Kevin Devine - She Stayed As Steam

On Saturday I saw Cursive and Kevin Devine in Birmingham and both were awesome, so I thought I'd write about some of their records. This is my only Kevin Devine vinyl (so far) and only an EP, but with a title-track so strong it carries the whole thing.

Apparently the first time I saw Kevin Devine was supporting Lucero in Le Pub in Newport, however it had been my work's Christmas do that afternoon and unfortunately I really have no recollection of either band (some bits of Lucero came back to me the next time I saw them). Everyone told me it was very good though. In a separate event, Damaged in Cardiff had copies of Every Famous Last Word by Kevin's old band The Miracle of 86 on cd for £2. Hugh bought a copy and we played it loads in the kitchen and thought it was great. I eventually picked up another £2 copy from there and it's one of my favourite albums (funny story: Hugh regretfully ended up selling his copy when he ran out of cash, which then went into the hands of another friend, who sold it back to me when he was broke which I then gave back to Hugh as a birthday present).

Sometime later I moved to London and found Kevin's most recent (at the time) solo album Brother's Blood in a second hand shop in Soho. Bought it, enjoyed it greatly (especially the title-track), and went with some friends to see him at The Borderline, which was very good indeed. In a final, unrelated event I won some prizes from Big Scary Monsters in the Banquet Records advent calendar a year later, including their endlessly packed (and 3D!) Partied Hard cd. On there I heard She Stayed As Steam and remember thinking it was too great to be an obscure b-side. Luckily I wasn't the only one as this EP got printed.

It's a nice little package: two new songs, two remixes and two live songs, coloured vinyl, limited to 750 copies and a download code. As I said, the title-track is a truly great song; a perfect build up and gang vocals (I have a lot of time for gang vovals). Big Bad Man is pretty good too. I really don't get the point of rock remixes usually. It's a rare event when I think they add much to the song (I have a Snapcase remix that is unlistenable). These two are ok, Another Bag of Bones fares better. The live Leonard Cohen cover is particularly nice. This record wouldn't be at the top of anyone's list of Kevin Devine albums to recommend, but it is a very nice one.

Anyway, the show on Saturday was really good (if a little empty) and it was nice to see Kevin Devine solo after the full-band tour earlier in the year (which I enjoyed a lot too). The highlight was undoubtedly the acoustic rendition of Every Famous Last Word though. It's my favourite on the Mo86 album and I'd never seen him play it before. Sent a chill down my spine.


Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 6
Cost: £12.50 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 03/05/12
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: download

Chuck Ragan + Anderson Family Bluegrass - Split

Another from my far-from-complete Chuck Ragan collection. Not the cheapest, or most necessary record, but a nice one regardless. The first song is Revival Road, the song that came to represent the Revival Tour very well. I love the idea behind the Revival Tour and I was pleased they brought it over here last year - there are a lot of great artists involved, all making lovely songs. The next two are In The Clouds and Live By The Sword (a live version with Paige Anderson of Anderson Family Bluegrass) and are both on the Break Our Bread 7". Both are good songs.

Paige has a fairly shrill voice, but it works with the music (particularly next to Chuck's singing). That said, it still catches me off-guard each time I put the needle on the second side. Two more nice songs. Chuck gets a joint writing credit on the second song but doesn't sing. He could well be playing guitar though. I really know nothing about Anderson Family Bluegrass, I suppose the idea is the record will make me check them out. I like the songs but, ultimately, they're just less to my taste.

I picked this up when Chuck toured with Frank Turner a couple of years ago. I went to two nights of that tour (London and Portsmouth); I'm a big fan of both artists and knew people who'd want to go in each city. Chuck played Kingston without Frank a few nights later, but I had to go to Cambridge for a conference so couldn't make it. A rare example of my PhD taking priority over music. It's a nice coloured record and only 9 inches across, a format I assumed reserved for Nine Inch Nails singles. Kinda expensive though.

Chuck Ragan has been quite prolific over the last few years in putting out 7"s here and there, and the early ones are pretty hard to come by, so it's pretty fair to say it'll never be a complete collection. I can still enjoy the records I do have like this one though.


Format: 9"
Tracks: 5
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Gig
When: 23/03/10
Colour: Green and clear
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Envy - All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead

Another record from the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year. It says a lot about the variety of records that place stocks that over four Tuesdays I bought records by M Ward, Envy, The Verve and Alexander Tucker; a fairly mixed bag indeed.

