[Vinyl Vednesday is a weekly feature about three favorite vinyl finds. It’s not meant to be a dick-measuring contest, but it usually turns out that way. This week’s installment celebrates the best of 2010. E-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]
Records: Bars of Gold’s Of Gold (2010) on clear orange, Crime in Stereo’s I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (2010) on clear, and Smoke or Fire’s Prehistoric Knife Fight seven-inch (2010) on black.
Place of Purchase: Actually, only two of these were purchased – CiS and SoF came from Interpunk.com. Bars of Gold came from the band’s publicist.
Thoughts: Bear Trap PR has always been good to me. Case in point: I got a limited pressing of Bars of Gold’s semi-self-titled debut. Made up of former members of Bear vs. Shark, the group essentially updates that beloved group’s sound and adds plenty of Modest Mouse-y twists. This record was a joy to review, and a real scoop too. I get high off of breaking great new bands, and debuting Bars of Gold to the Org crowd was awesome.
I’m still a little shocked by the break-up of Crime in Stereo. They wrote some of the best post-hardcore tunes. While their shows got a little hit or miss near the end, they were a band I felt compelled to watch as often as possible, thanks to a passionate songwriting that walked between melody and dissonance. They get compared to Brand New a lot, but honest, CiS had the better discography. I’m still holding out hope – the guys did break up almost as many times as, say, Sunny Day Real Estate. But for now, I have to settle for spinning I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone and screaming along to “Type One” and “I Am Everything I Am Not.” Oh, and, uh, Drugwolf forever.
Smoke or Fire sort of, kind of, maybe broke up somewhere between 2007 and 2010. But they announced their return with an onslaught of new material. Joe McMahon dropped two releases March 16, 2010 – an acoustic split with The Lawrence Arms’ Brendan Kelly and this fine seven-inch. It’s a lot rawer than what eventual full-length The Speakeasy turned out to be, which I respect and enjoy. Mostly I’m just glad to have the boys back.
No comments:
Post a Comment