Vinyl Vednesday 4/13/2011

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

Records: Cheap Girls/Lemuria split seven-inch (2011) on gray marble, Decemberists’ “The Rake’s Song” Record Store Day seven-inch (2009) on black, and Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band on the Run (1973) on black.

Place of Purchase: Decemberists and Wings came from Siren Records in Doylestown. Cheap Girls/Lemuria was purchased via the Internets on Interpunk.com.

Thoughts: I’ve had an on again/off again affair with Lemuria. They dropped a couple of catchy indie pop/rock singles and an amazing split with Kind of Like Spitting, rendering me smitten. I saw them play in a church basement in Doylestown and fell in rock love. Then they dropped a full-length that was pretty solidly OK I guess. But it lacked bite. Then, and then, and THEN, they put out Pebble this year, and it was just about the cutest thing I ever did see. Sure, the songs were about breaking up and hating everyone, but adorably so. Lemuria’s split with Cheap Girls lets up on the bile a little bit, and it makes me just as warm and fuzzy. I am all about this band again. Cheap Girls deal in Lemonheads-esque indie rock as well, and their tune “Pure Hate” is mighty fine as well. I need to check out more of their stuff.

I’m not a big Decemberists fan. [SPOILER ALERT: I actually decided to sell off my collection for an upcoming installment of myPod.] But I am a big Nicholas Charles Elmer fan. Some would say too big. When Nicky Cha-Cha Elmwood told me he wanted to cover “The Rake’s Song” by The Decemberists for our power slop group Science Club, I said, “What? Oh, OK.” Later, when I was trading in a chunk of albums at Siren for credit, I stumbled upon a single for “Rake’s Song,” in a moment of profound serendipity. “This is the thing with the thing,” I screamed in the clerk’s face, who then gave me the album for free. The song is a pretty catchy folk-rock ditty that I think we could really drrrty up. My favorite line is “I was wedded and it whetted my thirst / Until her womb start spilling out babies.” This one’s for you, Swelmer. We are going to throw so many babies at our shows.

Encouraged by my purchased of Ram, I decided to check out arguably Paul McCartney’s biggest post-Beatles album, Band on the Run, with his group Wings. Reviews I’ve read called it the album were McCartney proved he could still write hits. While this seems true at times (How do you not see “Bluebird” on the tracklist and not think of “Blackbird?”), overall I’d say the record feels more like a continuation of what McCartney was doing on Ram, which is turning out agreeable acoustic pop songs that occasionally recalled elements of folk, yacht rock, and ’70s rock in general. While it’s got a little more cajones on tracks like “Jet” and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five,” the record most strikes me as another example of how McCartney is better than 99 percent of all twee bands. I still like John Lennon and George Harrison better though.