The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely

I've written before about how a summer of seeing The Raconteurs at festivals made me a fan. I was completely floored by how good they were live - it was, I can only imagine, like watching Led Zeppelin. There aren't many bands that my friend Vicky has got me into, but her getting bored of watching metal bands at Roskilde and suggesting we see The Raconteurs was a great call.

I was excited when I found out they were releasing a second album. I'd very excitedly bought their first one after that summer to only find out that it had none of the edge or excitement that their live show had. I enjoyed the songs, but nowhere near as much as I enjoyed them live. I hoped that a summer of playing like Led Zeppelin would encourage them to make an album that sounded like that. I bought this in Spillers a week after it came out. The package is lovely - a triple gatefold with some arty pictures of the band on 8" squares of card. The album itself is spread across two records. At £17 it was pricey for back then, but felt worth it.

I was a little disappointed by the album (yet again). The more intense songs (like the opening duo Consoler of the Lonely and Salute Your Situation as well as Top Yourself and Many Shades of Black) all sound good. There are some slower (and stranger) moments like Old Enough and Rich Kid Blues that I'm not much of a fan of. The Switch and the Spur is one of the true highlights of the album and reminds you just how good their songs can be when they want them to be; the outro is fantastic. The finest moment on the record however is saved until the last song, Carolina Drama, a song unlike anything else on either album. The Raconteurs, appropriately given their name, tell a fascinating story over the course of the song. The only downside is that they didn't write more songs like that.

I saw The Raconteurs at Glastonbury the year this album came out and it pretty much ended my brief love-affair with the band. The new songs didn't sound great and even the old ones sounded a bit tired. It didn't help that they were on the Pyramid Stage and we were sat quite far back during their set. It's a shame that I had to see that show, but luckily I still remember the three times I saw them in the summer of 2006 incredibly fondly and nothing seems to be able to change that.

Format: Double 12", tri-gatefold sleeve, four art inserts
Tracks: 14
Cost: £17 new
Bought: gig
When: 08/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dirty Three - Sad & Dangerous, Mysterious & Exciting

I've been gradually building up my Dirty Three collection over a number of years now. I first heard of them when I saw a screening of the All Tomorrow's Parties film in London - there was a clip of them playing at a previous festival and they looked incredible; they played with such passion and power that it blew me away. I figured if I could be that impressed by them on a film, then I'd enjoy them even more live. They were playing at an ATP I was going to shortly thereafter, so I bought a copy of Ocean Songs on cd to listen to in advance. I'll write about that album another time, but I became a big fan of the band and have seen them a bunch of times since. Every time I see them play, I remember how much I love this band.

For a while, I was gradually buying their albums on cd but decided a while ago that I'd actually quite like to have them all on vinyl - a lot of the more recent ones aren't hard to come by but are often a little pricey. The last few Record Store Days, Bella Union have been reissuing some of the earlier ones which will make the collection much easier to complete. This year they reissued Sad & Dangerous, Dirty Three's first album. A few days before the list of RSD releases came out, I'd found a copy of Sad & Dangerous on cd and, thinking it'd be hard to find on vinyl, bought it to add to my collection. I'd never seen the cd around before and it'd been a while since I'd added any Dirty Three albums so I was pretty excited (the cd I found was the Torn & Frayed Australian release, which already has two more songs than the original LP release). I think had I not found that cd so soon before the RSD list announcement, I'd have been even more excited by the vinyl than I was.

I'd played Sad & Dangerous just once before the list came out and, whilst I enjoyed it, it didn't jump to the top half of my favourite Dirty Three albums. I have a huge amount of time for Ocean Songs, Whatever You Love You Are and the self-titled album, but struggle with some others. Sad & Dangerous is a long album and there are some great songs on there (Jim's Dog, Warren's Waltz) but I find it doesn't grab me as strongly as the other albums do; it's hard to explain exactly why. I hope that over the years it'll grow on me - I certainly think it has the potential to do so.

