(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 Smiths Album Title: Meat is murder Year released: 1985 Year reissued: 2011 Details: Remastered, part of box set that includes booklet and poster
The skinny: If you missed last week’s post for this series, I’ll once again forewarn you that I am in the midst of a Smiths bender. This here’s the second post in a series that will take me through the entire “Complete” box set that Rhino Records UK put out a number of years ago. “Meat is murder” is the second proper full length by the Manchester quartet and was their highest charting record in the UK. As I mentioned last week, all the records in the set follow the original track listing so you won’t find “How soon is now” here. However, the album did see Morrissey climb up on the vegetarian soapbox with the title track and also a belt out a few other humdinging tracks, like the one below.
(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 Smiths Album Title: The Smiths Year released: 1984 Year reissued: 2011 Details: Remastered, part of box set that includes booklet and poster
The skinny: To those of you who are not a fan of The Smiths, I apologize in advance and suggest you stay away from these pages for the next bunch of weekends. On the other hand, fans of the iconic post-punk and indie rock trailblazers can ready yourselves for a multiple week, multiple installment focus on The Smiths “Complete” box set I purchased a few years back. Rhino Records UK was responsible for this collection of all the band’s LP (in some cases, double LP) releases, remastered and repressed on heavyweight vinyl. It’s definitely a centrepiece in my collection. Today, I’m starting at the beginning with The Smiths’ self-titled debut. Their sound was fully realized from the beginning, sounding so different from everything else popular at the time. From Johnny Marr’s virtuoso jangle guitar to Morrissey’s sardonic lyrics and maudlin delivery. This pressing, like all the others in this set, follows the original track listing and so doesn’t include hit single, “This charming man”, that was added to later editions.
Amanda Palmer (or Amanda F*cking Palmer as she sometimes calls herself) is a divisive individual. But an individual she certainly is.
She formed The Dresden Dolls with drummer Brian Viglione in 2000 and the duo gained a rabid cult following with their “Brechtian punk cabaret” music, to which I have never ever listened to this day, but I imagine to be equal parts musicianship and performance art. They went on hiatus in 2008 (though they have reunited several times since then) and Palmer formed another short-lived duo with Jason Webley, called Evelyn Evelyn, before embarking on an even more successful solo career.
In the spring of 2012, Amanda Palmer launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the self-release of a forthcoming album she was working on with her new band, The Grand Theft Orchestra. Her goal of $100,000 was easily surpassed in a matter of hours, eventually reaching the lofty and record-breaking mark of nearly $1.2 million. It raised a lot of eyebrows and started to change the ideas of what it meant to be a musician and a fan/customer/art patron and the relationship betwixt the two in the digital age. Palmer definitely has her fans but she also has her detractors. And she didn’t do herself any favours in that regard when she asked for the whole helping arm and put the call out for volunteer musicians on each stop on her tour after raising so much coin on Kickstarter. She eventually backtracked on that when the internet was outraged but there it is.
I actually listened to most of the resulting album, “Theatre is evil”, without any of this context, well before reading about her in the news and becoming somewhat put off by some of her opinions and outspokenness and almost unreal persona. Truly, though, the album is quite a fantastic piece of work with a great many highlights. “Want it back” is track five out of fifteen and the second single to be released from it. Synth washes start the proceedings. Then come the driving piano staccatos and snappy drums and plucky guitars. Palmer’s vocals are breathlessly running from one line to the next, seamlessly snarling and yelling and barking and yelping and angelically crooning. It can be an exhausting listen but also a compelling one.
“Once when you’re gone, and I wanna do it backwards
Just like the song, we’re addicted to the L word
Up past your head, down your back
Around your ankles, ready for attack
You’re upstaged
And then you’re strangled”
The video is pretty neat too. Filmed like stop motion animation, the lyrics appear as she sings them, written all over the place, black ink from an ink well – splish, splash, splosh. The version below is the clean one. There’s an NSFW version out there for you to find as well. Because, of course there is.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2012 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 