Manic Street Preachers - Roses in the Hospital

This was an eBay purchase late last year - I'd gotten back into eBay in a big way and was spending far too much. I probably could have found this record cheaper, but it was in good condition (at least, the sleeve is) and I wanted to fill a gap in my collection, so I put in a bid and won. The record itself sounds like shit - not in a charming "isn't vinyl nice and warm and crackly" way, but more in a "I wonder what damage this is doing to my needle" way. Luckily I have the songs on the cd, so I don't need to play it to hear any of these songs.

Roses in the Hospital is, of course, a standout on Gold Against the Soul (although I love the whole album). The slow drum-and-vocals bit before the outro is a nice precursor to the perfect ending of A Design For Life and the "forever delayed" lines at the very end are (forever) brilliant. The line "We don't want your fucking love" has been replaced with "Roses in the hospital" (just about works if you say each syllable slowly enough) for the 7" version and the fade out is shortened considerably.

Us Against You has a Generation Terrorists b-side feel to it - dirty and punky. I like it. It's at odds with the polished sound of GATS in the best possible way; you wonder how it might have sounded if it'd had the same treatment as the album tracks. James' vocals in the chorus are impossible to understand, and could maybe stand to be a little cleaner. The other b-side here is Donkeys. There are a bunch of slower Manics b-sides that all sound great, and could be a fascinating album in themselves - Donkeys is one such song. Maybe I should make that as a mixtape for the car.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £8.45 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 15/10/18
Colour: Transparent red
Etching: none
mp3s: none

MewithoutYou - Ten Stories

This week MewithoutYou announced that they were splitting up, which was sad news. I took far too long to get into them properly and have only seen them play festival/support sets. I got their first two albums in 2007 when I first heard them and then neglected them entirely for five years until I found their fourth album in Banquet one afternoon. I can't blame anyone but myself for that; I imagine I missed out on seeing them play some incredible shows in the UK in the years between. Still, I can be pleased I did get to see them, that I had such a great time the two times I did see them, and that I can go back to their back-catalogue whenever I please.

In 2016 Big Scary Monsters put out this lovely reissue of their fifth album from 2012 and I picked it up in amongst a fairly large order of other albums I'd been meaning to pick up for a while. I didn't play it straight away, but I was into it as soon as I did - throughout there are highlights, like February, 1878, Cardiff Giant and Fox's Dream of the Log Flume (a song that could easily fit on their first two albums), but it was the closer, All Circles, that really stood out on the first play, and became the reason I played it a lot in the following weeks - I love the simple repeating lyric: "All circles presuppose they'll end up where they begin / but only in their leaving can they come back round". The brass instruments in the outro of Nine Stories is an inspired choice too. In the three years that have passed since then, it's probably become the MWY album I turn to most often, although they all get a good amount of play.

Format: 12", picture sleeve, booklet
Tracks: 11
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 07/03/16
Colour: Blue splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Braid - Frame & Canvas

I've noticed a few things in recent years: that there are a lot of emo albums that people consider to be absolutely classic, essential albums; that different people often have entirely different sets of albums that have such accolades; and finally that if you didn't hear those albums at the right point in your life, you can't understand why people hold them in such high regard.

I love Texas is the Reason and Miracle of 86, but I've played those albums to people who should, in theory, also love them and watched them be thoroughly underwhelmed. Frame & Canvas is a perfect example of this in the other direction.

In 2013, Banquet announced that Braid were going to Frame & Canvas in Kingston, and people got extremely excited. A lot of these people were ones whose opinions I hold in high regard, so I thought I should get tickets and see what all the fuss was about. A few weeks before the show, I picked up this copy of the album, so I'd at least have a reasonable idea of the songs. I enjoyed the album, and had fun at the show, but definitely never felt I really got why everyone was so excited. I watched them again at Fest that year and still wasn't really that into it. Eventually I had the series of observations in the first paragraph and concluded it was a time-and-place thing, and I was in neither when I heard Braid.

All that sounds a bit negative. Frame & Canvas is a perfectly fine record. In fact, it's quite enjoyable in places, but I don't consider it essential in the slightest. They hit up a lot of things I enjoy - layered vocals, odd shouts, generally interesting music. They're not so big on memorable choruses, which doesn't help crack into the album. Consolation Prizefighter is pretty good, but it's late in the album to finally have such a thought. I've probably just not given it all enough time, but it's had a good number of plays over the years and after a while you just have to accept that sometimes you're not going to get an album. I've decided Frame & Canvas is one such album. Ask me again in another six years and maybe I'll have finally got it.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 18/07/13
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

The Murder City Devils - In Name and Blood

It's 2019 and The Murder City Devils remain in the list of occasionally active bands I'd love to see but still haven't (along with Snapcase, Hum and The Blood Brothers - the list hasn't changed in years, despite all four playing shows in US in recent years. One day I'll see them and I'll hopefully have a great time).

