01 You're a Hurricane, I'm a Caravan (demo, undated) - just Karl at the piano
02 Ship of Fools (demo, partial 1984) - first time Karl ever recorded the song
03 Holy Water (vinyl-only B side) - inexplicably left off any album or comp
04 The Little Man Within (demo 1985) - "Gets him mixed up with Him"
05 All the Young Dudes (edit)+ - a soundtrack cut worth keeping
06 Penny Lane* - how does one guy DO all this?
07 Martha My Dear* - simply great
08 Piece of Mind - not sure what he was on about; not sure KARL knew, either
09 Little Bit of Perfection (outtake - Dumbing Up) - on the original LP, then cut
10 Nowhere Man* - early recording & rather simple, but it does the job
11 All You Need Is Love* - ditto my comment for Track 06
12 The Long & Winding Road* - if 1980s-era Prince covered the Fabs?
13 A World Without Love - written by 16 year-old Paul McCartney
14 Your Freedom - Rainy Days (demo 1990s) - worthy of a good listen; wow
15 Sunset - a studio jam worth a head bang, or three
All songs by Karl Wallinger, except: +David Bowie (by way of Mott the Hoople), *Lennon-McCartney
ROB SEZ: The sprawling 5-CD Arkeology is a great thing, and every self-respecting World Party fan needs to have it, at least digitally. That said, I was uncomfortably aware that it left out a lot of strong material. So I did what I typically do: I hauled out my archive and looked for Karl's gems that didn't make it to the box set or the streaming services of Apple Music, Spotify, etc. So what you have here is about a disc's worth of RARE FINDS — and not the throwaway kind. Most are sourced from my own CD singles and vinyl, but a few are lossless captures of lossy webstreams of one sort or another. I doubt that even the most fervent fan has heard ALL of these. Track 14, for instance, is something I found recently when I was on my treasure hunt. A quick sidetrack: did Karl have a serious Beatles fetish or what? Answer: obviously! Yet I challenge you to name another artist who consistently pulled off Lennon-McCartney cover versions of such high quality and right feel — even when he radically revamped the music, as he did on track 12. There's plenty more out there that didn't make it into Arkeology. But I am convinced this is the rarest and best of the lot.
