Rival Schools - Used for Glue

When I was at college, Rival Schools were huge. The first time I heard about them was in a promotional magazine MVC sent out. There was a bit about the album United by Fate and I remember reading it whilst having breakfast thinking that it sounded like good. On that recommendation, I bought the album and it was great. Shortly afterwards I started seeing the video for Used for Glue about the place and they became pretty big. I'm not sure any of us really understood the significance of the bands the members of Rival Schools had been in just yet. I ended up getting into most of them in a big way.

On holiday to visit my uncle in Boston, I went record shopping and picked this up in one of the Newbury Comics stores (the one by Havard Square, although I'd also visit the Newbury Street one on that trip). Newbury Comics is one of the coolest record shops I've been in, and if I lived in New England I'd spend an awful lot of money there. Foolishly, this is the UK import, which I then brought back, although I'd never seen it in the UK so I don't regret my purchase. The sticker in the picture was given to me when I saw Rival Schools in the Astoria in 2002 and has lived in with this record since I bought it. At Glastonbury Walter threw Rival Schools frisbees into the crowd, which remains to be one of the coolest pieces of band merch I've ever seen. I wish I'd caught one.

Needless to say, Used for Glue is a huge tune and one of my favourite Rival Schools songs. The Sweet is a good song too, and has a lot in common with some of the slower songs on the album. It's not often you get proper b-sides these days, so it's particularly nice. I also have the cd single somewhere, which has two more b-sides.

In the last ten years, I've twice seen copies in record shops of United by Fate on vinyl, but both times the sleeve was in terrible condition. I'd love to have that album on vinyl, but it seems I'm not the only one - discogs currently has two copies both for more than I've ever spent on a record.


Format: 7", numbered (#840)
Tracks: 2
Cost: £4.20 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Havard, Boston
When: 05/08/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

I'm not sure any band has started their career as well as Black Sabbath did here. The self-titled song on their self-titled album sets the scene perfectly - a rumble of thunder in the heavy rain, a bell tolling, the slow guitars and drums, and eventually Ozzy's terrified wailing. That must have scared the shit out of people in the 70's; it's still pretty scary today. Even the artwork makes you feel a little uneasy with that "figure in black" and the huge inverted cross inside the gatefold.

My parents are quite young, so the records I grew up listening to were Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. He didn't have this album, but I particularly remember Paranoid (and The Wall too). Maybe it's not the sort of music you're supposed to play to young children, but I turned out alright. I think for that reason, I've always enjoyed Black Sabbath. I only really know the first two albums, but I have a sneaking suspicion that's all you need to know. Both are classics and it only takes a listen to The Wizard, N.I.B. or Warning to convince yourself (or War Pigs, Paranoid or Iron Man for that matter. I know this isn't about Paranoid, but I don't have that album on vinyl. When snowboarding earlier in the year I had a huge fall whilst listening to Iron Man. It came on my mp3 player and I was having a great time carving down my first red slope. I found myself enjoying the song so much I caught an edge and went flying down the hill. Still, it was pretty excellent whilst it lasted).

I picked this record up in Snooper's Paradise in Brighton, which is one of the most incredible shops in the world. It's hard to explain it, but every trip to Brighton deserves a visit. I once bought a slightly broken 1970's Bang & Olufsen turntable in there for a tenner. I fixed it, but in doing so broke it in a different way and haven't quite got round to committing the time to fixing it again. It's a lovely looking record player, even if it doesn't quite work at the moment. Anyway, £3 for Black Sabbath is the sort of bargain you can expect in there, although annoyingly the price sticker took off some of the sleeve.

I've spent most of the morning listening to (the excellent) Electric Wizard, a band who take a huge amount of influence from Black Sabbath. I wish more bands would do the same.


Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 7
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Snooper's Paradise, Brighton
When: 11/01/06
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

MewithoutYou - It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright

Just before I bought this record, I'd forgotten about MewithoutYou for some time. Years ago Hugh had put Torches Together on a mixtape for me, I bought their first two albums and thought they were pretty cool. I enjoyed the spoken-word/shouting take on singing and the heavy tunes. Somehow then, I forgot about them for three or four years; I still played the albums I had but didn't seek out any new music or news in general. In September however, I rediscovered them when flicking through the LPs in Banquet Records.

The description they'd put in with the sleeve caught my eye and, having just been paid, I decided to chance £16 on a band I'd pretty much forgotten about. They had compared the album to Neutral Milk Hotel. I stood there for a minute trying to figure out in my mind how it would sound, and eventually decided it could work. I liked both bands and, despite their wildly different sounds, figured it had potential.

It's All Crazy... is MewithoutYou's fourth album, and somehow their style shifted considerably in the years between their second album and this. Listening to It's All Crazy... you'd never believe that they were a post-hardcore band - gone are the guitars and shouting, replaced by upbeat folk and singing. Still, for the most part it works, and you could easily believe they've never played any other music. The comparison to NMH holds too, because there's an edge and a style to the songs, not too dissimilar to the way Jeff made In the Aeroplane Over the Sea stand out. The highlights are definitely Bullet to Binary (Pt. Two), The Fox, The Crow and the Cookie and The King Beetle on a Coconut Estate (the outro to Bullet to Binary often refuses to leave my head). Unfortunately the first song, Every Thought a Thought of You, is the worst and made me immediately doubt my choice to by the album. Luckily my "what I have I bought?" thoughts were knocked aside on song two and the other ten songs are much better.

A few words need to be said about the package, because it's pretty lovely too. The artwork is excellent (and fits nicely with the themes of the album) and the record colours are great. The etching on side 4 was a very nice surprise too. It's hard to see in the picture beneath, but it's a crow in a tree with a cookie in it's mouth, and a fox sat at the base, relating to the song The Fox, The Crow and the Cookie.

Overall, I'm pretty glad I bought this album; it reminded how much I enjoyed the band and it works well on it's own.


Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, 20"x16" poster
Tracks: 11
Cost: £16 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 11/09/12
Colour: One orange, one green
Etching: Sides 1, 2 & 3: "MewithoutYou It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright", Etching on side 4
mp3s: no

Silverchair - Neon Ballroom

It was my sister who introduced me to Silverchair; there were only a handful of bands she got into before I did when we were younger, but Silverchair was one of them. When I was 14 or 15 I went on holiday to America with my family and my sister bought a handful of cds, benefitting from the good exchange rate. In amongst them was Adrenaline by Deftones and the first three Silverchair albums - Frogstomp, Freak Show and Neon Ballroom. I went on to buy the other two albums they released, but in so many ways those first three are the classics. I loved how different each album was from the one before it (no doubt the huge musical changes were due to the young age they recorded Frogstomp at), but Neon Ballroom struck the perfect combination of the angst of the first two and the pomp of the final two.

The first half of the album is huge, and Emotion Sickness and Anthem for the Year 2000 sound incredible with the volume way up (I have the house to myself and I'm blasting this record). The second half isn't bad, but it doesn't have the huge songs of side 1. Black Tangled Heart and the almost-punk Satin Sheets were also favourites back in the day and still hold up fairly well now.

I picked this LP up in Selectadisc in Soho (before it became Sister-Ray) while I was passing through London on the way to Winchester from Lancaster. I had an hour to make my connection in Waterloo so figured I had time to swing by some record shops, which I did, just about (there's no guilt in rushing around London because everyone does it). I was amazed it was only £6. Even today copies are going for £20-£30 on eBay. It's in practically mint condition too (a slight mark on the sleeve and the inner isn't quite perfect). I'd been a fan for a long time so was pretty pleased to find it on vinyl.

