This has taken forever to write about. On the vinyl, there are ten songs; nothing unusual about that. But accompanying this particular release is a USB stick containing nearly 4 hours of demos and out-takes from pretty much the entire history of the band. It is a lot to take in.
That said, the five unreleased songs on the vinyl (the other five are demos of songs from Water & Solutions) are probably the highlight of the lot. I remember putting the needle on the record the first time and thinking they were arguably late-additions to the album of the year list that year (the record arrived in December). The first four are all fantastic - Mantra and Sawed Off are both heavy-Far, something they did very well. The second has hints of doom-Far, which is all over the third song, Really Last, a song that would have worked brilliantly on Tin Cans With Strings to You. Accompanying the 52 songs is a zine with notes from Jonah about every single track - in it he says that Kisses From Magdalene was a hit in his brain, but not in reality, but I'd say it was a hit in reality too (later we're treated to another less polished demo) - the chorus is huge. Where Are You Now is the least exciting of the lot but still nice enough. Also would have worked well on Tin Cans, but not in place of any of the slower songs on there.
Controversially (to no one, I'm sure), I'm going to rattle off my thoughts on the other unreleased/non-album songs included first. If I had one criticism of this huge collection of songs, it'd be that it's lacking a coherent order, at least one that is apparent to me. As someone who likes order, I made playlists of the songs on the USB stick and arranged them by album. It was only then that it was really obvious that included were demos for the whole of Water & Solutions, most of Tin Cans and Quick, as well as a bunch of other great songs and some covers. The record and, indeed, the Kickstarter was billed as being a 20th anniversary release for Water & Solutions, but the scope clearly ended up being well beyond that.
Amongst the other songs that didn't make it onto the album are some gems. Jonah notes that Nine Miles has some Drive Like Jehu vibes, which I can see. A second version features Grady from Will Haven, which is even better. Probably the surprise of the lot is Heather's Homework, a song which sounds like it's going to be a Jonah-dicking-around-song from the title, but is actually a crushing, heavy industrial beast of a song. It's probably the heaviest Far song I've ever heard. Jonah's vocals are great, particularly when screaming "I am calling". If there's one thing these songs really show, it's how great Jonah's vocals were when they were rough and raw in the demos - somehow varying between gruff-punk and metal-screams. There are two versions of a song called Tides but neither really do it for me; I'm Gone sounds different in a way that I couldn't put my finger on, until I saw that it was from the At Night We Live sessions; it's essentially a very polished rock song, which is why it doesn't sound very "Far". Bingo is a 9-minute long instrumental jam that has its moments but ultimately doesn't justify its length. The messing around with the tape buttons at the end ruins it. There's also The E-Bomb Snippets, which is nothing but a fascinating glimpse into how things were done when the internet was still in its infancy.
There are a handful of covers included. I've never really listened to PJ Harvey or 7 Seconds, so I have no idea how Long Snake Moan and Satyagraha compare to their originals, but the chorus to the former is great (having heard Kevin Seconds voice on this record, I'm probably not going to bother with 7 Seconds). I was excited to hear their cover of Monkey Gone to Heaven but that was, surprisingly, the worst song here I think. I always thought "no one can do that song badly", but it turned out I was wrong - the best bits are all messed about with (in a bad way) and the highlight of the song - where Frank sings about the devil being six - is painful to hear. Also included is the semi-famous Sacramento-bands cover of Do They Know it's Christmas. I had an mp3 of this from the old days of file sharing and never really knew how legit it was. It's nice to finally have a proper version of it. It sounds like they had a great time recording it.