In Name and Blood was the last of the original Murder City Devils albums I got (The White Ghost... hadn't been released and they were very much broken up when I was getting into them). I got Thelema, Empty Bottles and the live album, R.I.P., in 2005/2006 and loved them. A while later I found the self-titled album and it became a stable in the kitchen of our house in Cardiff - that album acted as a little revival of the band for me and I was very pleased to find this album in Spillers one day early in 2009. The albums had been reissued on coloured vinyl and I was very pleased to add it to my collection.

I knew a bunch of the songs from R.I.P., but there are some great songs that weren't played at that last show - Bunkhouse with it's excellent chorus ("If you don't think that cowboys cry / Then you ain't never heard a cowboy's song"), Someone Else's Baby and Fields of Fire. Of course, Press Gang, Idle Hands and Rum to Whiskey were all highlights from the live album, particularly the last one, so I knew them well. There's also a couple of covers thrown in - Neil Diamond's I'll Come Running (for some reason) and two much-more on-brand Misfits covers - Hybrid Moments and She, although the latter is not listed on the sleeve. Goes without saying that MCD's organ-heavy sound and The Misfits make quite a pairing.

The band had a slight stylistic shift over the years, so much so they considered the Thelema EP part of the reason they broke up, but it's a very gradual change - in my mind (and ears), the self-titled album and Thelema are the extreme ends, but Empty Bottles and In Name and Blood are quite similar and a very strong pair of albums. All that said, if you like any of their music, I can't see you not liking the rest.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 18/03/09
Colour: White and red splatter
Etching: Side A: "Look upon your city, enjoy the sight..." Side B: "For it will soon be rubble and bleached bones"
mp3s: Download code

The Computers - Love Triangles Hate Squares

What happened to The Computers? They seemed to be on the edge of breaking through to being quite huge, and then just vanished into thin air. The last time I saw them they were supporting Rocket From the Crypt and the time before that they had every person in McClusky's getting into their thing; the album they released after this one was produced (or recorded?) by John Reis, which is a pretty deal by most people's standards. (That said, I didn't buy that album, so maybe I'm part of the problem.) There was a whole load of hype about that album, then they went quiet almost as soon as it came out. There was no "the band is over" message, just a fade into oblivion.

There was an argument from the very beginning that they were style over substance, but it worked - wearing matching red shirts and trousers, or these swanky suits or whatever followed certainly got them noticed. And live you couldn't help but buy into Alex's conviction; I never saw them play a bad show. These songs sound nothing like the band that I got into on the first EP, but as I mentioned before, I'm ok with that. Love Triangles Hate Squares is a million times catchier than the punk-rock songs they used to write and you could play this album in most situations and people would be ok with that - You Can't Hide From The Computers doesn't go down so well on the hifi when you've got your wife's friends over for dinner as this one does.

I definitely like these songs (except for C.R.U.E.L. which has a very annoying chorus) - they're too catchy to not like - but I feel like I shouldn't. It's a strange one. I wonder what I'd have made of them if I hadn't been introduced to them as a punk rock band (I met them before I saw them - they were friends with Rez from The Cut Ups and were staying at his house in Cardiff one evening when we were round there). The cynic in me suspects (/knows) I would have written them off as a gimmick. I like to think I'm better than needing bands to have proper punk-rock credentials to be enjoyable, but it turns out I'm not. I definitely wouldn't have given them the time of day if I'd been introduced to them through this album. I'm a bad person, I know that. I'm ok with that.

Format: 12", picture sleeve, poster, numbered (#1731)
Tracks: 11
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 18/07/13
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Max Richter - Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

I have fond memories attached to this album - not long after it was released, Max Richter played it live for the first time at Blenheim Palace, a place that had become our "garden" (we had a tiny garden, but were a short distance from Blenheim with annual passes, so we'd go there whenever we wanted to be in a nice, spacious garden). I love going to shows in strange places, and have been thoroughly impressed by Max Richter on a number of occasions. As well as premiering Three Worlds, he played his Vivaldi Recomposed piece and On the Nature of Daylight, a song from The Blue Notebooks that had been experiencing some increased attention from it being on the soundtrack to a movie (although I forget which one). It was shaping up to be a nice night.

