Vinyl Vednesday 10/26/2011

[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 edition is an early Halloween celebration. Hail Satan, and such. E-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: AFI’s Answer That and Stay Fashionable (1995) on turquoise marble, The Cure’s Faith (1981) on black, and Siouxsie and The Banshees The Scream (1978) on black.

Place of Purchase: AFI was bought at Repo Records in Philadelphia, Pa. The Cure came from Hideaway Music in Chestnut Hill, Pa. Siouxsie and The Banshees was obtained via eBay.

Thoughts: My favorite AFI records are Black Sails in the Sunset and Decemberunderground. One of them is just an awesome hardcore record with gothic lyrics; the other is a goth-pop record bordering on a dance album. They don’t have much in common, which is why I feel little need to justify fitting my other favorite AFI record, Answer That and Stay Fashionable, into the equation. Answer That has some psychobilly elements and captures the band at a really young age. Also, the lyrics are supremely goofy, as heard in “Brownie Bottom Sundae” and “Cereal Wars,” in which frontman Davey Havoc goes off on cereal brands. It’s all intentionally hilarious, while still getting in plenty of Misfits-y love. Plus, the vinyl version comes with the bonus tracks “Self-pity” and “Key Lime Pie.”

Early AFI is goth but silly. The Cure, now there’s a band for soundtracking my eternal despair. Faith is one of the band’s darker records. Opener “The Holy Hour” is a slow churner that sucks up all joy. The record owes a big debt to Joy Division – it captures The Cure’s transition from punk upstarts to psych/goth/pop explorers and falls somewhere on the post-punk lines – but I honestly prefer it over anything JD ever did. “Primary” is a bouncy tune indeed, while “The Funeral Party” predicts the wall of atmosphere that would create the band’s best album, Disintegration. There are better Cure records, but Faith is an album I’ve come to really respect over the years. It doesn’t have any of the band’s big hits, but it’s such a great, swirling mix.

I came to Siouxsie and The Banshees a little later in life. It wasn’t until I had digested The Cure’s complete discography that I then gravitated towards Robert Smith’s mid-’80s side project, The Glove. Knowing that Smith did time with The Banshees (He plays on Hyaena and toured quite a bit with the group), I started snatching up Banshee records at a rapid pace. They’re one of those bands that makes a lot of contemporary music sound redundant. The Scream, the band’s thrilling debut, exists somewhere between punk’s rawness and post-punk's jitteriness, exuding a kind of passion and depth that would develop into goth. It’s not quite as psychedelic as what the group would cultivate on later albums, but The Scream is a thrilling listen from start to finish.

Vinyl Vednesday 10/19/2011

[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. E-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!

Records: Less Than Jake’s Greased (2000 repress) on pink marble, Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) on black, and Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966) on black.

Place of Purchase: Joni Mitchell and Simon and Garfunkel were purchased at Disc World in Conshohocken, Pa. (R.I.P.), while Less Than Jake came from a recent excursion to Shore Things in Ocean City, N.J.

Thoughts: Less Than Jake has stayed with me since my pre-teens. I’m a fan through and through, which means I enjoy the band’s weird detours as much I do the obvious faves like Hello Rockview (Although not even I could defend In With the Out Crowd…). Greased takes the ’90s of ska bands covering pop songs to its breaking point by skanking up the Grease soundtrack. “Summer Nights” kicks the record off admirably, complete with a ska breakdown, and “You’re the One I Want” is super catchy, but over time the songs kind of blur together. Still, there’s something entertaining about two grown men screaming “You’re the one that I want, honey” at each other.