The RSD release is pretty lovely - for a start they've added in three extra songs that aren't on the cd release (or at least not on my cd release - the sticker says four extra songs, but there's either three or five, depending on which cd release you compare it to). These are wrapped around the final track Turk, presumably to fit everything on the sides of vinyl - Turk is a long song - or perhaps they are calling Turk one of the extra songs. Who knows. The bonus tracks are a nice addition - In Bed With the Dirty Three is a very different song to usual and has a very varied structure and style. Bull is a nice song and Dirty Three Theme has some very unexpected vocals and a nice strained guitar sound. The two records themselves are on a nice green vinyl and the package is pretty nice all round.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 13
Cost: £25 new
Bought: Truck Store Oxford
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Green
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Dinosaur Jr - Bug

I bought this during the Tuesday Record From Spillers year. It was before I'd read Our Band Could Be Your Life, but after I'd got a copy, so I knew they were a part of it. Similarly, I knew they were playing the All Tomorrow's Parties festival I was going to that summer but it was a few months before I'd see them.

Dinosaur Jr were one of those names you'd always known without really knowing why. I had a very rough idea of what they'd sound like without having consciously heard them. I was browsing Spillers that day and saw this one - the description that the shop had put on the sticker used all sorts of terms along the lines of "legendary" and "important", so I figured Bug was as good a place as any to start. I think it also mentioned Freak Scene - a song whose reputation precedes it. Plus, I'm pretty sure it mentioned the green splatter vinyl, which sealed the deal (and, for the record, is an incredibly appropriate colour and looks amazing).

I don't listen to Dinosaur Jr anywhere near enough. Playing Bug now I think it's incredible - Freak Scene is a huge opener, They Always Come is lovely, Let It Ride is incredibly catchy, Budge is great and The Post is almost a grunge-ballad (in the best possible sense). Don't sticks out like a sore thumb, but I love it for that. I read in OBCBYL that it was Lou Barlow rallying against J Mascis, which sounds about right; it's a brutal affair, blistering, deafening and intriguing. I remember being genuinely scared the first time I heard it - who just casually drops that song at the end of a record? This reissue has Keep the Glove added on as the final song, which you kinda need after Don't. In my memories, the album is just Freak Scene and Don't but there's great stuff between those two that I always forget about.

For whatever reason, I've never given Dinosaur Jr much attention. They're not the easiest band to get into, but definitely worth more effort than I've given over the years. When I saw them at ATP they were the loudest band I'd ever seen (an accolade since taken by Swans, also at an ATP) - it's easy to mistake that wall of noise for a bad thing, almost like the band don't want you to enjoy them. I really should give them more time. I've not played this record in years before today and now I feel terrible about that fact. I promise to do better - I will listen to Dinosaur Jr more.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 11/03/08
Colour: Green splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Pearl Jam - Vs.

I own many Pearl Jam albums on cd but this is the only one I have on vinyl. I was introduced to them at school by a friend named Johnny. He'd become a very big fan of theirs very quickly and I remember him getting very excited when Binaural came out in 2000. He lent me a copy of Ten and I quite enjoyed what I heard. I wasn't instantly blown away with a lot of the big singles on there, but I was particularly taken by Black (and, eventually, came around to liking the hits). I say he introduced to them to me, he introduced their music to me; they were already a name I knew but had no idea what they sounded like. The picture of them in the sleeve of Ten made me think they weren't going to be very cool, but he reassured me that they were a cool band.

I bought a copy of Ten on cd a short while later and followed that up with Binaural just after Riot Act came out. Binaural did very little for me and I became a bit sceptical of their more recent releases. I also bought a copy of No Code and began to wonder if Ten was a bit of a fluke in terms of Pearl Jam music I enjoyed. A little while later again I bought this copy of Vs. in Selectadisc in Nottingham for a relative bargain of £8. I never planned to have much of a Pearl Jam collection, I was just buying whatever cool vinyl I could get my hands on back then.

