Vex Red - Itch

So continuing with Vex Red day, here is their first 7" Itch. I remember not liking Itch as much as Can't Smile but still thinking it was a pretty good song. The heavy chorus/electronic verse/angst-y lyrics is pretty typical of their style. If you have no idea who this band are this is a good example of their music, but I probably wouldn't bother rushing to YouTube to give them a listen.

The non-album b-side Fast Cars begins (ironically) very slowly but builds up into the usual heavy/electronic combination they were going for. Nothing special really, but when this came out I absolutely adored it so it gets some points for nostalgia. 

Format: 7"

Tracks: 2

Cost: £2.50 new

Bought: Virgin Megastore, Southampton

When: 24/10/01

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Vex Red - Start With a Strong and Persistent Desire

When I was 16 or 17 years old, I was a huge fan of Vex Red. The details of how I got into them escape me now, but I'm pretty sure they were played on the Radio One Rock Show one night and I must have been pretty impressed because I remember thinking they were the greatest thing ever. I think part of it was a desire to be a fan "from the start", although they'd clearly been going for a while before I heard them. Still, mega-fandom ensued and when it was announced they were playing the NME Upstarts Tour that year I got tickets straight away (my ticket is number 5 I think). The other bands on the tour were The Pattern and Crackout both of whom I enjoyed at the time, although Crackout are the only one I still listen to today (a post on their debut album This is Really Neat is to come in the future). As it happens, I still have my red Vex Red hoody I bought on that tour and wear it when I go running (as well as a drum stick that the drummer threw into the crowd after their set).

Anyway, I remember rushing out to buy Start With a Strong and Persistent Desire the week it came out and thinking it was excellent. I'd picked up the 7" of Itch a few months earlier and played it to death and I'm pretty Can't Smile had been all over the radio (with it's strange and seemingly unrelated outro about smoking). Listening to it eleven years later, it hasn't aged well at all. When you look at that artwork and song titles (Bully Me and Clone Jesus being the worst offenders) it's not at all surprising. I don't remember having an opinion either way on the artwork as a teenager, but it's really quite fucking terrible now. There's no doubt about the market they were aiming for; the whole thing is dripping in teenage angst, which now strikes me as strange - the band weren't (I assume) teenagers themselves so why write songs that only a teenager could love? But, of course, I was a teenager at the time so I lapped it up.

I'm not a fan of turning my back on bands I used to love as I get older; I've always been probably too loyal to the music I once loved. Records only enter my record collection, and I'd never get rid of any simply because I no longer get the enjoyment I used to out of. Whilst this isn't an album I enjoy playing any more, it still deserves a fair bit of credit for how much I loved it back in the day. I found this LP in Selectadisc in London a year and a half later for £3 and figured it would be nice to have in the collection. I think even by that point I'd gone off it a bit, but £3 for an album I used to love was a bargain.

I'd love to have written a review of it ten years ago, just to see what I would have said about it.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 11

Cost: £3 new

Bought: Selectadisc, London

When: 19/09/03

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Two Gallants - The Bloom and the Blight

Two Gallants are a band I don't own enough records by. I found their third, self titled album in a second hand shop in Soho just after I'd moved to London having been recommended them by someone I knew in Cardiff (but my memory of who it was has escaped me). I liked it a lot (especially Despite What You've Been Told) and managed to catch them in Hoxton Bar and Grill a couple of years later. Despite enjoying them both live and on record, I never quite got round to buying their other albums, although that might be just because you rarely stumble across them in record shops. Sure, I could've tried harder to find them, but I just never got round to it.

Anyway, last autumn I saw they were playing London again and shortly afterwards found their new album in Banquet. I had no idea they had a new album coming out and I had a fully-stamped Banquet loyalty card in my wallet wanting to be spent, so picked it up along with the new Godspeed record. Ollie was on the till that day and said he'd bought it too, but hadn't liked it as much as the other albums. I think it's great, but maybe our difference of opinions comes from the fact it's notably heavier than their last records, something which always appeals to me. The opener Halcyon Days is a huge start to the album, and My Love Won't Wait and Winter's Youth are great too. Basically, if you like your folk-rock a little more ballsy and heavy, they're worth a listen (as a side note, I always thought that the singer looks like a not-too-distant relative of James Hetfield, so maybe they're the Metallica of folk!?) Also, Wikipedia reckons it was produced by John Congleton, which is something I'm always keen on (even though there's no mention of this anywhere in the sleeve).