I'm going to work through the rest chronologically by album, because that's clearly the right order. I've still not got a copy of their second album, Quick. This is mostly because I have a copy of their first album, Listening Game, and it's either the work of a band trying to find their sound, or terrible, depending on how generous I'm feeling (usually the latter). However, based on these songs, I should get a copy. Both versions of Man o' the Year are better than anything on Listening Game by a good distance. Less is very heavy, probably the heaviest they ever sounded whilst still sounding like themselves. Again, Jonah's vocals at the end are incredible. I didn't realise Girl was on both Quick and Tin Cans until I looked up the tracklisting on Discogs (this is a nice acoustic version). The Ballad of Simon & Constance is nice and All Go Down has some lovely warm strings in the chorus and a great melody too, but does drag on too long. Sister is a bit of a slow dirge though (not in the good way), but again Jonah cracks out some nice vocals at the end.
As I've said many times before (and to anyone who'll listen), Tin Cans With Strings to You is my favourite Far album and I was genuinely shocked to find that the general consensus was that Water & Solutions was the highlight. We get treated to demos of about half the songs here, which is nice. I never thought I'd say that a song from Tin Cans was too slow, but that is the case with the demo of In the Aisle, Yelling (great title). The chorus does sound amazing. Job's Eyes and Punchdrunk are both even slower somehow and sound brilliant - the former has these crunching heavy guitars that make you realise how easily the band could have been Helmet if they'd wanted to be. Punchdrunk, despite sounding like it was recorded underwater, shows how tiny little changes in the mixing can have such a huge effect on a song - there's a little bass line just before the chorus in the final version that really makes the song, but here it's low in the mix and not the focus, which is a shame. Whoever decided to bring that to the top of the mix made a great call. Boring Life is painfully quiet and it's a shame that there's no demo of Joining the Circus - one of my favourite memories of seeing Jonah live (of which, there are many) was seeing him play that song upstairs in the Garage; I could listen to that song for days. We do, however, get three versions of Sorrow's End which is a lot for a song I wouldn't have been able to tell you much about in particular before writing this. The loud version is a great example of how different a song can be, at least musically - Jonah's fucked-with vocals are totally wrong for the speed and volume - it needs a crystal clear singalong, not echoey whispers. It could be a great punk-rock song, but isn't here.
Water & Solutions is, as expected, the star of the show, with demos of all the songs, five of which made it onto the vinyl (that I've barely mentioned in countless paragraphs). There's an interesting mixture of results - Really Here sounds like it was recorded super-early on and Jonah hasn't entirely figured out or committed to the vocal delivery; the title track sounds amazing but like it probably hurt to sing; Nestle has a hint of a 60's style to it but is also way fuzzier, which is a strange combination. There are three versions of Mother Mary, the first of which sounds bare in the chorus, but I couldn't tell you exactly what was missing. We're also treated to an acoustic version from the Daytrotter Sessions, which I've had mp3s of for a long time - it's lovely, but that should come as no surprise - Jonah has played that song a lot in the years between. Bury White is also from that recording and sounds great too.
Finally, we come to At Night We Live, from which we have three songs, two from the Daytrotter Session - the title track and The Ghost That Kept on Haunting. I quite enjoyed the album and enjoy these versions too. The "ambient mix" of the the title track is interesting, but not as good by a long way. An interesting experiment if nothing else.
And that brings us to the end of the nearly-4-hours of music here. With international postage, this wasn't a cheap purchase (£47.25, all in) but there's no way you could say there isn't value there. I don't think any Far fan could really ask for more. And there are nice little touches beyond the vast, vast quantity of music too - the zine is signed by Jonah and each sleeve is numbered (mine is #10, surely a reflection of random ordering rather than numbering by order date, because I don't think I paid into the Kickstarter straight away). The last page of the zine lists the names of all the people who contributed and my name is there if you look very closely. I don't engage in Kickstarters as often as I probably should, but I'm very glad I did in this case. You never really know how these things are going to turn out, but Jonah has done his fair share, so knows what people want. And, this package suggests, that what people want is crazy amounts of music.
Format: Gatefold 12", zine, USB drive
Tracks: 52
Cost: £47.25 new
Bought: Kickstarter
When: 08/12/18
Colour: Blue
Etching: None
mp3s: USB drive
