The Ep Collection

The See For Miles label's EP collections are a good way for listeners to get a wide overview of an artist's career — all of the hits are there, because EPs were built around established hit singles as a stopgap toward doing a greatest-hits album later on, and a lot of interesting stuff that didn't make it onto LP also often showed up as well. This collection runs the gamut from classics like "Shout" and "Here Comes the Night," and the lusty R&B-flavored "You Touch Me Baby," to the softer pop of "Not in This Whole World" and "Don't Answer Me." Lulu was good at both, although she was far more successful in England as a white soul shouter than as a pop balladeer. The producers have jumbled the material from different EPs, so keeping a chronological order is out of the question, and makes this disc a little bit frustrating. On the other hand, the stuff here is of such high quality (it was real easy to come up with four good tracks for an EP, as opposed to 14 solid songs for an LP) that it's all worth hearing, regardless of whether it's being heard in the order in which it was intended — "Chocolate Ice" was no "Shout," but it's a pretty good song, regardless; and she does amazingly well covering standards like "So in Love," as well as Motown classics like "Heatwave." She also turns in a vocal cord-ripping performance on "He's Sure the Boy I Love" that nearly rivals John Lennon's work on "Twist and Shout." The notes tell a fair amount about Lulu during the mid-'60s.