A particularly nice touch here is the bonus 7" included with the record (it's nice to be treated to extras when buying vinyl, rather than seeing bonus songs tacked on the end of the cd release). The 7" features a cover of Abner Jay's I'm So Depressed on one side, and an etching by the drummer on the b-side. I've tried to photograph it below, but I'm no photographer and figuring out how to capture an etching is beyond me at the moment. Just so you know, even with the record in my hand I'm not sure what the picture is of; I'm tempted to describe it as the top-half of a man vomiting from his eyes, whose bottom half is a birds head. Strange, I know. Still, the cover is nice and surprisingly upbeat for a song with such a title.


Format: 12" and 7", picture sleeve, insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £8 new
Bought: gig
When: 11/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: Etching on b-side of 7"
mp3s: Download code

At the Drive-In - In/Casino/Out

This record is my bargain of the year so far, and probably will be for the next nine months too. Banquet Records had a sale on in January featuring a whole bunch of albums for a fiver, and half of the money from the sale went to a local charity to support carers in the Kingston area, a noble cause indeed. Because Banquet is awesome, the sale wasn't the usual shit you see in the January sales and there were some decent albums in there, the most incredible of which was last year's reissue of In/Casino/Out on clear vinyl. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to get this for a fiver; I'd nearly paid £17 for it a few months earlier but they'd run out of stock and waiting for some more to come in. I bought it using the "collect in shop" option and picked it up when I was in town a few days later. I almost felt bad; clearly this record cost them more than £5 given how much it was before the sale, and Banquet were then giving half of that to charity. It felt like I was taking advantage in a way - their desire for floor space and good deed was costing them loads whilst I was getting a classic album for not much more than a pint of beer (or a can of beer, if you're drinking in the wrong venues).

But guilt aside, this album is awesome. I first bought In/Casino/Out on cd in (the excellently-named and sadly-closed) Rounder Records in Brighton (along with Give Up by The Postal Service on double vinyl). I'd got Relationship of Command for Christmas and was keen to hear more At the Drive-In (much more on that here). I'd heard about the song Napoleon Solo so I figured In/Casino/Out was a good place to start. My first impressions were: it was a way crazier album than Relationship of Command; Napoleon Solo was one of the best ATD-I songs I'd heard; I didn't like it as much as Relationship (don't get me wrong, I like it, but I'm comparing to one of my all-time favourite albums). Eight years later, my feelings about it are much the same. There are some great songs here but, Napoleon Solo aside, none I like as much as the songs on Relationship. I'd still count this as my second favourite ADT-I album, but maybe that's only because Vaya is just an EP.

Somehow I never managed to get into this album as well as Relationship either. I often find that's the way with albums where there is one song that stands out so much more than the others; when I think of In/Casino/Out, I mostly think of Napoleon Solo but that's because it's such an incredible song - heartfelt and brutal and everything I wanted "emo/post-hardcore" to be. "Our alphabet is missing letters" is a fantastic lyric. That said, it does have other songs, and they have their moments. Chanbara is certainly a song worth getting excited over and I love the whispers in Shaking Hand Incision.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £5 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 04/01/13
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Bouncing Souls - Live at Generation Records

Two things happen this week: I'm going to see The Bouncing Souls again, and the list of Record Store Day 2013 releases gets announced, so it only seemed fitting to write about The Bouncing Souls' RSD2011 record. To make all this even more inter-related, this is a recording of The Bouncing Souls acoustic set in Generation Records on Record Store Day 2009, the very shop where a year and one week before I'd heard about Record Store Day for the very first time (I'd been in New York on the way to Boulder and ended up spending RSD in Bart's CD Cellar and Albums on the Hill). I've been a fan of RSD since I first heard about it; a lot of people have varied opinions about it, but I love standing outside Banquet at 6 in the morning each April and buying loads of great music (even if some of the records are a bit over-priced!).

Anyway, RSD2011 I'd bought the Deftones and Piebald records I was after, but they hadn't got in the Explosions in the Sky LP I wanted so I had a little cash to spare. Banquet are pretty good at getting in some of the cool US-only releases (like the Piebald one) and I think this was one of those so I picked it up on a whim. Part of it was definitely because I liked Generation Records so much, and it seemed like a nice RSD release. Because the album is acoustic, it's quite different to a regular Bouncing Souls album but most of the songs work brilliantly (Ghosts on the Boardwalk particularly; Here We Go less so). I ended up seeing The Bouncing Souls play an acoustic set in Banquet later that year, which was very cool too (furthering the list of RSD/BS/Banquet connections). None of my previously-favourite Souls songs appear here, but Gasoline has become one and it's a fun record despite that. It certainly captures the event nicely.

