Mogwai - Come On Die Young

Some years ago I was explaining to a friend why I can never move away from having an iPod Classic (or another equally large capacity mp3 player, but I don't think there are any of note). The argument I gave was that there are days when you just really want to listen to some obscure Mogwai b-side, and that's exactly the music that wouldn't make the cut if you were worrying about capacity. At the time, I had The Hawk is Howling and the double cd re-release of Young Team, and it was precisely those bonus tracks I was thinking about. I got Young Team just before I started my PhD and those years were heavily soundtracked by post-rock on my trusty iPod in whatever library I found myself working in.

With that in mind, I was very keen to pick up this fancy boxset re-issue of Mogwai's second album Come On Die Young when it came out; 17 bonus songs was right up my alley. I ordered it from Norman Records because they offered free postage on orders over £50 - before that point I'd never heard of them, but I've since spent more money with them than I care to mention - as I've often said before, they cover almost everything I'm after outside of the Banquet Records and Truck Store remit (in fact, I'd say they're more in line with my musical tastes in terms of what they stock than either of the other two are, but these things always change in subtle ways). It's a lovely boxset, as can be seen in the pictures below, and well worth the money.

As for Come On Die Young itself, it wasn't an album I instantly loved. One entirely unnecessary anecdote first though - at some point in my early twenties I was in Cambridge with my friend Tom and his friends Caz, Jim and Luch. Luch was studying there and for some reason I'd gone up with Tom to get drunk there one night. I have absolutely no idea why we'd gone out in Cambridge - it wasn't easy to get to and I don't think I had any other business there at the time. I can't even remember how we got up there, or where I'd come from (Winchester, Cardiff?). It definitely did happen though, and I remember more about the drunken night that followed than the days around it, it seems. Anyway, Luch was a Mogwai fan and had a poster of the cover of CODY on the wall. As we were drinking, he was getting routined harassed with the line "Come on Luch, die young". I will never be able to think about this album without thinking about his close friends telling him to die young.

About a year after getting Young Team, I bought a cheap, second-hand copy of CODY on cd in one of the records stores on Berwick Street in London. I was excited to hear it since I'd heard that it was considered one of their best albums. I didn't get it straight away, like I had with the other two albums I owned, and it took a long time for me to give it another chance (I also bought Funcrusher Plus that day, and that got a lot of play). If it wasn't that I knew it was so highly regarded, I might have disregarded it entirely.

To me, CODY is a very strangely sequenced album. Despite being sandwiched between two perfect bookends (Punk Rock and Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist), it feels a bit like it's on shuffle for the most part. What is certainly true is that the best songs, and the most traditionally Mogwai songs are all at the end. It's rare that "classic" albums are so back-heavy, with most being the opposite (meaning people often forget to notice that the back-half is a bit weak). In this case though, it works against the album - there's about half an hour of music before you get to a song that sounds like what I want from a Mogwai song (May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door). Ex-Cowboy is the first really incredible song on the album, and that's track nine. It's important to note though that Ex-Cowboy is really incredible. Of course, Christmas Steps is the real highlight, with it's slow start and bass-lead build up. It's almost as scary as the haunting face on the cover, and you want Mogwai to be scary, really.

At the other extreme, at the very start you have the title-track (of sorts) Cody which does nothing for me at all and couldn't be further from what I was expecting (which, I strongly suspect, is intentional). Sung vocals with an actual chorus and no big crescendos or heavy guitars. You can't help but believe they wanted that to feel a bit antagonistic. After the success of Young Team I imagine they took some pleasure in starting the album that way.

The third and fourth discs cover the 17 bonus tracks and we get a good mixture of demos, session and live tracks, as well as the Travels in Constants EP (from Temporary Residence Records excellent series of releases) and two rare songs, Nick Drake and Hugh Dallas. Of particular note are the shortened version of Christmas Steps, 7-25 with the fuzzed-out guitar thrashing, their cover of Papa M's Arundel (which took me ages to work out why it was familiar when I finally got a copy of Live From a Shark Cage), Spoon Test and Hugh Dallas which is pure Slint, but great for it. As expected, the bonus disc has had a good amount of play.

Format: 4x 12" boxset, double gatefold sleeves, inserts, poster, dvd
Tracks: 29
Cost: £54.50 new
Bought: Norman Records website
When: 06/08/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: dvd included

Manic Street Preachers - International Blue

To get a copy of this 7", I had to buy a copy of the white vinyl pressing of Resistance is Futile from an independent record shop. I'm all for spending money with independent record shops, but did have some trouble finding a shop with enough stock - it seemed to run out as soon as shops said they had stock and some shops had certain rules, like only over-the-counter orders. In the end I got it from Jumbo Records in Leeds, who I may have visited in the past, but can't say for sure. Looking at Discogs now, it wouldn't have been too hard to pick one up after the fact, but I wanted to make sure I got a copy.