Vs. had more going for it than No Code, but still didn't grab me as much as Ten. Go and Animal are a strong opening duo but I always thought Daughter was too slow too soon and ruined the flow of the album for me. There are other highlights (in fact the opening duo on side 2 - Blood and Rearviewmirror - are great too) but there weren't the real highlights I was hoping for. Maybe it's because Ten was scattered with so many hit singles that every other album was always going to sound sub-par.

Buying Vs. made me realise I should stop buying Pearl Jam albums. They were always so cheap in record shops that I kept finding myself nearly buying them but I knew I wasn't very likely to enjoy them. It was quite a relief to skip past the Pearl Jam section in the shops without feeling the need to see how much their other albums were. I eventually broke my rule in 2013 when I found a brand new copy of their double-disc best of album in a charity shop in Clapham for £1. For that price it seemed rude not to and enough time had passed that I might get more out of it. Plus, I hoped at some level that just having the singles would be what I needed to like them more. The album is split over the two discs with the heavier songs on one and the softer on the second; unsurprisingly, the first disc gets much more play the second. I've not bought any more of their albums since then.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 15/03/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Into it. Over It - Proper

I'm not a very big of Into It. Over It (otherwise known as Evan Weiss) it turns out. I first became aware of Evan's music at Fest the first time I went - the name kept coming up and I knew he'd done a a split with Koji whose music I enjoyed very much late one night in the CMC. A short while later IIOI was playing in Kingston on what turned out to be a very varied line-up - PJ Bond (who we'd also seen that night in CMC), Great Cynics (who I seem to see all the time), IIOI and Broadway Calls. Banquet had a deal where you'd get the Broadway Calls EP they were releasing for £2 more than just buying the ticket for the gig, so I have a copy of that (which I'll get round to writing about eventually).

I enjoyed Evan's set that night - he is a great story teller and each song came with a lengthy and interesting story about it. In hindsight, I remember the stories much more than I do any of the songs, which now is a red flag. Of course, at the time, I couldn't benefit from that hindsight so decided to buy a record after the show. I asked him which he would recommend to a new-comer and he suggested Proper - his only "traditional" album at that time - and I bought it.

Something I find happens a lot is that singer-songwriters decide to record their solo songs with a full band. In the case of Keven Devine, it works quite well but I do often think I'd prefer to hear them solo (it's also worth mentioning that he has some incredible songs that would work however they were recorded). In the case of IIOI I can't say I feel the same; Evan's songs, when played with a full-band, just sound like somewhere between emo and pop-punk. I'm a moderate fan of emo, but it's not a genre I obsess over. Pop-punk does nothing for me. The charm of a lot of these songs when played on an acoustic guitar is lost on the record. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed a few of these songs live that night but I couldn't tell you which ones they were. Very little stands out for me on the album.

It's not a bad record - it's important to note that - it just doesn't do very much for me. As a result I don't listen to it very often at all. Listening to it now, it's perfectly ok, but I could find many other records I enjoy listening to much more.

For some reason, a few months later I bought another IIOI album - 52 Weeks on double-cd. There were many contributing factors in that purchase: I'm a sucker for a concept album (52 songs, each written and recorded weekly over the course of a year); I really wanted to believe that there might be IIOI recordings I enjoyed as much as that show in Kingston; and finally because I had a fully-stamped Banquet loyalty card so was feeling a bit adventurous. On a number of occasions since that first listen I've tried to make it through 52 Weeks again but I keep quitting at various points throughout the (long) album with varying degrees of hatred for the album. One saving grace of Proper is that it's at least a reasonable length.

So yeah, despite a few good attempts, the music of Evan Weiss is not for me.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £10 new
Bought: gig
When: 08/12/11
Colour: Grey
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Hot Water Music - Till the Wheels Fall Off

I listen to Till the Wheel Fall Off a lot more than I do regular HWM music albums. The album collects what Wikipedia is calling "b-sides and rarities", but I think calling these songs b-sides would be doing most of these songs a disservice - some bands produce some incredible songs when working to create an EP or a one-off track, and that definitely seems true of HWM.