I love Joni Mitchell. I love her classic folk period, obviously, but I also love when she started to drift further into jazz abstraction. In a way, indie rock and even metal owes her a debt for all the weird tunings she came up with over the years. The Hissing of Summer Lawns doesn’t necessarily contain my favorite Mitchell songs of all time (“Case of You,” “Blue”), but it’s still one of my favorites. Whether dishing out a smooth L.A. jam on “In France They Kiss on Mainstreet” or on the futuristic funk of “The Jungle Line” (All I can say is it sounds like Bjork well before her time), Mitchell is something else on Lawns. I understand why some fans didn’t like it, but got-damn do I love this record.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is a fascinating record if for no other reason than it’s actually pretty uneven. Sure, it’s got some amazing folk tunes like “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” and “Homeward Bound.” But there are some astounding clunkers on the flipside, like the pretentious cultural allusions made throughout “The Dangling Conversation” and “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission).” Sometimes the lyrics are way off the mark, even though Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel still hit upon some stellar harmonies. Bridge Over Troubled Water is a better album by miles, but I have more to say about Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Vinyl Vednesday 10/12/2011

[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. Now that things are unpacked, I might as well talk about my move, through the gift of song. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Toi Amos’ Boys For Pele (1996) on clear, Jimmy Eat World’s “Pain” b/w “Shame” (2004) on clear sky blue, and The Meters’ Struttin (1970) on black.

Place of Purchase: I gave Michelle Boys For Pele as a gift. I obtained it through secret means. Jimmy Eat World came from Spaceboy Records in Philadelphia (R.I.P.). The Meters were part of a trade-in with Siren Records in Doylestown.

Thoughts: During the move, some records came to us by chance. Others were clearly going to get massive rotation. Boys For Pele falls in the latter category. It’s one of Michelle’s favorite records, if not her absolute favorite. I find the record to be a little uneven and intense, but got-damn does it sound good on vinyl. It’s Amos at her most unhinged, powered by nothing but harpsichord, drums, and rage. Tunes like “Caught a Light Sneeze” and “Hey Jupiter” are pretty darn intense and rocking. What’s funny about this record is that every time a woman comes out with an experimental pop record, be it Bat For Lashes or Joanna Newsome or even that upcoming Bjork album, people call daring and weird and great. And all I can think is, “None of you have listened to Boys For Pele.”

I’m up to the Js for myPod, in which I try to edit down my music collection by ripping through the whole dang thing. I spent a lot of time during my first week in the house listening to Jimmy Eat World. My emo collection in general is shrinking, and I figured I would cut some more albums here, but I hit a snag with Futures, the first JEW album to come out after the classic run of Clarity and Bleed American. For years, I argued that Futures was an underrated classic. It combines Bleed’s hooks with Clarity’s more luscious arrangements. But I found myself kind of neutral on the record all these years later, and I rarely played it anymore. But something forced me to stick with it. I lived with the album for two days and came out loving it all over again. Futures is a lot angrier than Bleed American, as evidenced by the single “Pain.” The B-side, “Shame,” is a little more giving, and I would gladly have rotated it onto the final album’s tracklisting in place of “Drugs or Me.” Chase This Light is gone, though.

The Meters are a funky, funky band. I like to listen to music when I do just about anything, but especially when I cook. Struttin makes for excellent cooking music. Propelled by “Zigaboo” Modeliste’s freewheeling drumbeats, The Meters could find a groove and make it last for as short or as long as they wanted. Struttin has some choice cuts, like “Go For Yourself” and “Hand Clapping Song,” but I kind of prefer the weirder cuts like “Chicken Strut,” in which the band, funkily, imitates roosters, and “Ride Your Pony,” in which the group is very insistent that you ride that pony right now. This record really helped me figure out how to use an electric stove.

Vinyl Vednesday 9/21/2011

[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 edition is in anticipation of the punk rock festival Riot Fest East. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: The Holy Mess’ Benefit Sesh seven-inch (2010) on white, The Menzingers’ Chamberlain Waits (2010) on clear blue, and X’s Wild Gift (1981) on black.

Place of Purchase: Benefit Sesh was sent to me for review. Chamberlain Waits didn’t actually come out on vinyl until 2011 for Record Store Day, at which point I picked it up at Repo Records in Philadelphia. Wild Gift came from Hideaway Music in Chestnut Hill.