For a while I was thinking more record shops should put out records of the in-stores they have - everyone wins because the band gets a low-cost mini-live-album to put out, the record shop gets loads of exposure and you can pretty much guarantee that everyone in the audience at least will want a copy (it's probably not a huge number, but I reckon a lot of Bouncing Souls fans had never heard of Generation Records before this came out). Banquet Records has countless in-stores and I was chatting to JT about the idea a few weeks back, but he explained that mostly the bands (or, more likely, the record labels) don't want to license out the recordings so freely, so it just can't happen. It seems a shame, because I've seen some incredible shows in that shop and would happily pay for a record of some of them. Sometimes they're just nice memories, but some shows are genuinely incredible and would make great records in their own right (the recent Chuck Ragan in-store comes to mind).

Anyway, very excited about The Bouncing Souls and Cheap Girls in Kingston on Saturday!

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £16 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 16/04/11
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Nation of Ulysses - 13-Point Program to Destroy America

I have no idea how I first came to hear about The Nation of Ulysses, but I think it may have just been a product of clicking links on Wikipedia; I was probably reading about a band, then ended up on the Dischord Records page and found them from there. In my mind, it was because of the book Our Band Could Be Your Life, but the dates don't work out - the band doesn't get mentioned until the Beat Happening chapter, which I read in Colorado, but I bought this in New York two weeks before that. But I also remember Ian Svenonius interviewing some bands on ATP TV the first time I went to the festival and his name sounding familiar. Maybe someone just recommended them to me. I'm annoyed I can't remember, but maybe it'll come back to me.

Anyway, I'm reasonably sure I hadn't actually heard them when I bought this LP. I quite enjoy buying records by bands I've not listened to, and record labels sticking to certain types of bands makes that an often safe bet. I'm pretty sure I knew Nation of Ulysses had a trumpet player, and a combination of my love of Black Eyes (who also enjoyed some brass instruments) and Dischord Records probably convinced me to chance £5.50 on them (what a bargain. Buying records in the US can be dangerously cheap). This is the 2008 repress on orange vinyl, which Discogs tells me was limited to 1000 copies.

If you've not listened to The Nation of Ulysses but like your punk a little different, I strongly recommend them. Musically they drift into jazz, but in a less aggressive way than Black Eyes and it works well. I later got the second album Plays Pretty for Baby (on cd), which I think I enjoy more, but I've also probably played it more often. This one still has it's highlights though, and Spectra Sonic Sound, A Kid Who Tells on Another Kid is a Dead Kid and Love is a Bull Market are all excellent and well worth a spin.


Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £5.42 new
Bought: Generation Records, New York
When: 11/04/08
Colour: Orange
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire

I suppose this was Rage Against the Machine's "difficult second album"; I certainly remember it being considered so back in the day. It was the start of 2000 when I properly got into Rage and by that point the three main albums had been released, with the covers album Renegades to appear a year later. We'd heard the self-titled album and everything we read told us that Evil Empire hadn't been so good but The Battle of Los Angeles was brilliant. Playing those albums now, I'd (controversially) say they're all as good as each other. Sure, RATM and LA have more of the big songs, but Evil Empire still packs a punch. I can see how people's viewpoints were different in 1996 and 1999, but here in 2013 Evil Empire is quite an incredible follow-up (despite taking four years to come out).

Evil Empire was the first RATM album I bought. I'd taped Hugh's copy of the debut album shortly after he bought it, but it was a year before I found the cd of Evil Empire in the MVC sale for £7 (I had way less disposable cash back then). A few months later I bought the other two albums too. It's funny how other people's opinions of music can affect yours - I remember thinking less of this album simply because I'd heard that other people didn't like it as much. It's a pretty irrational thing to do, but it happens all the time. I try not to read reviews of albums I'm excited about for that very reason, but sometimes it's the easiest thing to do. The other week I thought to myself that I should ask around to see if the Atoms for Peace album is actually any good before remembering that it's 2013 and I can probably find most of the songs on the internet and form an opinion of my own. Of course I haven't got round to doing that yet, but I can't afford to buy the album at the moment anyway, so it doesn't matter either way. 

Anyway, I bought this LP on a huge record buying binge in Selectadisc in Nottingham on a trip to the city to see The Paper Chase for the first time (I was living in Lancaster and Nottingham was the nearest Paper Chase show to me; my sister lived in Derby so I dragged her along and disguised the whole thing (badly) as a visit to see her). I bought a lot of vinyl that day including this one for £7, yet again. Like I said in the post about the self-titled album, I don't play Rage very often these days because I played them so much back in the day. It's been great fun spinning this album today though. I wonder if there'll after be a time when Rage doesn't getting my moving in my seat and rapping along. People of the Sun and Bulls on Parade were always the big hits on Evil Empire (and Down Rodeo had some of Rage's smartest lyrics), but Revolver and Without a Face are equally huge songs too.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 11

Cost: £7 new

Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham

When: 15/03/04

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no