Above Them - Water Lane

I've been a fan of Above Them for a long time. Back when I lived in Cardiff we saw them all the time and it was always great fun. I saw them a handful of time after moving to London, but shows became less frequent as, I suppose, real life started catching up. The last time I saw them was in 2014 (at the Deadpunk all-dayer) and before that was 2012 in Brixton. The fact that they made one last album is something of a treat then; they could have easily just drifted away. I'm very glad they didn't.

Water Lane is a great album, even better than the second in my opinion. It even made my end of year list for 2015. As we've come to expect there are huge choruses and great songs. I enjoyed it from the start, although it was Young & Petrified that really turned the album from being a good album into a great one - sometimes I just need a song to kick me into really listening and that song was it on Water Lane. The rest of the album has some great moments too, like We're All Going Down and Sink or Gin.

I got this copy as part of my Specialist Subject Records subscription, which has been great. I tend to buy most records they release anyway, so it's nice to have them sent to me every time. There have been some nice discoveries from other bands that I didn't know too (which I'll write about in due course).

On hearing Water Lane my friend Sarah asked if it was a compilation of other songs because it sounded familiar. I see that as praise for the album - Above Them have written an album that sounds so perfectly like Above Them that it sounds like a best-of, which is all I ever wanted them to do.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Specialist Subject Records subscription
When: 21/09/15
Colour: Mint green
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

El-P - Collecting the Kid

As soon as I heard El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead on Hugh's kitchen hi-fi in Swansea I knew I wanted to hear more of his music. The next opportunity I got was from this copy of Collecting the Kid which I found in Bart's CD Cellar in Boulder, Colorado (worth noting that the LPs at the time were on the first floor; I'm not sure there even was a cellar. Or a Bart). I had no idea what was on the album, but the words "Limited Edition" helped convince me further that it was worth buying.

Collecting the Kid is, as the name implies, a collection of odds and ends from around the time of Fantastic Damage. The songs are mostly instrumentals, but some are beats El-P made for other rappers, so we get their vocals too - Jukie Skate Rock and Oxycontin are great examples of the latter, featuring my introduction to Central Services. The instrumentals vary from quite good to absolutely amazing. Intrigue in the House of India from High Water is quite possibly the highlight of the album and is one of the finest instrumental hip-hop tracks I know. One of my favourite raps on Run the Jewels is when Killer Mike drops "Producer gave me a beat / Said it's the beat of the / I said El-P didn't do it / get the fuck out of here". This album is further testament to Mike's words. Slow Sex, Constellation and The Dance are all great too.

Whilst Collecting the Kid wasn't the best album to hear after becoming a fan on I'll Sleep When You're Dead, it's a great listen. It also showed me a hugely different side to his work that I might not have discovered so quickly otherwise. A short while later I found a copy of Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, which might have been a more obvious sequel for me. Over the years I've listened to El's work in various form and all of it has been mind-blowing in some way - it's impressive that one man can excel in so many areas of music.

Format: Double 12"

Tracks: 11

Cost: £9.21 new

Bought: Bart's CD Cellar, Boulder

When: 18/04/08

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Thursday - War All the Time

War All the Time was the beginning of the turn against Thursday for a lot of people I knew. They'd blown us away on Full Collapse and Five Stories Falling but I remember everyone disliking War All the Time. I think the general thinking was it was too polished and smooth; one acquaintance particularly hated the single Signals Over the Air with quite some passion.

Whilst it didn't grab me as much as Full Collapse, I still thought War All the Time was a great album. I concede that it's smoother in places, but that kinda works for Thursday - they didn't need to be the heaviest band in that genre for me. What War All the Time showed was that they could write great songs without them needing to be overly-shouty screamo/post-hardcore. And those moments were still there - Division St. could have fit just as easily onto Full Collapse as it does here. The piano-led This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb would sound thoroughly out-of-place on any earlier album but works beautifully here. Other highlights include For the Workforce, Drowning and Asleep in the Chapel and the title track in particular. As an aside, I had a Thursday t-shirt with some artwork for For the Workforce, Drowning which eventually became my running t-shirt. It almost soured a relationship before it even started because the girl in question thought less of me for being a Thursday fan (but she liked to think of herself as very cool - her Les Savy Fav t-shirt helped).

I got a copy of this album on cd for Christmas one year (the same year I got Waiting) and a few months later found this LP in Selectadisc in Nottingham for a very reasonable £10. I still listen to it a lot - it has a lot of fond memories for me.

Format: 12", booklet
Tracks: 11
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 15/03/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Murder City Devils - R.I.P.

When I got this record I only had two Murder City Devils album - Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts and Thelma. I was just getting into the band so it felt a bit wrong to hear their last-ever show next, but I knew copies wouldn't be that easy to find at any later point. Plus, at £8 it was a steal. I bought it in Brighton just before returning to Australia for my second semester out there; I made time to record it onto cassette before going back but after getting there was disappointed to find that I'd managed to not hit record on the second record, so for the first six months of owning this album I could only listen to the first half.

I love The Murder City Devils. Not enough bands I listen to sound anything like them - there's such an energy and power and sense of a good time - they're the sort of band that make you want to get drunk and throw yourself around to punk-rock bands (although the band will almost certainly not be as good as The Murder City Devils). This album captures their live show in a raucous and fairly shambolic way - the notes in the sleeve concede to this point but also imply that it couldn't really be any other way for a band like this. I never saw them live (something I still long to correct now they're playing shows again) but I think I would have enjoyed it greatly. As a live album, this is fairly terrible and as a final show it's also a strange one, but all that adds to its charm.

A lot of the album sounds great - the band had such a good sound - but there are some weaker moments. One Vision of May and Midnight Service suffer from what sounds like a combination of exhaustion and bad timing, which is a shame because they're great songs; Spencer has some mic issues during That's What You Get and Idle Hands, although someone steps in for some very deep backing vocals, which works well . I Want a Lot Now, Dancing Shoes, Boom Swagger and Broken Glass all sound fantastic; 18 Wheels gets played with such incredible energy that I'm impressed every time I hear it. Strangely, (for a final show) they play two new songs, Waltz and Grace That Saves, the latter of which gets the prime place of being the last song they'd ever play (until they reformed). It's not only strange because you'd typically go out on a familiar high, but also because it's just not a very good song - it drones and feels half finished, which is a shame. Had they gone out on 18 Wheels it would have been perfect.

There are a few really touching moments of stage chat throughout - at the end of Bear Away one of the band announces that it's the last show they're ever going to play with a real tremble in his voice; "these boys love you more than you will ever imagine" at the end of Boom Swagger; and when Spencer announces the last song. Each makes you feel really sad that they're breaking up, but glad they existed in the first place.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve

Tracks: 19

Cost: £8 new

Bought: Borderline, Brighton

When: 11/01/06

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no