Thoughts: I’m pretty darn stoked for Riot Fest East. The Chicago festival finally added an East Coast variant, one that covers punk rock from the ’70s (X, even though they didn’t get to release a studio album until 1980), ’80s (Descendents, Naked Raygun), ’90s (Hot Water Music, Weston), and today (The Menzingers). I’m pretty darn excited to see The Holy Mess live again. Dudes are hilarious, and they write some pretty catchy punk rock jamz. Curiously, my love all began with a two-song seven-inch their publicist sent me. I was intrigued by those tracks, and a year later consummated my romance with the group’s self-titled Red Scare debut. Now that Riot Fest East has announced set times, I’m going to begin my day at the concert with The Holy Mess (after hitting up Blackbird for lunch).

I haven’t seen The Menzingers live in a long time. Before they blew up – relatively speaking – the Clash enthusiasts played through my stupid little piece of Pennsylvania plenty of times. I saw them play all over Doylestown on the strength of hot shit debut A Lesson in the Abuse of Information Technology. But it’s been years since I caught them – I still haven’t even heard the Hold On Dodge material live yet. Menzingers, then, are the band I’m most excited to see live. Since the halcyon days of playing Siren Records, the group has gone on to write one of my favorite albums of, well, ever, Chamberlain Waits. I made copies of that record when I received it digitally for review on CD-R AND cassette. I spent more hours on the road with Chamberlain Waits than any other album in 2010. And it still gets me pumped up a year later. Yeah, I’m excited to hear Lesson live again, but I’m just so dang excited to hear Waits in a live setting. I need the crowd to be a good one for my boys in the Manslingers.

A close second in anticipation is X. Arguably the best West Coast punk band of all time, I saw the legends live a few years ago, and they were still amazing. I hope that, health problems aside, the band can still deliver the same energy. They’re going to play Los Angeles live in its entirety, which should go over well with the crowd. But I’m just as excited to hear later material. I’d love to hear some See How We Are cuts, but that’s doubtful. Wild Gift might make an appearance, though. Songs like “The Once Over Twice,” “When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch,” and even the comedic “Back 2 the Base” have a haunting anger to them. Steeped in a kind of rock ‘n’ roll that was retro even for ’81, Wild Gift is better than most records, punk or otherwise. Yeah, people are probably going to leave early to catchy Descendents’ set, but fuck ’em.

Vinyl Vednesday 9/14/2011

[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. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Baroness’ First and Second (2008) on red, Black Tusk’s The Fallen Kingdom (2007) on mustard yellow, and Tool’s Opiate (1992) on black.

Place of Purchase: eBay. Interpunk. Hot Topic.

Thoughts: Baroness is the band that sucked me into metal, specifically the metal coming out of Savannah, Ga. First and Second collects the band’s first two EPs, forming a makeshift full-length not unlike Fugazi’s 13 Songs in structure; that is to say, these songs rule and I don’t care when they were recorded. That said, First and Second sounds a little different from the Baroness of breakthrough Blue Record. The vocals are more abrasive, and the tunes are generally faster. Over time, Baroness evolved into something a little jammier. I don’t have a preference for either sound, as both styles are great, but there is something to be said for the unabashed aggression of the group’s early material.

Speaking of “unabashed aggression,” I love Black Tusk. Other Savannah acts like Baroness and Kylesa have been experimenting more and more with their metal, but Black Tusk just keeps kicking ass. I am so stoked for Set the Dial next month. I’m also stoked on The Fallen Kingdom. Black Tusk recently saw their discography reissued on vinyl. Thanks to Interpunk, I now know that Black Tusk was pretty much always awesome. These guys specialize in writing wicked fast metal jams that border on hardcore. Isn’t that what thrash metal was supposed to be?

