CD reviews: Ray Columbus & The Invaders: The Definitive Collection

by Gary Steel

This double set looks like a real labour of love, with its nicely designed and well-written liner notes. More importantly, every song of any consequence (and probably quite a few that are not) is here, and properly remastered, too.
Of course, we’re looking at primitive recordings here, but considering their age, they sound pretty good: there’s even some bass to be heard.

The bigger question is: what were Ray Columbus & The Invaders to New Zealand? They’ve certainly got a prime place right at the beginning of local rock history, but it’s probably a little presumptuous to call them ‘NZ’s Beatles’. Listening to a song like ‘She’s A Mod’ now, it’s certainly as vigorous and fresh and fun as, say, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. But the songs here betray a general ‘entertainment’ ethos that’s a lot less artistically interesting than the Beatles ever were. Plus these guys were never really writers, so they’re at the mercy of the material they could get hold of, and the quality and performances vary wildly in style.

Those performances? One of the greatest things about the Invaders from this distance is their phenomenal tightness. There’s a terrific vigour to the group that says something about the time in which they existed, when this beat music we now think of as naive was a new phenomenon.