this compilation offers a greater assortment of genre-mashing than the albums. And the bad vocal mixes... they're no more, right? Just listen to "tasteless".
This compilation shows some facets of this solo artist/band-type-thing I haven't come to know until now, and it's great. Plus, it's even twice longer than the band's usual albums, and it doesn't come with a crappy remix CD. I hope that some of these will be considered for re-recording (hint: "Aeromind" has some background crackle too) and that other artists will follow suit.