Hot Water Music - Exister

Hot Water Music have released a lot of albums, and I have a copy of most of them. In fact, they've released so many and I have so many I struggle to think which ones I'm missing. As much as I like the band, I'd say that you could live quite happily only owning Fuel For the Hate Game, Caution and A Flight And a Crash, but such a statement is bound to piss some people off. The first time I saw the band was in 2010 (with Leatherface and Solutions in Newport, a gig I travelled back to Wales for) and a friend commented afterwards that he didn't think they should have played songs from The New What Next (their most recent album at the time) as it wasn't worth "trying to get them to work"; he wasn't a fan of that record, I can't begin to imagine what he made of the two that have since followed.

For what it's worth, I thought The New What Next had one really great song (Poison, the opening song. That said, I have the cd, which doesn't include Kill the Night, another song I really like). Similarly, this long-awaited comeback album from 2012 also has one truly great song - Drag My Body. Anyone who read my last post on Chuck Ragan's Live at Skaters' Palace will know I have a lot of time for that song. I strongly suspect that it's actually a song he wrote himself and ended up on a HWM album rather than a solo one - that's no criticism of the rest of the band, it just works incredibly well solo whereas a lot of others don't.

Exister isn't a bad record by any stretch - Mainline, State of Grace and Paid In Full are all solid songs. Is it a vital album for anyone getting into the band? No. Is it an enjoyable listen? Yes. You can't really complain about that. I picked my copy up in Banquet Records along with a handful of other new releases I was catching up on. The vinyl is lovely - the brown and blue swirl, although looks better on side 1 than side 2.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 09/07/12
Colour: Blue and brown swirl
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Chuck Ragan - Live at Skaters' Palace

Chuck Ragan seems to have slowed down his relentless output in the last couple of years. Between 2007 and 2014 he was playing solo shows constantly, and cranking out albums at a pace that was hard to keep up with. We saw him whenever we could, and found ourselves singing along in increasingly large venues. In the last three years, he's only released one studio album (which is a perfectly normal cadence for any other musician) and I can't think when the last time he toured was.

Luckily, for every studio album of his I have, I also have a live album (I'm on five of each, not counting the split album with Austin Lucas, but including the Daytrotter 10"), which means I can get some of the Chuck Ragan live experience whenever I want. Live at Skaters' Palace is the most recent of the live albums, and probably the one I know the least well; it doesn't include mp3s and I tend to go for Chuck Plays Frankfurt when I want to hear him live, because I'm not sure I'll ever tire of hearing it.

The setlist here is strong, but some of the later songs never struck me as hard, and I find too much peddle-steel guitar a bit grating. Most of the classics are there though - it finishes with the brilliant duo of The Boat and California Burritos, and has excellent versions of Rotterdam and For Broken Ears. If I were there, I'd have been shouting for Glory and Cursing Concrete but I have both of those on other live albums (Daytrotter and Frankfurt, respectively), so I can live with them not being here.

The unexpected highlight of this set is undoubtably Drag My Body, a Hot Water Music song from their 2012 album, Exister. One of the last times I saw Chuck was an afternoon in-store in Banquet Records that I was very pleased to be able to go to (this was whilst I was still finishing up my thesis). It was a short set (and my request for Cursing Concrete wasn't heard) but he played brilliantly. It was great to see him play entirely solo again, as that was something I hadn't been treated to for a good few years. The unexpected highlight of that set was also Drag My Body, so I was happy to have a Chuck-solo recording of it - I remember being floored by what a great song it was that afternoon in Banquet, and that's true of this version too; it's an incredible song and I recommend either version of it thoroughly. It works so well as a solo song that I wonder if Chuck wrote it with that intention. The only other HWM song he often plays live is "God Deciding", which doesn't translate anywhere near as obviously - whenever I hear either version it takes me a moment to remember the other version.

Keen to keep my collection of Chuck Ragan albums reasonably up-to-date, I ordered this from Uncle-M records in Germany shortly after it came out and was able to get the blue vinyl version (which now seems to sell for quite a lot on Discogs). I remember it arriving, because we had my friend Vicky staying with us for a couple of weeks, who commented on what a nice colour the vinyl was. At the time I remember thinking that £22 was a lot for an album (including postage from Germany!), but clearly things have changed a lot in those few years since.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 17
Cost: £22
Bought: Uncle-M Records website
When: 03/02/13
Colour: Light blue
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jeff Buckley - Grace

There were a number of years when my record collection was spread across two houses - mine and my parents'. I was moving every year (into increasingly small rooms in London) and it wasn't practical to have them all with me. One trip back home, I was flicking through the LPs I'd left there and stumbled across Grace by Jeff Buckley, a record I had no memory of buying. It didn't take long to realise I bought it during the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year, but I was pretty shocked that I'd forgotten that I owned a copy of it.

My relationship with Grace goes far further back, back to my first year of college. My local record shop had just started stocking vinyl for the first time, in the form of 180-gram reissues of "classic" albums. I was browsing them with my friend Guy, who got very excited over a copy of Jeff Buckley's Grace, an album and artist I'd never even heard of (my musical education at that point came from Kerrang!, so I'd never heard of Tim Buckley either). He told me it was a classic and insisted on lending me his copy. I played it and really didn't get the fuss. Whilst I thought I was open to many types of rock music at the time, it was very different to most of what I listening to and I remember being distinctly under-whelmed.

A short while later, Guy and I were at our friend Tom's house playing poker and Jeff came up again. Tom insisted on playing the album whilst we played (people like to insist on listening to Jeff Buckley it seems) and it sounded better. In particular, Eternal Life sounded excellent and I enjoyed the whole album more than I had the first time. Sometimes you just need the right time and place. In the second year of university I eventually bought a copy on cd, having spent two years hearing my housemate Matt routinely tell me how great it was. Very slowly realising that the album was indeed a "classic", I bought the LP three years later, on a Tuesday with few other records I fancied in Spillers.

So I'm not an evangelical Jeff Buckley fan (like so many of my friends), but I am a fan. A lot of the songs have heavier moments than I remember and build to some real highs. Of course, everyone knows and loves Hallelujah, which is a highlight. The slower moments like Lilac Wine and Corpus Christi Carol still do less for me, but I can still appreciate them for Jeff's great voice. At times, I'd be tempted to say it's a bit over-produced - there are just these moments every now and again that don't add much to the song and the album could easily live without - but it's a very small criticism. The other small complaint is that the LP doesn't include the bonus track on the cd that I have come to love, Forget Her - it's a great song, far better than you'd usually expect for a song tacked onto the end of an album.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Kingston
When: 04/07/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no