I only saw Silverchair once, but it was incredible. I had tickets to see them in 2002 but Daniel was taken ill and the tour was cancelled. Luckily that meant I got priority booking when they rescheduled the dates for 2003 and got tickets for the first of four shows in Shepherd's Bush Empire. Unfortunately this show was the night before my maths A-level exam, but got away with going by telling my parents the exam was the day before. I passed (only just) and they still don't know to this day. The Live From Faraway Stables cd/dvd is a pretty good representation of the show I saw that night. We had no Frogstomp songs, but Emotion Sickness and Anthem pleased me plenty.


Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, inner
Tracks: 12
Cost: £6 second hand
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 06/10/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

My Vitriol - Finelines

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've played this record in the last five years, but I remember a while back in the day when you couldn't move for hearing Always: Your Way. That song was huge and, playing it now, it's still a tune. My main memory of listening to the album when I was 16 was that the intro and Always: Your Way were great and the rest had nothing about it that really stood out.

I don't ever remember being a huge fan of the band, and I'm quite surprised to see that I paid £11 for the cd. That was a lot of money back then. I guess I was more into them than my memory suggests. When I found the LP for £4 on my second-ever trip to Selectadisc in Nottingham I already considered the album a minor classic from back-in-the-day and was happy to add it to my armful of records. It's probably been horribly neglected in my record collection - the cd/mp3s have always been at hand for those very occasional plays I've given Finelines since 2004. One of the many reasons I started this blog was because I felt I was neglecting some of my records, and by listening to them and writing about them I'd give them their dues.

So what am I getting out of this record this time around? Mostly memories of studying for GCSEs and playing Nintendo 64. Between those strange flashbacks, there are songs I'd forgotten about. Grounded and Losing Touch are still good tunes, and Infantile made me think of Deftones, something it never did back in the day. Both bands have their shoegaze influences, but My Vitriol had way too much pop about them, and I always felt Stephan's guitar gave the 'Tones their heavier side. My Vitriol's attempt at heavy on C.O.R. was always out of place. The instrumental Tongue Tied is pretty good too, and I wonder how they would have faired as an instrumental band (not that there's anything wrong with the singer's voice, but it gives a better chance to pull away from "normal" rock songs, and you get the impression they're trying to). It's the sort of album you'd expect to have a huge closing number, and whilst the short drum outro to Under the Wheels is nice, I think leaving it on Falling off the Floor would've been better.

At 16 songs, Finelines was always too long, despite four of them being filler tracks, but overall it's been nice playing it again. This has been a nice trip down memory lane.


Format: 12", picture inner
Tracks: 16
Cost: £4 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 15/03/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Bear Vs. Shark - Right Now, You're in the Best of Hands. And If Something Isn't Quite Right, Your Doctor Will Know in a Hurry

I think I just got this record. I've had it for months, played it quite a lot and thought it was good, but I put the needle on the record this afternoon and was suddenly struck by how excellent it is (in fact, I'm now listening to it for the third time today). Might have something to do with the fact that I'm playing louder than usual - Bear Vs. Shark sound very good loud.

I'm reasonably sure the name Bear Vs. Shark had never passed my ears (or eyes) until I got a Friction Records sampler at Fest last year (a cd I got free when I bought the first two Shores albums). I still didn't know anything about them for a few weeks afterwards, but that cd put me on the path to finding out about them. As we drove from Gainesville to Orlando, Sarah dug out the two cds she'd got that weekend (just try buying music on any format but vinyl at Fest. I love how difficult it is!) and we listened to them in the car. The second was the Friction Records sampler and the second song - The Hustle by Bars of Gold - was excellent. When I got home I played it again, and it was still excellent. I had a Google, read all about them and made good intentions to ship their album over. The piece of information I took in was that two of the band's members used to be in Bear Vs. Shark and that Big Scary Monsters had re-pressed their debut album. Always keen to avoid being shafted by customs fees, I figured I'd pick up the Bear Vs. Shark album on BSM and save Bars of Gold for later.

