Populating a phone’s music library with 10cc essentials is easy. Their run of mid-70s hits were bona fide, pop-literate, soft-prog gold. But as this exhaustive 145-track, 14-disc, all the albums, plus single edits, B-sides and alternatives box set reveals, warming to their deeper cuts is a far tougher task.
As far as 70s bands go, they’re as unsalvageable as a budgie jacket, but as is often the case with repertoires of similar vintage, their signature hits are rose-tinted with lashings of seductive nostalgia. Unsurprising, as this is exactly the purpose for which they were designed; Donna, Rubber Bullets and The Dean And I hark back to an idealised 50s America in the form of sock-hop doo-wop, Jailhouse Rock retread and prom-smooch-to-midlife- breakdown soap opera, respectively.
