The Last Cruise

Travelling by boat from Broome to Darwin, this route in Australia’s top end is a breathtaking coastline of open seas, bays, basins, islands and estuaries. This area is dubbed ‘Australia’s last great witness’ and surprising stories of multicultural history abound - from Aboriginal cave paintings to Japanese pearlers, a Filipino missionary to a proposed Jewish refuge from the Nazis, Vietnamese boat people, WWII bombings, shipwrecks, and modern-day mining.

THE FIRST TIME…FOR THE LAST TIME is collection of demos a then-unknown Shania Twain recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Canadian label Limelight Records. Written in collaboration with Los Angeles producer Paul Sabu, the songs here are not country music, but rather well-crafted, energetically performed pop/rock fare. Though the production is often dated (particularly on the cruise-ship-dance-party-sounding “For the Love of Him” and the Laura Branigan-esque “It’s Alright), the tracks definitely offer repeated glimpses of Twain’s superstar potential. There are even a few country-tinged numbers (“Bite My Lip,” “Luv Eyes”) that presage Twain and Mutt Lange’s multi-platinum Nashville/arena rock hybrids. Though recordings contained herein have been made available in several other forms, this package goes the extra mile by offering both the original recordings and significantly re-mixed/remastered versions on two different discs.