The album, as I've only just realised, is incredible. The music is a perfect mix of punk-rock and endless amounts of energy. Evidently, I had to turn the volume up to realise this, but the opener Ma Jolie is huge, and so are the 13 songs that follow it. Songs like The Employee is Not Afraid show an indie side to the band and it's a pretty upbeat record too; play it on a day when you're in a good mood and it'll take some effort to shift the smile off your face.

This reissue is pretty lovely too. The sleeve is entirely different to that of the original, it's numbered (/250) and the colour of the vinyl is lovely (despite a friend pointing out it looks a little like a scab). When mine arrived the record itself was strangely dirty and had slightly knifed the sleeve, but these things don't affect how enjoyable the music is. BSM has now sold out of these, but Banquet has at least one copy which I notice every time I go in there since it has a lower number than mine.

I still haven't bought the Bars of Gold record. I've listened to it on Bandcamp and it's every bit as excellent as the song I heard. You can hear the similarities to Bear Vs. Shark, so much so I think this album may have quenched my desire a little; I still want to buy the Bars of Gold LP, but then I just play Bear Vs. Shark instead and that kind of suffices. I also quite fancy picking up the second BVS album, but copies in the UK are few and far between. On the off chance Kevin is reading this, could BSM please put out those two records? I'd definitely buy them both, and I can't be the only one.

Nearly wrote a whole post about this album without mentioning that it holds the record for the longest album title in my collection.


Format: 12", numbered (225/250)
Tracks: 14
Cost: £12.50 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 03/05/12
Colour: Red with black haze
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Turbonegro - Ass Cobra

How the fuck did it take me so long to hear Ass Cobra!? I've been sporadically buying Turbonegro's albums since I saw them seven years ago and I figured I'd heard their peak on Apocalypse Dudes; how could any of their records been better than that instant classic? Ass Cobra does it somehow. I still love Apocalypse Dudes, but Ass Cobra has re-ignited my love for Turbonegro.

Some of the bands greatest songs are on this record. Deathtime, Demin Demon, and Bad Mongo are all perfect examples of Turbonegro's own death-punk genre, and that's just Side 1. In fact, you can drop the "death-" because the whole album is full of great punk songs. I think that's why I like this album more than Apocalypse Dudes - it's way more punk and way less camp (despite Sailor Man). The first album is even more rough around the edges, but Ass Cobra does everything perfectly. The intro to Imorgen Skal Eg Daue might just be one of the greatest intros I've ever heard, and I Got Erection closes the album on another of Turbo's greatest hits.

I picked this album up for a tenner on my second ever trip to All Ages in Camden, and it's proved to be £10 very well spent. Inexplicably, the order of the songs on the vinyl and the tracklisting on the back of the sleeve bare no relation to each other at all. I can't seem to find any reference to this on the internet (Discogs lists 6 versions of the LP, and it appears that I have the Boomba Recs sleeve and the Bliztcore vinyl but with neither a poster nor insert). So, for the sake of posterity, here is the order that the songs play on at least my copy of this record:

Side 1
1) Raggare is a Bunch of Motherfuckers
2) Deathtime
3) Demin Demon
4) Imorgen Skal Eg Daue
5) Turbonegro Hate the Kids
6) Sailor Man
7) Bad Mongo

Side 2
8) Hobbit Motherfuckers
9) Black Rabbit
10) Mobile Home
11) The Midnight NAMBLA
12) Just Flesh
13) A Dazzling Display of Talent
14) I Got Erection

Format: 12"
Tracks: 14
Cost: £10 new
Bought: All Ages, Camden
When: 17/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Tall Ships - Everything Touching

Until June this year, Tall Ships were a band I'd simply heard of. I'd seen their name about the place and even had a song on a Big Scary Monsters sampler which I must have listened to, but not properly it seems. Anyway, that all changed when I saw them at Banquet's Big Day Out in the summer, where they were quite possibly the highlight of the day (Hundred Reasons were great, but the sound did them no favours).

