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It’s kind of a minor miracle that Enzyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 (Chrysalis CRC/CRV1899) – the first in what we hope is an ongoing reissue campaign for Antipodean rock icons Split Enz – exists at all. Their catalogue is probably a tough sell if you live outside of Australia or New Zealand (none of their discography is consistently available worldwide), and their best-known work, where they became a razor-sharp, New Wave-adjacent ensemble, doesn’t come until years after what’s covered in this collection (available as a 5CD or 3LP set). And that’s before you get into the music itself: shaggy, semi-pastoral pop with folk and prog afflictions that only occasionally hint at what fans would hear in the early days of MTV, or even further on the timeline, when Neil Finn – younger brother of band co-founder Tim Finn and a later addition to the group who’s not yet heard here at all  – would find international success as founder and frontman of Crowded House.

Enzyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 is a much firmer push into the pool than a new career-spanning compilation might be. But if you know respectable eight-figure streaming hits like “I Got You,” “Message to My Girl” and “Six Months in a Leaky Boat,” will you discover anything of value in the band’s early works? (Sure, if you’re patient.) And if you know every swatch of fabric, makeup palette, guitar strum and spoon clatter that made the group such oddballs coming up from down under five decades ago, will Enzyclopedia offer the definitive word on the early Enz? Perhaps the band said it best: “Sweet dreams…every once in a while.”

The set, at its most maximum, features new remasters of the band’s first two albums, Mental Notes (1975) and Second Thoughts (1976); a remix of the latter by bandmate Eddie Rayner; a partially remixed and reorganized version of 1979 singles-and-oddities collection The Beginning of the Enz and the new bonus disc Wide Angle Enz, offering seven rare and unreleased live cuts and rough mixes. It’s liable to confuse from the get-go: about half of the material on Mental Notes was re-recorded for Second Thoughts, which was released in some territories under the title Mental Notes. (Such is the case in America, where Chrysalis digitally offers, with near-identical covers, 1975’s Mental Notes and 1977’s…Mental Notes) The line-up isn’t too drastically changed between albums, both of which feature Tim Finn (vocals/piano/guitar), Phil Judd (vocals/guitar), Eddie Rayner (keyboards), Mike Chunn (bass), Emlyn Crowther (drums) and Noel Crombie (percussion, as well as the band’s visual design). (Wally Wilkinson plays lead guitar on Notes while Rob Gillies is a featured saxophonist on Second Thoughts; additional musicians include flautist Mike Howard, violinist Miles Golding and drummers Div Vercoe and Geoff Chunn on early singles as Split Ends, lending a patina of Jethro Tull-ness to it all.)

The push and pull of Finn and Judd’s songwriting is central to the group at this juncture. Each is capable in equal measure of beauty, punch and unbalance that might leave the listener more lost than the unusual hairstyles and make-up the band could sport in their early years. The careening sequence of Mental Notes offers embryonic examples of what one might consider that classic folk/rock/pop Finn sound (“Walking Down a Road,” “Amy (Darling)”) intermingled with hazy Judd-driven epics that recall King Crimson or Genesis as a post-Peter Gabriel quartet (“Under the Wheel,” “Stranger Than Fiction”). Sometimes, the signals get crossed entirely, as on “Time for a Change” – a winsome Judd composition sung with heartrending delicacy by Finn – or “Spellbound” (a duo co-write where Judd’s craggy vocals approach a rhythm more like Tim’s). They’re odd, but not avant-garde; weird, but not for its own sake. (One minor curiosity on Mental Notes is an indexing error that begins “Amy (Darling)” about halfway through the track; the rest of it appears on the preceding “Under the Wheel.”)

