The sun is shining today, so I've been listening to a lot of The Bouncing Souls. It was sunny yesterday too and my Bouncing Souls kick started before I went out for the day with my go-to BS record, How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
In 2011, The Bouncing Souls played four shows in Islington over four nights playing working their way through their back-catalogue. I remember being sat with Sarah upstairs at The Forum waiting for Death From Above 1979 to come on (we'd missed out on standing tickets) when I got an email about these shows and we spent a while discussing which shows we should make it to. The Summer Vacation / Anchors Aweigh show was a given and we decided to check out the self-titled / Hopeless Romantic show too. Neither of us are huge fans so our collective knowledge of any other albums was pretty slim. I think I'd heard good things of The Gold Album too, but Sarah was due to be working that night. Anyway, a short while later I went into Banquet to pick up at least one of self-titled or Hopeless Romantic, and a combination of a positive write-up on the sleeve and the blue vinyl convinced me to get this one.
It's a good record and pretty fun too. There's that usual mix of classic Bouncing Souls song (Hopeless Romantic, Night on Earth), stupid songs (You're so Rad and Ole!) and ones that are a bit of both but ultimately very fun (Bullying the Jukebox and Wish Me Well). The show was pretty cool too (I'm a sucker for whole-album shows) and they had some girl from the crowd sing the female vocals on Wish Me Well. I ended up seeing them play an in-store in Banquet the afternoon between the two shows, meaning that I saw The Bouncing Souls three times in 24 hours, a record for any band for me.
Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 14/07/11
Colour: Transparent blue
Etching: none
mp3s: no
