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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.

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Weakerthans “Reconstruction site”

(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 Weakerthans
Album Title: Reconstruction site
Year released: 2003
Year reissued: 2013
Details: 20th anniversary, limited to 1000 copies, brown with red splatter

The skinny: Like the last post in this series, today’s album is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year but in the case of “Reconstruction site”, the pressing in my collection is the one done to celebrate this very milestone. The Weakerthans are one of those bands that I had always known quite well and had seen live a bunch of times but never fully appreciated until after they disbanded. I am now quite in love with all four of the Canadian indie rock quartet’s albums – the sound, the style, and the outstanding songwriting – and have been working hard on tracking them all down for my vinyl shelves. So when I saw the group’s penultimate record was getting the 20th anniversary reissue treatment, I did a bit of internet digging to track down a copy. I finally found a Canadian distributor in Cut Loose Merch that was selling this sweet brown and red splatter colour variant. Supporting a Canadian company and paying in domestic currency? Yes, please and thank you.

Standout track: “One great city!”

 

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Bedouin Soundclash “Light the horizon”

(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: Bedouin Soundclash
Album Title: Light the horizon
Year released: 2010
Details: Gatefold sleeve, orange translucent vinyl

The skinny: Just over a week ago, I started counting down my favourite albums from 2010, perhaps one of my favourite post-Y2K* years for music, especially in terms of Canadian indie rock. Bedouin Soundclash’s fourth album, “Light the horizon” appeared at the number nine spot on said list and while writing about it for that post, I got the urge to pull the record down off the shelf and give it a spin or three. It’s easily my favourite by the ska/reggae outfit that formed back in 2001 while its members were attending Queen’s university in Kingston, Ontario. They had had a huge radio hit with “When the night feels my song” in 2004 but I really think they found some special magic when they put together the ten solid tracks that made up this album six years later. I managed to procure this original pressing to orange translucent vinyl from Amazon, back before I became disillusioned with their lax attitudes with shipping records, and am grateful that I did. It looks and sounds great on my turntable.

Standout track: “Fools tattoo”

*Is Y2K still a thing?