I'd already ordered the "collectors" package for the new Manics album the day they announced it, which included the album on black and red vinyl (that's one on black vinyl, and another copy on red vinyl, not "black and red" vinyl), as well as the album on double cd, regular cd and cassette. I probably would have bought all the variants over time, so it's just easier to buy them all up front. What is one extra copy after all those (I sincerely hope they got to count that as five separate album sales)? Some might say it's strange to have a copy released that isn't in the "collectors" bundle, but after buying nearly 200 different Manics releases I really can't be bothered splitting hairs about this.

Anyway, I was pleased to have a 7" of the only single from the album that got a physical release. Digital-only singles are basically pointless, except from a streaming-sales-on-chart-position point of view. But the bigger concern is the lack of b-sides, which is most of the reason I have a Manics collection in the first place. There exists one b-side from Resistance is Futile, which is a terrible shame (there are some Japanese bonus tracks I'm yet to get, so I guess they count). That b-side is called Holding Patterns. It's a nice song, Christmassy somehow with an unexpected guitar solo. It would have been a fine song on the album, but not essential.

The a-side however is worth dwelling on. International Blue is an instant classic with a huge riff and a great reminder of why they're such a good band - the fact that they can drop a song like this after 30 years and it just does everything you want a Manics song to do is really incredible. Comparing it to Motorcycle Emptiness, as they did when it came is a bit of stretch but only a bit, which says a lot (I can see why they made the comparison too). It is soaring and triumphant, and makes me so happy to be a fan.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £5 new
Bought: Jumbo Records website
When: 13/03/18
Colour: Transparent blue
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Manic Street Preachers - Roses in the Hospital

This was an eBay purchase late last year - I'd gotten back into eBay in a big way and was spending far too much. I probably could have found this record cheaper, but it was in good condition (at least, the sleeve is) and I wanted to fill a gap in my collection, so I put in a bid and won. The record itself sounds like shit - not in a charming "isn't vinyl nice and warm and crackly" way, but more in a "I wonder what damage this is doing to my needle" way. Luckily I have the songs on the cd, so I don't need to play it to hear any of these songs.

Roses in the Hospital is, of course, a standout on Gold Against the Soul (although I love the whole album). The slow drum-and-vocals bit before the outro is a nice precursor to the perfect ending of A Design For Life and the "forever delayed" lines at the very end are (forever) brilliant. The line "We don't want your fucking love" has been replaced with "Roses in the hospital" (just about works if you say each syllable slowly enough) for the 7" version and the fade out is shortened considerably.

Us Against You has a Generation Terrorists b-side feel to it - dirty and punky. I like it. It's at odds with the polished sound of GATS in the best possible way; you wonder how it might have sounded if it'd had the same treatment as the album tracks. James' vocals in the chorus are impossible to understand, and could maybe stand to be a little cleaner. The other b-side here is Donkeys. There are a bunch of slower Manics b-sides that all sound great, and could be a fascinating album in themselves - Donkeys is one such song. Maybe I should make that as a mixtape for the car.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £8.45 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 15/10/18
Colour: Transparent red
Etching: none
mp3s: none

MewithoutYou - Ten Stories

This week MewithoutYou announced that they were splitting up, which was sad news. I took far too long to get into them properly and have only seen them play festival/support sets. I got their first two albums in 2007 when I first heard them and then neglected them entirely for five years until I found their fourth album in Banquet one afternoon. I can't blame anyone but myself for that; I imagine I missed out on seeing them play some incredible shows in the UK in the years between. Still, I can be pleased I did get to see them, that I had such a great time the two times I did see them, and that I can go back to their back-catalogue whenever I please.

In 2016 Big Scary Monsters put out this lovely reissue of their fifth album from 2012 and I picked it up in amongst a fairly large order of other albums I'd been meaning to pick up for a while. I didn't play it straight away, but I was into it as soon as I did - throughout there are highlights, like February, 1878, Cardiff Giant and Fox's Dream of the Log Flume (a song that could easily fit on their first two albums), but it was the closer, All Circles, that really stood out on the first play, and became the reason I played it a lot in the following weeks - I love the simple repeating lyric: "All circles presuppose they'll end up where they begin / but only in their leaving can they come back round". The brass instruments in the outro of Nine Stories is an inspired choice too. In the three years that have passed since then, it's probably become the MWY album I turn to most often, although they all get a good amount of play.

Format: 12", picture sleeve, booklet
Tracks: 11
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 07/03/16
Colour: Blue splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Braid - Frame & Canvas

I've noticed a few things in recent years: that there are a lot of emo albums that people consider to be absolutely classic, essential albums; that different people often have entirely different sets of albums that have such accolades; and finally that if you didn't hear those albums at the right point in your life, you can't understand why people hold them in such high regard.

I love Texas is the Reason and Miracle of 86, but I've played those albums to people who should, in theory, also love them and watched them be thoroughly underwhelmed. Frame & Canvas is a perfect example of this in the other direction.

