With two decades’ removed, Britpop is now as much of of heritage industry as punk. Long-forgotten bands are reforming, touring and making new albums. Some, like Suede, are doing it right; others, like Blur, are not. Kula Shaker have inexplicably made two albums since the nineties, and even Menswe@r, butt of most Britpop jokes, are recording new material.

It’s a strange phenomenon. Britpop was a scene which was almost immediately derided for its lack of innovation, questionable jingoism and generally poor music. So while the concept of reissuing Gene’s entire catalogue may be a strange one, especially since theirs was very much a case of diminishing returns to begin with, they make for a pretty fascinating case study. As a band frequently championed as “the new Smiths” by a music press still desperate for such a thing, their debut album was savaged by at least one publication for sounding too much like Morrissey and co. They followed it up with a Hatful of Hollow-style collection of singles, live tracks and sessions. Fortunately, at the risk of descending into uber-lazy journalism, the comparisons end here. Unfortunately, that album marked the end of their imperial phase, and their descent into the footnotes of music began. So how do these reissues serve to redress the balance?

1995′s Olympian, the band’s first album, remains one of the best debuts of the decade. Sure, Martin Rossiter’s vocals are comically mannered in places, the frequent lyrical references to “the pubs and the clubs” are entirely of their time, and the clunky metaphors “Left-handed” offers regarding sexuality (“On the Isle of Man I’ll serve my time” indeed) should have been stricken from the record. And yes, it only really shows the band able to operate as purveyors of glammy swagger or keening scarf-wavers, but Olympian proves that they did both of those things really fucking well. Bouncy opener “Haunted by You” cops a trick out of the Johnny Marr playbook by piling on verse after verse, before exploding in a glorious, never-ending chorus for its final ninety seconds, while the swooning highs of “London, Can You Wait?” and the epic title track hint at the grandeur that would follow. No apologies - this one gets a 9.

To See the Lights is no Hatful of Hollow. That much should be obvious. A comfortable home for some of their more lunkheaded singles (“Be My Light, Be My Guide” and “Sick, Sober & Sorry” are clustered up front), and some average live versions and radio sessions (with more of the same found on its bonus disc), it’s the kind of collection for which most bands would have stockpiled as their stock waned – or, indeed, a bunch of songs perfect for scattering onto reissues as bonus tracks a few years down the line. However, it does demonstrate Gene’s more sensitive side; a re-recorded version of debut single “For the Dead” makes a suicide anthem (“Give me a rope – I’ll take it gladly”) all the more disturbing for its unassuming catchiness, while “I Can’t Help Myself” sounds like a genuine classic that just happened to have been written by Gene. Still, it’s as unnecessary now as it was then. 6, sober and sorry.

1997 was the sink or swim year for British music – it’s an oft-peddled statement, but an important one. The questing of the mid-nineties music industry to build a new Jerusalem in Camden Town left bands of the era with two choices: evolve or die. Gene chose both, simultaneously. Drawn to the Deep End, remains a fascinating listen, if only because it hints at so many pathways they could have taken to save themselves from punchline status. There are gloriously odd Queen-aping anthems, morose cocktail jazz and a couple of stabs at multi-part epicdom that never quite pan out. Flashes of the Gene of old could be found on the likes of “We Could Be Kings” and “Fighting Fit” (look at those triumphant titles! Did they not know their time was running out?) – but they’re anthems which seemed too purpose-built to truly soar. That said, an instant sell-out concert with a full orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall – their Knebworth – provides the bonus disc with a bevvy of impressive live cuts, including renditions of the album’s (and the band’s) two best songs.

With seventeen years’ remove, it’s hard to tell if “Speak to Me Someone” would have sent long-time fans running or not – ostensibly, it’s “Everybody Hurts” as rewritten by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It should be awful. It should be unlistenable melodrama of the highest order…and yet, there’s something genuinely perfect about the way the song rises and falls, and by the time Rossiter belts out that first “NO!” during the middle eight, you find yourself laughing and sobbing uncontrollably. Only Gene had that confused grasp over your emotions back then. Better still is “Where Are They Now?” – five minutes which both justify and transcend those lazy “new Smiths” comparisons; built on layers and layers of guitarist Steve Mason’s deft picking, its winding structure sounded like an outtake from Morrissey’s nineties high water mark Vauxhall & I, while Rossiter’s lyrics took on a profundity (“The smallest gentle gesture keeps the enemy at bay”) they never managed again. As a whole, though, it remains an undoubtedly strange record, and a relic of an era when major labels were willing to risk money and energy on some risky ventures. Drawn to the Deep End is a noble failure, and warrants a valiant 7.

