Broadway Calls - Toxic Kids

I really had no intention of buying this record, or seeing Broadway Calls, but Banquet Records had other plans.

In December 2011, they put on a show in The Fighting Cocks featuring PJ Bond, Great Cynics, Into It Over It and Broadway Calls. Tickets were £8, or if you bought a copy of the Broadway Calls EP Banquet were putting out for £10, the ticket was free. Since I wanted to go to the show, I decided that £2 was probably worth it for the record and picked up a copy instead of just the ticket. Broadway Calls aren't a bad band, but they do play very generic pop-punk and it doesn't do much for me. I played a song when the show was announced and decided I wanted to go anyway because the other three bands were a great line-up as it was.

We'd seen PJ Bond play a great acoustic set late night on the Friday between Koji and Make Do and Mend in a bookshop; Great Cynics played all the time, but always put on a good show (that said, the show they played at Fest remains the best Great Cynics show I've ever seen, and ruined all future ones - if they're not playing to a room of Americans all going nuts then it's underwhelming in comparison); Into It Over It had released a split with Koji and we'd heard good things, so wanted to check him out. The headliners then were the only band I had no real connection to or desire to see.

It hammered with rain that night, and I got pretty drenched on my walk over from Surbition, but I was new to the area and still enjoying being able to walk to shows in general. I remember really enjoying PJ Bond, and enjoying IIOI's stories (turns out, I enjoyed those more than the songs). I've seen Great Cynics so many times in Kingston it's hard to recall a particular time. I don't really remember much of Broadway Calls, but definitely stayed to watch them.

The EP is fine. The title track is by far the catchiest, but still not really my thing. If I'm being critical - and it seems that I am - the singer's voice is a bit annoying. But maybe it's just a pop-punk voice and that's what I don't like about it. The last song is the obligatory acoustic number. I've not played it a huge amount over the years, but for £2 I don't mind too much. My fiend Sarah opted for the £8 ticket without the record - I guess her thinking was that she didn't need records in her collection that had no purpose being there; clearly I'm more of a hoarder of any vinyl I can get my hands on. It's not an important or interesting record, but it reminds me of that gig so I'm happy enough to hold onto it.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 6
Cost: £2 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 06/12/11
Colour: Transparent blue
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

The Good Life - Help Wanted Nights

Help Wanted Nights was the first Good Life album I bought, but was maybe not the introduction to the band I needed at the time. I was (and still am) a big fan of Cursive, so wanted to check out Tim's other work. In 2008 I bought three The Good Life albums between April and December - Album of the Year is my favourite of the three and neither this or Black Out particularly struck me. Both have bars and heartbreak as a common theme, but that could be said about a lot of Tim Kasher's albums (after seeing him play a solo set at Fest whilst blind-drunk does make me believe the stories a bit more).

On the Picket Fence is slow starter, but A Little Bit More pick up the pace and has a nice and memorable chorus. As with almost all of Tim's albums, there's a song I'd skip every time if this was a cd; in this case it's Keely Aimee. As with Album of the Year, the female backing vocals add a lot throughout - even if it's just a whisper like in You Don't Feel Like Home to Me (one of the strongest songs on the album). A lot of the songs finish abruptly - it seems like an intentional device, but I'm not sure to what end. The closer Rest Your Head is another highlight and has some of Tim's best vocals.

I found this copy in Generation Records in New York on my first trip there (my second was two days later). I knew I wanted to hear the band and figured it was as good a place as any to start. Also the exchange rate was ridiculous at the time - for £8 a pop I'd buy pretty much anything. I think it's fair to say I was disappointed when I first played it because it was so far from Cursive, but now I know what the band are like I can see the album in its own right. I obviously enjoyed it enough to get two more albums, although I think that might have been for other reasons - I knew Album of the Year was the most renowned one, and Black Out was £2 for the cd - I clearly bought that because it was so cheap.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £7.59 new
Bought: Generation Records, New York
When: 11/04/08
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

The Dwarves - Blood, Guts & Pussy

When I was doing my Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year, sometimes when I'd get back to the office my colleagues would ask what record I bought; they mostly knew very little about the music I was into but liked to look at the covers and ask what sort of music it was. When I came back with this LP that summer, I remember praying that no one would ask me - I snuck in and hid it by the side of my desk. How do you explain that cover to anyone? The band name alone would raise some eyebrows, let alone the album title. What if they looked at the song titles and saw songs like Let's Fuck, Insect Whore or Gash Wagon? Thankfully the lyrics for Let's Fuck aren't printed because I definitely don't want to be doing any explaining around that (I'll let you Google that one if you're not familiar with that particular slab of punk-rock).

