Jena Berlin - This is Yours as Much as it is Mine

I bought this record having never actually listened to Jena Berlin. I was, and still am, a huge Restorations fan and they added a bunch of old releases to their website a while back, so I took the opportunity to stock up on a few bits. Most excitingly, they had the Little Elephant session 12", but they also had this 7" and the album by the band that a few of them were in before Restorations by the of name Jena Berlin. I figured it was worth a punt, so I bought both.

It's impossible to listen to without comparing it to Restorations, which is probably unfair - everything about it sounds so much more naive and scrappy; Restorations always sounded so sure of their sound and somehow older because of it. I don't want to use the words "mature" and it's loaded negative "immature" because it'd be doing Jena Berlin a disservice, but it's hard for those words to not pop into your mind. Restorations always felt (to me, at least) as an older-person's punk band. Jena Berlin sounds like the music they made as teenagers in comparison - there's so much energy and a slightly metal-tinged edge in places (Motion Sickness on the album jumps through a bunch of different styles, but kinda works; Oh God on this 7" is even more unexpectedly metal). For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, it reminds me of a lot of the bands we used to see in South Wales - not even in musical style, maybe it's the cheaper production or youthful energy. But there are hints of Restorations in there, along with about a hundred other influences.

As a result, I always think "I'd rather be listening to Restorations" when I play it, so I can't say I've ever listened to it purely on it's own merits. If you've thought "I wish Restorations played faster punk with a hint of metal" then you should probably check out Jena Berlin.

Format: 7", folded screen-printed sleeve
Tracks: 2
Cost: £7.70 new
Bought: Band's website
When: 03/08/17
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: download code

Mogwai - Central Belters

 

I feel like curating the Mogwai best-of must have been one of the easiest tasks whoever did it did that week; if you put their back-catalogue on shuffle and took the first three hours of songs that came up, you'd have a collection that was both a) uniquely Mogwai and b) full of bangers. It goes without saying that the actually-curated best-of is an amazing listen and a brilliant use of 12 sides of vinyl and well over three hours of your time.

My Mogwai collection still has some glaring holes, but I've been enjoying gradually working on it – one large hole is their debut album Mogwai Young Team, one of the first albums of theirs I heard (which I bought on cd in Spillers a week after buying The Hawk is Howling). Whilst under-represented here (on paper at least - do we count the original version of Summer separately? Does it's 16-minute runtime balance out the multiple shorter songs from other albums?), it is great to finally have Mogwai Fear Satan on vinyl. There's still something really pleasing about seeing one song take up a whole side of vinyl and Mogwai Fear Satan does that perfectly. It's then quite surprising that the other song that takes up a whole side of vinyl never made it onto an album, despite being a live favourite and ridiculously huge song – it takes a lot of sides of vinyl to get to My Father My King but it is absolutely worth it every time. I suspect at some point after getting most of the LPs on vinyl I'd have got round to seeking out the single, but I'm glad I've been listening to this for the last six years, rather than waiting for the point in my life when I got round to seeking it out. I love that you can see the quiet part in the grooves of the vinyl.

Mogwai have been around long enough to have a number of different eras, and I think I'm firmly a circa-2010 era guy. It might help that The Hawk is Howling was the first album of theirs I heard, but I also love Hardcore Will Never Die and I think Les Revenants is the greatest soundtrack they've done by a good distance – it’s a contender for the "best soundtrack that actually works even better as an album", running against The Fountain, which they were also involved with, although I'm never very sure how much was Clint Mansell and how much was Mogwai. Anyway, as a result I think the selections from those albums are great. The songs from Mr Beast also sound amazing, more-so than I remember them sounding on the actual LP. We're No Here sounds particularly great. The early era has some highs and some lows for me – Summer is a huge way to start (I love the way it races ahead of the xylophone) and Christmas Steps is the highlight of Come On Die Young. I've never really loved that album as much as everyone else seems to, and Cody feels like a bit of a downer here. Similarly, Stanley Kubrick from EP (or EP+6, as I know the release) is a bit nothingy. 

