Tool - 10,000 Days

This record is a bit of an oddity in my collection, in that it's a shameless bootleg of an album that was never pressed on vinyl. I largely avoid buying bootlegs for all the usual reasons (quality, ripping off the band, they just feel wrong, etc) but I still bought this one despite knowing full-well that it was a bootleg; I'm not entirely sure why. 

The weekend before last I was in Manchester visiting my friend Aled and going to see Neutral Milk Hotel. Sunday turned into a pretty-much perfect day - I went record shopping in the morning, spent the afternoon in some nice pubs drinking beer in the sun, ate "Manchester's best burger" and saw Neutral Milk Hotel for the first time (in a very lovely venue). The midnight bus ride back to Oxford followed by a full day at work took away from the enjoyment a little, but it was all good. My record shopping saw me visit three shops: Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange and Vinyl Revival. The last of the three, Vinyl Revival, I knew as soon as I walked in wasn't going to be great. This happens a lot - I walk into a record shop and instantly know there isn't going to be much for me. There are usually over-full boxes of knackered 1960's LPs and a "metal" section that contains nothing released later than 1989. Vinyl Revival had that vibe, but did have one box of fairly recent albums that weren't in horrendously shitty condition. I felt guilty not buying anything (which is becoming a problem) and, in the box of not-shit records, was this bootleg copy of 10,000 Days. Interestingly, he also had a bootleg of Lateralus and a small handful of other tempting, mostly-bootleg albums. At £20 I should probably have left it behind, but unless it ever gets a proper vinyl release (which it might do given how strong the reissue market is these days) I figured I'd never get another copy. Plus the shit-record-store guilt. So I bought it.

Addressing the bootleg issue first, the quality here isn't too shitty at all. Maybe a more trained ear could pick any flaws out, but it sounds fine to me. The only times you really notice that it's a bootleg are on the run-off groove (which makes quite a racket) and on the rough edges to the vinyl when you turn it over. The sleeve looks pretty decent, albeit quite minimal - the cd of 10,000 Days had quite the fancy packaging. The back of the record says "For promotional use only", but I've been around too long to fall for that.

10,000 Days is Tool's most recent release, which is ridiculous when you recall that it came out 8 years ago. I was living in Australia at the time and that feels like a lifetime ago already. I remember going into town the week it came out to buy the cd and having a very excited conversation with some guy I half-knew about how good it was. A few weeks later I left Australia and saw Tool play Roskilde Festival, a memory that's surprisingly fresh in my mind. It's a lot heavier than the two albums that came before it and, at times, almost sounds more like The Melvins than it does Tool. A lot of the quirks that featured on Lateralus (songs designed to be played at the same time, Fibonacci rhythms) are missing and replaced with huge riffs. I kind of miss those little oddities, but sometime it's nice to appreciate a band for the talented musicians they are. Highlights for me are Vicarious, The Pot and Rosetta Stoned but Tool really cut out the filler here and squeezed in a lot of strong songs. Makes me hope they come out of their slumber soon.

Format: Double 12"

Tracks: 11

Cost: £20 new

Bought: Vinyl Revival, Manchester

When: 18/05/14

Colour: Transparent red

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Manchester Orchestra + Grouplove + Frightened Rabbit - Make It To Me / Architect

I bought this record mostly because I'm a fan of Manchester Orchestra and of Frightened Rabbit, but also partly because it really feels like the sort of record that Record Store Day should be releasing - something that's a little different and not just a reissue of an album everyone has on cd anyway. I feel like less of an idiot queuing outside a record shop for four hours on an April morning if I get to take home some songs that are made for that day. I don't know what sequence of events led Manchester Orchestra to record a song with Grouplove and a song with Frightened Rabbit, nor how those songs came together on two sides of an RSD 12", but I like the idea a lot.

So what about the songs? Grouplove are a band I know absolutely nothing about. Six months after I bought this record I had just sat down in a hire car and put the radio on (having left my pile of cds buried deep inside my luggage). The hifi told me that the song playing on the radio was Grouplove, and it sounded familiar. I couldn't place why I knew it, but it wasn't my thing particularly. The parts of Make It To Me that I assume are Grouplove's contribution aren't really for me either (and I think my assumption is fair - they're the parts of the song that don't sound very much like Manchester Orchestra). That said, it's not a bad song and quite catchy. I could do without the possibly-Cockney vocals that come in towards the end though.

Frightened Rabbit's collaboration is a much slower and more sombre affair, but it also works nicely. It's hard to compare (because I don't know much by Grouplove), but Manchester Orchestra's contribution feels much less evident here. In fact, Architect wouldn't sound out of place on any of the Frightened Rabbit albums I own (still haven't bought the last one. I really must pick that up).

