(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: Blur Album Title: The special collector’s edition Year released: 1994 Year reissued: 2023 Details: RSD 2023 reissue, 2 x LP, Light blue translucent
The skinny: Long gone are the days when I would set the alarm to wake up early, drive downtown, and queue up in a massive line at one of my favourite independent record stores for a chance at purchasing one of that year’s Record Store Day exclusives. In fact, there have been some years in the last handful where I haven’t even ventured out at all and instead, tried and generally succeeded at tracking down some of the exclusives online. This year, though, I decided to head out for the festivities* in person, albeit arriving at the respectable hour of 11 am, instead of 7:30 am, when the employees at the store I chose to visit opened up early to a ridiculous amount of waiting customers. I had my own eye out for a couple of the special releases and yesterday, found one of the two at Compact Music, and so after flipping through the rest of that store’s wares on the racks**, I returned home satisfied with my limited participation. Then, last night, I gave Blur’s “The special collector’s edition” a proper spin for the first time and quite enjoyed it. Originally released as a Japan-only release back in 1994, this b-sides collection, from what I would consider the best period of one of my favourite bands, featured some tracks with which I was already familiar*** but others that I had never at all heard before. For even more fun, the artwork plays upon magazine pull out adverts for collector’s edition memorabilia that I always though no one ever purchased. Twenty-four hours and two full spins later, I am still quite pleased with my Record Store Day purchase.
Standout track: “When the cows come home”
*Unlike last year when I went out a day afterwards and still found what I was looking for.
**And finding a non-RSD exclusive to bring home with me.
***Including the above tune, a hidden track on the CD copy I had of 1993’s “Modern life is rubbish”, and one of my favourites on that particular album.
I started this series counting down my ten favourite albums of 2000 almost two years ago. Usually, when I start them, I bulldoze through the posts and get the series wrapped up in less than two months. And while I started this one as I normally would in the summer of 2021, my sense of urgency with the series tailed off to almost nothing and the drafts sat idle for many months in between, while I picked at them and glanced at them, while concentrating on other pieces. I decided this month, though, April 2023, it was way past time to wrap this one up.
Interestingly, when I started this series, Doves were very much a going concern. They had reunited after after a nine year absence in 2019, performed a string of successful shows, reissued their first three albums on vinyl (including this one), and released a brand new album called “The universal want” in 2020, which topped my list of albums for that year. Then, in October 2021, a few weeks after I posted the number four album in this series, Doves cancelled all the remaining dates in the tour that they were on, citing health concerns for their frontman, Jimi Goodwin. And while they haven’t officially disbanded, there has been little news since of any new activity.
For any of you not in the know, Doves are a Manchester, England-based trio that originally formed as a group called Sub Sub back in 1991. They had released a few house and dance type singles and were gearing up for something bigger when their studio burnt down in 1996. They re-emerged as Doves a couple of years later, with a new sound as well as a new name.
I didn’t hear their debut, “Lost souls”, when it was originally released. I only got into them a few years later with their sophomore release, “The last broadcast”, a story I’ve recounted before on these pages. My love for that album had me going back to discover the debut and fall for it just as hard. For me, it’s hard to pick a favourite from those first two records but I’d agree with the pundits that claim it as being possibly the best debut album since, “Definitely maybe”. “Lost souls” also did just as well commercially, hitting the UK album charts, three of its singles charted, and it was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, losing out to Badly Drawn Boy’s “The hour of the bewilderbeast”, an album on which Dove’s members also performed.
“Lost souls” is one of those albums that just screams out for a good pair of ear phones, a bit of dim lighting, perhaps candles scattered about the room, and some good wine to sip on. Though it could also just as easily be good company on a night drive on the highway, layers of beautiful sounds flying past alongside the blur of red taillights off in the distance. Doves’ music exist in its own plane, an environment of the band’s own making, each song a riddle to unwrap and savour. Two of the three picks I’ve selected for you below appeared in My Best Tunes of 2000 list when I counted that down in this blog’s early days and the other was one that I had to haggle my way to selecting from wealth of awesomeness on offer.
This is a great great album. But don’t take my word for it, listen to it yourself and thank me later.
