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