They were the first band on but, due to an unnecessarily long ID-checking queue, they'd long finished by the time we got into the arena. Luckily enough they played a second set on the Fighting Cocks acoustic stage just before HR, during which they blew me away. The stage was essentially a gazebo with a PA, but that added to the excitement as they spilled out into the small but densely packed crowd of fans trying their best to hear. It was impossible to not enjoy the party they got going, especially as they climbed on top of whatever they could find and handed out instruments for the audience to play. The final sing-a-long was incredible, but at the same time felt like there was this private club that I hadn't been invited to (how did everyone know all the words?).

I left that day a new fan of Tall Ships and pre-ordered their album from Banquet with a ticket to see them at New Slang (hence missing out on the white vinyl). Whilst the next sentence is a bit negative, read on because it gets more positive. When I got home and played the record, I was massively underwhelmed; I'd been looking forward to the album so much after the BDO show but the ten songs I was now hearing didn't seem at all interested in jumping out at me and making me excited. However, I put the mp3s on my player and listened to it a couple of times whilst out and about. The epic closer Murmurations was the first one to really catch my ear and make me think again about the album. The build-up is brilliantly gentle and the eventual group-vocals and simple lyrics are perfect. It might just be one of the finest songs I've heard all year. Since then I've grown to love T=0, Ode to Ancestors and Books too (the last of which made it onto my ATP mixtape swap cds). Now that I've properly got into the album, it's on pretty heavy rotation.

I'm fairly sure that if I see Tall Ships again I'll come to love these songs even more, but I've had a run of bad luck in catching them since June: after getting the New Slang tickets I realised that was the same night as The Cut Ups' first London show in years (and they had to take priority) and I had horrendous man-flu when Tall Ships played XOYO in October. Still, hopefully I'll be free of excuses when they play the Scala in March.


Format: 12", picture sleeve, 20"x15" poster insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 11/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

I was pretty slow to get into Godspeed for some reason, but since then I've had the good fortune to see them play twice and each time was amazing. The second time was just last month, a few weeks after their fourth studio album in 18 years was released. People were excited, and understandably so: the previous three were all incredible, and they have that rare ability to amaze almost equally on-stage and on vinyl. I picked up a copy as soon as Banquet had them in stock and I've been enjoying it since.

There are four songs on 'Allelujah!... but on a functional level, there are just two (which is fine - they sum to nearly 40 minutes of music so I'm not complaining). The two bridging/drone tracks are on a separate 7" and, in all honesty, I play the songs in the correct order rarely, instead favouring the two on the 12" alone. Those two songs, Mladic and We Drift Like Worried Fire, are both excellent. The first is by far the darker of the two and drags you down with its beat. I love it, particularly after seeing them play it in November; it seemed twice as long and infinitely more dark (as the song hit the final and darkest movement the projectionist began burning the tape so that it curled up in front of the lens). The second song is somehow the opposite, an uplifting piece with wavering guitars and strings that bring you back up from where Mladic left you. The package is pretty nice too, and photographs of the various bits are below. Most strangely, the etching in the run-off groove of the 7" leads to youtube video featuring pictures of a dog (called Loukanikos) running around during the Greek riots. It's worth a watch (the link is below. I tried to photograph the text but seems impossible to do). Banquet have a loyalty card system, which I redeemed on this and another record, hence the relatively bargain price.


Format: 12" and 7", gatefold sleeve, die-cut picture sleeves, 12"x48" poster
Tracks: 4
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 11/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A1: "Two thousand stoned kids will be stoked" Side A2: "Too bad they don't vote" Side B1: "For Loukanikos" Side B2: "youtube.com/watch?v=lFd0hztEUWk"
mp3s: Download code

Chuck Ragan - Feast or Famine

This album is one of my all-time favourite records. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's a safe number 2 in such a list (behind In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) and it has been for a good five years now. I'll start at the very beginning.

