Tag: White vinyl

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Spiritualized “Songs in A&E”

(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: Spiritualized
Album Title: Songs in A&E
Year released: 2008
Year reissued: 2012
Details: Limited edition, 2 x LP, white, gatefold sleeve

The skinny: Continuing the backwards trend through the Spiritualized records on my vinyl shelves, we come to their 6th studio album, 2008’s “Songs in A&E”, aka the album that got me excited about one of my favourite bands again. It had felt to me like Jason ‘Spaceman’ Pierce had lost a bit of momentum with his previous two albums but when this one arrived, a whole five years after its predecessor, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Named for the period of time that he had spent in the hospital after a brush with death, this album felt like a different approach to a similar destination but one that revelled in its journey. And whenever I think of this album, I remember seeing the band supporting its release in Toronto with an afternoon slot at the Virgin festival and being tickled pink by a toddler-aged fan singing along to all the tracks and dancing with his father. Like the rest of the records that will be featured in this series, my copy is a reissue (this one in white) and was plucked from the racks of one my favourite indie record stores*.

Standout track: “Sweet talk”

*I’m pretty sure this one was found on the racks at Rotate This in Toronto.

 

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Spiritualized “Sweet heart, sweet 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: Spiritualized
Album Title: Sweet heart, sweet light
Year released: 2012
Details: Limited edition, 2 x LP, white

The skinny: Spiritualized’s latest record “Everything was beautiful” ended up on the top of my list of best albums for last year and to celebrate, I decided to kick off this new year with a ‘Vinyl love’ post featuring that very same record. Then, I thought, why stop there? And so, you’re now in for a prolonged Spiritualized ‘Vinyl love’ series, starting their 2012 release, “Sweet heart, sweet light”*, and going backwards chronologically from there. To be honest, this one is the least played in my collection. Not but because I dislike it, understand, but because it was nearly the last one to be added to my shelf. I remember seeing it on the merch shelves when I saw Jason Pierce and company touring for the record, thought about, but opted instead for a copy of it on CD because I was still very new to collecting vinyl and didn’t yet have a turntable. I’ve often heard that the only regretted purchases are the ones not made and I definitely did regret leaving that record there. I finally remedied my error a few years ago at a record store in Toronto.

Standout track: “Hey Jane”

*I’ve already featured Spiritualized’s 2018 album “And nothing hurt” in this space.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Engineers “Engineers”

(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: Engineers
Album Title: Engineers
Year released: 2005
Year reissued: 2022
Details: Gatefold sleeve, 2 x 180 gram, white, numbered 502/1500

The skinny: Of all the great albums released during the first shoegaze revival wave of the early 2000s, Engineers’ self-titled debut was one of my favourites. The group formed as a four-piece – Mark Peters, Simon Phipps, Dan MacBean, and Andrew Sweeney – in London back in 2003. I happened upon the debut shortly after its release and latched on to a great many of the songs, recognizing in Engineers’ aesthetic the bands of my youth. Though some of their later work was pretty great as well, I wasn’t as immediately enamoured with it, always holding it up to this fantastic debut. It had been on my wishlist from pretty much the beginning of my collecting days but given what I perceived as their cult-like status, I didn’t think my chances were great at finding a copy on vinyl. My hopes were raised earlier this year when I saw that Music on Vinyl was reissuing Engineers’ debut EP, “Folly”, for Record Store Day, especially given that label’s track record of reissuing other classic shoegaze works. Then, I caught wind of this reissue of the debut LP on 2 x 180 gram slabs of white vinyl and jumped headlong aboard the pre-order train. It’s a thing of beauty.

Standout track: “Come in out of the rain”