(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 Postal Service Album Title: Give up Year released: 2003 Year reissued: 2013 Details: 10th anniversary deluxe edition, Remastered, 3 x LP, Triple gatefold, 8-page booklet
The skinny: The one and only collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello (aka DNTEL) received the 10th anniversary reissue treatment and I was all over it. It was 10 clean and crisp pop gems that seamlessly blended indie pop and electronic, though this release included extra b-sides, remixes, and even a brand new song.
I stumbled upon Camera Obscura while on the internets and saw their name in connection with Belle And Sebastian, a band I’ve been into quite heavy for years. I listened to their second album, 2003’s “Underachievers try harder”, first and worked backwards.
You can definitely here the B&S influence on the Glasgow-based indie pop band’s debut, “Biggest bluest hi-fi”, especially since it was produced by Stuart Murdoch, but they definitely are their own band. Led by the delicate to the point of crumbling vocals of Tracyanne Campbell, Camera Obscura’s is even more retro sounding, harkening back to girl groups crying over broken hearts in the 60s.
“You say your life will be the death of you
Tell me, do you wash your hair in honeydew
And long for all of them to fall in love with you
But they never do”
“Eighties fan” starts off with a drum beat you’re sure you’ve before a hundred times, hinting at something upbeat, but Camera Obscura doesn’t go there. Instead, they run up crying to their bedroom and slam the door. They put something sad on the turntable and crank the volume, ignoring the shouts of their mother below. They pull out the tiny bottle of vodka that an older teenager had procured for them and sip lightly but still coughing and sputtering. There curse the name of their more attractive and hipper older sister for catching the eye of their cute boy they had a crush on and cry, tears streaming everywhere. And… well… you get the picture.
An incredible first single off the debut album that started it all.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.
You may not be familiar with the name Richard Hawley, nor his music, but you might have heard of the short-lived 90s post-Britpop band, Longpigs. And if not them, surely Pulp. Hawley was a guitarist for both of these bands, lead for the former, touring and session performer for the latter. And though I can’t remember exactly when I decided to sample some of his solo material, it was definitely because of his work with those two bands (both of whom, I love) that I did so. However, all you have to do is listen to the first two seconds of the song below to determine that his solo work sounds nothing like the music by his former bands.
At first, I enjoyed quite a bit of his debut long player, “Late night final”, whenever I listened to it, especially “Long black train”. However, after a month or so of spins, I forgot all about the album until around 2008 when I recognized his song “Baby, you’re my light” in the film, “Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist”. (It’s a great film, if you haven’t seen it, though I’m a sucker for any film about music.) Then, I went on a huge Richard Hawley kick, rediscovering the debut and exploring the rest of his output up to that point.
My wife Victoria was not a huge fan of “Long black train” when I played it for her, saying it sounds too much like a Christmas song. She’s not exactly wrong in this. What she knows as the Christmas classics were usually sung by the crooners of the thirties, forties, and fifties. And Richard Hawley certainly sings like a crooner, channelling Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Indeed, his smooth baritone vocals negate any need at all for complex instrumentation.
For me, “Long black train” is slow burning number, like a cigarette left unattended in an overflowing ashtray, nearly since the point of lighting, the length of it ash, threatening to disintegrate to nothing with one misdirected deep breath. It is a gentle tug at the acoustic, a hint of the slide, the pretence of the xylophone, and Hawley’s deep voice rumbling over it all. It is the time of night of the album’s title, when any respectable person is already asleep and misery reigns.
It’s not at all a song for your morning commute. If I were you, I’d wait until the sun goes down later on today and then, turn it up.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 