The strangest thing here is why this record is a 12" single rather than a 7". The running length of both songs is less than 8 minutes, so it would fit quite happily on a 7". Historically, in my understanding at least, 12" singles existed mainly for dance music to allow for greater depth and richer bass (but this could be complete nonsense). Perhaps that's what they were going for here. Or perhaps it's because they knew I probably wouldn't have bought this record had it been a 7"! With the average price of a RSD 7" being about £7, I tend to avoid them and I might have done the same here. I guess I assumed the songs would be longer, hence it being a 12", and £8 for 12" of two long, unique songs seemed like a relative bargain (on a day of ridiculous prices). I certainly don't regret the purchase but it's a funny set of circumstances that led this record to be in my collection when it could have easily gone the other way.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 20/04/13
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Wild Beasts - Two Dancers

I've never quite got this record. Even more of a mystery, in some ways, is why I even own a copy. I was given this copy of Two Dancers as a birthday present from my friend Hugh shortly after I'd left Cardiff and gone back to university. Not to sound terribly ungrateful, but I'm not sure I understand why he bought it for me. Over the years I'd lived in Cardiff we'd had a number of discussions about how I had no time whatsoever for Coheed & Cambria, mostly because of the ridiculous falsetto the singer sings with. Wild Beasts' calling card, on this record at least, is a similarly ridiculous falsetto.

I certainly have a lot of records by artists with voices that aren't traditionally considered "good" (Neutral Milk Hotel, Smashing Pumpkins, Front Bottoms, etc) but I suppose I like them for how raw they sound. Wild Beasts come across as the opposite - overly smooth vocals that bounce around at an unpleasant pitch. Three tracks in we briefly steer away from falsetto for part of All the King's Men only to find a voice that sounds like Morrissey, another singer I don't particularly care for. Vocally, as you might have noticed, I'm not a fan.

Musically, it's not bad. It's always felt like there's permanently been this dance-based undercurrent to indie music and there are certainly some bands in that genre that I quite enjoy (Q and Not U and !!!, to name a couple). The pairing often works quite well. There's a feeling of that here, and I quite enjoy it, once I get past the vocals. At best, there are parts of songs I enjoy enough to forget the bits I don't enjoy; Two Dancers (Pt II)  and This is Our Lot both spend more time on the "I'm quite enjoying this" side than the "I'm not into this at all" side, so I guess that makes them highlights.

I don't like to be negative, but I've not spent the last 40 minutes listening to an album I get very much out of. I've owned Two Dancers for four and a half years now, and today is the first time I've played it in a very long time. I must admit, I came to it hoping that the years had treated it well and that perhaps today I might finally get it, but sadly that hasn't happened yet. Maybe one day.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 10

Cost: free, new

Bought: gift

When: 17/10/09

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: Download code

Restorations - LP2

It's a very rare thing for a band to be so amazing live and on record when the two experiences are quite so different. I've mentioned before how brilliant Restorations are live and how their first LP captures a different side of them. The same thing can be said for LP2, but I think I love this record almost as much as I love seeing Restorations play. In fact, I'm such a fan that it even topped my end-of-year list last year (in a close fight with TWIABP and RVIVR). The first listen was enjoyable, but it really came into its own over the next few listens. To list the highlights would basically involve listing all of the songs, so much so that on their recent tour I didn't find myself hoping that they'd play any songs in particular; I was happy with any combination of them.

Which brings me round nicely to how incredible they are live. I've now seen them four times - Fest 2011 (when I first heard them and went home with a new favourite band), twice at Fest 2013 and most recently in The Fighting Cocks in Kingston a few weeks ago. Despite it being a fairly regular occurrence, I always forget just how incredible they are to watch (which given that I always remember them blowing me away should say something). I swear live everything is played to its extremes - the drums are battered, guitars thrashed and vocals screamed. The choruses to Let's Blow Up the Sun and Civil Inattention are excellent on vinyl as it is, I can't even think of words to describe how it was in the Cocks the other week. I've played this record a lot since October and had no idea I could enjoy those songs so much more - in my head there are now two versions of Civil Inattention - one where the the lines "I am no longer scared / I am terrified all of the time" are sung, and another where they're screamed frantically.

I was a bit gutted to only catch Restorations once on their recent UK tour (especially having looked forward to it for so long). I moved to Oxford just before they came over which is making a lot of gigs a bit harder to get to. On top of that, I already had tickets to see The Ex on the night of their first London show. The final London show was free which removes that guarantee that you'll actually be able to get in, leaving just the Kingston show. Kingston is now a 5 to 6 hour round trip from Oxford, depending on how bad the trains are across London, but it was definitely worth it. I miss Kingston a lot, and Banquet have more than a small role in how my life has played out over the last five years so it was nice to go back and see a band I'd been so keen to see again play in a venue I know so well.