Closing out this installment of Vinyl Vednesday, I’d like to talk about Tool. I like Tool. I loved them in high school, and I don’t listen to them nearly as much as I used to. That makes me sad, because for the longest time, Tool made it difficult for me to like other metal bands. They wrote angry songs about Christianity and feelings and hookers with penises! That shit mattered to me! Opiate is a taste of what Tool would go on to achieve over the course of their first three full-lengths. An EP, the band hadn’t quite developed into an artistic powerhouse, but there’s still plenty of aggression and humor to be had. Granted, the lyrics lack Maynard James Keenan’s usual sophistication (“WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCK YOURSELF?!” goes one memorable chorus). That title track is still one of my favorite Tool tunes, though, distilling all the rage I used to hold against organized religion.

Vinyl Vednesday 9/7/2011

[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. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Black Flag’s My War (1983) on black, The Cure’s Disintegration (1989) on black, and Galaxie 500’s On Fire (1989) on, again, black.

Place of Purchase: Philadelphia’s Repo Records across the board.

Thoughts: Full disclosure: I’m wearing a My War T-shirt right now. There’s just something so satisfyingly primal in early Black Flag that I cannot deny. Even though the second half of My War goes off the rails a little bit. Even though I now see the lyrics as juvenile. Even though I should probably be listening to Fugazi or Strike Anywhere instead. My War’s title track is the penultimate “me against the world” fight song, a song so full of rage that you can hear Henry Rollins blowing out his voice and forcing the vocal track anyway.

Operating at the opposite spectrum of Black Flag, howsabout The Cure? I’ve been listening to Disintegration a lot lately. It’s just this monolithic, swirling haze of melancholy that’s ideal for autumn. Sure, it’s got one of my favorite love songs, “Lovesong,” but the tune I’ve been really gravitating towards lately is the title track. The Cure is pretty closely associated with keyboards, and the lines on that track play off of the driving drumbeat so well. It’s a little goth pop symphony in my head. Of course, hits like “Pictures of You,” “Lullaby,” and “Fascination Street” help as well. This is one of those records I can play anywhere – at work, on the road, in my bedroom – and it always carries me off.

Thanks to Venice is Sinking, I have fallen in love with Galaxie 500. I first got into the group via “Tugboat,” a Today cut which ViS covered, but it’s 1989’s On Fire that really set me off. That record frequently flits between shoegaze and dreamy indie rock. It definitely reminds me of acts like ViS, Nada Surf, and Mazzy Star. Fire is a little more rock-oriented than Today which suits me fine, opting for surreal slice of psychedelia. The band even throws in a great cover of George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity,” from All Things Must Pass. The trio jams out the tune, turning such a sad song into an epic chorus rolled over and over. On Fire is a record that I can connect to a ton of indie rock material released in the ’90s and ’00s, but it outshines them all.

Vinyl Vednesday 8/31/2011

[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. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Rick James’ Street Songs (1981) on black, Ida Maria’s “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” seven-inch (2008) on clear red, and Mean Jeans’ “Tears in My Beers” seven-inch (2010) on black.

Place of Purchase: eBay for James ‘n’ Maria. Mean Jeans was a promo from the Trouble in Mind label for review.

Thoughts: Music journalist Michelangelo Matos is pretty much my spirit guide when it comes to R&B. In addition to penning a most excellent book about Prince’s Sign O’ the Times, he also wrote an illuminating essay on music from 1981 that introduced me to Rick James. Obviously, James was already in my consciousness, first for “Super Freak,” then for his appearance on Chappelle’s Show. But it was Matos who turned me on to “Give It to Me Baby,” a song so undeniably funky and sexy and funny and awesome that I had to buy the record it appeared on. I used to think James was a bitter beauty queen for hating hip-hop so much. Then I heard Street Songs and realized he really just hated it because rappers couldn’t touch what his songwriting. While I wouldn’t put him on the same level as Prince or Michael Jackson, Street Songs is still essential listening for people who like sexxxy musics. Blasting this record makes me feel so good.