The odds and ends that make up the final two discs are interesting - Hugh Dallas is always good (classic slow build) and Devil Rides with it's vocals from prolific musician Roky Erickson is unexpected and a bit bizarre, but great to hear. Strangely, we get one song from Les Revenants in the usual chronological section as well as one in this section - not sure why. Personally, Hungry Face is the one I associate more with the show, but Wizard Motor is probably the better song in the usual sense. Earth Division is another nice one I wouldn't have heard. I didn't realise until just now that the song itself isn't on the Earth Division EP (which I regret not buying when I saw it in Banquet around the time it came out - I can't remember why I didn't buy it).

It'd be wrong to not dwell on just what a nice package this boxset is too. Each record has one letter from the word "Mogwai" on the cover and a selection of incredibly brightly coloured sleeves, contrasting the grey, fabric-lined outer box. The booklet is brilliantly detailed and a good read - the concert tickets and set-lists from over the years are particularly nice. All this for just under £50 is a ridiculous bargain - they could have charged twice as much and I'd still have bought it and still have been raving about how great it was.

Format: 6x 12", boxset, booklet

Tracks: 34

Cost: £49 new

Bought: Norman Records website

When: 23/10/15

Colour: Black

Etching: None

mp3s: Download code

Hot Water Music - Live in Chicago

It’s now been so long since I went to a concert that live albums are starting to take on new meanings. I bought this Hot Water Music triple live LP because at the time there was no best-of compilation and I quite liked the idea of having all their best songs in one place. And this record ticks that box and then some; just look at those first four songs – A Flight and a Crash into Remedy into Wayfarer (one of their greatest songs full stop) into Trusty Chords. What a way to start a show. That is a truly amazing run of songs, the sort you end a show with not start with. It'd be fair to say that the rest of the album doesn't hit such heights again, but how could it?

And pre-pandemic, this album was just a good way to hear all my favourite HWM songs in one place (although three discs is stretching the definition of "one place" – I could equally play Fuel for the Hate Game, A Flight and A Crash and Caution in their entireties, hear 90% of my favourite HWM songs and have got out of my seat the same number of times). But it's now been 16 months since I last went to a concert, an otherwise unfathomable gap between shows, and it's only going to get longer. So when I put the needle on this record, my mind is thrown back to the first time I saw HWM play, in a sweaty dodgy venue in Newport, South Wales surrounded by every punk I'd made acquaintances in the two years I'd lived in Cardiff - it was 9 months after I'd left for London but there was no doubt in my mind that if I was going to see HWM it'd be in South Wales. It was horrifically hot, beer-soaked and chaotic. We'd been drinking in beer gardens in the afternoon and the show was perfect. More than 10 years have passed since, but this record puts me right back there, struggling to sing along to any of the choruses (partly because I still know less than a third of the words being sung at any given point). I saw HWM twice more after that show - to a disappointingly small crowd at Reading Festival and to a raucous hometown crowd on the first night of my first Fest, but that Newport show will always be my favourite memory. And it's nice that I can take myself right back there with this record.

I've only mentioned the first four songs here so far, but there are some other great moments - "God Deciding" and Kill the Night are two of my favourite non-album songs and both get played, which is great (they'd both be missing from the alternative choice of three records I mentioned above). Moonpies for Misfits is a great slower one that I often forget about. Side 5 has the opening duo from Fuel (in reverse order) which is another huge moment on the album, and The Sense from Caution sounds amazing - it's not a song I'd ever have listed as being amongst my favourites but it's definitely up there.

This copy, as with most variants, is from the second run which featured different colour sleeves to match the records and Discogs tells me that there were 550 of each colour. I bought it one day in Banquet - I don't remember them having any other colours, but I was perfectly happy with blue. I was aware of the record before seeing it there that day, and without the tracklisting printed anywhere on the sleeve I had to trust that it'd be huge, but it was just after Christmas and I guess I just fancied spending some money. Of course £17 for a triple LP is now a bargain regardless what's actually on it.

