The above review refers to the UK version of The Best Of The Wildhearts. This is the superior Japanese version in all its splendor.
The only problem i have with this compilation is that i don't agree with the track listing for the first CD. I've never liked "Dreaming In A" much and instead of "The Miles Away Girl" either "News Of The World" or "Love U Till I Don't" would have been much better. That's just me.
Anyway, this Greatest Hits sets shows alot of thought. The A-Side CD is a decent plowing through the bands main attractions while CD2 features all the bands B-Sides to that point. The Wildhearts work ethic of going back into the studio to write B-Sides especially means that the resulting songs are of a far higher quality than your usual re-mix or album out take affair.
To top it all of you have handwritten notes by Ginger in the sleeve describing the story behind (almost) every song.

In retrospect it's not a complete Greatest Hits, because it was released when The Wildhearts parted with their label, so anything they released afterwards is obviously not here.
The Wildhearts are simply a superb rock band. Catchy and heavy in equal measure they represent FUN and ROCK combined in a way that hasn't been replicated since. This compliation is good to get you started, and if, like me, you descovered The Wildhearts too late to have bought any singles, the extra CD is a joy for newcomers and fans alike.

What a fantastic band! The best of the Wildhearts really is the best of the best.

The Wildhearts UK label were not fans of the band. Both band and label clashed over almost everything, and when The Wildhearts finally managed to split from EastWest in 1996 the label responded with this Best Of compilation in order to milk the last few drops they could. In all fairness you can't argue with the quality of the songs, but with one look at the Japanese version which was complete with a whole bonus CD (featuring all the B-Sides) you can see that not much effort was made here.

All that said, this isn't terrible. A good song order (as opposed to the Jap chronolgical approach) and an arguably better song selection in some places. Unlike the Jap version the inclusions of dedicated b-movie "Splattermania", excellent "If Life Is Like A Love Bank..." and 120mph "Caffine Bomb", ups the ante in quality Wildhearts songs. In terms of introducing you to the band, this selection is as good a starter as any.

However, to fans such as myself, there are some little things that ruin this cd. The fact the blurb in the sleeve is rather "we were great friends with the band!" when they weren't. The fact that we have the 'radio edit' of "Sick Of Drugs" instead of the original, that's just plain stupid. The remix of "29 X The Pain" is insulting to the band who expressly prefer the original, and the inclusion of the (alright) "Beautiful Me, Beautiful You" as the only un-released song in this country smacks of an obvious attempt to draw in the people who already own all the other songs, and therefore help boost sales for the label.
Lastly, the label's outright refusal to release "In Lilly's Garden" as a single, and then include it here is just hypercritical, (in fact there are at least 5 better songs i can think of that i would replace "In Lilly's Garden" with if i had the choice).

So, if you know nothing about the band and don't care about the guilt, by all means get this and enjoy the sheer fun factor of the amazing back catalogue The Wildhearts amased. If you are a dedicated fan, the Japanese version is worth the extra money.

As a 'Best of' collection this isn't that great. Many of the tracks are gems but there are quite a few of their best tracks missing. There are some single B-sides included here but there are better ones which could have replaced them. Two of the extra tracks from the vinyl issue of the official release of 'Fishing For Luckies' are also present but even that doesn't help the album as one of the tracks isn't that great and the other is the very poor new version of their classic B-side '29 x The Pain'. The band didn't sanction this release and it's easy to see why. A sloppy track selection for a band who deserved a better representation of their music, it gets three stars due to the excellence of the tracks from the first two albums but it could have been so much better with a bit of thought.