Despite its rather cheeky title,
Greatest Hits 1977-1990 is a good place to sample the entire
Stranglers output. From the squalor of the late-'70s material, to the smoothed-out gloom pop of songs like "Skin Deep" and other mid- to late-'80s neo-goth rock, this is a solid anthology that values substance over style and exhaustive track selection. For sure, a well-edited
Stranglers anthology is the only way to enjoy them; they recorded way too much dross to spend time searching out all of their plentiful, marginal records.