Reuben

To celebrate 20 years of 'Racecar Is Racecar Backwards', Big Scary Monsters proudly present 'The Complete Stakeout Sessions', by Reuben: 41 demos and alternative versions of their seminal debut album and other early recordings.

From Jamie...

"Right before we made Racecar we recorded the whole thing as-live in the same studio with the same producer, along with most of our other songs, to work out which tracks we should concentrate on. I remember it sounded great from the off, and listening back it still does. In fact, I lobbied pretty seriously that we should just release these versions of the tracks, in order to forgo the long tortuous process of overdubbing, fine-tuning and general fretting that comes with all album production. 21 years later you can hear how that might have sounded.

The tracks have been arranged in chronological order rather than recording order so that they can be enjoyed as alternative versions of our first few records. So the second disc is just Racecar, track-for-track, and side A is the Pilot EP in the same manner, all with little differences and rough lyrics and things that make you wonder. Most of all it's just cool to hear how slick we were at this point - all the instrumental parts are live and no tricks are missed. I particularly like the way you can hear Jon's bass more clearly when it's not smothered by a hundred guitar tracks - super cool."