Brendan Canning - Something For All of Us

For a good number of years, All Tomorrow's Parties dominated my musical discoveries. 2008 was the start of that - Explosions in the Sky curated a weekend and had one of my favourite bands, The Paper Chase, playing. We saw some excellent bands that weekend, and went to the festival as often as I could for the four years that followed (and beyond, but they ran into actually-holding-the-event issues, which was a shit). That EITS weekend I saw Broken Social Scene for the third time. I'd been introduced to them by the song Ibi Dreams of Pavement on a mix cd I'd been sent from Australian Kate in 2006, and saw them play an incredible set at Pukkelpop that summer.

The ATP performance in 2008 has come to be my main memory of seeing them - they had musicians from so many other bands on stage with them and the set was just perfect. ATP later gave out mp3s of the whole set to anyone who became a "member", a paid-for privilege that I definitely got my money's-worth from - every so often they'd offer free tickets to gigs for members and I was living in London at the time, so went to a lot of shows. They also gave you advance booking, which meant I got to see Mogwai in the tiny Hoxton Bar and Grill. Anyway, all that means I'm very familiar with the set from the recording, but I also have distinct visual memories of seeing Explosions and J Mascis on stage with them, as well as seeing them play Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl, a song I absolutely love. I've seen them six times now, and they basically alternate between blowing me away and hugely underwhelming me - I think I tend to remember how great the last time was, build my hopes up to unreasonable proportions, get underwhelmed, then go in with very low expectations and get blown away again. The last time I saw them was great though. Broken Social Scene were a prime example of the sort of music my ATP-years involved, and I bought many albums from all the related bands from that Canadian Arts & Crafts scene.

In July 2008, Virgin Megastore was in a dire situation and closing stores all over the place. Loads of cheap stock was getting sent to the Cardiff store before it finally closed, so there were constantly cardboard boxes of random cds appearing. I spent more in those last few weeks than I did at any other time in a Virgin Megastore, which probably says a lot. One find was Kevin Drew's solo album, billed as a "Broken Social Scene Presents" album, which ticked by BSS / Arts & Craft box very nicely. He's clearly the member of the band that wants them to be a rock band, and the album is quite basic rock music, but enjoyable.

In December I found the second in the "Broken Social Scene Presents" series, Brendan Canning's Something For All of Us in Spillers. Brendan is clearly the member of the band that is the opposite of Kevin Drew. The intersection of these two albums is almost BSS in entirety, and the exact reason why they're so good. It seems that Kevin is pulling them in one direction, and Brendan the other and somewhere in the middle they meet and write excellent music.

All of this is a long way of trying to describe this album without actually committing to do so. The reason for that is that I'm struggling to find the words. Being a mathematician, I'm left with

BSS - "rock" = this album,

which is probably the closest I can get. There are songs on the BSS albums where it's just a bit of a soundscape and less of a song; there's a lot of that here. There's a 60's-ish, floaty feel to it all, which doesn't do it for me. I couldn't tell you of any highlights because nothing really stands out. Kevin Drew's album felt like it was made of traditional, simple songs, so it's easier to break it down and feel some sort of connection to it. I don't get that here. (It's worth noting that the Kevin Drew album isn't great by any stretch, but it has many aspects of good music that I'm missing here). This song is okay, Churches Under the Stairs, but I fully acknowledge that it's because it sounds like a perfectly average BSS song, the sort that sits between the good BSS songs that I suspect Kevin Drew had more of an influence on. There are some fun horns on Love is New, but I'd prefer it considerably as an instrumental song.

I hoped, as is often the case, that writing about this album would finally endear it to me more, but that hasn't happened. They can't all be winners.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Spiller's Records, Cardiff
When: 09/12/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Nick Cave + Warren Ellis - West of Memphis OST

I like this album, but the story I'm about to tell would readily imply otherwise, and certainly pulls down my enjoyment every time I play it.