Unlike Rick James, whom I instantly fell in love with upon hearing “Give It to Me Baby,” my courtship with Ida Maria took a few months. She honestly first came into my view when “Oh My God” was used in the trailer for It’s Kind of a Funny Story. I found the song to be addictive, adrenaline-pumping fun, but my fiancée Michelle swore that Maria’s debut album was terrible. But I couldn’t get “Oh My God” out of my head, and soon I picked up the single on eBay. I decided that I would buy a second single and, should it be as good, I’d commit to the record. “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” is just as catchy and, like James, super fun/sexy jam. The B-sides are mighty fine.

Said it before, said it again: Mean Jeans made a great mini-concept album about dranking back the year 2010. “Tears in My Beers” is a zesty Ramones tribute of a tune, while “Cool 2 Drive” is more somber. That’s relatively speaking, of course. Still, of all the Ramones rip-offs over the years, Mean Jeans are my favorite. They just have a raw yet hooky pop-punk delivery that never gets old for me.

Vinyl Vednesday 8/17/2011

[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. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Terence Trent D’Arby’s Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby (1987) on black, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, as performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with William Steinberg, conductor (1970), on black with a sweet shiny, trippy cover, and the compilation The Right to Assemble Volume Two: A Hardcore Punk Compilation From New Brunswick, N.J. (2008) on clear.

Place of Purchase: D’Arby was purchased at Disc World (R.I.P.) in Conshohocken. Holst was obtained from Impact! Thrift Store back when it was still located in East Norriton. Right to Assemble came from my homies at Chunksaah Records.

Thoughts: While he burned himself out creatively pretty quickly, Terence Trent D’Arby put out one hell of a debut record. Yeah, it’s a little ’80s-ish in production, but the dude had a clean, soulful voice and a songwriting style that skipped along the border between pretentious and hilariously awesome (Sample lyric, from “Dance Little Sister,”: “GET UP OUTTA YA CHAIR GRANDMA! / Or rather, would you prefer to dance, grandmother?” This is a spoken word into, by the way. D’Arby loves spoken word intros). While the guy never quite topped Prince or Michael Jackson, he certainly had the confidence needed to try on this first album. Plus it’s got the super catchy “Wishing Well.” That song is so sparsely arranged but so infectious.

While I haven’t done this in a while, for a period of time I used to love digging through crates of vinyl at thrift stores. The success ratio was practically nil, but the few finds were so cheap that it felt validating. Also I love looking at all of the crappy Christmas records people donate. One day, a creepy dude saddled up to me and started going off about how classical is the best musical genre. He talked at me for maybe 10-15 minutes, long enough to scare my then-girlfriend, now-fiancée, Michelle. I was looking for classic rock and ’80s pop on the cheap, but this dude kept pushing Holst’s The Planets on me with a vengeance. I finally caved – it only cost a few cents anyway. Besides, hey, maybe I could dig classical too. While I’ve come to since love the orchestral works of Hans Zimmer, Planets is merely one of those once-in-a-while kind of albums. It has some amazing swelling moments. Those strings are, um, really stringy. Also, I kind of like the random looks it gets when people flip through my collection.

OK, back to the punk rock. Man, 2008 was a great year for Hub City Hardcore, and Right to Assemble boasts exclusive tracks from a ton of bands that I was obsessed with then: The Ergs!, The Measure [SA], Static Radio NJ. There’s a bunch of other shouty, distorted guitary type groups, and the whole thing is just a real fun listen. Throw in a cool zine and a download for the first volume of Right to Assemble, and you’ve got yourself a real deal in stereo. Punkrockneverstop.

Vinyl Vednesday 7/27/2011

[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. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Hans Zimmer’s Dark Knight single (2008) on picture disc, Have Heart’s Songs to Scream at the Sun (2008) on white, and Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes (1972) on black.