The first time I heard of Envy was when they were added to the bill for the Explosions in the Sky All Tomorrows Parties festival. I already had tickets (mostly thanks to the fact The Paper Chase were playing, but also because the rest of the bill was amazing) and I remember reading about them and thinking it would be good to see something a bit heavier that weekend too. And heavier they are. Hardcore varies a lot more than I realised when I first started listening to it, but Envy play the sort of hardcore I really enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Black Flag from time to time, but this hardcore that teeters onto post rock is what I really like.

The sticker on the front calls the record "a juggernaut", which is a pretty apt description (it definitely helped convince me it was a good record to buy that week, the first Envy album I got). The album is unrelenting in its sound. The lyrics are translated into English, but I like the idea of a Japanese guy shouting words I don't understand in the slightest at me (there's something very strange about reading the lyrics to a song sung in a different language. Also the title of the record alone makes me wonder if something got lost in the translation!) Some songs like A Cradle of Arguments and Anxiousness hint more at the sound of their later albums, and it's always nice to see the progression of a band - the songs here vary in length from shorter, older sounding ones like Invisible Thread (a highlight in my opinion) to the longer, more stretched out songs  they've been releasing lately. All of them are pretty good!

They were excellent at the festival (another thing that made me buy the LP that day) but I'm yet to see them again. They toured the UK last October, but it was went I was at Fest so I missed them. I hope I get to see them again. There are a few albums of theirs I still don't own; not the most commonly found records, but Spillers has done me pretty well in Envy LPs so far.


Format: 12", a4 insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 19/08/08
Colour: black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Caves - Homeward Bound

There are a lot of great punk-rock bands in the UK at the moment. Bands that tour constantly, playing little sweaty shows to 50 people who know all the words and buy all the records. I spend a lot of time going to those shows and I always have a good time. Caves are one of the core bands in this scene as far as I'm concerned. The first time I saw them was supporting The Doublecross in Cardiff but I've lost count how many times I've seen them since; they get some pretty good support slots and I've ended up seeing bigger bands because Caves were supporting.

When they released their LP Homeward Bound, I made sure to pick it up fairly soon after. I bought this on my first trip to Banquet after moving to Kingston (along with a RVIVR LP). The tunes are catchy, as I knew they would be. One of the most noticeable things is that there's a lot of repetition (with slight changes) in the lyrics, and the other being the large amounts of "woahs" and "ohs" (I remember one of the guys from Above Them joking about the "Caves LP drinking game" - a drink for every "woah-oh"!). But these are the staples of Caves songs it seems and I like them. I think I'm Not Sorry is my favourite both live and on the record. Water Wings is pretty awesome too. It's a good record, but with songs as great as theirs they'd have had a hard job to make a bad one.

I'm always pleased that these bands get to play so often and make these records. They work hard for it. I may not know many of the people at the shows, but it is a lovely scene full of bands who all adore playing and listening to each others music.


Format: 12", A3(ish) poster insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Banquet
When: 11/08/11
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Run, Forever - The Devil, And Death, And Me

Run, Forever and ONSIND were my two favourite musical discoveries of last year. Both had albums that came out in 2010 that I didn't hear until 2011, but it would have been a close fight for album of the year had I heard them in 2010 (or if they came out in 2011). The ONSIND story can come another time, this is about how I heard Run, Forever for the first time late one night and how I fell in love with this record.

In the lead up to Fest the organisers put out samplers on bandcamp of the bands playing. Given that I was flying half way round the world, and because I wouldn't be able to afford Fest again for another few years afterwards, I wanted to hear as many of the bands playing as possible. On the first sampler, at about one in the morning sometime in July I heard The Devil, and Death, and Me for the very first time. I was blown away by it, and I still am now. The song was basically perfect: a marching beat, shouty vocals AND group vocals, catchy chorus, a little breakdown all wrapped up in 3 minutes. You can't really ask for more.

Needless to say, I looked them up and found their album online and listened to that over and over again in the months that followed. I had my doubts that it could be as good as the title track I heard on the sampler, but it is. I can honestly say I've never heard such a heart-felt record. The singer sings/shouts the lyrics with an urgency that only In The Aeroplane Over The Sea can beat, and you can feel their loss in almost every line of every song. All the things I loved about the title track appear again throughout the album at every turn and the beat of the drums carries the album the whole way through. A Sequence of Sad Events, The Grand Illusion and 10,000 Leagues are all highlights, but the other songs between them are still fantastic, and Lifted is a perfect closer.

On the Friday of Fest they played in the Laboratory and I got there especially early to make sure I'd see them (the bonus to this was that we also saw Cutman, another good discovery). They were brilliant and the crowd went suitably mad for them. I had a great time and sung along to all the songs I could remember the words to. Afterwards I bought the LP and, something I don't tend to do, told the band what a great time I'd had. They were as good live as I'd hoped they would be.

