I've been gradually buying the Deftones back-catalogue on vinyl. A couple of years ago they all became very readily available, which took away the pressure to buy everything straight away. I've had White Pony on vinyl since it came out and I'd always thought it'd be nice for it to sit there amongst their many other excellent albums, something that is now nearly the case.
Fopp in Oxford has had them all in pretty much since they opened, so every now and again I buy one. Every time I get served by the same member of staff and each time we have the same conversation about Deftones - it's a perfectly nice conversation, and I'm all for conversations with people who work in record shops, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to take as much interest as I did the first time. She saw them at Reading, Chino is awesome, the White Pony is an incredible record. Luckily, I can chat happily about Deftones for hours - I also think Chino is a great frontman and I have endless amounts of time for White Pony. My main worry is that one of these days she'll realise that this isn't the first Deftones album she's sold me, that I've been having the same conversation back each time and that I'm odd for not mentioning that we've already had that conversation. Two albums to go, it might not happen.
Anyway, recently I bought Around the Fur, Deftones' second album. When I got into them they'd only released this and Adrenaline, and I'd started with Adrenaline. I paid a surprisingly pricey £9 for a second hand copy of this album on cd at a record fair in 2001, just over a year after White Pony had come out. I'd heard the album a bunch of times beforehand, but was pleased to finally have my own copy. The songs with brackets in the titles, My Own Summer (Shove It) and Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) had been on heavy rotation on MTV so I was even more familiar with those two, here opening up each side of the vinyl. The album came out twenty years ago, and I've been listening to it for most of those; in particular I've heard those two singles an unfathomably large of times and they still sound great. Both are instantly recognisable from the off and have sent a shiver down my spine each time I've heard those first few notes live. The whole album makes me wish I was still young and fit enough to throw myself around the way Chino does.
It's hard to talk about the other highlights of the album because there aren't any songs that I don't think are great. That said, Lhabia, Around the Fur, Lotion and Headup are all incredible. Dai the Flu is the most White Pony-esque song on the record and wouldn't have sounded too out of place on that record. Headup was, of course, the song that introduced us to Max Cavalera and Soulfly (being a few years too young for Sepultura's peak), which isn't particularly worth noting; it is a great song though. MX is a fun closer to the album with a strong riff. The cd version is actually a bit ruined by the long wait in silence for the bonus track Damone, one I can’t remember too well off the top of my head. I should make an effort to listen to it soon.
Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £16 new
Bought: Fopp, Oxford
When: 10/01/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