This is the only Dwarves record I own. I knew roughly what I was getting in for and get some enjoyment out of it - Drug Store is actually quite a good song - but I very rarely ever think "yes, I want to listen to the Dwarves". There are many uneasy-listening hardcore records in my collection, and most of them are recorded better - the quality here varies from just about ok to appalling - Detention Girl is just a smudge of noise for the first half. On the other hand, it's a very short record, so at least you're not listening to it for long. I've definitely had £8 of enjoyment from it over the years, so I can't complain. On the other hand, I do worry my children will see it one day and judge me.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 11
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Spiller's Records, Cardiff
When: 03/06/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Rise Against - The Unravelling

There was only a fairly short period of time when I considered myself a Rise Against fan - it started with seeing them in 2003 and ended sometime between 2005 and 2006. They had two albums out when I saw them in 2003, and those are the only two albums I have. The third they released in 2004 and I remember not being at all impressed by the song I heard from it. I couldn't tell you much about it, but I remember thinking they weren't a band for me anymore; I was at university and getting into American indie-rock bands like Hum and Modest Mouse (shortly afterwards I'd hear Broken Social Scene and the Canadian indie-rock phase would begin). I remember it sounding too polished, and I wasn't into that. I saw Rise Against again in 2006 and 2011 (at Leeds and Reading festivals, respectively). They were still a fun band, but I don't remember feeling bad that I'd given up on them. They've now released countless albums and my brother has most of them. Maybe I should give them a listen one day.

All that aside, I still have a lot of time for their debut, The Unravelling, as well as the second album, Revolutions Per Minute. Alive & Well is a huge opener and they keep the momentum going across all 16 songs (in true-punk style, they barely give you a moment to take a breath between songs). Six Ways 'til Sunday and One Thousand Good Intentions are particular highlights, as well as The Remains of Summer Memories which treads the line between metal-breakdown and Fat-Wreck-style punk seamlessly. The title-track is probably the slowest moment and painfully emo, but in a thoroughly enjoyable way. Everchanging was always a favourite too with the slowdown in the middle crying out for a sing-a-long. Following it up with the two shortest and most traditional-hardcore songs on the album was a good move.

When I was introduced to the band at college, my friend Steve loaned me his copy of this album and I recorded it onto a minidisc (that I still have somewhere). At the start of the second year of university I decided to blow a bunch of my student loan on a big order from Interpunk, a website I'd been stalking for a while realising I could fill some gaps in my The Paper Chase collection much more easily than I could by just relying on UK shops and eBay. I got a lot of great stuff, including End Transmission and an excellent Glassjaw t-shirt. I also took advantage of the ridiculous exchange rate and picked up this copy of The Unravelling to go along with my copy of Revolutions Per Minute. They'd released that third album by then, so I knew they were never going to be part of a bigger collection, but I wanted a copy nonetheless. Neither album gets a great deal of play these days, but they represent a certain period of time nicely. It's still a fun listen.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 16
Cost: £7.50 new
Bought: Interpunk
When: 06/11/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Songs: Ohia - The Magnolia Electric Co.

I've been slightly putting off writing about this record because I just don't think I can do it justice. In the five years I've had a copy, this album has continued to grow on me and I still find new parts I love with each listen. Whilst I consider The Lioness to be my favourite Jason Molina album, I think it's safe to say that Magnolia Electric Co is the greatest. If people ask me where to start, it's almost wrong to suggest anywhere other than here; sure, he has released some incredible albums aside from this, but this is surely the canonical Molina album. Both ends of his career are represented here as the turning point from Songs: Ohia to Magnolia Electric Co. Start here. Play the album over and over again. Fall in love with it.

The second Farewell Transmission starts I get shivers down my spine. I've heard so many covers of this song that it's become a treat to hear the original. If this album is the starting point, then it's pretty fitting that the first song people will hear is his most famous and one of his best. I'm sure some would say it's over-rated, but I think it gets the praise it deserves for very good reasons. It's a perfect moment spread across seven minutes. The transition from that into I've Been Riding With the Ghost is perfect too, with the ghostly backing vocals brilliantly at odds with the hints of country throughout. Just Be Simple rounds out the trio of opening songs, all of which have become fan-favourites. When the first three songs in row are all easy additions to a theoretical Greatest Hits album, you know you're listening to something special.