One of the reasons I listen to this so much is that there are some incredible songs on it - Kill the Night is amongst my favourite HWM songs and a great way to start the album. Beyond that you've also got "God Deciding", their excellent cover of Alkaline Trio's Bleeder (both, as it happens, songs that Chuck has often played solo), Home (unreleased before this record) and an early version of Wayfarer which is also up there amongst their best songs. Some brilliant songs for a collection album.

The latter half is dominated by a variety of covers, including their Turbonegro cover that I also have on the Alpha Motherfuckers tribute album. It feels much less coherent towards the end but that adds some charm (and it says a lot that it was so coherent at the start). The Springsteen cover came at a very bad time for my friend's band when we lived in Cardiff, as they'd just finished working on their own cover of No Surrender when this album came out; given how heavily influenced by HWM they already were, I think they felt that doing the same cover was a step too far (although that cover had been knocking around since 2000, so perhaps it was just bad research). Their's was about as scrappy as HWM's version here is.

I found this copy in an excellent record shop in Toronto called Criminal Records, where I also stocked up on a lot of Attack in Black records. I hadn't seen it around before so I figured it'd be a good addition. I knew it was a collection album as I recognised Prince of the Rodeo on the tracklist, but thought I'd enjoy it either way. I didn't realise quite to what extent I'd like it mind you. This is the double transparent green vinyl from the first pressing (/625). Or at least I think it is - I don't know what the "green mix /32" from the second pressing looks like, but odds are this is the first. The second record is a much darker green than the first. It's a nice package too with the lyrics on the picture sleeves and a very nice way to capture the band.


Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 23
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Criminal Records, Toronto
When: 13/05/09
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: Side A: "We.re all put to the test... to drown like all the rest" Side B: "We fend and fight what we know best" Side C: "Alone or siding with the chosen few" Side D: "Breaking up is hard to do"
mp3s: no

Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

Lift Your Skinny Fists was one of the last Godspeed albums I got. In fact, I bought it the same day I bought their most recent album, Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress, which the shop owner kindly let me have a few days before it's actual release; with those two purchases my Godspeed LP collection was complete.

Whilst F# and Slow Riot I know are the first two releases and 'Allelujah and Asunder are the two recent releases, I often find I confuse Skinny Fists and Yanqui. They're both long albums from the era before I got into the band. Before today, I probably couldn't have confidently said in which order they were released in. It's not a slight on either of them, I just think they're the two most similar of the band's albums. Lift Your Skinny Fists is definitely a great album and one I should probably listen to more. It's easy to tend towards the first two releases (for their relative brevity) or 'Allelujah because it's possibly my favourite, so they get more play. I imagine I was slightly over-dosed on Godspeed around the time I got this record, especially having very excitedly played the new one immediately before hearing it for the first time (I wasn't hugely taken with the latest album, but more on that another time).

Storm reminds me a lot of We Drift Like Worried Fire from the (much later) follow-up - an uplifting epic piece of post-rock and everything I want from this band. It's dramatic but the mood is definitely positive, or so I feel at least. It has a mildly anti-climatic end, but that doesn't take away from the first 15 minutes. Static the starts off a bit slowly but eventually some strings build up over a man talking, slows down for a moment again (with what I think is a violin being picked rather than played with a bow) before modestly exploding into something much grander and ultimately very menacing. It's harder work than Storm but still very rewarding.

Sleep begins life as a rather gentle piece but the suspense kicks in and the violins seem to circle around you before the song quickly shifts. It speeds its way to what sounds like the end, but gradually grows into another rather uplifting piece featuring what sounds like a trumpet - a very triumphant instrument. Antennas to Heaven takes a little while to get going but when She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer gets going you know about it.

All in all, Lift Your Skinny Fists is a great album, but the band make you work hard to enjoy the highs - all of the songs are wrapped in tape loops and drones whose sole purpose is to pace out the explosive post rock; it's an aspect I find I still enjoy the album both for and in spite of.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 4
Cost: £21 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 28/03/15
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no