Hearts In Their Eyes (compilation album) by The Searchers

Finally came the box that covers the entire career of The Searchers from the golden years at Pye through Liberty, RCA, Sire, PRT to the group's now their so far most recent album release for Coconut Records.

It has often been said that among the Liverpool groups of the 1960s The Searchers were only second to the Beatles, which this excellent box for full documents.

The group recorded in the period 1963-67 more than a dozen excellent singles and five albums for Pye Records. They scored several top ten hits, but during 1965 the group gradually began to lose the hold of their audience. This can not be explained by the declining quality in the group's record releases; on the contrary , for each release their album grew better and better, and had they been allowed by Pye to release a sixth album, this would undoubtedly have been their best yet. Just think of the fine singles released during 1966-67 and also the great bandcomposition "I'll Be Loving You" from 1967, found only as a BBC recording, which fortunately has been included on this box. The group had got an image problem which made the record buying young people lose interest in their music. As you can hear from the group's final Pye recordings, this was both a shame and unfair.

After some rather lean years in the 1970s, came the group's next heyday with Sire Records, for whom the Searchers recorded two excellent albums. Unfortunately it was only critics who discovered this, and a commercial comeback failed to materialize.

One can only regret that the group's time as a big commercial name was so short. In return, they came to be an inspiration and role model for many later artists, with their crunchy guitar sound and tight but easy vocal harmonies.

With four CDs and more than 100 tracks follows superb color illustrated 64 page book with contributions from, among others, Jon Savage, Bob Stanley, Tim Viney and group member Frank Allen.