As for this copy of the LP, I picked it up after seeing the band at Pre-Fest in Tampa (very pleased that they were as awesome as they had been two years previously). The artwork on the inside of the gatefold and the colour of the vinyl (some sort of smoky-white? Possibly the green marble?) are both particularly lovely. I fully recommend checking out this record and catching Restorations live. Both are equally awesome but in different ways.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 9
Cost: £9.45 new
Bought: gig, Tampa
When: 29/10/13
Colour: Smoky-white/green marble?
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Manic Street Preachers - The Everlasting (Jukebox 7")

Final Manics single for today - The Everlasting on white-label, jukebox 7". By the time this single was released I'd got the album and knew it quite well. It was a pretty good song back then, but it's aged well too. When the Manics played their singles at the O2 Arena a year or so ago it went down very well and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It fit the grandiose style of rock they were playing then but it still works now.

I bought this one and If You Tolerate This... in what was a bit of an eBaying spree. Over a period of weeks I'd bid on loads of records and won a lot of them. This was before PayPal and it seems that all the cheques I'd posted out had cleared (ah, the old days!) and all my parcels arrived over two days. Those two days were the very same days I was visiting Lancaster University for an open day and staying with my sister in Derby. Both those events also involved a lot of record shopping so I ended up with 19 new cds and records by the time I arrived home. It was a very good haul.

Format: 7", white label jukebox single
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3.75 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 21/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Jukebox 7")

Having bought The Masses Against the Classes on a white-label, jukebox 7", when I saw similar copies of If You Tolerate This... and The Everlasting on eBay I thought I might as well pick them up too. There's not a great deal to say about this record as there's not much to it. Both sides play the same again.

But what about the song (I tend not to dwell on particular songs too much here normally)? If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next was a pivotal song in my youth - I was aware of the Manics prior to its release having seen videos for A Design For Life and Everything Must Go on Top of the Pops a few years beforehand - but this single came at a time when I was ready to pay them more attention. Whilst musically the song comes across a bit soft, the lyrics were still angry and fascinating for a young teenager. I guess I was at that age where my musical taste could have gone any direction (although I'm pretty sure my dad's Sabbath, Floyd and Zeppelin records had already begun steering me towards rock), so it really hit at the right time. One of the other things that draw me in was the video that accompanied it - that eyeless family playing in the sand and blood - it was appropriately weird to suggest that this band really had some depth to them; a hint of something more. The whole package acted as a teaser to younger-me, and one that proved pretty significant.

Format: 7", white label jukebox single
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3.75 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 21/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - The Masses Against the Classes (Jukebox 7")

There was a time, in my younger years, when I thought I'd try to collect everything that the Manic Street Preachers had released. Looking back, this was of course wildly ambitious, but for a few years I bought every Manics record, cd and tape that I could find and afford. My collection remains very far from complete but there are some nice releases in there (the Japanese cd of Gold Against the Soul, the Japanese release of the US release of Generation Terrorists, Lipstick Traces on triple vinyl, etc). One of the more redundant records is this white label jukebox 7" of The Masses Against the Classes, which I found at a record fair in 2002. I didn't have the 10" proper release of the single at the time, so thought it would be a nice edition (having bought the cd the day it came out - I was a massive fan-boy after all).

Both sides play the same (why bother pressing it twice?) but there's no denying that The Masses Against the Classes is a stand-out song from that era of fairly sub-par releases by the band. This is My Truth... and Know Your Enemy weren't terrible albums but certainly not my favourites, and time would judge Lifeblood very poorly. Amongst all this, The Masses Against the Classes was shining gem. It was the Manics being a rock band rather than a pop band. It was also delivered in a uniquely Manics way - a single that wasn't cut from an album and released in just run. There were a lot of great things about it, it's no wonder it made it to number 1.

Format: 7", white label jukebox single
Tracks: 2
Cost: £4 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 26/01/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Good Life - Album of the Year

The Good Life are a band I've had a tricky relationship with, but it seems recently it's all come good. In 2008 I bought three Good Life albums but didn't find myself drawn in to any of them particularly. I'd gone into each album expecting to hear more of the Tim Kasher I'd been used to from Cursive (a band who I adore and have written about extensively here) but that wasn't what I got. The Good Life is a much more reserved, quiet affair but there are certain consistencies; Album of the Year is a concept-album based on 12 months of a relationship from start to end (making the title a brilliant play-on-words), and broken relationships and concept albums are very familiar to Cursive fans (see Domestica and I Am Gemini, respectively).

