Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Erasure “The innocents”

(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: Erasure
Album Title: The innocents
Year released: 1988
Year reissued: 2016
Details: 30 years limited edition, 180 gram

The skinny: Back in 2016, iconic synth pop duo Erasure celebrated their 30th anniversary together and to celebrate, they reissued their first twelve albums on 180 gram heavyweight vinyl. I enjoyed a lot of their early work but for me, there was one album that I decided was a must for my collection. “The innocents” was Vince Clarke and Andy Bell’s fourth album together and was my introduction to their music. The album spent many hours in my walkman and in the cassette deck of my bedroom stereo. I know each of the ten tracks very well. Some of them sound a bit dated today but that didn’t stop me from ranking it at number nine when I counted down my favourite albums of 1988 last summer. This is some serious 80s throwback.

Standout track: “Chains of love”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1992: #13 Suzanne Vega “Blood makes noise”

<< #14    |    #12 >>

My introduction to American singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega came via a remix of her track “Tom’s diner” back when I was in high school. I won’t tarry long on that particular song lest we run the risk of it getting tangled in all of our heads. But if you so wish it, the song appeared at the twenty-seven spot on my Best tunes of 1990 list and you can read more about it in that post I wrote three years ago.

I wasn’t the only one introduced to Vega in 1990. As I wrote previously, that remix opened the doors to all sorts of new fans and perhaps was the impetus behind the change in direction we heard on her 1992 album, “99.9F°”. I remember not really being phased when I first heard it but then again, I had not yet gotten into her earlier, more folky stuff, save for perhaps being vaguely familiar with “Luka” from the radio. My friend Tim brought the CD over to my place one night, though I’m not sure what we were doing that evening (maybe playing Risk), and I asked him to leave it with me because the sound reminded me of “Pretty hate machine”, an album with which I was quite obsessed at the time.

Number one hit single, “Blood makes noise”, was particularly, jaw-droppingly good. Chains clanking, drums thumping, bass heavy and insistent, demanding insular attention, while Vega chants and incants alongside the tribal rhythms.

“I’d like to help you doctor
Yes I really really would
But the din in my head
It’s too much and it’s no good”

It’s two minutes of racket, an uproar on the dance floor, frenzy and ecstasy. Indeed, this din is not too much, nay, it’s really, really good.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1992 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Various artists “Tiny Changes: A Celebration Of Frightened Rabbit’s ‘The Midnight Organ Fight'”

(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: Various artists
Album Title: Tiny Changes: A Celebration Of Frightened Rabbit’s ‘The Midnight Organ Fight’
Year released: 2019
Details: Double LP, 24 page booklet

The skinny: Back in the middle of January, I went on a bit of a Frightened Rabbit kick, posting photos from the one time I saw them live in 2013, as well as ‘Vinyl love’ instalments for the albums “The midnight organ fight”, “Pedestrian verse”, and “Painting of a panic attack”, and all of this in the span of a week. However, I waited until today, what is widely-acknowledged as the second anniversary of frontman Scott Hutchison’s death, to post this, the only other Frightened Rabbit-related vinyl in my collection (for now). This tribute to “The midnight organ fight” was in the works before Hutchison’s suicide, the recording of the album’s tunes by friends of the band were already mostly recorded to celebrate the album’s 10th anniversary, but the remaining band members decided to refocus its release after the fact. They named it for the mental health charity launched in honour of Hutchison and donated a portion of the album’s sales to it as well. The album includes covers by Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Canadian indie rockers Wintersleep, fellow Scots The Twilight Sad, dream-poppers Daughter, and the lovely one below by Julien Baker. This heavyweight double-LP pressing includes a 24-page booklet filled with words and memories supplied by other members of Frightened Rabbit and by the artists that performed the covers (a few of these are shown above). And reading these really hits you hard and you can’t escape the feeling that we’ve lost a great songwriter. We miss you Scott.

Standout track: “The modern leper” as covered by Julien Baker