Terry Sylvester ‎– Complete Works 1969-1982 (2001)

Terry Sylvester is the kind of artist whose solo career would probably be best represented, for most listeners, by getting his two LPs on a single CD from Collectables or Collector's Choice. An important but ultimately not essential member of the Hollies from 1969 until the early '80s, he also enjoyed a middling solo recording career in the '70s; 150 minutes of his music gathered together in one place seems like overkill, but that's the route that Magic Records of France has followed, representing all of these aspects of his work over that 13-year period, 43 songs mastered in 24-bit digital audio on two CDs. His solo recordings, represented on the first disc, consist of pleasant mid-tempo pop/rock, some of it fairly catchy if not extremely memorable, and not too different from the Hollies' work of the same period but without the harmonies -- a few of the songs, such as "The Trees, the Flowers and the Shame," a strangely haunting ballad, are fairly enigmatic in their subject matter; the best cut on this disc is "Too Bad Lucy Jane," a bright rocker with attractive guitars, great hooks, and a killer chorus. It's difficult to assess most of this music without taking into account the era of its origin -- in 1974 and 1976, these were solidly commercial releases that touched all of the bases that they were supposed to, but today they mostly come off as reasonably pretty, intermittently exciting, modestly distinguished artifacts of their period; the most interesting of them, from a musical standpoint, are the handful of Hollies numbers that Sylvester also recorded solo. Much more engaging is the material on disc two, which features a dozen of Sylvester's best recordings with the Hollies, among them his most substantial songwriting efforts on the group's behalf -- and having Tony Hicks' guitars and Bobby Elliott's drums on hand sort of boosts the value of almost any song. His work with ex-Bread member James Griffin is also represented on the second disc, and a trio of previously unreleased songs -- "Big Man's World," "It's Not Easy," and "Saturday Dance" -- fills out the set.