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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Robert Ascroft “Echo still remains”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Robert Ascroft
Album Title: Echo still remains
Year released: 2025
Details: Special edition, custard vinyl

The skinny: Do you have a favourite record label? One that you swear by, trust, and pretty much love everything it releases? For a while in the 2000s, Arts & Crafts* was that for me. Into the 2010s, it was Paper Bag Records**. And now, it seems to be Hand Drawn Dracula***. Incidentally, all of these have been Toronto-based but not coincidentally, all have been locked into one scene or another, what was hot and new and seemed to be making music just for me. Early last year, Hand Drawn Dracula announced they were releasing the debut solo album of photographer/producer Robert Ascroft. I gave it a go, like I seem to do for all their releases of late, and quickly fell for its dark and cinematic sound and wonderful cast of guest vocalists (just check out that hype sticker). I purchased this special edition, custard yellow pressing off of the label’s Bandcamp site, and further spins drove me to place “Echo still remains” at number eight on my Best albums of the year list for 2025.

Standout track: “Empty pages (feat. Zumi Rosow)”

*Home to Broken Social Scene, Stars, Dan Mangan, etc.

**Home to Austra, Young Galaxy, The Rural Alberta Advantage, etc.

***Home to No Joy, Breeze, Tallies, etc.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #4 Elbow “Fugitive motel”

<< #5    |    #3 >>

I wrote about how I fell in love with Elbow and their first album, 2001’s “Asleep in the back”, in a couple posts about tracks that were amongst my favourites of that year*. Indeed, I became quite obsessed with the Manchester-based quintet, name checking them with all my friends, recommending their music at every chance I got, describing their sound as epic and bombastic. I’m sure my friends got sick of hearing about them and being who they were, took every advantage to rib me and poke fun. I didn’t care. I just pressed repeat.

When I heard a sophomore album was being released, I went out to the local HMV and purchased “Cast of thousands” on CD as soon as it was possible. I didn’t even consider there would be a letdown given my lofty expectations and thankfully, the album didn’t disappoint in the least. Titled for the idea that they enlisted and recorded the Glastonbury crowd singing the refrain of one of the album’s tracks but really evoking how the band doubled down on the followup to their successful debut. Listening to the album over and over again that first week, I came up with a new descriptor for them: beauty, personified.

I distinctly remember taking the CD with me on a trip down to Toronto to visit my friends, Discman company for the long Greyhound bus ride, there and back. I stayed with my friend Tim that weekend, whose birthday it was, if I correctly recall, sleeping on the pullout couch in his basement apartment. On one of the afternoons, a couple of other friends came over and we span tunes, drank beers, ate Pizza Pizza pizza, and played Axis and Allies** for hours. When it was my turn to select the tunes, I slipped on “Cast of thousands” much to the eye rolling of my friends and though I think they got more of an appreciation, I don’t think any of them were entirely sold or as enthusiastic about the album as I was. Maybe it was my fault for talking it up so much. Their loss.

“I blow you a kiss
It should reach you tomorrow
As it flies from the other side of the world”

The second single and track three on the album is “Fugitive motel”. It begins with the barking of dogs off in the distance, followed by sinister guitars, a brushing away at the drums, strings awash, and a lonely piano. Over it all is Guy Garvey’s plaintive vocals, a depth of tone, and a layer of guilt and hurt. His is a protagonist, disheveled and unshaven but unwavering in hope in the face of eternity. It is less a narrative than a feeling – lovelorn and lost and far away. Strong imagery, cinematic in scope, the cheap and seedy hotel room as a prison, a captive in a dream, the whole world desolate and forgotten. But still Guy waits.

*”Red” came in at number twelve and “Any day now” was the top song on the list.

**A strategy game, not unlike Risk but more involved, in which you redo WWII.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #30 Eddie Vedder “You’ve got to hide your love away”

<< #31    |    #29 >>

Well, we’re finally breaking into the top thirty on this list of my favourite ever covers and it’s Pearl Jam frontman doing The Beatles’ “You’ve got to hide your love away”.

This is the fourth cover of a Beatles song we’ve seen on the list so far* and the third track to be pulled from the “I am Sam” soundtrack. In the two previous such posts, I mentioned how the soundtrack for the 2001 film consists solely of Beatles covers, faithful in track length and time signatures, given the filmmakers were not granted the rights to include the originals and that the songs had already been selected for already filmed scenes. It was a brilliant save by the filmmakers and the result is probably a more interesting soundtrack than it might have been, as great as The Beatles’ originals of those seventeen songs were.

It’s no accident that I am timing this post to follow the one counting down albums ten through six in my Best film soundtrack series. If you’ve been following along, you’d know that “I am Sam” didn’t appear as one my honourable mentions back on February 1st, nor was it amongst the latter half of my top ten. And when I saw this particular post on radar to write, I thought I’d take the opportunity to clear the air before moving into the top five – “I am Sam” won’t be one of them. Great concept yes, and some of the renditions were quite successful, but I’d say that almost of half of them were less so, making the whole less than its parts. An uneven listen.

Eddie Vedder’s cover was another one of the bright spots. Faithful to the original, not only in sound but also in spirit, a playful wink of the eye.

Much has been made of the fact that the John Lennon-penned “You’ve got to hide your love away” was his attempt at Bob Dylan. Successful or not, the fourth track on side one of 1965’s “Help” album is Lennon singing solo overtop a bed made of mostly acoustic guitars. Sure there’s a bit of percussion but it’s definitely before Dylan went electric and where Mr. Zimmerman would typically accompany himself with a harmonica, The Beatles opted for some flutes in its place.

Vedder opted for similar ethos with his cover. You can almost imagine him standing on a New York City street corner with a harmonica neck holder around his neck, a kick pedal attached to a high hat at his feet. The production even sounds dusty, DIY, and of a different time.

Lovely stuff indeed. Better than the original? Well…

Cover:

Original:

*The three previous posts were Rufus Wainwright’s “Across the universe” at #90, Cornershop’s “Norwegian wood (this bird has flown” at #69, and Sarah McLachlan’s “Blackbird” at #58.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.