Tag: Alternative

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Smiths “Louder than bombs”

(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 Smiths
Album Title: Louder than bombs
Year released: 1987
Year reissued: 2011
Details: Remastered, double LP, part of box set that includes booklet and poster

The skinny: Last week, I received another comment from fellow blogger, Aphoristical, with which I could not disagree: “Their discography is kind of annoying.” He was referring to The Smiths, of course, and this is the reason why purchasing this “Complete” vinyl box set of their full-length releases was an easy sell for me. “Louder than bombs” was released a mere three months after the focus of last week’s ‘Vinyl love’ post, “The world won’t listen”, rendering this latter one all but useless as compilation. Like a lot of their discography, the two compilations share a lot of the same tracks but each are missing songs the others don’t have and vice versa. For me, though, “Louder than bombs” is the ultimate introductory compilation, and this is mostly because it was my own intro to the band, the first album cover I remember seeing, the first spin in the CD carousel, etc. And yeah, the song below, mostly due to its short length, found its way on pretty much every mixed tape I made in the 90s. Cheers… and be safe and healthy everyone.

Standout track: “Please, please, please, let me get what I want”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2012: #28 Dr. Dog “These days”

<< #29    |    #27 >>

Dr. Dog was formed by Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999. They’ve had a number of different members come in and out of their midst and have released ten albums and a handful of EPs over the past couple of decades, but have never really managed to crack mass culture consciousness. Indeed, they might have never even managed to catch my own attention had it not been for fellow blogger, John Hubner over at Complex Distractions. I’m 100% certain I first read about these guys when he wrote about Dr. Dog’s sixth, “Be the void”, the album on which this song can be heard, on a previous iteration of Mr. Hubner’s very excellent blog.

The band name was what first caught my attention. (Much like every person I’ve mentioned them to since, my own first words upon reading their name was: “What a great band name”.) But it was Hubner’s description of their psych rock sound that had me searching them out. “Be the void” was on regular rotation for me after that first meeting in 2012 and I recommended them to my good friend Andrew Rodriguez, who also enjoyed their carefree sound. And now, every time their name comes up, which is pretty much every time I see him, Rodriguez tells the story of how he met some guy wearing a Dr. Dog toque at an Oh Sees show. Funny, the stuff that sticks with us.

Track three on “Be the void” is this two and three-quarter minute ditty that shakes with the shakers and whose frenetic guitars match the piano madness and heavy drum pacing. It feels not a little bit like the energy of an early Strokes barnburner, but there’s less anger here and more laissez-faire attitude. Indeed, it’s easy-going psych rock with an über-peppy pop tone, just plain fun all around. And as John Hubner said in his aforementioned post back in 2012: “If you don’t like Dr. Dog, check to make sure you have a pulse.”

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2012 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Smiths “The world won’t listen”

(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 Smiths
Album Title: The world won’t listen
Year released: 1987
Year reissued: 2011
Details: Remastered, double LP, part of box set that includes booklet and poster

The skinny: Happy Sunday! Are you getting tired of seeing pictures of the pieces from this box set yet? Patience. Just a couple installments to go. This compilation, whose title is an expression of Morrissey’s frustration at the band’s lack of exposure, gathers together a bunch of the band’s singles and their b-sides, released between 1985 and 1987. As a record, it’s one that doesn’t see the platter often because of the compilation that was originally released a mere months after this one and that one will be featured next week. That other one is a big favourite of mine and the song featured below is one of only two songs from this one not available there.

Standout track: “The boy with the thorn in his side”