Yet The Czars remain Denver’s best-kept secret. In their lifetime, they simply couldn’t turn critical salvos into commercial success. Then, when the band split up in 2004 after their fifth album - the presciently titled Goodbye – nothing was heard from any member for six years. So when their frontman JOHN GRANT reappeared in 2010 with his landmark solo debut Queen Of Denmark, some thought he was a new artist, without a back story that stretches as far back as 1994, when the singer/songwriter/pianist met (bassist) Chris Pearson in a club in downtown Denver’s red light district. Drummer Jeff Linsenmaier signed up next before guitarists Andy Monley and Roger Green arrived respectively in 1997 and 1999. By then, The Czars had
self-released two albums that Grant still disowns as premature prototypes: “muddy, croony, bluesy and countryish with a touch of electronics and a huge identity problem” is how he recalls them, and neither is represented on The Best Of The Czars.

Instead, it’s the run of three studio albums that Bella Union released between 2000 and 2005 that constitutes 15 of the 16 tracks. 2000’s Before… But Longer donates the first four songs, 2002’s The Ugly People Vs The Beautiful People the next six, and Goodbye the next five. The final track is an exquisite reading of Tim Buckley’s signature standard “Song To The Siren” taken from 2005’s B-sides/covers compilation Sorry I Made You Cry.

Grant is his own fiercest critic, and says of all Czars albums, he only stands by Goodbye. “It’s the only one that came anywhere close to being what I’d hoped for,” he reckons. “Out of the five albums we made, there’s one good solid album of material.” Well, John, here it is. But The Best Of The Czars isn’t merely good; it’s magnificent. But what exactly was Grant, their principal songwriter as well as singer, hoping for with The Czars? From Patsy Cline to Tim Buckley, Connie Francis to Simon & Garfunkel, trad British folk to the Great American Songbook, the originals that the band covered on Sorry I Made You Cry give an insight into their sound and vision. At their best, The Czars mastered a luminous and stately country-folk’n’western noir shot through with a classic songwriting twist and the occasional bristling arrangement (such as “Side Effect”).

The musical backdrop ebbs and flows with empathy for the tone of Grant’s sensational
caramel-toned baritone, which was only matched by his penchant for eviscerating confessionals: those desperate exorcisms and unanswered prayers, those feelings of despair and yearning, anger and contempt while growing up in god-fearing homophobic quarters of America, didn’t just start with Queen Of Denmark. But for all his fear, Grant was remarkably brave in using the “he” pronoun when describing his thwarted love life. Goodbye, for example, was not about the bitter end of The Czars but the collapse of a seven-year relationship, plus Grant “saying goodbye to self-destructive me" as he struggled to sober up after years of alcohol and drug dependency, all compensating mechanisms for his deep-rooted unhappiness.

The vinyl version of the compilation includes the Abba cover “Angel Eyes” and the Connie Francis classic “Where The Boys Are”, both of which highlight Grant’s exquisite voice, the almost radioactive levels of sadness and loneliness, and the objects of the desire. Certainly a man singing about “him” didn’t endear The Czars to many Americans in the early part of the Noughties. But why the band remained Denver’s best-kept secret could equally be down to the fact that a lush, tortured and romantic brand of Americana-tinted song-craft just wasn’t called for at the time. Maybe it was down to the infrequent, and frustrating, live incarnations of The Czars and the band’s frequent personality clashes. “I was terrified of audiences, and I’d get so drunk that I couldn’t sing or play the piano,” Grant recalls. “We’d all drink to handle being around each other.”

But through the salivating press reaction and the underwhelming public response, Bella Union, kept the faith. It was to label head – and former Cocteau Twins bassist – Simon Raymonde that Grant – a huge Cocteaus fan– had first sent those early Czars recordings; Raymonde fell in love with their new demos and ended up co-producing both Before…But Longer and The Ugly People… albums and he kept in contact with Grant after the band split, organising him to support Bella Union labelmates Midlake on a short US tour, after which the boys from Denton, Texas offered to help him record what became Queen Of Denmark.

On various tours since that solo debut, Grant has performed three old Czars tracks: “Drug” (according to Drowned In Sound, “sheer beauty on a plastic disc”) from The Ugly People… and “Paint The Moon” (“soaring, crystalline ballad…an exhilarating, simple melody, dramatic chord progressions, and a sweeping arrangement” said Pitchfork) and “Little Pink House” (Pitchfork again: “a jazz burner stuffed with trumpet and fat piano chords”).

“They’re the Czars songs I most connect to in performance, that I’m proudest of, that flowed out of me as complete products,” says Grant. As a whole, though, the band remains a conflicted memory for the singer. “I had so much fear at the time, I wanted to try and control everything around me, which I feel affected my voice,” he admits. “Only now do I feel that voice is coming out of its shell, and that I’m comfortable in my own skin. But the music is an important part of my history, so it deserves to be heard.”

Indeed it does. It’s too recent to class The Czars as “buried treasure” but this compilation will be a revelation for John Grant lovers who don’t know the band.