Frank Turner + Jon Snodgrass - Buddies

This is a strange record. Frank Turner and Jon Snodgrass spent a few days together in Colorado in 2010 and decided to hammer out a record. They'd written a song on the Revival Tour a while before and wanted to follow it up with a record. That song and nine others make up this record.

Some of the songs are pretty good - Buddies and New Orleansy are definitely worth a listen. The Ballad of Steve is fun too, but exactly the sort of song that comes from this sort of writing scenario (Steve was that flight attendant who was very briefly in the news). On the other hand, there are also some songs that aren't very good at all - Shut the Chicken, Mosquitoz and the unnecessary Remember That Time We Wrote This Record (I think there's a lot of irony in their use of the word "hits"). But then does any of that really matter? I guess the point was to document what came out of their few days regardless of whether either of them would consider the songs their best (having seen both of them, I'm going to say they're not, although New Orleansy is a genuinely decent song). I've heard a few records recorded in a similar way, and they're rarely my favourites (although Curve of the Earth by Attack in Black and The Rescue by Explosions in the Sky were both pretty nice). These ten songs are certainly enjoyable enough from a "documenting a time and place" perspective, and maybe that's enough.

A final, small point - it seems the insert was thrown together equally half-heartedly (or possibly equally drunkenly?) because the text about songs 4 and 5 seems to have been deleted or replaced with one of the photos. The front side finishes half way through a sentence about The Ballad of Steve but the following text on the other side appears to be about Old Fast Songs.


Format: 10", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £12.30 new
Bought: Banquet Records website
When: 22/12/10
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones

It would be wrong to say that I've been listening to Frank Turner's music since he was in Million Dead, because there were a few years at the start of his solo career when I had no idea he had a solo career; I remember Million Dead falling off my radar (presumably because they broke up) and then a few years later he was headlining the "UK Soft Core Tour", which I'd gone along to because Jonah Matranga (of Far and New End Original fame) was playing. From that night in Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff I've watched him on his seemingly never-ending rise to fame and it's great to see him doing so well.

Rewinding a bit, the first time I heard any of Frank's music was in the video for Million Dead's Breaking the Back (which stood out because I couldn't get over how much the singer looked like my friend Tom's brother. Despite them both being from Winchester, to the best of my knowledge, they share no relation). I picked up both of Million Dead's albums and enjoyed them, and I guess I heard they broke up, but I was living in Australia at the time so a lot of news passed me by.

The UK Soft Core Tour was great though, because Frank already had this following and these great songs and it was pretty incredible to be dropped into the middle of that. A few months later his excellent second album Love Ire and Song came out, but rather than buying a copy myself, I actually bought it for my dad first. I'd given my dad a copy of Chuck Ragan's Feast or Famine a short while before and he thought it was the best he'd heard in ages. For his birthday he asked for some similar cds and I remember thinking he might enjoy Frank. I gave him the album and he thought it was great so I then bought a copy for myself. I'm pretty sure if my dad had to make a list of his all-time favourite albums, Love Ire and Song would be up there amongst The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zepp IV.

So, three paragraphs later, what about this album? England Keep My Bones is Frank's fourth proper solo album and it's got some great tunes. I Still Believe had been knocking around for a few months before the album came out and is a prime example of what Frank's doing. Some other highlights include I am Disappeared, If I Ever Stray and Glory Hallelujah. I'm not too keen on English Curse mind you, nor the waistcoats he and the band adopted, but these are minor things. Annoyingly, the cd came with a huge bunch of bonus tracks that the vinyl doesn't have, so once again I'm paying more for fewer songs because I like vinyl, but I'm getting used to this.

Being from Winchester myself, it would be rude to not dwell on Wessex Boy for a moment. Frank sang about Winchester back in his Million Dead days, but it was on This Town Ain't Big Enough for the One of Me that I realised that Frank and I were pretty much on the same page about a number of things. Wessex Boy felt like part two to that song; when you're younger you need to escape Winchester (and we did all move to London), but a few years later it's this great place to go back to and re-live those days of getting drunk in The Railway and meeting people on the Buttercross. Pretty much everyone got drunk in the cathedral grounds at least once so I'm sure the whole city can relate, but it's nice to hear someone singing about the exact same things you did for years. Frank has a few years on me but I would be surprised if our paths hadn't crossed in Winchester at some point.

All this brings me round to my final point, which is the amount of shit Frank seems to get these days. If you move in certain circles you come across a lot of people with a very low opinion of Frank Turner and, personally, I disagree with them. I think it's great that he's doing well (and it's not just because it's nice to see someone from Winchester succeeding); when he played the Olympics last year I felt a little fuzzy because there was Frank playing to one of the biggest audiences imaginable. This is a guy who I still see going to the same shows as me (if I had £1 for every time my view has been slightly ruined at a gig because Frank Turner was stood on front of me, I'd have at least £2) and there he was playing the Olympics. Maybe the Black Flag and other punk influences aren't so obvious, but how many kids do you reckon have got into Minor Threat just because Frank sang about them on his first album? Surely that's a good thing? I also have huge respect for him for still playing tiny shows despite being able to sell out Wembley Arena. Just after Christmas he played a benefit show for The Joiners in Southampton which was excellent (I took my dad who loved it even more), and next week he's playing Banquet Records for the millionth time. He's even partially responsible for me moving to Kingston, something I went into way more detail about here.

Anyway, that's all my Frank Turner rants rolled into one, long blog post, with a token paragraph about the album itself. I'm going to have nothing to say at all next time I write about any of his records. His new album is out soon and I'll certainly be getting a copy.


Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £11.25 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 21/06/11
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: none
mp3s: CD included