At the start of 2015 I decided I was going to replicate my Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year by buying a weekly record in Truck Store in Oxford. Truck is a great shop and I'm very thankful to have a good independent record shop within walking distance of work, albeit a 15 minute march through the many Oxford tourists. The first few weeks were good and I got a mixture of new albums I was keen to hear and some classics they often had in stock. By February I was already scrapping the barrel a bit. I love Truck, but there are times I go in there and there's nothing I want (although I've only left empty-handed once); other times I spend obscene amounts, but the flow is inconsistent. I like a lot of the music they stock, but the intersection between their stock and my music taste could be much larger. Just like Banquet left me wanting music that wasn't punk, Truck makes me want music that isn't indie or relatively safe-bet alternative. Between those two and Norman Records online I'm pretty much sorted.

In February 2015 a few things happened: I was due to visit my friend Matt in Switzerland on flights I'd booked with the air-miles I'd got free with my credit card; also my wife's grandma passed away, so we had a funeral to attend. The funeral was the same day as my flight to Zurich, so I booked another flight for the next day and thought nothing of it - the original was essentially free. I had a nice weekend in Zurich and on the Monday went to check-in at the airport for my flight. However, my ticket had been cancelled by British Airways. Turns out there's a clause in return flights that if you don't fly on the outbound flight, they cancel your ticket for the return leg. This is entirely cynical of the airline who are only doing it to reduce the fact that buying two returns in the opposite direction can sometimes be cheaper than buying the one return you actually want. It also helps with their over-selling policies that frequently get reported. There's really no reason to do it other than because they can, and it helps with profit-margins.

Needless to say, I hadn't heard of this rule and was pretty shocked when I got to the check-in to hear this news. No amount of reasoning would convince them that it was ridiculous and in no other industry would a paying customer have a valid ticket for something that evidently had plenty of space but not be allowed to use their ticket. I was pissed. I went to the tickets desk and very much begrudgingly paid £250 for the pleasure of a seat on the plane that had another seat I was supposed to be sat in. I remember looking around at the empty seats wondering which one was also mine. Upon getting home I discovered that pretty much every airline has such a policy and many countless people all over the internet had been screwed over by amounts far greater than me. I made it my mission to mention this to as many people as I can to avoid them the misfortune I had.

I've always been fairly good at calming myself in situations where I've lost money on stupid or annoying things by justifying the money in some other way; here I'd not actually paid for the original flights and had I gone to Zurich and not stayed on Matt's sofa-bed I'd have spent a great deal more on accommodation. Compared to most weekends in Zurich, mine was still relatively cheap. However, I obviously spent the whole flight kicking myself and thinking I really needed to be better with money.

That's where this record comes into it. Two weeks before I'd been to Truck and the only record I fancied was the new Two Gallants album. I like the band, but their albums never blow me away (across all the ones I have, there is one excellent album-worth of material). £22 for a single LP seemed pricey, but I wanted to give the weekly-record-from-Truck a good go so I went with it knowing I wasn't really that keen. The following week the only record that remotely interested me was this soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. I hadn't started getting into Nick Cave at that point (I've only really begun to scratch the surface now) but knew and respected him as a musician; Grinderman at ATP was quite a spectacle. I've been a fan of the Dirty Three for years and Warren Ellis and his violin are a huge part of that. I'd also been listening to a lot of instrumental music at work and was increasingly discovering that soundtracks by musicians I liked formed a part of that. Also, I knew of the case of the West Memphis 3 from the Black Flag covers album that Henry Rollins put together years ago to help the case.

The music here is nice enough, but it's not a soundtrack I go often, or very much at all. Clint Mansell's soundtracks are prime examples of what I enjoy listening to - essentially post-rock in their structures, but with these central themes that keep repeating throughout and building to something huge; there's something very classical in the structure, but post-rock in the execution. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have made some interesting music here, but it doesn't hang together as an album well; there are no central themes to repeat or even any real progression. It's desolate, as I imagine a lot of Memphis is. There's a lot of sadness and little redemption. I've not seen the film, but I strongly suspect this music is absolutely perfect for it. The feelings I'm getting from it are exactly what I'd expect to feel from watching it (if you don't know the case, it's well worth reading up on). I'd like to watch the film one day, but knowing what I know, I keep putting it off because I know I won't come away feeling better about things.