In 2013, Banquet announced that Braid were going to Frame & Canvas in Kingston, and people got extremely excited. A lot of these people were ones whose opinions I hold in high regard, so I thought I should get tickets and see what all the fuss was about. A few weeks before the show, I picked up this copy of the album, so I'd at least have a reasonable idea of the songs. I enjoyed the album, and had fun at the show, but definitely never felt I really got why everyone was so excited. I watched them again at Fest that year and still wasn't really that into it. Eventually I had the series of observations in the first paragraph and concluded it was a time-and-place thing, and I was in neither when I heard Braid.

All that sounds a bit negative. Frame & Canvas is a perfectly fine record. In fact, it's quite enjoyable in places, but I don't consider it essential in the slightest. They hit up a lot of things I enjoy - layered vocals, odd shouts, generally interesting music. They're not so big on memorable choruses, which doesn't help crack into the album. Consolation Prizefighter is pretty good, but it's late in the album to finally have such a thought. I've probably just not given it all enough time, but it's had a good number of plays over the years and after a while you just have to accept that sometimes you're not going to get an album. I've decided Frame & Canvas is one such album. Ask me again in another six years and maybe I'll have finally got it.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 18/07/13
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

The Murder City Devils - In Name and Blood

It's 2019 and The Murder City Devils remain in the list of occasionally active bands I'd love to see but still haven't (along with Snapcase, Hum and The Blood Brothers - the list hasn't changed in years, despite all four playing shows in US in recent years. One day I'll see them and I'll hopefully have a great time).

In Name and Blood was the last of the original Murder City Devils albums I got (The White Ghost... hadn't been released and they were very much broken up when I was getting into them). I got Thelema, Empty Bottles and the live album, R.I.P., in 2005/2006 and loved them. A while later I found the self-titled album and it became a stable in the kitchen of our house in Cardiff - that album acted as a little revival of the band for me and I was very pleased to find this album in Spillers one day early in 2009. The albums had been reissued on coloured vinyl and I was very pleased to add it to my collection.

I knew a bunch of the songs from R.I.P., but there are some great songs that weren't played at that last show - Bunkhouse with it's excellent chorus ("If you don't think that cowboys cry / Then you ain't never heard a cowboy's song"), Someone Else's Baby and Fields of Fire. Of course, Press Gang, Idle Hands and Rum to Whiskey were all highlights from the live album, particularly the last one, so I knew them well. There's also a couple of covers thrown in - Neil Diamond's I'll Come Running (for some reason) and two much-more on-brand Misfits covers - Hybrid Moments and She, although the latter is not listed on the sleeve. Goes without saying that MCD's organ-heavy sound and The Misfits make quite a pairing.

The band had a slight stylistic shift over the years, so much so they considered the Thelema EP part of the reason they broke up, but it's a very gradual change - in my mind (and ears), the self-titled album and Thelema are the extreme ends, but Empty Bottles and In Name and Blood are quite similar and a very strong pair of albums. All that said, if you like any of their music, I can't see you not liking the rest.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 18/03/09
Colour: White and red splatter
Etching: Side A: "Look upon your city, enjoy the sight..." Side B: "For it will soon be rubble and bleached bones"
mp3s: Download code

The Computers - Love Triangles Hate Squares

What happened to The Computers? They seemed to be on the edge of breaking through to being quite huge, and then just vanished into thin air. The last time I saw them they were supporting Rocket From the Crypt and the time before that they had every person in McClusky's getting into their thing; the album they released after this one was produced (or recorded?) by John Reis, which is a pretty deal by most people's standards. (That said, I didn't buy that album, so maybe I'm part of the problem.) There was a whole load of hype about that album, then they went quiet almost as soon as it came out. There was no "the band is over" message, just a fade into oblivion.

There was an argument from the very beginning that they were style over substance, but it worked - wearing matching red shirts and trousers, or these swanky suits or whatever followed certainly got them noticed. And live you couldn't help but buy into Alex's conviction; I never saw them play a bad show. These songs sound nothing like the band that I got into on the first EP, but as I mentioned before, I'm ok with that. Love Triangles Hate Squares is a million times catchier than the punk-rock songs they used to write and you could play this album in most situations and people would be ok with that - You Can't Hide From The Computers doesn't go down so well on the hifi when you've got your wife's friends over for dinner as this one does.

I definitely like these songs (except for C.R.U.E.L. which has a very annoying chorus) - they're too catchy to not like - but I feel like I shouldn't. It's a strange one. I wonder what I'd have made of them if I hadn't been introduced to them as a punk rock band (I met them before I saw them - they were friends with Rez from The Cut Ups and were staying at his house in Cardiff one evening when we were round there). The cynic in me suspects (/knows) I would have written them off as a gimmick. I like to think I'm better than needing bands to have proper punk-rock credentials to be enjoyable, but it turns out I'm not. I definitely wouldn't have given them the time of day if I'd been introduced to them through this album. I'm a bad person, I know that. I'm ok with that.

Format: 12", picture sleeve, poster, numbered (#1731)
Tracks: 11
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 18/07/13
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code