Tag: Indie rock

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Strokes “Is this it”

(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.

Standout track: “Last nite”

 

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Neutral Milk Hotel “In the aeroplane over the sea”

(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.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #15 Venus Furs “Chaos and confusion”

<< #16    |    #14 >>

“Paul Kasner is a perfectionist in the same way Kevin Shields, Anton Newcombe, and Thurston Moore are perfectionists. So, it’s probably befitting that all three of the aforementioned artists were among the many influences on Venus Furs, the self-titled debut from Kasner’s solo moniker of the same name.”

These are not my words but those of music writer Dom Gourlay conjured for one of my favourite music zines, Under the Radar. These are the words that he opened his eight out of ten review for “Venus Furs”, still the only album released by Paul Kasner’s project. And yes, these are the words that goaded me into checking out the album after I had missed its initial launch in July of 2020. I gave it a handful of spins on Spotify and found that it was indeed within my wheelhouse and was quickly on the website for Silk Screaming records, the label Kasner set up to release said album, and ordered a copy of it on vinyl for my record shelves*.

Paul Kasner is a Montreal-based songwriter, multi-instamentalist, and producer, who has toured with The Horrors and The Twilight Sad, and has worked by himself for many years on this one album, working to get it just right. Indeed, it is a lovely and tight 8-song cycle of guitar heavy, psych rock, toying with shoegaze and noise rock along the way.

“Chaos and confusion” is the five minute opener that layers acoustic strums with wispy reverb drenched electric licks. Meanwhile, the poltergeist on drums keeps time and space in check with a menacing leer and the bass line eases its way in and out of the miasma like a perfect stitch line sewing up eternity. And floating just above it all is Kasner’s vocal track, affecting his best Jim Reid/Peter Hayes impression, a woeful tale of gambling and loss.

*It later muscled its way into my top ten albums list for that year.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.