Two years later an actual best-of compilation did come out, but I've not bought it - mostly because I have this record, which is more interesting owing to it being a live recording, but also because it doesn't have "God Deciding" and Kill the Night on (however does have Poison and Drag My Body, two of the best songs they wrote in their more recent eras). To be honest, if I saw it in a shop, I probably would buy it, but that says more about my compulsive record buying than it does the relative merits of these two albums.

Format: Triple 12", insert
Tracks: 30
Cost: £17 new
Bought: Banquet Record, Kingston
When: 04/01/13
Colour: Blue
Etching: Side A: "I love these chords" Side B: "From voice to ear" Side C: "Scarred but here" Side D: "You are not alone" Side E: "I must always remember" Side F: "This makes me whole"
mp3s: Download code

Restorations - Call + Response IV

I distinctly remember ordering this record, which is not something that can often be said for the fairly soulless experience of ordering something online; there's none of the usual enjoyment that comes from buying something in person in a shop, but this one stuck with me.

It was the day after I'd turned 30 and we'd just returned to Bergen having been out in the fyords the night before. We'd checked into our hotel for that night and were getting ready before going out for a meal (in a bar that sold metal-themed burgers). I was catching up on Twitter and saw that Restorations had tweeted about this record being available and there only being 300 copies of it available. I immediately clicked through to wherever it was on sale and added it to my basket. All in, it came to £12, which under any other circumstance is a horrific price for a 7" record. But I was in Norway, where every beer I'd drunk had cost about £9. I knew £12 was a lot, but if I could justify £9 for a beer that gave me less than half-an-hour's enjoyment, I could justify £12 on a record I'd have for many years to come.

On top of that, the song on this 7" is 12-minutes long, so not far off the amount of time it takes to drink a beer anyway (depending on the night out and the beer). I think I knew some of the context around this release when I pressed "buy", but was willing to chance it regardless. The premise here is that Restorations wrote a 12-minute long instrumental song (with the cracking title Alright Boys, When We Get to the Airport, There Will be Absolutely No Place to Land) and then 16 local writers wrote short stories in response to it (call and response). The record comes with a huge book of all the responses. Because I'm a horrendous person, I've not read all of them. In fact, I'm not even sure I've read most of them. Not gonna apologise, that's just the sort of person I am it turns out.

I have, however, listened to the song a lot. Given how far from usual Restorations territory it lies, it's a great song; they're not the first band you'd think of to write either an instrumental song, or a 12-minute long song, let alone both at the same time. It doesn't get boring and does a lot of things in its runtime. As an added quirk, there's a locked groove at the end of the a-side, so the song essentially goes on for as long as you like. It's the only record I have where the locked groove appears halfway through a song.

Format: 7", book, numbered (233/300)

Tracks: 1

Cost: £12 new

Bought: Online

When: 29/10/14

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The Enablers + Bedford Falls - Split

 

I bought this record because Hugh was gushing about how the Bedford Falls songs were two of their very best and I needed a copy. I had the two albums they’d released at the time and seen them a good handful of times, both in my Cardiff days and beyond. It was the only time I visited Ghost Town Records in Cardiff, what I assume was a fairly short-lived venture between Damaged Records and whatever Welly is doing now. It was a good haul - this 7” for £2, the first Onsind album on cd for £1 and an Underground Railroad to Candyland record for £7.50; I was very pleased with my haul. If I remember correctly, it pissed it down in the afternoon, so we had a token drink in the Christmas market and went to the cinema, mostly to keep dry. 

Anyway, Hugh was right (but don’t let him know I said that), these are two of the best Bedford Falls songs - both great, standalone songs, which is what you want from a 7” - two songs that are deserving of being on a bit of vinyl all to themselves. The Sweetest Science is particularly good. I know people love The Enablers, but I’ve never really gotten on with them. They’re fine, but don’t do much for me.