Shaved heads? Polo shirts? Anti-Thatcher/Blair lyrical diatribes? On Revelations, one year shy of the millennium (how quaint that word sounds now…) Gene discovered the nineties. Nine years too late. Chances are, if Revelations had emerged as their second album, it might have caught the tail-end of Britpop brilliantly. As it is, the album merely stands as a too-little-too-late exercise in A&R led music for the masses. Out with subtlety, in with chest-beating, big guitars and clumsy attempts at state-of-the-nation addresses (“Bevan spins round in his grave,” anyone?). Lead single “As Good as It Gets” suffers from the same issues as “Fighting Fit” – a factory-constructed stadium anthem – but with the added pathos of only worth playing as the house lights go back up and the crowds depart. The intentionally-rough production actually comes close to making the album sound almost demo-like, and while elegiac closer “You’ll Never Walk Again” is one of the band’s best ballads, it’s too little too late. Revelations is the sound of a band playing to their weaknesses; screw the ’witty’ comment to go with its mark - 3.

Initial signs for Libertine weren’t good. Dropped by Polydor, it was self-released, and trailed by a mournfully sparse single entitled “Is It Over?”. The answer to that question seemed obvious. Yet, somehow, in the face of public and internal indifference (their anthemically resigned final single, “Let Me Move On” also spoke for itself) Gene managed to make their most experimental album without a trace of self-consciousness. Eschewing Revelations’ pseudo-political buffoonery, Rossiter’s lyrics returned inward, as his band’s music expanded. Opener “Does He Have a Name?” stretches out for seven minutes of dubby bass, luxurious strings and beautifully understated vocals, while the bluesy swagger of “We Get What We Deserve” – a snarky obit for the “young, sassy and nubile” nineties kids who long since deserted the band – works far better than it has any right to. Even the ill-advised stabs at sophistipop on tracks like “O Lover” (far more worthwhile than its initial impression of New Morning-era Suede covering “L.O.V.E. Love” would suggest) have a confidence to them which suggests that, without pesky A&R interference, Gene really could have been kings if they were allowed. So sod it, this one gets an 8 - if only because no one really noticed at the time.

The extras are mostly…well…extraneous; the reams of concert recordings show Gene as well-honed at best, and competent at worst (with Rossiter’s banter betraying his Morrissey fetish far more than his music ever did). Drawn to the Deep End‘s b-sides sound of a piece with their parent album, with its Tindersticksy title track standing out, but so-so covers of R.E.M. (“Nightswimming”) and Nick Cave (“The Ship Song” – with added cock rock guitar solo!) seem like CD2 fillers of the highest order. The flipsides to the Revelations singles, on the other hand, show that a far greater album could have existed with a little less label meddling; “All Night” should have been a single, whilst ballads like “Pass on to Me” and ”Man on Earth” are genuinely mesmerising. Once again, though, it’s Libertine which fares finest, with an entire alternate album’s worth of unreleased material littering its bonus disc; “Let Me Move On” is possibly the greatest I give up song ever written about a band ever (“You’ve done nothing wrong – we all move on…”), while a slower demo version of “You” shows that it wasn’t always a cringeworthy belter. Although worrying number of the extra songs here are concerned with underwear, the charming “Man Seeks Life” takes a sardonic look at dating culture, with its narrator with “a face you’ll get used to” seeking nothing more than a “breathing partner.” That it’s set to the most Olympian-style guitar line the band had written since 1995 only adds to its clumsy charm.

There is, in all honesty, far more Gene available on these reissues than any sensible person would want – more than most people even realised existed. Yet, while they were never a band for the ages, these deluxe editions boast at least one hidden gem worth revisiting. Even the lesser points of nineties nostalgia will, unfortunately, live forever, so while Gene aren’t quite as good as it gets, there’s more than enough here to prove that their catalogue was one worth occasionally remembering.