Compendium: the Fontana Trinity spans the years 1987-1990 and features 44 tracks over 2 CDs plucked from the Lilac Time's first three long-deleted albums, plus most of the B-sides. Fundamentally a study in mellow tunefulness, the Lilac Time's pastoral minstrelising owes much to the timeless tranquillity of Nick Drake. Drake's influence is clearly audible on gracefully strummed songs such as "Return to Yesterday", "Black Velvet" and "You've Got To Love", from their eponymous debut album. Of course, such acoustic serenity was markedly out of the step with the 1980's mainstream, and predictably, the band became exiled to pop's periphery. Their second album Paradise Circus is arguably their finest hour and rightly considered a lost classic. Highlights here include "The Girl Who Waves at Trains"--which deftly dodges the tweeness of its title and includes the brilliant couplet, "I won't pester or presume, I love you through the diesel fumes"--and the pants-a-swinging "The Lost Girl in the Midnight Sun". The Lilac's third and final Fontana long-player & Love For All found head Lilac Stephen Duffy evoking The Incredible String Band, Pet Sounds and "Penny Lane" to concoct a wistfully English brand of psychedelia. Post-Fontana, the Lilac Time released a 1991 album, Astronauts for Creation and then disbanded, Duffy duly reverting to solo status before once again reconvening the band in 1999. --Chris King