Explosions' first album - How Strange, Innocence - was the last one I bought of the four they'd released at the time. In the two years since I'd bought All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone I'd gotten pretty heavily into them and seen them play at the All Tomorrow's Parties they'd curated (although it was The Paper Chase that led me to know about that festival). One afternoon in Fopp in Bristol I found a copy of this album on cd for £10 (the 2005 reissue, not original, of course) which was a lot by Fopp-standards, but I very keenly added it to the pile of cds I was buying, probably putting some others back to make space (and not blow all my money) because of it. I can't remember why I was in Bristol, but it might have been to meet potential PhD supervisors - that would have been around that time for sure.
My main memory of this album, however, is from that summer. It's crucial to remember this was 2009, so basically before smartphones and certainly before streaming platforms; going on holiday or even a road trip meant needing to be prepared when it came to playing music other than the radio - if you packed cds, a cassette-to-headphone-jack adapter, a headphone-to-RCA adapter and an mp3 player, you might be able to play some music you want to hear. So I always took all those things. That summer we went to Devon, and by plugging my shitty little USB stick mp3 player into the back of the TV (via an audio cable) in our rental place, we were able to listen to music and, crucially, only really my music. The mp3 player had a capacity of something comical, like 2GB, so I was frequently having to change the albums on there.
For the holiday I'd thrown on How Strange, Innocence, and pressed play on it one rainy afternoon when we were all hanging around. After a song or two, Hugh asked me who it was and said something along the lines of "why is it so out of tune/time?" - I can't remember which, but he was pretty scathing about their musicianship at this point. Without the context of the cd sleeve explaining that the band were also pretty embarrassed by it, it wasn't maybe the strongest of their albums to play, but these were the problems of limited 2009-era technology. Of course, having no musical ability whatsoever, whatever criticism Hugh had of their playing, I hadn't noticed it (so much so I can't remember if he complained about their timing or tuning). I was enjoying the album - I guess I appreciated it had a certain roughness, but just felt that added to it's charm.
Despite the band's (and Hugh's) opinion of it, there are some great songs here. Magic Hours is probably the highlight, with the incredibly fuzzed out guitars that creep in on-and-off before taking over in the inevitable post-rock explosion. Glittering Blackness is another great one, although I will concede that those huge drums need to be way louder. Remember Me as a Time of Day might be the most Explosions-in-the-Sky title ever written.
As soon as I read the back-story of this album, I knew that getting a vinyl copy was out of the question - if the original cd sells for an obscene price, the only word for the 2004 vinyl is "terrifying". Luckily, Temporary Residence realised the same and have reissued the album on vinyl so we can all have complete Explosion back-catalogues on our shelves, which makes me very happy. As is always the case, the package is lovely - two colours of vinyl, neither of which words quite do justice, a triple gatefold sleeve, and the story of the history of the album from the 2005 cd reissue etched onto the fourth side of vinyl. I would have been happy with double black vinyl stuffed into a single sleeve, so this extra effort was very much appreciated.
Format: Double 12", triple gatefold, insert
Tracks: 7
Cost: £30.97 new
Bought: Temporary Residence Records website
When: 19/08/19
Colour: Light blue splatter / dark blue splatter
Etching: Recording notes etched into side D
mp3s: Download code