Side B starts off a bit strangely with country singer Lawrence Peters taking on the vocals on The Old Black Hen followed by Scout Niblet singing Peoria Lunch Box Blues. It possibly shows that Jason wasn't necessarily thinking at the time that this album would be the landmark or turning point it would become; who would make such a choice on an album that would be hailed (by me, at least) as his greatest? The demos show how the songs sound with Jason singing - his voice sounds different on The Old Black Hen, perhaps a sign that it made sense for someone else to sing it; his version of Peoria is nice, but Scout's vocals add so much to it. The studio version hints back to Jason's lo-fi days, but with some drums tastefully brought to the front of the mix.

After the quiet end of Peoria Lunch Box Blues, John Henry Split My Heart opens up with a bombastic riff, briefly giving way to a few bars of piano and the opening lines, before launching back into the huge sound of the intro. The demo holds very few clues that the studio version would hit so hard. The outro, reprising the lines of "Long dark blues", is another perfect moment. Hold On Magnolia is the gentle closer that no one knew the album needed. Part of me wonders how the album would feel if it and John Henry were swapped around - perhaps it would have been too much to go from Magnolia into that start of John Henry. It's a reflective ending, and feels like a goodbye for the Songs: Ohia of old before fully becoming Magnolia Electric Co. Maybe it would have felt too forced to have both opener and closer feature the same lines. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Jason's vocals are incredible on it either way.

There are moments throughout the album where you can hear Jason urging the other musicians on through the way he sings - halfway through Just Be Simple, towards the start of Almost Was Good Enough and, famously, at the end of Farewell Transmission. Much like with Ghost Tropic, you can picture them in the studio together at those exact moments, with Steve Albini doing some fine work behind the mixing desk.

You can dwell on the meanings of Jason's lyrics for endless amounts of time, but I've always found myself most strongly attached to individual lines - "Real truth is no one gets it right / Real truth is we're all supposed to try" and "I will be gone / But not forever" from Farewell Transmission (the latter the name I picked for my Jason Molina best-of I made for in the car - it was incredibly tricky boiling his work down to 80 minutes!). Also "If Heaven's really coming back / I hope it has a heart attack / When it sees how dangerous it is for guys like that", "Half I'm going to use to pay this band / Half I'm saving, cause I'm going to owe them" and "Hold on Magnolia" for its willing and repetition, but also when it's paired with "I think it's almost time". He was a great lyricist.

Anyway, I eventually bought a copy on my first trip to Truck Store in Oxford. I'd just accepted a job in the city and came up from London one Saturday morning to look at flats. Once I was done, I made the trip over to Truck to see what I was in for from what would become my new local record shop. I'd had a look at the website and knew that Karl, the guy who runs it, was a big Molina fan, so wasn't at all surprised to find a copy there that morning. Over the following years I filled a lot of gaps in my Molina collection there and have had some nice chats with Karl about them.

The reissue is lovely and much-needed - albums like this shouldn't be only available as second-hand first-pressings; they should be in every collection. William Schaff's artwork looks incredible and the demos, as mentioned, are not some fodder for the collectors, but fascinating alternative takes and nearly as important as the album itself. I was too late to get a copy with the bonus 10" (but will one day hunt one down), but luckily the mp3 download code includes the two songs from there. This is really very lucky because The Big Game is Every Night is another of Jason very finest songs. To think it was abandoned to be a Japanese bonus-track is mind-boggling. It's one of his longer songs, but feels effortless in its ability to keep your attention. It's a hidden gem in a career of countless gems.

A couple of years later I picked up a copy of the original cd pressing (in Amoeba Records) which also included the demos here, but with different names and in a different order - Farewell Transmission is called The Long Dark Blues (arguably a better name? Certainly a grander one),
I've Been Riding With the Ghost is I Made the Change and John Henry Split My Heart is You Can't Save Everything; Almost Was Good Enough is missing from both, but we have demos of Whip Poor Will (a song that would appear again years later on Josephine) and The Big Game is Every Night instead. I didn't know that they were the same demos when I bought it, but it makes sense that they would be, and I would have still bought it anyway.

I say this a lot, but I thoroughly and whole-heartedly recommend this album. No good record collection is complete without it.