“Melody calls”: “A melody calls. A setting sun, a melody calls. Time to lose myself again.” A haunting guitar line fades in across the land, drifting in upon the breeze from a circus being packed up from the other side of the plains. It is the sound of memory and sadness and is instantly recognizable as such. The trio then jump in together to create an ear worm that anyone would want to sing along with. There’s a lot of bah-bah-bahs, hand claps, foot stomps, glockenspiels, and of course, that instrument of forelorn wants and needs, the harmonica. It is three and half minutes of momentary light and joy in the middle of a dark and obscured world.
“Catch the sun“: (The following words are a sampling from the post on this song’s appearance at #10 on the list of Best tunes for 2000) “Every day it comes to this, catch the things you might have missed. You say, get back to yesterday. I ain’t ever going back.” Jimi Goodwin just lays it all out there with his matter-of-fact and assured delivery, sounding very much like he comes from a long line of Madchester vocalists, like a meeting over pints with Ian Brown and Tim Burgess but with some bourbon thrown in for depth. And he’s got the guitar and drum muscle to back him up on this song, all driving and gut-wrenching, creating an envelope of sound that you wish you could seal yourself up in for the afternoon. However, it’s not to be as Goodwin and the brothers Williams are urging you forward, to get you out there into the world and experience everything under the sun.
“The man who told everything”: (Much like for the previous song, I’m paraphrasing here from a past post, but in this case, the song appeared at #3) “I’m gonna tell it all, I’m gonna sell it all, I’m gonna sell / Get out of bed, come out and sing, blue skies ahead, the man who told everything.” This song is big, bold, and beautiful. But don’t mistake my words for inferring that this tune is high energy frenzy. Instead, for all the excitement of the words, the music has a more muted pace. The guitar strumming matches the easy drumming at the outset but at each chorus, another layer of guitars and string effects is added that has an arduous quality, at once daunting and stubborn and unforgiving… So much awesome.
Just in case you missed them, here are the previous albums that have graced this list:
“Trainspotting” was a film based on a book of the same name by Irvine Welsh and it was released too much critical acclaim and commercial success at the height of Cool Britannia in 1996. I remember going to see it in the theatres with my friend Tim, when it finally crossed the ocean into the North American market and I absolutely loved it. I later followed many of the actors that made up its young cast as they took full advantage of the film as a stepping stone and went on to great successful careers of their own. I had a copy of the film poster on my residence room wall, duly purchased that year at one of the campus Imaginus fairs, and read the Welsh novel during my next break in studies. And yes, you guessed it, I went out and procured a copy of the film’s soundtrack on CD.
Considered by many* to be one of the best film soundtracks ever, it combines classic alternative tunes from Brian Eno, Lou Reed, New Order, and of course, Iggy Pop, with more contemporary music of the day, which of course meant a smattering Britpop and Techno/Electronica. The mix works surprisingly as well as an album listen as it did match the feel and flow of the film. It ignited a resurgence in popularity for Iggy Pop’s “Lust for life” and made Underworld a household name on dance floors all around the world.
Four tracks in on the soundtrack is this cover of the Blondie track “Atomic”, done by a perhaps lesser-known** Britpop act named Sleeper . Unless I am mistaken, this was the very song that was playing during the scene in which Ewan McGregor’s character, Renton is at a club with his friends and he first catches sight of Kelly Macdonald’s character, Diane***. I won’t go any further lest I ruin part of the story for any of you yet to see the film but I will say that this song was seared into me and became one that I would play over and over again.
I had actually gotten into the band already with their debut album, “Smart”, released the previous year, and with “Atomic” fitting right in with their sound, I didn’t immediately realize it was a cover. When I did and tracked down the Blondie original****, I was somewhat tickled at how faithful a cover it was. It was as if the filmmakers wanted to include the original but somehow couldn’t get the rights and found some other band to replicate it almost to a tee. Admittedly, Louise Wener is not Debbie Harry, nowhere near comparable in the vocal category, but otherwise, I’d have a hell of a time telling the music apart.
Blondie fans might call this one sacrilege but I’d call this comparison even and given my fondness for Britpop, I might even give the Sleeper version the edge.
Cover:
The original:
*Or maybe just me.
**Although at the time, they were quite well-known, scoring a good number of hit UK singles.
***I also had taped to that same residence wall a picture torn from a Select magazine of Sleeper front woman Louise Wener dressed and mimicking the likeness of Diane from the Trainspotting promo shots.
****One of its many versions.
For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 