By much of the Enz’s account, Mental Notes was in part undermined by co-producer David Russell and engineer Richard Batchens, who seemed baffled at best (or hostile at worst) to the band’s in-studio approach. The Enz would find an unlikely high-profile ally in Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, who caught the group on Australian TV before realizing they were his band’s support act. Impressed by both appearances, he offered to assist them as they saw fit, and so Second Thoughts was recorded in England with him in the producer’s chair. One can debate the merits of the re-recorded Mental Notes tracks, but the new songs here – including the upbeat Judd-Finn collab “Lovey Dovey” and Judd winners “Late Last Night” (a re-recording of a non-album single) and “Sweet Dreams,” arguably the most straightforward pop number the Enz offered in this era – are unquestionable assets. (Your reviewer did have a laugh when the extended spoon solo on “The Woman Who Loves You” prompted my 20-month-old daughter to imitate Enz’s rhythms with a wooden comb and brush handle – a moment which turned teachable when she started whacking her twin sister!)

It’s around this point that Enz loyalists may be tested by the presentation of Enzyclopedia, when Rayner’s remixes kick in. “The original 1976 mixes [of Second Thoughts] always felt right to me,” Rayner writes in the liner notes. “But…curiosity got the better of me.” This sentiment may drive detractors of Rayner’s previous remixes of later Enz albums Frenzy or True Colours crazy. (Scott Davies, founder of Rubellan Remasters, licensed the unique U.S. version of Frenzy from stateside rights holder Universal Music Group for an intended CD release that Rayner and the band blocked, causing a chain reaction that led him to blast UMG and the group and close up the label.) Listening to some of Rayner’s tweaks on Second Thoughts (available only as a remix in the vinyl set) or the first side of The Beginning of the Enz, you might wonder if Davies had a point: several tracks suffer from unusual editorial anomalies, from garden-variety editing to new electronic rhythm tracks or – most notably on “Sweet Dreams” – the use of Auto-Tune to keep Judd’s vocal better pitched. Artistic intent is what it is, but it does grate when the original presentation isn’t preserved, as is the case on the vinyl box or either version of The Beginning of the Enz.

This sentiment does spill over into a few nitpicks, too. One might wonder if the live set at Melbourne, Australia’s “Reefer Cabaret” at Ormond Hall just before New Year’s Eve 1975 – which takes up about half of the Wide Angle Enz bonus disc deserves a fuller release than the four tracks included here (with others featured on previous reissues and compilations). It might have been nice to hear equally rare studio content like the Second Thoughts songs as reportedly recorded during the Mental Notes sessions, or the original single release of “Late Last Night,” which, near as we can tell, has never been released anywhere else.

Perhaps the most striking what-if is the rather good packaging that could have been even stronger. The CDs are encased in a trifold media carrier replicating Judd’s amended Mental Notes artwork in vivid colors, and the liner notes for the albums on the inside panel. Curiously absent are any notable appearances of the original album covers, including a newly-designed sleeve for The Beginning of the Enz that Crombie created for the new LP. This is accompanied by a 40-page full-color booklet offering rare photos, advertisements, handwritten lyrics, tape box scans, single sleeves and brief, new liner notes from Finn, Rayner, Wilkinson and Manzanera, plus an excerpt from Mike Chunn’s Enz biography Stranger Than Fiction and a page of technical credits (including remastering by Phil Kinrade at AIR Studios). While all of this is great, one could’ve imagined testimony from key members like Judd, who’d never appear on another full-length Enz album, or Crombie, who’d have something to say about the band’s onstage aesthetic. (There is at least a URL directing curious fans to Enzology, the must-hear, nearly 10-hour audio documentary on the group, assembled from Radio New Zealand in 2012.)

But it’s all very well to cry: these are minor quibbles over a striking set that puts a less-familiar era of Enz into sharper focus than ever before. Faithful collectors might want to hold onto previous sets just to have everything Enz has ever released, but Enzyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 is a fine foreshadow of what future installments might sound like – particularly as Split Enz got more and more Finn-tastic along the way.

Enzyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 is now available from Chrysalis Records and can be purchased below:

5CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Check out the rest of The Second Disc’s Holiday Gift Guide here!