The Twilight Sad - No One Can Ever Know

The Twilight Sad's third album, No One Can Ever Know, marked the beginning of me really struggling to get into their songs but really liking them at the same time. If you played me a song from this album or the one that followed, I'd probably not be able to tell you which was from which (their fifth and most recent album, is a little less punishing and a little more 80's, so easier to tell apart); when I have a craving for this era of The Twilight Sad, I play this and Nobody Wants to Be Here... in fairly equal measures, mainly because I've never decided which I prefer - they tick the same boxes.

It's a solid album - there are hints of their influences throughout - The Cure on Nil and Radiohead on Not Sleeping. It's also incredibly fucking dark, which says something given the albums that came before it - Sick is a pretty bleak example of this. The highlights are Dead City, where the vocals build gradually against the consistently dark and industrial music, and Kill it in the Morning which is strangely danceable; the abrupt ending is unexpected and a brilliant way to end the album.

There's no particularly interesting story about buying this one - I was in Banquet a couple of days after it came out and picked it up along with a Fucked Up 12" and a Q and Not U album. I had a voucher, which I applied across the purchases in my spreadsheet, hence the strange price listed below. Looking at Discogs, it seems that this has gone up in value a lot since it was released.

Format: Double 12", insert
Tracks: 9
Cost: £15.81 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 08/02/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Mother Love Bone - Apple

I always thought I should have got more into Mother Love Bone and, listening to Apple now, I still don't know why I didn't. The album always felt like this tussle between 70's and 80's glam rock and 90's grunge, and that conflict got in the way of me being able to really enjoy it; it's a key part in the beginning of grunge, but the hard rock part felt dirty, tainting its status as an album that started the genre that defined the 90's.

I'd read about the band before I heard them, and their connection to Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog and Soundgarden was irresistible; how the singer, Andrew Wood, died just before this album was released and that Chris Cornell wrote most of the Temple of the Dog album as a tribute to him (naming it after a line in Man of Golden Words), essentially introducing Eddie Vedder to the other guys in Pearl Jam. I got the Temple of the Dog album in 2004 and loved it. I occasionally thought about getting a copy of this album on cd when I saw it come up on eBay, but for some reason never did.

In 2007 I had one of the best charity shops finds ever, and picked up this and Soundgarden's Louder Than Love for less than a fiver each - the wonders of the age when people priced things before Discogs. Both were in great condition considering their age so I snapped them up. I never found anything even half as good in that shop again. It really is a huge album, and if you can get past the glam-rock leanings, it's really great (although I have to make a real, conscious effort to do so). Stardog Champion has a brilliant riff and, actually, the same can be said for Holy Roller too (a song only ruined by the spoken-word section and the use of the word "love rock"). Heartshine is another great song. The second half doesn't reach such heights after that point, although the closer is nice. Looking at the song titles I've written here, you can see where that dirty glam-rock feeling comes from.

Anyway, as I wrote this, I just managed to knock some Lego onto the record as it played. My heart sank. Luckily it's just left a surface scratch and still plays fine. That comment about it being in great condition now seems a bit like I was tempting fate. Definitely going to review where my X-Wing model sits now.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 11
Cost: £4.80 second hand
Bought: Oxfam Books and Records, Winchester
When: 23/07/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Dave House - See That No One Else Escapes

See That No One Else Escapes was the first Dave House album I bought. Six months later I bought his debut solo album, Kingston's Current, on my first ever trip to Kingston. I'm still yet to pick up a copy of his third and final solo album, although I really should. I suspect I'll enjoy it.

I bought this album after seeing Dave support Lemuria in Bar Sigma in Swansea the summer before I left South Wales for London. The Arteries played too. I've got a feeling the poster for that show was great, and a few people I know had copies of it up on their walls. Possibly involving a swan? I enjoyed Dave's set and asked him which album I should pick up after the show. He suggested this one and sold it to me for £5, a bargain by any measure.

My first impression was that it was more mellow than I remember his set being, but I wonder if the songs took a more punk edge given the setting and the bands on the bill. All D's No Future is the first song on the album that has anything punk to it, but Trafalgar Square to Anywhere shows that his songs could be great without being heavy - the chorus there is perfect. For an Afternoon could easily fit on the first Frank Turner record (I remember Frank blocking my view for a lot of the time at the Dave House vs Dave Hause show in The Fighting Cocks in 2011; that guy is tall) and Old Girl Back made me think about The Klaxons for the first time in at least a decade.