In 2007 I moved to Cardiff for no reason other than I had no reason why not to. I'd just finished university and had to look for a job somewhere, so I found a house with my friend Hugh and a couple of his friends. I was excited to be living in an interesting city after three years in Lancaster and very keen to start seeing bands more often. Not long after we moved in Hugh suggested going to see Chuck Ragan from Hot Water Music play in Le Pub in Newport. I only had Caution and A Flight and a Crash but enjoyed them, so agreed to it (and for the first time in years I was in debt to Hugh rather than the other way around).

On the 11th of October Hugh and I met up with his friend Jon, Reza, and two others whose names I since forgotten and we all got the train to Newport to see Chuck. The gig was incredible (Hugh claims it was the best concert he'd ever seen, and it's certainly one of my favourites). Gunrack? (a Wayne's World reference) opened up and were excellent (Young Hearts was always a classic) and then Chuck took to the stage. I'd only heard bits of the album briefly on the kitchen hi-fi at this point, so wasn't fully prepared for what happened; he belted out the most heart-felt, brilliant songs and played so passionately and genuinely there can't have been a single person in there not impressed. This was my introduction to the world of acoustic folk/punk and I couldn't have asked for a better way to start.

The Boat was incredible, a song whose meaning I have a lot of time for, but California Burritos was the highlight; about five or six guys near the front all had their arms around each other singing along every word to, what I didn't realise at the time, would become my favourite song. It was quite an incredible few minutes in an already incredible evening. At the end of the show I bought the cd of Feast or Famine, an album I've played more times than I care to imagine. Everything I felt about the live show is captured perfectly on these 12 songs and they've become the bench-mark to which I compare all other acoustic music. I can't recommend it enough. It's What You Will, Between the Lines and Do What You Do are all songs worth mentioning too. I ended up picking up a copy on vinyl at the No Idea Yard Sale because it's nice to have great music on vinyl.

Since most of this has been off-topic (more about that gig than the album itself), I figured it's also worth mentioning where this album has taken me: I spent ages trying to find records that are similar to this and seeing musicians of a similar style. If I hadn't seen Chuck that night I may have never heard music by Austin Lucas, William Elliott Whitmore, Sam, Jimmy and Helen, anyone on the Revival Tour and countless others (not to mention the Daytrotter Sessions). All in all, I'm pretty happy with what this record has led me to.

I used to be in a group on Facebook where each month we'd get paired up at random and make a mixtape for the other person. I put California Burritos on one I made for some girl in America (I've put it on practically every mixtape I've made in the last five years) and she sent me a message back saying how much she loved that song. Hopefully she checked the album out too and got at least somewhere near as much out of it as I did.


Format: 12", 10"x20" insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £4.96 new
Bought: No Idea Yard Sale
When: 29/10/11
Colour: Marbled grey
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Magnificent - Bad Lucky

When I went into All Ages to buy The Magnificent's LP, the guy behind the counter told me it was "exactly that". I was feeling a bit slow that day so it took a moment to figure out that he was telling that the album was magnificent, but I eventually got it and told him how much I was looking forward to hearing the record. Over the past year I've picked up a handful of splits and 7"s featuring The Magnificent and enjoyed all the songs, but somehow managed to put off buying the record until October. Better late than never I suppose.

Anyway, the guy in All Ages was right, it's a great album. When I wrote about the 7" of 1981 I said it reminded me of very early Manics, a comparison I stand by despite the fact it's probably more that both were influenced by The Clash. It's certainly heavier and faster than those bands generally were (the whole thing plays at 45rpm) and much more gruff. 1990 is possibly my favourite song, and it's nice to hear the full band version after a year of listening Jimmy's solo version on the Chuck Ragan et al split (as it happens, that was one of my favourite songs on that record too; the female backing vocals are the end of this one are spot on). Hold my Drink up High and King of Denim Jackets are highlights too.