Anyway, as I sat in my very expensive chair on a very short flight I thought about my weekly trips to Truck and how I wasn't getting the exciting musical discoveries I'd got seven years ago in Spillers - five weeks into my Spillers year I bought In the Aeroplane Over the Sea; six weeks into the Truck year all I had was the feeling that I was going to regret buying a lot of the albums I did. The cost of vinyl had risen hugely over those seven years, so it was becoming harder to take a chance on unknowns. If this album had been incredible, or they'd had something a little different or more exciting in stock that week, I might have continued with the year, but as it was, I decided it was the first thing to go. The combination of feeling bad about money because of the flight, and feeling bad about money when spending half an hour checking every single record they had in stock that week only to go for a record that otherwise has little business in my collection was too much.

But some positives did come from the experience. I realised that I didn't want my collection to consist of random albums I'd spent too much on from bands that I'd otherwise not bother with. I decided I needed to focus my record buying on building up the collection I really desired. I drafted a list of bands for whom I wanted to have all their albums on vinyl, one that I'm still working on today. I also decided it was time to stop ignoring cds, as I'd come to do, and instead embrace them as a cheap way to get into bands and build collections for artists I like, but not enough to buy all the albums on vinyl. As it happens, Nick Cave has become my go-to example for this - I want to have all his albums, but I don't like him enough to spend £20-£25 on each of his many albums on vinyl; I do like him enough to spend £5 to have them on cd, which is exactly what I've been doing. Nearly four years later, I'm still really enjoying the clarity of having such a goal for my record collection has brought me; I like crossing off albums from the list. I still buy albums off the list, but I have more of a purpose now, which I like.

The other final point to make is that I really like Truck Store, but maybe I started my plan at a particularly bad time for new releases / interesting back-catalogue additions. If I was doing such a year now, I reckon I'd have better luck - their stock of vinyl has increased hugely and they do get in some strange things that I quite enjoy. That said, I don't have the time to absorb new music at such a rate anymore. Also, perhaps 23-year-old-me was more open to risking £12 on an average album than 30-year-old-saving-for-a-house-deposit-me was to risking £20. Who knows.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £17 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 19/02/15
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Milloy - Creating Problems While Practising Solutions

Milloy were an excellent punk rock band from Leeds that I was lucky enough to see once in Le Pub in Newport, along with Bedford Falls, Harbour and Blackbeard. That line up really covers all the bases of the music I was listening to and the bands I was seeing back in 2009. I remember everyone being really excited for that show and I'm pretty sure everyone I knew in Cardiff would have been there that night (a reasonable number on stage).

Milloy pre-dated my getting into punk by a good margin - that meant they were one of the older bands by the time I was getting into things, one that everyone respected and admired. I'm glad I got to see them at least once. We had a copy of Creating Problems While Practising Solutions in the kitchen - I don't know who it belonged to (either Hugh or Nicky) - and it got played a lot. About a month after seeing them, I picked up More Than a Machine in Damaged, which is an incredible album. On this follow-up they stepped it up again - the songs here are ridiculously catchy, the guitars intense and there's enough layered vocals to please anyone.

Propofol opens the album and somehow takes me back to the kitchen in Cardiff every time. Mary Rose and Textbook are a huge pairing, The Math has a brilliant chorus that keeps coming back, Stone Court is a great finisher and the album never relents. I said the same thing about More Than a Machine, but you really couldn't ask for more from a punk rock album.

