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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Teenage Fanclub “Howdy!”

(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: Teenage Fanclub
Album Title: Howdy!
Year released: 2000
Year reissued: 2018
Details: Black vinyl, gatefold, 180 gram, reissue, remastered at Abbey Road Studios, included bonus 7″ single “Thaw me” b/w “One thousand lights”

The skinny: So here’s the final of the five reissues the Fannies released late this past summer. “Howdy!”, their sixth (or seventh, depending on how you count them) album, was their first since the debut not to be released on Creation and the first since the debut that I didn’t immediately rush out and purchase on CD. In fact, this repress is the first physical copy of the album I’ve ever listened to and for some reason, it sounds quite different than the digital version I have. Perhaps it’s the remastering? Nonetheless, another great and underrated offering by the band that followed very much in the same vein as “Songs from Northern Britain” and was the last proper album the band would release for five years.

Standout track: “I need direction”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Teenage Fanclub “Songs from Northern Britain”

(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: Teenage Fanclub
Album Title: Songs from Northern Britain
Year released: 1997
Year reissued: 2018
Details: Black vinyl, 180 gram, reissue, remastered at Abbey Road Studios, included bonus 7″ single “Middle of the road” b/w “Broken”

The skinny: I bet you thought when I stopped posting about my Teenage Fanclub vinyl reissues back September that I only got albums two through four. But not so fast. There’s more. Album number five by the Scottish alt-rock quartet, “Songs from Northern Britain”, is a great one, hitting number 8 on my Best albums of 1997 list back in April and considered by many to be one of their best. Released just as Britpop was starting to wane, the album’s title pokes fun of the fact that the band was lumped in under its umbrella. Like the others reissued this year, this remastered vinyl is lovely sounding and a prize in my collection.

Standout track: “Start again”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Cranberries “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”

(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 Cranberries
Album Title: Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
Year released: 1993
Year reissued: 2018
Details: standard black, 25th anniversary, 180 gram, remastered at Abbey Road studios

The skinny: Living in North America, my first exposure to the jangle rock of The Cranberries and the incredible vocals of frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan was the single “Linger”. MTV picked the video up, MuchMusic soon followed suit, and then, it was everywhere. This was just the beginning, of course, because the band would explode and achieve outright superstar status the following year with “Zombie”. But we’re talking about the debut right now and this here is its 25th anniversary. Before Dolores tragically died earlier this year, plans were already underway to remaster this album at Abbey Road Studios in celebration and as you can see above, it also became a way to remember her glorious voice.

Standout track: “Dreams”