Run Forever blew me away with their first album. I played The Devil, and Death and Me pretty much on repeat for ages and I had an excellent time watching them at Fest that year. It was a perfect band-crush. To a certain extent, I played that album too much, which meant I was pretty excited when they announced their second album was coming out; I was definitely in need of some new Run Forever music.
On first listen, I enjoyed the record, but it didn't knock me off my feet like the debut did. I was a bit disappointed but knew I'd probably built the excitement up in my mind to a point where it was never going to live up to expectations. Where Settling and The Devil... differ is that Settling is a grower. In the year-and-a-half that I've had this album it's gone from being this enjoyable punk-rock record to being a great album I want to go back to over and over again. At some point the albums shifted and Settling became the Run Forever album I'd go to first.
The highlights for me appear at either end of the album - Good Enough and Forget are both incredible songs. The former sets the scene for the album reflecting on past times but the latter looks forward optimistically. I like that a lot - Settling isn't just ten songs, but a journey of dealing with the past and moving on. There are great songs in the middle as well - Basement, Postcards and Drop Out are all brilliant too.
I'm not great at ordering records from the states - the exchange rate is usually pretty good but the postage soon adds up and every now and again Customs decide they want a slice of the pie too. When I do order from abroad, I tend to stock up (there'll be a bunch more posts on here about that particular shopping spree). I knew I'd have to order this record to get a copy - it certainly wasn't going to appear in any UK shops any time soon and I hadn't planned to go back to Fest at that point.
There were four colour options on the Tiny Engines website and I was a bit torn about what to do - the smoke-white vinyl sounded the nicest, but part of me wanted the least numerous press (the green in the picture). They also had the option to order all four colours. Normally I wouldn't go for this, but I'd been reading some blogs of some guys who obsessively hunted down every colour of records for certain bands and a part of me really liked that. Combined with my indecision about the colour, I decided to order all four. They've since released some other pressings (including one only available on a US tour), so my dream of owning every variant of their records was shot down pretty soon (although it's probably for the best - I know that a better use of my money is to spend it getting into other bands). Still, the four colours I do own look very lovely when all lined up.
Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £9.30 (each) new
Bought: Tiny Engines webstore
When: 10/01/13
Colour: Green (/100), pink (/125), blue (/125), smoke-white (/150)
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