Place of Purchase: Have Heart and Dark Knight were rescued from the bargain bin at Hot Topic. HOOP DREAMZ was part of a triple-vinyl deal on eBay.

Thoughts: I am all about Hans Zimmer, especially when he works with my man Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Inception). There’s a featurette on the Dark Knight DVD where you get to watch Zimmer’s process, and the guy is insane. He takes old metal scraps and leather whips and glass and turns it into music. This two-track single doesn’t capture the full majesty of the score, but it looks super cool and delivers the best track of the composition, “Why So Serious?” A sort of theme for the Joker, the song is just all over the place, perfectly capturing the insanity and destruction the Joker causes all over Gotham City. It’s a little on the experimental side, but gloriously so. The other cut, “I am the Batman,” is a whisper of a song. It’s a little disappointing – “Batman” is more of a segue than a proper song on to itself – but “Why So Serious?” still holds up.

Have Heart crossed my path just as they were breaking up, which bums me out. I would have loved to hear this Massachusetts hardcore band rip through “The Same Son” live. What I love about the record is that it balances Paint It Black’s skull-crushing, primal attack with, say, Crime in Stereo’s ethereal post-hardcore flourishes. I’m sure a thousand hXc fanboys just winced at that comparison, but whatever. Point is, go listen to Songs. Shit rips.

I’m a huge David Bowie fan. I even have the Labyrinth soundtrack. Once I more or less completed my Bowie collection (or so I think… I keep picking up the occasional odd ‘n’ end), I dove into his various personal projects from the early ’70s, when he opted to produce all of his favorite artists. While I was already a big Stooges fan by this point, I was still surprised and amazed by Bowie’s work on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lust for Life. Same goes for Lou Reed’s Transformer. But my favorite of the bunch was Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes. While not the best Hoople album (My pick: the uber-pop-leaning The Hoople), Dudes is probably the best gateway record, even though it’s two best tunes weren’t written by the band. Bowie penned “All the Young Dudes,” a love letter to glam rock, specifically because he wanted the Hoople to have a hit. The other knockout is the group’s interpretation of The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.” I’ll argue it’s the penultimate version with any hipster any day.

Vinyl Vednesday 7/20/2011

[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. Since I’m currently reading Bob Mould’s autobiography, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, this week’s installment is all about Hüsker Dü. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Hüsker Dü’s Land Speed Record (1982), Metal Circus (1983), and New Day Rising (1985), all on black.

Place of Purchase: Land Speed Record and New Day Rising both came from Siren Records in Doylestown. Metal Circus was purchased at Repo Records in Philadelphia.

Thoughts: My love of Hüsker Dü took time to build. I picked up Zen Arcade when I was maybe 19 years old, and while I appreciated the dissonance, it wasn’t until a few years later that I really started to fall in love. But once things clicked, I fell hard, and started snapping up Hüsker Dü releases at a rapid clip. Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t. To be honest, Land Speed Record is one of the less essential Hüsker Dü records. Consisting of two live sets, the fidelity is debatable. Considering it’s an indie live record from the ’80s, it’s just a notch or two above bootleg status. But it captures the band during their most primal punk phase

If you want to know where to start with Hüsker Dü, though, I’d argue for Metal Circus being a good starting point. That’s when the band started evolving beyond simple hardcore speed. While the group hadn’t quite hit the expansive dissonance of Zen Arcade yet, they were nearly there, as tunes like “Diane” and “Real World” attest. Mould already had his signature guitar sound in place – with just a few tweaks, he was able to create this monolithic, otherworldly noise that just devastates me. He gets one of my all-time favorite guitar tones, alongside My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and Jawbreaker’s Blake Schwarzenbach, and reading his breakdown of how to get there on See a Little Light is amazing. He makes this incredible, unique music seem like the easiest thing to make.