Format: Double 12", gatefold, picture sleeves
Tracks: 17
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 15/03/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone is Not Enough

I didn't go to my local record shop on Record store Day in 2017. I've written about it before (at length) and you can read that here, but the reasons were basically that I only really wanted a couple of records, and I couldn't bring myself to wait in the cold for 5 hours with the usual strangers who are all excited about records that I have no interest in; I visit record shops routinely and came to the conclusion that RSD isn't about people like me, and that's fine. If it keeps record shops open then I'm all for it. If there are no records I really want, then I will very happily stay in bed for as long as possible.

That said, there were three records I wanted in 2017 - Snapcase, Dirty Three and this Manics 12". My Manics collection hasn't always stayed up-to-date, but I'm back on it and this record had to get bought. As it happens, Send Away the Tigers represented the start of me drifting away from the band so I think I felt the need to over-compensate to make up for it.

In the ten years that followed, Your Love Alone is Not Enough has become something of a classic. I certainly get excited every time I hear them play it live. It wasn't clear that it would go that way when it came out - it's instantly very poppy, which runs the risk of feeling dated quickly. Ten years proved that not to be the case. The speed at which James and Nina begin harmonising still catches me off-guard, but I guess that's part of its charm. The chorus absolutely soars though and Nicky's lines are brilliantly unexpected every time, even though I know they're coming.

The b-sides are three demos, each different to the version that appeared on the reissue of the album. All three show the songs in different states, working backwards in arrangement and complexity to Nicky's very basic version. The first has James vocals dubbed over themselves instead of Nina, which is equally strange. James' demo is nice and simple, and Nicky's is interesting to hear how the song sounds at almost half the speed.

Anyway, I didn't buy a copy that cold April morning. However, my friend Sarah lives very near to Banquet Records and was able to grab a copy for me - they get in huge amounts of stock for RSD and often a good percentage of the stuff I'm after is still available after the queues have gone or in the following days. (I was able to get a copy of the Dirty Three record online a few weeks later too - Sarah wanted a copy for herself so couldn't buy me one of those). I took delivery of the record from her when we went to see Deftones in Alexandra Palace. This is number 1458 out of a few thousand I'm sure. There's not a great deal more to say about the release. It's a nice way to pay appropriate tribute to a enduringly great song though.

Format: 12", numbered #1458
Tracks: 4
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Sarah
When: 05/05/17
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Rope - Manteision Bodolaeth or the Perks of Being

I don't remember being blown away by this album the first time I heard it, nor do I remember the exact point I realised it was brilliant, but it happened sometime between March and December 2016; March was when I bought it and December was when I placed it at number 4 in my albums of the year list. I have distinct memories of being sat at my desk and thinking "I want to listen to that Rope album" and, more often, "I really want to play that Rope album again".

The reason I got into Rope was quite simple - I knew the singer, Kai, from my Cardiff days and have been listening to his various bands for many years. He was good friends with my old housemate Nicky, in a band and a regular at all the local punk shows. He was a few years younger than us so his enthusiasm definitely helped us get more excited about some shows. Plus, he had a car and would drive us back from Le Pub. The first band I heard he was doing after I left Cardiff wasn't a punk band but doom metal, which I was not expecting but enjoyed. They were called Hunger Artist, wrote a three-song 44-minute album and released only one cassette, which I duly bought. I liked the music that happened when Kai went metal.

Some years passed and I heard he was in a new band called Rope. The album came out at the start of 2016 and I bought a copy when I was in All Ages a short while later. I'd heard only two things about the album - it was heavy but pretentious. The first is certainly true, and based on the number of quotes, literally references and some of those song titles, I could see how someone would reach the other conclusion. I don't mind it - in fact, being a Manics fan means I've got quite used to seeing quotes all over album sleeves.

Regarding the heaviness, Rope are brilliantly slow and heavy. It's less metal than Hunger Artist, but the result is a sort of doom-Shellac - the songs are quite sparse and at times angular, but everything is played so slowly and thoughtfully; songs shift at unexpected times. Highlights are The Perks of Being (seamlessly blending in some sports commentary) and Crisis on Infinite Earth, although it's only six songs so you might as well listen to them all. The drums on Ignatius (A Plague of Dunces) are particularly excellent.

2018 brought around another Rope album, and another entry in the top half of my end of year list (at number 3). I'll write more about that one another time, but I thoroughly recommend checking both albums out.

Format: 12", insert, poster
Tracks: 6
Cost: £11 new
Bought: All Ages Records, London
When: 25/03/16
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: none