Tag: Indie

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Eyelids “A colossal waste of light”

(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: Eyelids
Album Title: A colossal waste of light
Year released: 2023
Details: ‘purple lightning’ coloured vinyl

The skinny: Two weeks in a row and two vinyl love posts and both were amongst my favourite albums of last year. Where last week’s was just on the outside of my top ten faves, this week’s was just outside the top five. As I wrote in my end of year posts, Eyelids are a band I had not heard of at the beginning of last year, despite having been around a good while. I actually heard about the release of “A colossal waste of light”, the group’s fourth album, from a posting on The Decemberists’ Instagram account, whose drummer, John Moen, is one of the Portland based band’s principal members. Co-produced by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, I fell hard for the hook-laden jangle pop and an album that lacks any real skippable tracks. After two listens, I was on the internet to track down a copy for my record shelves and found this rather pretty pressing on clear vinyl with purple splatter, aka purple lighting. It looks and sounds great on the platter.

Standout track: “Colossal waste of light”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #13 Snow Patrol “Spitting games”

<< #14    |    #12 >>

Snow Patrol got started in Dundee, Scotland way back in 1994 when Gary Lightbody formed a band with university friends Mark McClelland and Michael Morrison. Of course, they went through a few name changes and struggled mightily before settling on the moniker we now know and signing to indie label Jeepster, original home to another Scottish indie band we love*. Unfortunately, the struggles didn’t end there, seeing an almost complete turnover in personnel and middling sales and critical reception of their first two records. They were dropped by Jeepster in 2001 but it turned out to be the best thing to happen to them, because they were signed to Fiction less than two years later and sent to the studio to record their major label debut.

“Final straw”, Snow Patrol’s third record, was where I came in. I don’t remember now exactly how I heard about the group or the record, but I definitely remember that it was never a grower. I was hooked to the sound of the album right away. I bought the album on CD**, something I wasn’t doing a lot of at the time, given my lack of disposable income. And when I went back to sample the music of the previous two albums, I didn’t find them nearly as compelling. So something truly clicked here.

“It’s not as if I need the extra weight
Confused enough by life so thanks a lot”

“Spitting games” was the first of five singles to be released off the record. It was and still is my favourite of the bunch. At just shy of four minutes, it is one of the longer tracks, especially on the first side but it is no less driving, nor hard-hitting for all that. It is brash and breathless, starting off all guns ablaze, a punishing drum beat and raging guitars, and it never really lets up. The verses all have the same energy as the non-chorus, where Lightbody just lends his voice to a raging wordless melody. It all leads to the feeling of nervousness and anxiety of someone that has feelings that he doesn’t know what to do with, the confusion of youth and the uncertainties of love.

“Spitting games” is a track, much like the rest of the album, that is raw and passionate and hints at the success that the band will find a few years later.

*Um, Belle & Sebastian.

**And I’ve since replaced that with a copy on vinyl.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #22 The Veils “Another night on Earth”

<< #23    |    #21 >>

At the end of last year while counting down my favourite albums of the year, I noted that there wasn’t nearly enough references to and content devoted to The Veils, and that I really wanted to rectify that situation. Well, as luck would have it, the next song up on my list of favourite tunes from 2013 is by the very same band.

I had been following the London, England (by way of Auckland, New Zealand) -based band for almost a decade already by the time their fourth record came out. I’d loved every single song I’d heard by The Veils. There just weren’t enough superlatives in the English language to describe their style, the battle of darkness and light, the theatricality, the imagery made palpable by sound, and above all, the passion and emotion of their frontman, songwriter and principal vocalist, Finn Andrews. He was a storyteller in the vein of Lou Reed and Nick Cave, but for some reason, I connected with him much more than I did the other two.

“Time stays, we go” was in no way a letdown from the previous three. It’s front cover was an arresting image of a familial home consumed by fire. The title was an encapsulation of one of Andrew’s oft-explored existential themes. The songs were by turns intense and light in sound but told stories and expressed feelings to which all of us can relate, like it or not.

The penultimate track on the album is this super upbeat number that starts off with a piano line that seems to be dancing away from its player. The drums, when they appear, are snappy and full of confetti. The guitars serve up a breeze to get everything fluttery and then carry upwards the exhaling trumpet sounds. It’s all a shade, however, because “Another night on Earth” is really a sad song posing as something happy, espousing the many ways the world can drag you down into the depths and pondering the worth of it all.

“I hope I don’t go ’til I’ve seen everything
I hope I don’t go ’til I’ve felt everything”

After it all, though, our hero Finn Andrews isn’t quite ready throw in the towel… and neither should any of us.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.