Once you get on board with Metal Circus, you can either dive headfirst into Zen Arcade, or you could take a detour through New Day Rising. Zen Arcade is both Hüsker Dü’s best and most difficult record, and New Day Rising streamlines all the noise into something ever so slightly more mainstream. While it’s not as pop-oriented as Candy Apple Grey, their major label debut, New Day Rising is the record that got the band a record contract with Warner Bros. As a double album, Zen Arcade has a certain amount of sprawl. Granted, New Day Rising is 16 tracks deep, but it still shows a greater emphasis on melody, something the band would develop even further on Flip Your Wig (which Warner Bros. nearly put, but the band opted to give to SST as a farewell present) and Grey. In that sense, it might be the best gateway, as it represents all of the band’s styles at once. It’s a little hardcore in spots, it shows glimmers of what became alternative rock, and it even gets shoegaze-y on occasion.

Vinyl Vednesday 7/13/2011

[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. I’m moving in with my fiancée this week, which I commemorated last week by celebrating three of my parents’ records one last time. This week, I get all warm and/or fuzzy over three records that are near and dear to my special lady friend and I. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: PJ Harvey’s “Glorious Land” single (2011) on black, The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987) on black, and The Promise Ring’s Very Emergency (1998) on black.

Place of Purchase: “Glorious Land” was an exclusive preorder from Recordstore.co.uk. That’s in England! Kiss Me came from Legends at the Plymouth Meeting Mall (R.I.P.). Very Emergency was an eBay find.

Thoughts: Michelle and I love the new PJ Harvey album Let England Shake. It’s just such a haunting, politically volatile record. Accordingly, I’ve been importing two copies of its singles (one for me, one for her) every time they pop up. “Glorious Land” is a particularly heavy tune – the lines “What is the glorious fruit of our? / Its fruit is deformed children” certainly sticks in my head. The B-side, “The Nightingale,” is quite good as well. It’s almost definitely about Florence Nightingale, so it fits England’s war imagery. But the lyrics are a little more atmospheric. As much as I enjoy the song, I get why it was left off in favor of more visceral material like “On Battleship Hill” or “The Words That Maketh Murder.”

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is a schizophrenic Cure record, which makes it a great entryway into the band’s discography. Jumping from pop to psych-rock to goth on a whim, it manages to be both a unique piece in their canon yet a solid overview of what the group did post-1985. Also it has “Just Like Heaven,” a.k.a the best loved Cure of all time. It brought Michelle to tears when we saw The Cure perform it live back in 2008. And really, why wouldn’t it? It’s a beautiful song. Frontman Robert Smith specifically wrote to seduce his future wife. And it worked! If you hate that song, you’re a jerk. Me, I’m going to hold on to the memory of Michelle being so moved by music that she wept.

Michelle is secretly a huge Davey von Bohlen fan. I’ve been working on turning her into a Maritime devotee. Every summer, though, is when I bust out the collected works of The Promise Ring, especially Very Emergency. It’s an ideal Jersey shore record, if for no other reason than for the song “Jersey Shore.” But Very Emergency is also appropriate overall. The tunes are catchy and breezy and fun, and they work regardless of summer setting. On the road, on the beach, at night; it’s just such a perfect record.

Man, I really hope none of these records gets damaged in the move…

Vinyl Vednesday 7/6/2011

[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. Since I’m moving out next week, this week’s installment is about my parents and their dubious musical taste. E-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Beach Boys’ California Girls (1980-something reissue of Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)) on black, Billy Joel’s Piano Man (1973) on black, and USA For Africa’s We Are the World (1985) on black.

Place of Purchase: All three were inherited from my mom and dad.