Periodically between 2009 and 2016 I thought to myself I should get a copy of this album (turns out they also had two mini-albums that I've not heard either) but in my usual, terrible, apathetic way I didn't. Then Boss Tuneage announced a new series of "made to order" records and I knew it was time to rectify that situation. The idea was brilliant, they would press albums from their past that never made it onto vinyl the first time round - the label has been going for so long that they existed before and throughout the time when cd was king and vinyl the old has-been. It's a great idea, and this was the first album they pressed in that series. Of the records they've pressed so far, Milloy is the only one I've been keen to get, but I always keep an eye out for what they're working on next. The idea is that everyone pays up-front, then they press the exact number of albums needed - minimises the risk and means everyone gets something cool. The pressing is nice - the sleeve a half-gatefold and a nice large insert; the record is white label and the paper sleeve is stamped saying "Boss Tuneage Made to Order Series". The only criticism/improvement would have been to number the records so we could see how many they actually pressed - I assume only the people at the label know the exact number. A minor thing though.

As I often say, I'm really pleased to have this in my collection sat alongside More Than a Machine (I don't thank Facebook for much, but it was a promoted post from the Boss Tuneage page that meant I saw this in time). I felt the closest to the UK punk-rock scene when I was living in Cardiff and I have endless fond memories of it; Milloy and this album are deeply wrapped up in that, so I love listening to them and thinking back to those days.

Format: 12", white label, insert, made to order
Tracks: 10
Cost: £18 new
Bought: Boss Tuneage website
When: 10/11/16
Colour: Black
Etching: None
mp3s: None

The Clash - The Story of The Clash, Volume 1

Every now and again, I write something on here that is very controversial (luckily few people who read this take me up on those controversies, or maybe they're just not as controversial as I think they are). They're mostly things I'd be very wary of saying aloud in a crowd because you know at least one person within earshot will strongly disagree. Here is one such controversial thing: I don't care for The Clash.

I know I'm supposed to. My teenage years were dominated by the Manic Street Preachers who owe a lot to The Clash - all the books I read about the Manics constantly reminded me that The Clash are a band I should check out. Of course I knew the big songs from the radio - Rock the Casbah, Should I Stay or Should I Go and I Thought the Law - but for years I never made any effort to check them out properly. I'd see their cds in record stores and occasionally toyed with the idea of buying a best-of, but I didn't buy anything until 2007, when I got this second-hand, well-loved (or not, since it was in a second hand shop) compilation. It was a lot of The Clash to take in in one go.

I wonder if this collection is just too long. I know there are good songs in there - and great ones like London Calling, the highlight for me by a long way - but there's a lot of songs that I could really take or leave: Straight to Hell drags on far too long and Lost in the Supermarket is just a really bad song; I don't know if I'm missing something with that one, but every time I hear it I wonder how it made it onto an album, let alone a greatest hits album. London Calling doesn't appear until the last side, which is a long wait.

Guns of Brixton is another great song and (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais is quite fun - shows off their varied influences and you can see where Rancid stole at least half of their songs from. Tommy Gun has a good chorus and English Civil War would be an excellent way to end the album (but they don't end it there). Train in Vain I know well from the Manics cover, but I genuinely prefer their version - I couldn't tell you who is singing on any particular song, but I don't care for either Mick of Joe's voice - one has a sneer I find deeply off-putting. Safe European Home makes me want to listen to Suburban Home by The Descendents - the direction of influence is an easy one to follow there.

I wanted to like The Clash, but it just didn't work out. I feel that if you can't be convinced by a greatest hits album, then you really stand no chance with the albums themselves (Bob Dylan, a case in point, although that was another compilation that was far too long for an introduction). A lot of people would probably be amazed by the lack of "classic" albums in my record collection, but really I think I just love music from the late-80's/90's onwards (Sabbath, Zeppelin, Floyd and Springsteen being notable examples) - I get that a lot of these bands and albums from before that paved the way - I appreciate it and I'm thankful for it - but I just don't get the same enjoyment from them. That's no bad thing to realise.

