Eurythmics

In the Garden (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Sweet Dream (Are Made of This) (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Touch (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Be Yourself Tonight (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Revenge (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Savage (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

We Too Are One (RCA/Legacy)

Eurythmics

Peace (RCA/Legacy)

As a singles act, London’s Eurythmics not only wrote all their own hits, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox’s co-authorship stamps nearly every track across the New Wave duo’s eight studio albums. Wallpapered with stunning portraits of Lennox, not to mention her equally stunning voice, and improved by generous amounts of B-sides, 12-inch mixes, and covers, the Eurythmics’ newly reissued LP run proves there’s a fantabulous box set to be gleaned here. 1981 debut In the Garden grows so very English, lush, nocturnal, with tantalizing pulse “Take Me to Your Heart,” reprised live as a bonus track. Breathy, synthetic, 1983 breakthrough Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) reinvents the pair as Blade Runner replicants, whose bizarre take on T-Birds’ smash “Wrap It Up” doesn’t help a noticeable thinness in the song/hook department outside of bookends “Love Is a Stranger” and “This City Never Sleeps.” Bonus highlight: a totally Eighties take on Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” Likewise, the best bits of follow-up Touch, besides Baccarat cuts “Here Comes the Rain Again” and “Who’s That Girl?” are the extra tracks – live and live, acoustic versions respectively of both FM gems. A serpentine take on Bowie’s “Fame” mops up. 1985’s Be Yourself Tonight is the best of the bunch, not a bad cut among high points “Would I Lie to You?” and “There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart).” Aretha Franklin on “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” mirrors the album’s more soul than synth quotient, including a melting cover of Françoise Hardy fluff, “Tous Les Garçons et les Filles.” 1986’s Revenge opens on the Ike & Tina Turner-ish “Missionary Man” and romantic ecstasy of “When Tomorrow Comes,” but pulls up short with Reagan-era stiffness. Save for “You Have Placed a Chill in my Heart” and “I Need a Man,” the perfect Aretha shout-out, 1987’s Savage, whose opener proclaims, “I was dreaming like a Texan girl, a girl who thinks she has a right to everything,” isn’t any more memorable. Final LP of the initial run, 1989’s We Too Are One, is bereft of hits, yet still manages to be one of the better efforts in the catalog. After a decade-long break, the entirety of Peace doesn’t have a single song as good as one of two new tracks on new best-of Ultimate Collection (Arista), the soaring, majestic “I’ve Got a Life.” Lennox/Stewart strikes again.

(Revenge, Savage, Peace)

**

(Sweet Dreams)

**.5

(In the Garden, Touch)

***

(We Too Are One)

***.5

(Be Yourself Tonight)

****

This article appears in December 16 • 2005.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.