I often worry when I get a record I instantly love that I'll over play it and get a bit sick of it. I've had this record seven months now and played it countless times and I'm nowhere near sick of it. I can't recommend this record to people enough; one song has made it onto every mixtape I've made since the first time I heard them. One of the reasons I was so keen to listen to loads of Fest bands before going out was because it might be my only chance to see them. Some bands get the good fortune of a UK tour, but not always. I hope Run, Forever one day make it over so I can see them again, but if they don't then I'm very pleased indeed that I got to see them and that I have this record in my life.


Format: 12", A3(ish) poster insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £6.20 new
Bought: Fest
When: 28/10/11
Colour: Pale blue?
Etching: Side A: "This record in every possible way is for Corey Wolfram, RIP my friend" Side B: "If you lose that battle, you lose that battle 9 times out of 10"
mp3s: download

Cursive - I Am Gemini

I honestly (and worryingly) cannot remember how I got into Cursive. It must have happened in 2006, based on the fact I bought three of their albums that year and saw them at Pukkelpop. I came back from Australia that year, so I imagine Australian Kate had turned me onto them; she seemed to know an awful lot about good bands. That said, I know the first time I heard them. It was on a mixtape given to me by Hugh (second mention today!) in 2004, but the song was Gentleman Caller. For some reason, at that time, it did nothing for me. I now know it's a great song from one of my all-time favourite albums. I wonder had he put Some Red Handed Slight of Hand or Art is Hard if I'd have gone mad for them straight away. Still, better late than never.

However it happened, I became a big fan of Cursive. I've kept up with their albums since then and enjoyed them varying amounts. Happy Hollow had some great moments but Mama, I'm Swollen I struggled with. Needless to say, I pre-ordered the picture disc of their latest album from Big Scary Monsters when it was announced back in January (the downside being the other cds I ordered didn't get posted until the LP came out. I'd bought the new Kevin Devine album in the same order so didn't have it when he toured last. Luckily he's out on the road supporting Cursive this week). And it is a lovely picture disc at that. Limited to 500 copies and numbered.

As I've said before, I'm a sucker for a concept album, and Cursive do know how to write one; Domestica and Happy Hollow were brilliant and very good, respectively. I Am Gemini has the tunes to carry the concept, even if I didn't quite follow it the first time through. The songs are mostly pretty short, but they've always had a couple of toes in the punk pot so it works.

I'm not sure how well the songs will stand up by themselves without the rest of the record. Not that they're not good, but because the concept is such a big part of the album. I guess I'll find out when I see Cursive on Saturday. I'm pretty excited about this. It's only my second time seeing them; I missed a few tours over the last few years and couldn't go to the London show on Saturday just gone, so I'm heading to Birmingham instead. I'm pretty sure it'll be worth the effort. Hopefully live some of the songs will come into their own, I think plenty of them have the potential.


Format: 12" picture disc, insert, numbered
Tracks: 13
Cost: £13.50 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 08/03/12
Colour: picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

William Elliott Whitmore - Song of the Blackbird

I'm a big fan of everything William Elliott Whitmore has put out. I had a song on a sampler cd for ages but somehow hadn't paid much attention to it at the time. I later heard the same song on a mixtape Hugh sent me in the last year of university, but this time I realised it was brilliant. (In my defence, the sampler cd had way too many songs on it.) I picked up this record in Spillers towards the end of the Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year having earlier bought Ashes to Ashes on cd in Generation Records and his Untitled Latitude Session in Spillers. I'm still missing Hymns for the Hopeless, the other record in his early trilogy-of-sorts, but I'm sure I'll pick that one up soon too.

Musically it's lovely, but all of his recordings are. Quite dark and slow for the most part, but that suits his voice so well. And it's his voice that really carries it. He sings like he's in his 80's, having smoked all his life. It's a very unique sound, at least it is in my record collection. A short album, but with 8 incredible songs (and one instrumental that I could live without). Dry and The Chariot are both highlights and a brilliant way to start the album. Take it on the Chin is another lovely moment, carried along by it's simple kick-drum rhythm, and Everyday is a slow finisher that rounds the album off nicely.

I've had the good fortune of seeing Will play live twice now and each time was incredible. The second time was fairly recently in The Windmill in Brixton. When asking for requests, someone jokingly asked for "all of them" and he did pretty much that - a set nearly 3 hours longs and every song of his you could wish for. He's playing End of the Road festival this year and I'm toying with the idea of going. Seeing him in a pub is nice, but I can't think of an act I'd like to see play in a sunny field more than Will Whitmore. It has the potential to be perfect.


Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeve
Tracks: 9
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Spillers
When: 25/11/08
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: no