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 28
Cost: £6 second hand
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 14/04/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None

Inventions - Inventions

Every now and again, I gamble reasonable sums of money on albums that I've not heard; this is one such album. Sometimes those gambles pay off, other times not so much. I always thought this album leant towards the latter, although listening to Flood Poems now I'm wondering if I haven't given it enough chances over the years.

In November 2014 I was in Cardiff and it's almost rude to go to Cardiff and not visit Spillers Records, so I did. It was the first time I'd been there since they moved location and was slightly sad to see that the quantity of stock was much lower than it used to be. Luckily, the quality was even better, so at least they downsized in a good way. The vinyl is/was hidden upstairs on a landing, but in the few boxes were many records I fancied buying. They had the newest Electric Wizard album, Time to Die, a very reasonably-priced copy of Shellac's Excellent Italian Greyhound which I'd been after for a little while and the double-cd best of The Ex; the latter resulted in a nice conversation with the staff about the fact they'd sold three The Ex albums in the last few days and how nice it is to meet other people who like that band. They were also very positive about this Inventions record.

Roll back a few minutes and I was making some very tough choices about what records to take downstairs to the counter. I made a fairly long short-list going through the racks and left behind some albums that I'm sure would have been very welcome in my collection (including Run the Jewels 2, an album I already loved but hadn't yet bought a copy of, something I later rectified). A curious addition was this record. I was on a huge Explosions in the Sky trip at the time (and still am, to be fair), so a collaboration between one of the guys in Explosions and Eluvium (who I didn't really know at the time - I've since become a fan after hearing Shuffle Drones (in endless different ways)) sounded quite interesting. Spillers have always been great at writing little reviews on the sleeve and this was very positive. £20 was a lot to gamble on an unknown, but the review was very convincing and I choose this record to add to my pile of records, at the expense of at least one other.

Now having listened to a bit of Matthew Cooper's music as Eluvium, this album sounds exactly like what you'd imagine a collaboration between Explosions and Eluvium would do. It has more in common with The Wilderness and their soundtracks than it does the earlier EITS albums, but that experimental edge is very welcome. Compared to Eluvium, there are these very EITS-esque guitars just floating somewhere in the background, occasionally coming forward, that really make it work (not to say Eluvium is difficult, but it's certainly not music you could put on in a crowded room). Peaceable Child is a perfect example to what they do and well worth a listen.

I'm enjoying Inventions far more right now than I ever remember doing so before; I possibly wrote them off unfairly. In my defence, Hugh gave me a copy of Nils Frahm's excellent Spaces that weekend, so as far as neo-classical/ambient post-rock music goes, it was up against a truly stunning album. On top of that, Time to Die ended up being number 3 in my top ten that year, and Excellent Italian Greyhound has The End of Radio on it, so competition for my ears was tough around that time. However, the point of this blog was always to rediscover and re-appreciate hidden gems in my collection, so this last 45 minutes has been very productive - I'll be playing this one much more often.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 8
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Cardiff
When: 15/11/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

In 2018 it's easy to be dismissive of Jane's Addiction - on the surface, there's a lot that hasn't aged well, but probably no more than most bands from LA at the same time. Sure, the reunions and reunion albums (yes, plural, apparently) probably didn't help, but if you ignore all of that, they released two landmark albums. I wrote about Ritual de lo Habitual five years ago, but kept forgetting to write about Nothing's Shocking.

There's a very good chance I've not listened to this album in the years in between; if I had I would have remembered how great it is and written about it straight away. The second those amazingly uplifting guitars hit in Up the Beach I would have been mentally writing paragraphs after paragraphs about it. Over the 15 years I've had this album I've periodically had this same thought: Ocean Size might be the biggest riff ever. I mean, literally the-size-of-an-ocean huge. The production is incredible (this was recorded in 1988) and it does everything to possible to make you focus on the sheer size of that riff. I like Up the Beach as an opener, but can you imagine if they'd just opened it up with Ocean Song? People wouldn't have known what hit them.