Thoughts: I went through a lengthy love/hate relationship with my parents’ taste in music. For a brief period in my late teens, I hated the Beatles. During that same time, though, I began to really fall in love with The Beach Boys. Their harmonies were sweet, and while the lyrics were idealistic odes to young love, the band’s history lent them gravitas. If I could layer harmonies like Brian Wilson did on Pet Sounds, I would. Instead, I’m just a casual listener who will put them up against The Beatles or The Kinks any day. California Girls in particular is one of my favorites. You’ve got such summer time golden hits as “And Then I Kissed Her,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “California Girls.” Of course, I have a soft spot for “Salt Lake City.” Wilson used to be able to crank out songs at a rapid clip as part of his self-imposed rivalry with The Beatles, so sometimes he would write about anything, even a city that most people don’t think too highly of. Then again, my friend Angelina has partied it up in SLC twice, so maybe Wilson was on to something.

If you’ve ever been on a college campus, you have heard someone slur his/her way through a Billy Joel. It was probably “Allentown.” Maybe “You May Be Right.” But “Piano Man” definitely came up. Or perhaps “Captain Jack.” Nobody sang “Stop in Nevada,” though, even if it is a good song. Point I’m getting at is this: Drunks love Billy Joel, because he sings sad songs with a happy slant. It’s hard to believe he could only manage one hit off his breakthrough record Piano Man, then. “Captain Jack” is a little long at seven-minutes-and-some-change, but it’s still a catchy rocker about drankin’, something that Billy Joel fans, obviously, love to do. Also a shouldabeen hit: “You’re My Home.” C’mon! It’s a love song but it rocks without being a lame-o ballad!

Oof. “We Are the World” is cheesy something fierce. Just listen to that opening keyboard line. Yeah, it helped raise money to save the children (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!), but it’s questionable as a work of art. What you may not know, however, is that We Are the World keeps going after its title track. And I’m not just talking about USA For Africa’s northern equivalent, Northern Lights, performing “Tears Are Not Enough” (You get John Candy and Joni Mitchell on the same track! Gangbusters!). Prince has a solid exclusive track, “4 The Tears in Your Eyes.” My man Bruce Springsteen, in addition to giving “We Are the World” some much needed grit, also delivers an amazing cover of “Trapped” by Jimmy Cliff. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t turned up anywhere else, like on Tracks or something, because it’s quite good. Maybe if Born in the U.S.A. gets the boxed set treatment it’ll turn up, but people need to hear this song.

Vinyl Vednesday 6/29/2011

[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. Anyway, as always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: The Flatliners’ Cynics seven-inch (2009) on black, Missing Persons’ “Words” single (1982) on black, and Restorations’ Restorations seven-inch (2010) on black.

Place of Purchase: Interpunk.com for the punk stuff. Impact! Thrift Store for the new wave stuff.

Thoughts: For those of you just tuning in, I’ve recently begun an open relationship with The Flatliners. It started off simply with last year’s Cavalcade, but it’s grown considerably since then. After picking up The Great Awake, I opted to go all in and snatch up the band’s seven-inches. Turns out those deliver toe-tapping, throat-shredding punk rock too. My only complaint with them is their brevity, but whatevers. Cynics is a solid stopgap EP between Awake and Cavalcade, and while none of the three tunes surpasses material from those full-lengths, it’s still Flatliners clam flammit. Get into it.

Outside of the themed installments, I grab my three records for Vinyl Vednesday at random. So, it’s funny to me that I’ve begun this sudden trend of “punk rock + ’80s hits.” Oh well. While they weren’t around for very long, Missing Persons got in a catchy hit in the ’80s with the chirpy, synth-driven “Words.” What are they for, when no one listens anymore? ANSWER ME. The B-side is a new wavey take on “Hello, I Love You” by The Doors that isn’t nearly as different as it initially seems.

You guys know Restorations put out a full-length this year, right? Because that shit is super limited yet still readily available. When I heard the band’s Strange Behavior EP earlier this year, I didn’t realize just how much they had in common with bands like the singing, biking, fucking Latterman. That EP had a spacey CSTVT quality to it. The new album, and this self-titled seven-inch, are clearly punk rockin’. So stoked.

Here’s some trivia for you: This is the shortest Vinyl Vednesday I have ever posted. I’m going to bed.