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Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Suburban light”

(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: The Clientele
Album Title: Suburban light
Year released: 2000
Year reissued: 2014
Details: 180 gram

The skinny: Okay. So I don’t usually make a habit out of posting two of these ‘Vinyl love’ pieces in a row. However, my most recent vinyl purchase, that of the long awaited reissue of “The violet hour“, and of course its requisite go-round on the turntable, immediately put me in the mood to listen to more of The Clientele. And while posting the piece a few days ago, I came to the realization that I hadn’t beforehand published a single ‘Vinyl love’ post on any of their long players, of which I now have all of them on my shelf. So I’ve decided to remedy (and perhaps overcompensate for) this oversight and run the gamut over the next few months, starting back at the beginning, with their debut, 2000’s “The suburban light”. The English dream pop trio cobbled together demos and rough (sometimes home) recordings for this debut, preferring their sound to the versions that resulting from time spent in proper studios and because of this, the album was oft mislabeled a compilation* rather than an album proper. My copy of the record was the one Merge reissued in 2014 with the original artwork and tracklist, as part of its 25th anniversary series, pressed to 180 gram vinyl using the original analogue tapes. So beautiful.

Standout track: “Rain”

*Indeed when I posted about “Rain” (the song above) for its entry on my Best tunes of 2000 list, I referred to the album as such.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “The violet hour”

(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: The Clientele
Album Title: The violet hour
Year released: 2003
Year reissued: 2025
Details: standard black

The skinny: Here’s one that’s been on my vinyl wish list for a very, very long time, perhaps even from day one of my collecting vinyl in earnest. “The Violet hour” was my introduction to London-based dream pop outfit The Clientele and to say I was obsessed with its gauzy sound for the larger part of the 2000s would be putting it mildly. I’ve been intently following the group ever since and every single one of their long players has found a place on my record shelves, all but this one… until now. As I wrote when the song featured below appeared on my Best tunes of 2003 list, the original recordings had been thought to have been lost, which was why this was the only album in their discography that hadn’t seen a recent vinyl reissue. When it was located, incidentally in the year of the album’s 20th anniversary, I was hopeful that this reissue would finally see the light. And now, two years later, here it is and I wasted no time in procuring a copy. It’s a thing of beauty.

Standout track: “Porcelain”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting”

(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: Concrete Blonde
Album Title: Bloodletting
Year released: 1990
Year reissued: 2017
Details: standard black

The skinny: Well, it’s All Hallow’s Eve again and though it’s been years since I’ve celebrated it in any traditional sense and double that since I dressed up in costume as the holiday warrants, I know it’s an important one to many people and I do try to observe it every year in my own way. This year, as I often do, I’ll spin some gothic rock tunes, perhaps some Sisters, some Joy Division, or this album by Concrete Blonde. “Bloodletting” took the alt rock trio from California into gothic rock territory, their frontwoman Johnette Napolitano having been reportedly inspired by Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles novels, and scoring the group their best-selling album* in the process. I purchased this bare bones reissue when I saw it come up for sale on Amazon back in 2017 because it’s one of those albums** that I knew I needed in my collection, a total mood record that is playable front to back and to front again. And every time I do spin it, I get the urge to light some black candles and crack a bottle of full bodied red wine. Happy Hallowe’en everybody!

Standout track: “Tomorrow Wendy”

*This mostly on the back of their huge radio-friendly hit “Joey“.

**It ranked number six on my best albums of 1990 list when I counted it down earlier this year.