Tag: 2020s

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Reds, Pinks & Purples “Uncommon weather”

(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 Reds, Pinks & Purples
Album Title: Uncommon weather
Year released: 2021
Details: Limited edition, pastel blue

The skinny: When I counted down my favourite albums of the year at the end of 2021, the last one standing was “Uncommon weather” by The Reds, Pinks and Purples. I had never even heard of said act prior to last year but following an email blast from Slumberland Records and trip over to Spotify, I was an instant fan. I went on the hunt for a vinyl pressing of what I later learned was Glenn Donaldson’s third album as The Reds, Pinks and Purples and found the pastel blue variant at one of my favourite indie online shops. It’s such a great record, like pretty much everything he’s released over the last few years. And just as I wrote in my end of the year post, “there’s just something addictive in Donaldson’s short bursts of ear-worm pop. Each of the thirteen songs on “Uncommon weather” sounds immediately familiar and welcoming. There’s loads of reverb and silky smooth synths, peppy drumming and jangly guitars, and above it all, Donaldson channels all of our 80s John Hughes heroes: Robert Smith, Ian McCulloch, and Richard Butler.” I really just can’t help myself from gushing to anyone who’ll listen about The Reds, Pinks and Purples.

Standout track: “I hope I never fall in love”

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Du Blonde “Homecoming”

(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: Du Blonde
Album Title: Homecoming
Year released: 2021
Year reissued: 2021
Details: Limited edition (limited to 500), signed, reissue, transparent with black, neon yellow and bright pink splatter, came with a small magazine, stickers and two cards

The skinny: Continuing my ‘Vinyl Love’ series that’s highlighting my favourite records of last year, here’s the album that placed number eight on that list. I liked the sound of “Homecoming”, the third album by Beth Jeans Houghton as Du Blonde, right off from the get-go. I hesitated, though, and didn’t pull the trigger on its purchase right away. As time wore on, the grrl-rock-ravaged, salacious glam wore upon me, and I found the collaborations with Ezra Furman, Ride’s Andy Bell, and Garbage front woman, Shirley Manson too much fun to bear. I finally decided the record should be on my shelf, but by this time, it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one to come to this conclusion. All of the initial pressings and variants had sold out. Luckily for me, Du Blonde decided to do another limited run late in the year and this time, I did not hesitate. It’s signed by Du Blonde herself and includes a bunch of stickers and postcards and a hand-drawn zine that explains how she came to create her own record label. And of course, the “Lil Petey’s Pick’n Mix Puke” spatter vinyl looks much lovelier than it is described.

Standout track: “Medicated (feat. Shirley Manson)”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #29 Matt Berninger “Distant axis”

<< #30    |    #28 >>

This here is an example of one of those situations where you like a band so much, a band that can do no wrong in your eyes, that has consistently put out great album after great album, but one that you can’t fathom its talented parts making music outside of the near perfect whole. You don’t want to listen to solo material from any of its members, least of all that of its golden-voiced lead singer. You don’t want to like it. You don’t want there to be even more solo material released to take away from the possibility of another great album from the singer’s band.

No?

Okay. Maybe it was just me.

To be honest, I know a lot of diehard fans of The National that couldn’t wait for Matt Berninger’s debut solo album and that ate it up the moment it was released. Perhaps curmudgeonly, I probably waited two or three weeks after its mid-October release date before I gave in and tracked it down on the Spotify. And though it didn’t necessarily push any of my favourite albums of the year out of the top ten that had pretty much been set by that point, I couldn’t bring myself to hate “Serpentine prison”. Scratch that, I couldn’t even bring myself to discount the album as subpar. Nope. It was actually quite lovely.

In spite of myself, I was especially enamoured by track two, pretty much from the first few seconds of impassioned guitar strumming. That intro, mired in smoky washes, smacked nostalgically of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm” or James’s “Ring the bells”, but when Berninger’s fine baritone crackled in, those similarities faded right away into the ether. “Distant axis” is like a howling in the night, a call out between lost lovers, a demand for warmth and understanding. It’s a message that Berninger delivers as if out of breath, as if he had just run the length of a cold and cloudy beach in the hopes of catching a fleeting glimpse of hair or a slip of a dress. And he almost seems resigned to his fate.

“There’s a pattern to the way the world is tearin’ up
I think it’s happening to me”

With tracks this heartbreaking, I’d be hard pressed not to hope for more solo material from Matt Berninger.

But not at the expense of a new National record…

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.