Over the years, it's had far fewer plays than Kingston's Current, but that's mostly because I have mp3s of that album but not this one, and it has the title-track, which is a really incredible song that I still can't get enough of. I should give this one more time though. It's generally a bit softer, but the violins (which feature in a lot of the songs) really add to those songs, and actually some of the highlights of Kingston's Current are the softer songs too.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 11
Cost: £5 new
Bought: Gig, Swansea
When: 10/06/09
Colour: Grey marble swirl
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Run the Jewels - Stay Gold Collectors Box

With Record Store Day just around the corner again, it's probably time to write about some old releases again. Musically, this was a luxury purchase for sure. There's a lot of stuff in the photos below, but ultimately there are four songs here - Kill Your Masters from RTJ3, an instrumental version, a remix of Stay Gold and an instrumental version of the remix - so nothing vital as such.

Kill Your Masters is a great song and Zack de la Rocha's verse is nice. For reasons I don't understand, it's listed together with A Report to the Shareholders on the LP - maybe because they're thematically linked? Anyway, I appreciate that instrumentals are a thing, but I rarely get excited about them. I mostly just miss the lyrics. It is nice to focus on El's beats though. The remix of Stay Gold by Smiff & Cash works well - the whole feel of the song is different - kinda haunting, which somehow has less of an effect on the instrumental version - and there's some extra verses added.

At £43, I probably should have left this behind on Record Store Day in 2018, but it looks so lovely that I couldn't resist. Plus, I was already spending an obscene amount that morning, so this wasn't that big a percentage, sadly. I missed RSD the year before, and the year after (and probably will this year too), so it kinda evens out on the years when there was nothing I was after. In the gold metal box we have a poster, a slip mat, and alternate sleeve for RTJ3, some stickers and, of course, the four songs on a one-sided, etched clear 12". It's a nice package for sure, and given that some LPs are edging near to £30 on their own, it's not even that expensive really.

Despite it having space for the three RTJ LPs to fit in, I've never put them in there - just doesn't seem necessary. Maybe I'm missing the point (I'm not much of a Marvel fan, so the effort that's gone into the Marvel version of the sleeve is lost on me too). A strange detail to get wrong (if you consider it wrong) is that the writing on the edge of the box goes in the wrong direction (wrong by UK/USA standards - in continental Europe I think most books and records are oriented this way around).

Format: Etched one-sided 12", gatefold sleeve, box, stickers, posters, slipmat
Tracks: 4
Cost: £43 new
Bought: Truck Store
When: 21/04/18
Colour: Clear
Etching: etched b-side
mp3s: no

Q And Not U - No Kill No Beep Beep

Exactly seven weeks passed between me getting Q and Not U's second album, Different Damage, and going back into Banquet to pick up their debut. I never bought (or heard) their third album, but that's mostly because Banquet never had it in stock (although that's probably because it didn't get reissued in 2009 when the other two did, so it's hardly Banquet's fault); I'd buy it if I saw it for sure.

Clicking on various links on Discogs just now revealed two things - I do have a song from their third album on a sampler cd, and that cd long pre-dates me stumbling upon their albums in Banquet in 2012, so I had heard what they sounded like before I bought Different Damage (contrary to what I wrote four years ago). However, that cd was a great but rambling sampler cd that came free with a copy of Rock Sound in 2004 - in fact, it had two free cds that month - the usual Music With Attitude cd and a 20-track compilation of songs released by Southern Records (called Music With Latitude). My main memory was a drone song about a quarter of the way through which was my first introduction into drone, and not what I was after at the time. I didn't remember getting much from it at the time. About two years later, I'd hear the William Elliott Whitmore song again on a mixtape from Hugh, and a long journey into his music began there. Clearly there's a theme here, and that theme is that I should have paid more attention to that free cd. I played it again a few years ago on a train back from London (I'd been to gig at Wembley Arena, and it caught my eye as I scrolled through my iPod, and I had a good listen whilst waiting for the train). As it happened, the regular Rock Sound cd was one of the less impressive ones I got (although I should probably play that again too), but did finish with an incredible song by a band called Threemovements whose cd I immediately ordered online. They went on to achieve basically nothing, but some years later I saw the singer's new band, EastStrikeWest (not a fan of spaces, that guy) supporting This Will Destroy You, the same night I also got into Talons. Everything is always more connected than you think.

That paragraph drifted way off-topic, sorry. No Kill No Beep Beep has some great songs - Fever Sleeves is crazy catchy and one of the highlights, Hooray for Humans has gang vocals, which are always a winner, Y Plus White Girl has these frantic, strange guitars, and the opener, A Line in the Sand settles into a huge groove that I wish lasted longer. I usually try not to buy multiple albums by the same band in such short succession, but I'd had some fun with Different Damage, and this was a tenner also, so seemed like a wise purchase. The reason I try to avoid that is because it's easy for the songs to not become very distinct in my mind if you don't give one album time to settle, as was the case here - if you played me songs from either and asked me to tell you which album they're on, I'd struggle.

In recent years, I've not put these albums on so much, but they're fun and I should do more often. Maybe I'll even seek out that third album.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 28/03/12
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code