Format: 7"

Tracks: 4

Cost: £2 second hand

Bought: Ghost Town Records, Cardiff

When: 24/11/12

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Fugazi - 3 Songs

A little while ago I realised I was within striking distance of completing my Fugazi collection - I had all the albums on some format and was just missing Margin Walker. When I picked that up from Specialist Subject, I also picked up The Argument and Instrument on vinyl, meaning the only outstanding release was the 3 Songs 7". Of course, I'd had the three songs themselves since 2005, tacked onto the end of the Repeater cd, an album I loved so much I got the cd two years after buying the vinyl just so I could listen to it on my mp3 player. So I know these three songs very well.

Still, in October 2019, just after the package arrived from Specialist Subject I went on eBay and bought the first reasonably priced copy of this I saw (at £4.50, it's not far off the £6 I spent on my vinyl copy of Repeater). The internet has made record collecting far less exciting for sure, but it's still nice to put that final piece of the puzzle in. These three songs are deserving of their own 7" (something that isn't universally true) - Song Number One is huge, and would easily fit on a best-of Fugazi, if such a thing existed (which it does in my car, and indeed is on there). The bass at the start of Joe Number One sounds amazing, as does the piano. I've never really had much time for it on the end of Repeater, but when you sit down and properly listen to it, it’s great. And finally Break In is just frantic. In just seven-and-a-half minutes, you have a perfect slice of Fugazi.

Format: 7", picture sleeve, insert
Tracks: 3
Cost: £4.50 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 16/10/19
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Will Oldham - Songs of Love and Horror

On one hand, I've probably not given this record the time it deserves, but on the other, I think if I enjoyed it more I would give it more time. And thinking about it, I have played it quite a lot in various attempts to get into it, but I still consider it one of those records I haven't played enough.

It didn't come with mp3s, so the odds were stacked against it from the off. The other factor that didn't help is that it's not the first album I have of Will Oldham re-recording his own songs, and that album was a huge disappointment (so, much like so many others, this story goes back long before this record even came out). I bought Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Sings Palace's Greatest Hits quite soon after getting into his music - he'd released so many albums and they were all so readily available I figured a compilation of sorts would be a great way to sample a bunch of his songs. But on that album he re-recorded some of his earlier songs in a country-style and the results are not what I came to his music to hear. I've not listened to that cd in many, many years (although I'm now wondering if I should give it another chance). I'd heard New Partner on the excellent Is It the Sea? live album, but the version on Sings Palace's Greatest Hits was not my cup of tea in the slightest. (This version feels very casual in the verses, but suitably solemn in the chorus.) That cd made me tread with caution through the rest of his back-catalogue and I've not been so care-free since.

So when I saw this album was coming out, I decided not to buy it. But then, just after Christmas in 2018, I was in Banquet on what is now an increasingly rare trip and fancied buying a lot of new vinyl. I saw this one in the racks and it was an easy sell when I was already dropping a lot of money. I figured he wouldn't pull the same trick twice (country covers) and it started with I See a Darkness, a song that I think everyone agrees is not only one of his finest songs, but one of the finest songs full stop. I also spotted New Partner on the tracklisting, but that was the extent of the songs I knew by title. I actually have half of these songs in my collection in their original forms, but that's mostly because The Letting Go spawned three of the songs here. One of those, The Way, is a highlight here, but still not as good as the original.

All of which brings me to I See a Darkness itself. I'd go so far as to say that there's not been a bad cover of that song because I've only ever heard good ones. I'm no huge fan of Johnny Cash, nor do I have the American albums that he recorded towards the end of his life, but I've heard a lot of the covers he did of more recent songs, and his cover of I See a Darkness is up there with Hurt in terms of the most hauntingly appropriate songs for him to sing. With that in mind, I'd go so far as to say this isn't even the best cover of the song. It's really nice, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't add anything. That said, it's always nice to hear any version of it because it's such a beautiful song.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £18 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 27/12/18
Colour: Black
Etching: None
mp3s: None