I dragged my wife along, knowing she'd probably not hate it, but also knowing that since it was seated she might actually enjoy it. At this point she was about halfway through the pregnancy of our first child, who was just beginning to kick. During the concert, our little foetus got quite into the music and really started going for it; it was nice to see her reacting to it. We've played it a few times to her since she's been born, but the reactions are more subdued these days. The sun was shining and the Blenheim concert was lovely - it was a great evening. We were letting out our spare room on Airbnb at the time and our guests were also at the concert, having planned a trip around the UK from Canada mostly around the concert. It was nice to chat with them about it the morning afterwards too.

I'd bought Three Worlds when it came a few months earlier, but didn't really know what to expect. I had a bunch of Max Richter albums at the time, but they were beginning to fall into two camps (and have continued to do so): very strongly themed albums (Recomposed, Sleep, this one) or his relentless soundtrack work - albums as collections of songs seemed to be a thing of the past, Infra possibly being a turning point. Similarly to that album, this one is based around a series of ballets, this time based on Virginia Woolf writings, of which I know nothing.

The three sections of the album are fundamentally very distinct from each other - Mrs Dalloway being a handful of shorter related pieces at the start, The Waves comprising one piece (Tuesday) at the end, and two sides of very electronic music in the middle for Orlando. Spreading the Orlando suite across two different LPs seems strange, when perhaps it would have been easier to pair Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, but maybe that would have hammered the separation home too hard - one LP being the more traditional classical music, the other the out-there electronic stuff. Even with the running order as it is, it's hard not to make that distinction.

On the night at Blenheim, the second movement felt far more out of place than it does on the record - the electronic section clearly not landing so well with the Blenheim audience as it might have in a less fancy venue (it's funny to consider The Barbican a "less fancy" venue, but that is where my mind goes to, being the first place I saw him play Recomposed). People were clearly struggling with that part more than the others. Virginia Woolf's suicide note at the start of Tuesday is a little hard to take too.

It's a good album, but has somehow never found it's way into being a Max Richter album I turn to very often, probably because of the slightly jarring middle section. The strange thing is, before that show at Blenheim I hadn't even really clocked that the middle was so heavy on the electronics, which is a worrying sign that I probably hadn't really listened to it all that well in the two months between.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 16
Cost: £27 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 07/04/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart

I think I've finally learnt which band is Jawbox and which one is Jawbreaker - Jawbox are the one I have a couple of albums by and quite enjoy, Jawbreaker are the ones I watched a documentary about on Amazon Prime thinking they were Jawbox (it was reassuring that even Steve Albini couldn't remember which was which). The Jawbreaker documentary was interesting and I stuck with it, partly because they seemed to really hate each other, but partly because people really love them and, it turns out, I've never listened to them despite them being the sort of band I feel like someone would have played to me. But enough about Jawbreaker.

Like a lot of people (I suspect), I was introduced to Jawbox because Deftones covered Savory and their recording ended up on their 2005 B-Sides and Rarities compilation (as well as on the 2011 Covers LP). That recording also features most of the guys from Far, and I also had a recording of Jonah covering Savory on his The Three Sketchys compilation, so it's safe to say the song hit hard amongst that group of friends. I liked the song and made a mental note to check the band out; over the years I heard about For Your Own Special Sweetheart being a classic and landmark album.

In 2010 I finally stumbled across a copy - this is the 2009 reissue and Spillers had it in stock when I was back in town for some reason (it wasn't for a gig, so I'm not sure why I was in Cardiff that weekend in particular). I still hadn't actually heard Jawbox when I first played the record, but the covers of Savory and the general fanfare was enough to draw me in. Plus, it was on Discord, so it really couldn't go too wrong. Jawbox have a lot in common with Albini-related bands from Chicago but they have a far greater ear for a melody and throw in some incredibly catchy choruses; it's a far easier listen than anything Big Black recorded, which I see as a plus. It's still pretty abrasive (my wife made some strange faces at the start of FF=66 just now and left the room before the chorus kicked in). Of course, Savory is a great song, but so are Breathe, Motorist, Jackpot Plus! and U-Trau, mostly because of their soaring choruses. Reel feels quite different from the rest of the album, but is a nice moment.

Many years later I found a second-hand copy of My Scrapbook of Fatal Accidents on cd in Oxfam and that reminded me that I really should have bought more Jawbox records by now. It's no surprise that the only blocker has been that I never ever see their albums in shops and forget to seek them out online. I've bought both Jawbox releases that I've ever seen, so that's a reasonable effort I suppose. I should try harder; I like their music and could happily listen to more of it.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Cardiff
When: 17/04/10
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "This is not a psychotic episode" Side B: "This is a cleansing moment of clarity"
mp3s: Download code