Nothing's Shocking is a funny one - there are songs that in my mind are less essential, but actually all have their charms - Summertime Rolls takes a little too long to get going but I do love where it ends up - I think I even used to put it on mixtapes; Idiots Rule ends up being this jazz explosion but starts as something almost throwaway; and Ted, Just Admit It builds in an almost post-rock style that was a world apart from anything they'd written before. Of course there's also Mountain Song and that bassline - a song that would dominate any album that didn't already have Ocean Size on it. Snapcase did a cover of it which worked well. I think Sepultura covered it too. It's a classic.

Jane Says was, as mentioned before, my introduction to Jane's Addiction, although I was used to the live version from Kettle Whistle being played on MTV. I was excited to hear the original version when I bought this album - I'd found a copy of Kettle Whistle a few months beforehand, which quenched my thirst for the song (and introduced me to demos of Ocean Song and Mountain Song). I like it, but not as much as the live version - the steel drums are far quieter in the mix. I'm still a little bitter that I've never seen them play it live - at Reading in 2002 they had the steel drums by the side of the stage but didn't play them; they cancelled their set last minute at Reading 2011 and when I saw them in Brixton they were playing Ritual in whole. I might have to accept that I'll never see it.

If I had to say which Jane's album was the best (no one is asking, but I like to ponder these questions) I'd be torn. Ritual was the first I heard and I spent a lot if time listening to it in the two years before getting Nothing's Shocking; I love it and all its strangeness. On the other hand, Nothing's Shocking has the big stand-alone songs - Ocean Size, Mountain Song and Jane Says; when I think of the best Jane's songs, I think of those songs. But maybe that answers the question itself - Ritual is the better album, but Nothing's Shocking has the songs. Either way, both are important and excellent.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 20/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: None
mp3s: None

The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute b/w The Widow

Frances the Mute - the album - gets a lot of hate, but it's always been my favourite Mars Volta album. I remember being knocked over by it the first time and I still listen to it often now. The way they bring Cassandra Gemini around at the end was perfect; I remember telling my dad that they were a modern-day Led Zeppelin, a ridiculous claim but what I felt at the time. I once saw a copy of the album on 4LP glow-in-the-dark vinyl in a record shop in Melbourne for $400 or so. I wasn't remotely tempted, but I knew I'd never see a copy in the wild again and, so far, I was right.

This isn't Frances the Mute the album, but Frances the Mute the single. The cd case for the album had lyrics beneath the cd tray for a song that wasn't on the album. Those lyrics are the lyrics to this title-track that didn't make the cut, since the album was already pushing the limits of a single cd. I can remember the excitement of finally being able to hear a song whose lyrics had been so mysteriously left behind on the packaging. It's a good song and would have fit the album, but I don't think it suffers for missing it. It's 14 minutes long, but really only about 8 or 9 of music. Had it been on the album with all the ambient noise either side, I think it would have harmed the flow. The hint of Cassandra Gemini through the static at the end always makes me want to put the album on.

The b-side is a live acoustic version of The Widow, which mostly sounds lovely and works far better than those words suggest it will do. To account for the almost-screamed chorus (which would struggle over the gentle acoustic guitar), Cedric messes around with his voice through all sorts of effects pedals and boxes, which isn't as good as the original but interesting nonetheless.

I found this copy in Selectadisc in London the day before I flew out to Germany to visit my friend Matt. From Germany I went to Austria to see some friends in Vienna, then back to Lancaster to see some other university friends followed by a quick trip back to Winchester before flying back to Australia for my second term over there (my carbon footprint at that time was substantial). That means I didn't actually get to listen to this until I was back in Winchester a few weeks after buying it, and then not again for another 6 months. I recorded a couple of records I bought that winter onto tape to take back to Canberra, but this one didn't end up anywhere. It's slim sleeve means I've routinely overlooked it in my collection (especially surrounded my The Mars Volta's other album in their double gatefold sleeves). I've not listened to it enough.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £6 new
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 13/01/06
Colour: Green
Etching: Side B: "The Widow live at the Wiltern"
mp3s: None