Somehow I've only just found out that this is their second album, despite having trawled the Boss Tuneage website when buying some things earlier in the year. It's only a fiver so I might pick it up as an early Christmas present to myself. Also, I still haven't seen The Magnificent live, but hopefully they'll play London before too long.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £11 new
Bought: All Ages, Camden
When: 03/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Muncie Girls - Revolution Summer

Well, it's approaching end-of-year list time and so I figured I should get some things written about some of the records that'll probably make my top ten. This EP has been a contender since I picked it up in September; it may only have five songs, but they're some of the catchiest I've heard all year.

I heard a buzz about Muncie Girls long before I saw them (thanks Twitter) and they lived up to that when I finally caught them supporting Lemuria at The Peel. When the EP came out it was impossible to look at the internet without seeing people praise it and I finally picked a copy up after seeing Bangers in The Fighting Cocks. Luckily the record is every bit as great as I'd heard and it's been on pretty heavy rotation since I got it (so much so my girlfriend even noticed how often I've been playing it, and I'm pretty sure she usually tries her best to tune out my music).

All five songs are great, but Feel it Soon and Railroad are possibly my highlights. I was told when I bought it that these guys are only 18/19 years old, which makes me worry about how much I can emphasise with the lyrics despite being nearly ten years older. I'm about a month away from submitting my PhD thesis, so the line "I don't know what I'm going to do and I'm sick of having to decide" in Kasper and Randow seems particularly apt right now. Also, the Scrabble board print/green vinyl on the b-side looks incredible.

I've not written my top-ten records of the year yet (it's too early and a nice task for that week between Christmas and New Year) but I'll spoil the surprise a bit and tell you this EP will definitely make the top ten.


Format: 12", screen-printed b-side, a4 insert
Tracks: 5
Cost: £7 new
Bought: gig
When: 22/09/12
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

This is a very lovely record in many ways, although I can't remember whether I'd actually listened to Explosions in the Sky before I bought it. I knew their name because they had been touring the US with The Paper Chase and Eluvium and I imagine I'd read a few words on what they sounded like at some point. I've got a feeling that I might have watched a YouTube video at some point too, but my memory fails me. Anyway, I decided to chance £14 on it and I haven't looked back.

I picked this album up in Spillers (on my first ever trip to Cardiff) not long after it came out. I'd seen it in a record shop in Germany a few weeks earlier and nearly bought it then but decided to save my euros. The limited edition coloured vinyl and bonus cd probably helped convince me; it's a stunning package, and the etching on side 4 is a great touch (have a look at the very last picture beneath).

Of course once I put needle to vinyl I realised how lovely it really was. Explosions are now one of my favourite instrumental bands. There's something really gentle about the way the songs build up and explode and the guitars sound excellent (at times their name seems brilliantly appropriate). After buying this one I went on to pick up the rest of their back-catalogue (mostly on cd) and I love them all. I probably don't play this one enough though. It's Natural to be Afraid is 14 minutes well-spent, and Catastrophe and Cure is brilliant too. The remixes also work really well (post-rock lends itself to remixes much better than any other -rock genre) and, incidently, was the first time I'd heard of Jesu and Adem both of whom are artists I've become a fan of since. Jesu's version of The Birth and Death of the Day is particularly dark.

I've seen Explosions play live a bunch of times in the five years since I bought All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and each time they've been fantastic to watch and left me with a huge smile of my face. They also deserve particular mention (especially after this weekend just gone) for being the band that curated the first All Tomorrow's Parties festival I ever went to. I'm not sure I would've known about the festival had I not seen that Explosions had picked The Paper Chase, and I certainly would've missed out on some of the great ATP weekends I've been to since. ATP has given so many great bands it's hard to know where to start! All in all, this record is a pretty special one, and not just musically.


Format: double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves, bonus cd
Tracks: 12
Cost: £14 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 14/04/07
Colour: One white, one dark blue
Etching: Laser etching of cover on side 4
mp3s: no