Of the three Good Life albums I own, Album of the Year is definitely my favourite. It was the one I enjoyed the most back when I wasn't so keen overall, and it's my favourite now that I've rediscovered them. I guess it's partly because I'm a sucker for a concept album, but mostly because it's got some incredible songs. The title track and opener is an excellent song (and, I recently discovered, stunning live) and Lovers Need Lawyers is also quite a highlight. The whole record examines the relationship from a level that's never possible when you're actually in one and I'm sure everyone can relate to songs like Inmates (with it's lovely dual-vocals) and Needy. There's something pleasing in the way the record starts with "The first time that I met her..." and ends on "...that night we last spoke".

I'm glad I rediscovered this album. Some records are slow-burners and it's great when you get to the point where they truly shine. Years and years ago I decided to never sell any of my records, even if I got no enjoyment out of them - essentially my record collection is a one-way function where records come in but never leave (meaning all those embarrassing ones I bought as a teenager remain in the racks). I can't say whether I'd have kept this one the first time around but the fact I enjoy it now is testament to benefits of a one-way record collection. Who's to say what records you'll be listening to six years after you bought them?

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £7 second hand
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 15/09/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Jukebox Explosion: Rockin' Mid-90's Punkers!

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of this record. I've tried, but it just doesn't do much for me. There are moments that I kinda enjoy (the saxophone on Son of Sam, Down Low, Do Ya Wanna Get It) but there are others that are just plain unpleasant on the ears (Showgirl, Train #1). I've tried, but The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion aren't for me.

I picked up this collection of JSBE singles in Spillers during the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year in what I assume was a fairly poor week selection-wise. I must have been taken in by the amusing cover and bargain price and a desire to give Jon Spencer a second try. Some years beforehand I'd found a JSBE cd in the sale in MVC in Winchester (which had always proved very fruitful in the past). I can't even remember which album it was, but it was a fiver and I'd heard the name so figured it was worth a shot. I didn't get the band then and I don't now. So I did something I've rarely ever done - I returned the cd. Part of it was that I wanted my fiver back, but it was mostly because I knew I wouldn't listen to it and thought someone else might get more enjoyment out of it. That Tuesday in Spillers, I guess I thought my musical tastes had progressed to the point where I could enjoy JSBE, but they hadn't. Six years later and they still haven't. I even saw them play at Jeff Mangum's ATP but they either made no impression or I was too tired to remember (they played at 1.30am) because I have no memory of it. They can't all be winners I suppose.

Format: 12"

Tracks: 18

Cost: £10.50 new

Bought: Spillers Records

When: 29/04/08

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die - Whenever, If Ever

The end is usually a bad place to start, but here I can't help myself. Getting Sodas couldn't be more perfect as a closer to Whenever, If Ever. I still remember the first time I heard the album and being left amazed at the end. I immediately played the whole album over again in the hope I could repeat the enjoyment. A closer should make you come away from an album feeling triumphant and like you've just listened to something special, and that's exactly the feeling that Getting Sodas cements for me. Everything comes together perfectly in that song and the build up leads to such a wonderful, explosive conclusion. It feels like everything, musically and thematically, was just a build-up for this moment.

Or at least that's what I took form it. Before Whenever, If Ever, I'd heard a few TWIABP songs here and there (a band whose name is so long even the acronym gets abbreviated) and enjoyed them. However, similarly to how I feel about a lot of Low songs, I felt the grand build-ups stopped too soon and I wanted them to go further. For me, Getting Sodas is to TWIABP what Nothing But Heart is to Low. Both are songs that I longed for, I never want to end but never fail to put a huge smile on my face.

The timing of this post seems appropriate too. Whenever, If Ever appeared on the internet in a slightly un-momentous way just before its release and Topshelf announced a stream on Bandcamp. I was just about to start my first job after graduating and decided to give the album a play one afternoon. A few weeks into my new job I played the album a few more times in my headphones when the office was a bit quiet and, for a while, it was my go-to streaming album at work. In October I finally saw the band at Fest and was suitably blown away by their live show. I bought all their EPs and received the LP for Christmas. I placed the album at number 2 in my albums of the year (it was a close fight between TWIABP, RVIVR and Restorations). Two days before I left the job I got last summer I was lucky enough to catch the band play in Banquet Records and The Fighting Cocks in the same evening. Then I left my job, moved to Oxford and started a new adventure. TWIABP, and this record, really covered that period of my life very neatly. I'll still enjoy it in the future I'm sure, but it's connected to that period of my life in so many ways it feels like a part of it.

So what of the rest of the record? It's all pretty good. After a gentle intro, Heartbeat in the Brain really kicks things off and Picture of Tree... and Gig Life are all excellent. And of course it ends on Getting Sodas, putting this incredible cap on those exciting moments that have just passed. The album feels short but there's so much crammed in. As for the pressing, I'm inclined to say that its the clear vinyl from the first pressing but it's hard to tell for sure. It looks pretty nice either way.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 10

Cost: free, new

Bought: Gift

When: 25/12/13

Colour: Clear

Etching: none

mp3s: Download code