I started listening to RVIVR entirely because so many people I knew thought the album was incredible. I think end-of-year-list time had come around and I kept seeing this name (that I wasn't very sure how to pronounce - "Reviver" is how I eventually learnt to refer to them) in my friends' lists. One of them had thankfully put a link to a stream of the record on the label's website and I gave it a listen. I don't have a very good relationship with listening to music on the internet - basically, I'm not very good at it - so I tend not to. If I buy an album online and it comes with an instant download, I'm not very good at remembering that I can listen to it (I bought the new Arteries EP the other day and the mp3s remain zipped-up on my hard-drive). I'm equally bad at downloading mp3s that come with records I've bought in person, and even worse at updating the music on my mp3-player. I'm not doing particularly well with the digital age.
All this aside, I did play the RVIVR album a lot. I think knowing it was there (without having to dig through my surprisingly messy hard-drive) meant that whenever I was on the internet and not near my hifi I'd search RVIVR and give it a play. I particularly remember doing some maths in my garden on one of the first days of spring that year streaming this album. A few months later, on my first trip to Banquet since moving to Kingston, I found the album and bought it, along with the Caves LP. I already knew the songs, but it was nice to hear them played on a half-decent stereo, and the lyric sheet greatly improved my ability to sing-a-long (in as much as I knew the words, it didn't improve my singing voice).
I'm a big fan of RVIVR these days. There's an edge to their punk-rock that makes them stand out; incredibly raw yet somehow poppy. The combination of Matt and Erica's voices works brilliantly too. I saw them play The Fighting Cocks in Kingston just before my birthday that year, and again at Fest a few weeks later. Both shows made me like them even more and I've recommended the album to a bunch of people (directly and indirectly - a friend saw my t-shirt and decided he'd check them out. A few months later he told me how great he thought the album was. I never really realised up until then that, to a certain extent, I'm advertising a band when I wear their t-shirts. Still, since I got into the band through other people's recommendations, it's nice to know I'm paying the favour on). If I had to pick highlights on the album, I'd say Real Mean, Animal Hands and Cold in Your Bones but you'd be best off giving the whole album a play.
A few words certainly need to be said about the presentation of this album, because I like it a lot - the sleeve is an old record sleeve cut down the sides and turned inside out. You can see in the last picture below that mine was originally used to house an LP by Treepeople, who are a band I know nothing about other than that K Records put out their album (who in turn are a record label I know nothing about except what I read in Our Band Could Be Your Life). The RVIVR artwork is then printed on the other side in a fairly thick black ink. From what I can gather, this is the Rumbletowne Records version rather than the YoYo release. The Rumbletowne website jokes that they "spared no amount of extra effort", but given that there's a glossy printed inner sleeve, it seems that they'd already done half the job. Either way, it looks great. This girl I used to know in Australia had a 7" with a similar turned-inside-out sleeve and I remember thinking it was pretty cool. Pressing info seems slim on the ground, but it makes you wonder what sleeves other people have inside their RVIVR LPs.
Format: 12", discarded LP sleeve turned-inside-out, picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 11/08/11
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Future man" Side B: "That's what I said"
mp3s: no
