(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 Strokes Album Title: Is this it Year released: 2001 Year reissued: 2024 Details: Original cover, transparent red vinyl
The skinny: Here’s my most recent vinyl purchase, having just received it in the mail a few weeks ago. The Strokes’ debut album “Is this it” has been on my wishlist for a while but every time I saw a copy in stores, I already had something else in my hands. And of course, it always seemed to be the US version of the cover, which I did not want. The album probably up there with some of the best debuts ever, certainly ranking amongst those released in the 2000s. I distinctly remember that there was a lot of excitement with its release, breathing new life into American indie with its blistering take on garage rock. I wasn’t as enthused with the albums that came after, however, with the exception of The Strokes’ most recent release, but I never lost the love for “Is this it”. So when I caught the news of its reissue on transparent red vinyl with the international cover art, I didn’t second guess – I put in the order.
Digital music has certainly changed the way we consume our favourite songs and albums*. First, with the mp3 and illegal downloading in the late 90s and early 2000s and then, with music streaming services in the late 2000s to present. I know a great many people who have stopped buying physical music altogether and some who have been offloading their collections in order to make room for other… stuff. Indeed, I am thinking that there may be some in the younger generations who have never owned a record, a cassette tape, or a compact disc. It’s these folks that I worry may never know the joys of physical music: album artwork, liner notes, gatefold and other foldout sleeves, and of course, the hidden track.
Yes… the hidden track.
For those who may not know of what I speak, hidden tracks are songs that were typically tacked on at the end of the official track listing on records, tapes, and CDs, the song titles weren’t listed on the sleeves and sometimes on CDs, would be “hidden” on tracks far later on in the disc. I personally have enjoyed a great many of these over the years** but I do believe my all-time favourite example would be Cracker’s “Euro-trash girl”. It appeared at track 69 of 99 on the CD version of the band’s sophomore album, “Kerosene hat”, and was apparently put on there by the band unbeknownst to the record company, who wanted them to keep it for a future release.
I had gotten into Cracker with their self-titled debut album and the hilarious debut single, “Teen angst (What the world needs now)” and when I started hearing new singles “Low” and “Get off this” on alternative radio, I recognized their country-twanged alt rock right away. But when I started hearing “Euro-trash girl” on the radio, I knew had to get the new album. Of course, when I first picked up the CD in the stores and didn’t see the song listed, I was quite disappointed but I picked it up anyway. And yet the story had a happy ending, unlike our protagonist in the song.
“Yeah, I’ll search the world over
For my angel in black
Yeah, I’ll search the world over
For a Euro-trash girl”
“Euro-trash girl” is a fan favourite at live shows that was as such before it was ever put to tape, which is reportedly why it ended up as a hidden track. It starts with a gentle strum and a forlorn electric guitar and it doesn’t really kick in to a higher gear than that, even when the drums join the fray and things get louder. It’s a lackadaisical eight minutes of meandering and reminiscing, David Lowery weaving a tale, true or no, of a backpacking trip through Europe, a search for European love and the misadventures that are found instead. It plays on all of our collective schadenfreude, amusing us to the point that we don’t want it to end, singing along with our narrator as he gets robbed, arrested, shaken down by border cops, is forced to sell his ‘plasma’ after his parents refuse to wire him money. And at the end, he is still searching for his “angel in black”.
*In fact, I’ve seen more than few writers posit whether the ‘album’ has seen its day.
**“Train in vain” by The Clash, “Blue flashing light” by Travis, and “All by myself” by Green Day are just a few fine examples.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.
(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: Neutral Milk Hotel Album Title: In the aeroplane over the sea Year released: 1998 Year reissued: 2018 Details: gatefold sleeve, 180 gram
The skinny: I’ve not just been away from blogging over the past week or so but also from work and home and have been out living the dream. I returned just a few days ago and almost immediately reacquainted myself with my vinyl shelves, one of the very few things I miss while being away from home. So it made most sense to me to share one of these ‘vinyl love’ posts as my first upon returning from this brief hiatus and I chose Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic sophomore album, “In the aeroplane over the sea” because I just happened to be reading about it of late in the 33 1/3 books treatment of the band and album. I personally came to the album years after its 1998 release but it quickly became one of my all-time faves, landing at number three on my best albums list of that year. And the book is giving me so much more context to chew on that I felt giving it a fresh listen was overdue. The reissue in my collection was repressed to 180 gram vinyl by Merge Records twenty years after its initial release and came in a gatefold sleeve. I’m fairly certain it was one of the last records I ever purchased from Amazon, an add-on to another purchase to bring me over the free shipping threshold, but I’m even more certain that it gets more spins on my turntable than that other record*.
Standout track: “In the aeroplane over the sea”
*Indeed, I don’t even remember with which record I purchased it.
My (life in) music lists 