Tag: Coloured vinyl

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Blur “The ballad of Darren”

(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 ballad of Darren
Year released: 2023
Details: 180 gram, blue

The skinny: From the ‘in case you missed it’ files, I’ve been replaying my top five albums from 2023, albeit in a ‘vinyl love’ post format, every weekend in January and just into February; partially because I love these albums and partially because I have them all on vinyl and want to show off their physical beauty as well. I’ve already shared albums five, four, and three, and today is my second favourite album of 2023. It is an album by one of my all-time favourite bands, reunited once again, producing something beyond expectations. “The ballad of Darren” feels like the culmination of everything Blur has done over the years. It is the sound of a band playing music together and for themselves. This 9th album doesn’t feel like a climax, or like a swansong, and yet, if this does turn out to be the last Blur record, I don’t think we’d have any cause at all to complain. I knew I would purchase it for my vinyl shelves, even before I’d heard the excellent song below, but hearing it cemented things. I was actually away from home on vacation the week it was released but I made sure to stop in at an indie record store in the city I was staying and wouldn’t you know, they just happened to have a copy for me to rescue. And on blue vinyl too!

Standout track: “The narcissist”

 

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Beach House “Teen dream”

(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: Beach House
Album Title: Teen dream
Year released: 2010
Year reissued: 2020
Details: Gatefold sleeve, clear vinyl, Love Record Stores 2020 release

The skinny: A few weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, a campaign called ‘Love Record Stores’ was started in support of brick and mortar independent music vendors in England and a number of musical artists, big and small, threw their weight behind it. Many record stores, not just in England but worldwide, had to rethink how they did business and shifted from analog and tactile sales towards the online marketplace. It didn’t happen quickly enough to rescue the Record Store Day festivities in April but Love Record Stores managed something in June, which saw a bunch of artists offer a lot of great albums for special edition pressings in support of the cause. I found and purchased once such record, this clear vinyl reissue of Beach House’s third album, “Teen dream”, a couple of years after the original event. This no-brainer purchase came courtesy of one such indie record store in England that actually has a great online presence and from whom I order quite often. The album had been on my wish list for a while, being one of my favourites by the Baltimore-based dream pop duo. “Teen dream” took the well-practiced elements from their first two outings and amplified them into a collection of memorable numbers. Victoria Legrand’s vocals feels more pronounced, more melodic, and pushed to the fore, breathing new life and energy into their sound. It’s an album that, from the start, I was able to delve into deeply, soak my whole body into its warm flowing eddies and let it stream through my fingers.

Standout track: “Used to be”

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Amos the Transparent “Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart”

(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: Amos the Transparent
Album Title: Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart
Year released: 2012
Details: Gatefold sleeve, white vinyl

The skinny: I’m already a couple days and a handful of great live performances into this year’s edition of Ottawa Bluesfest – the local music festival that blasts through pretty much every genre of music over the course of a week and half. I’ve been attending this thing on the regular for just over a decade now and one of the great things about it that hasn’t changed much is the organizers’ promotion of local talent. One such band that I discovered at one of the first few times I attended is Amos the Transparent, an indie rock collective led by Jonathan Chandler. I’ve since seen the group a number of times* and bought all of their albums, my favourite of which was their sophomore LP, 2012’s “Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart.” For those of you too far afield to have heard this album, it is an excellent, big, Canadian indie rock record in the vein of “Funeral” or “Set yourself on fire”, but in addition to the orchestral elements those two albums sport, Amos throws in some traditional folk instrumentation for fun. I picked this original pressing in white vinyl up from the band’s merch table the last time I saw them perform live, back in 2018 at the Ottawa Dragonboat festival, and it’s one I slip on to the turntable with regularity.

Standout track: “Sure as the weather”

*And I will see them one more time this coming Thursday at Bluesfest.