Whilst I've always been a Tin Cans man, I still have a lot of time for Water & Solutions and I get why people rate it so highly. It took me a long time to get there though - I got Water & Solutions only five months after getting Tin Cans With Strings To You, but I'd been sold on Tin Cans' slightly rougher edges and doomier moments. On top of that, I knew that Water & Solutions was the one that was meant to be the better one, so maybe I went in with higher expectations - I'd read (and still have somewhere) a Kerrang! article that listed Water & Solutions as the third best post-hardcore/emo album of all time, which is a pretty big claim (and a solid list to be in at all - I remember Fugazi's Repeater and At the Drive-In's Relationship of Command also being in the top ten, but not necessarily above Far).
People absolutely adore Mother Mary and I suspect it's the Far song that Jonah plays the most. It is an incredible song, there's no doubt about it. Do I love it more than Job's Eyes or Joining the Circus? No, but I'll agree that it probably is the better song in a traditional sense. The title-track is pretty great too - the whispers of "Soon, a light on" before the chorus is brilliant - you can imagine the comparisons to the Deftones that drew, despite musically being pretty far removed. Nestle and Wear It So Well are highlights too. Man Overboard is the only one that that has those same hints of doom and sludge that my favourite songs on Tin Cans have; it's the only one that would have comfortably fit on that album (it feels bad to constantly compare the album to its predecessor, but I'm not sure I've ever listened to it without thinking about how much I never got it as much as I did Tin Cans).
I saw Jonah play Water & Solutions in full in 2018 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. To play the shows, he toured the UK (and possibly Europe) with the band Witching Waves, which was unusual, but made for an interesting twist on the usual anniversary tour. I was lucky enough to see Far in 2008, so I didn't mind it not being a full-band thing. Given the history of the band, I'm not surprised they couldn't get back on the road together and I'd much rather watch one quarter of the band play these songs than not at all. Strangely, Jonah changed the tracklist entirely, playing the gentler songs first, before exploding into the heavier ones. I guess people don't write album tracklists and setlists in the same way at all - so few albums save the best song for last; it's a fundamental flaw in the whole "playing an album in full" tour idea. Ironically, Waiting for Sunday is a huge song (but not Mother Mary-huge).
Around the time that Tin Cans got reissued, they reissued Water & Solutions too. I had the chance to buy both at Fest, but opted for just Tin Cans because it was a few days before payday and I had to hold back a bit. I'd never really minded having just one in my collection, and I had the one I cared about the most. But over the years I did occasionally think it'd be nice to have both albums on vinyl. Last year at some point I read an email from Jonah that mentioned a new German reissue of Water & Solutions, so I immediately headed over to their site to pick up a copy. In the email Jonah said the last reissue sounded shitty, but this one he was on board with, so I figured it was worth picking up. It also came with a bonus flexi-7" which was a nice added bonus. Annoyingly, the coloured vinyl had sold out by this point, so I snapped up this black vinyl copy (more annoyingly, they did a second run on a different colour of vinyl, which is a pet-peeve of mine - first pressings on coloured and black vinyl then subsequent on coloured - means if you're a bit slow off the mark you get stuck with a boring colour of vinyl, but then you'd have been rewarded with a nicer colour for waiting. It happens far too often. I guess it helps sell records). It is a nice pressing, although the faded colour of the sleeve makes it look cheaper somehow - like a shitty photocopy, even though it's not. The 7" has a home demo of Mother Mary, which is nice, even if hearing Jonah play Far songs on his own is the norm rather than the exception these days.
Around the time that Tin Cans got reissued, they reissued Water & Solutions too. I had the chance to buy both at Fest, but opted for just Tin Cans because it was a few days before payday and I had to hold back a bit. I'd never really minded having just one in my collection, and I had the one I cared about the most. But over the years I did occasionally think it'd be nice to have both albums on vinyl. Last year at some point I read an email from Jonah that mentioned a new German reissue of Water & Solutions, so I immediately headed over to their site to pick up a copy. In the email Jonah said the last reissue sounded shitty, but this one he was on board with, so I figured it was worth picking up. It also came with a bonus flexi-7" which was a nice added bonus. Annoyingly, the coloured vinyl had sold out by this point, so I snapped up this black vinyl copy (more annoyingly, they did a second run on a different colour of vinyl, which is a pet-peeve of mine - first pressings on coloured and black vinyl then subsequent on coloured - means if you're a bit slow off the mark you get stuck with a boring colour of vinyl, but then you'd have been rewarded with a nicer colour for waiting. It happens far too often. I guess it helps sell records). It is a nice pressing, although the faded colour of the sleeve makes it look cheaper somehow - like a shitty photocopy, even though it's not. The 7" has a home demo of Mother Mary, which is nice, even if hearing Jonah play Far songs on his own is the norm rather than the exception these days.
Format: 12", square 7" flexi disc, insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £25.60 new
Bought: Thirty Something Records bandcamp
When: 11/12/19
Colour: Black, transparent blue
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
