Vinyl Vednesday 4/14/2010

[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 my favorite holiday, Record Store Day. This year it’s going to be held Sat., April 17. I’ll be discussing three items I picked up on previous RSDs, and next week I’m gonna give big-ups to my haul from the weekend. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Camera Obscura’s “French Navy” single (2009) on black, Flight of the Conchords’ “Pencils in the Wind” single (2009) on black, and The Strokes’ “Juicebox” single (2005) on black.

Place of Purchase: I celebrated the first annual Record Store Day at Siren Records in Doylestown, Pa., where the owner gave me a stack of seven-inches for free. My girlfriend and I hit up Repo Records in Philadelphia for the second celebration. I had to pre-order Flight of the Conchords and Camera Obscura, and it was totally worth it. Less worth it: Cursive’s picture disc EP that tied in with the shit-fest that was Mama, I’m Swollen.

Thoughts: I have never been an elitist. Sure, I prefer smaller venues for shows and hate it when assholes like the bands I like, but generally speaking, I want the art I love to endure and be appreciated by as many people as possible. To that end, I have always been OK with paying for art, even though the rise of Napster (remember Napster?) and its various clones made it easier to get music for free. My opposition to illegal downloading is simple:

1. If good music is to survive, artists need to be compensated so they can focus on their craft.
   
   
2. I believe in capitalism.
   
   
3. The idea that one day music will become divorced from its physical form frightens me.

It is because of these reasons that I still love going to record stores. Now, I am not necessarily opposed to Target, Wal-Mart, or even Best Buy anymore. I own a membership card to FYE. I am willing to shop wherever I can get deals on the records I want. It just so happens that most of the time, the records I want are located at independent record stores.

Check out the Vinyl Vednesday archives, and you’ll notice that most of the albums discussed so far were purchased at either Siren or Repo. These places give me the best service, the best prices, and best of all, the records I need to hear. Yeah, it’s great that a kid stuck in East Nowhere can download The Mountain Goats’ complete discography with a few clicks, but the thrill of hunting down TMG’s output – and knowing that I’m helping the group put out more of the music I love – will always appeal to me. Plus, whenever people tell me they pirated an album, I tend to assume they’re butt-munchers who know fuck-all about music.

OK, so I’m a little bit of an elitist. On to the records!

Not much to say about Camera Obscura’s “French Navy” single. It’s one of the peppier numbers from the group’s pretty great twee effort My Maudlin Career. Frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell coos about a sailor she’s fallen for – the rest of the album deals with her romantic ups and down, but “French Navy” is pure first kiss bliss. B-side “The World is Full of Strangers” can’t quite hit the same ecstasy, but what could? It still sounds like adorable Scottish people making lovely music together, which is something I like very much, thank you.

One thing about Record Store Day which is quite thoroughly awesome is all of the exclusives. I didn’t reserve too much last year – three seven-inches if I recall correctly – but this year I’ve got like $70 worth of stuff waiting for me. The second season of Flight of the Conchords was a dud, but I was stoked to score a physical copy of “Albi the Racist Dragon.” Every child should hear this story. “Pencils in the Wind” is actually solid for a late period Conchords song. At their best, the duo wrote songs that were musically entertaining while still delivering witty jokes. They eventually lost control of the formula, but for a little while there, they were one of the best indie bands out there.

Another thing that’s great about Record Store Day is scoring free shit. I was pretty much over The Strokes by the time their third album came out, but I’m not going to deny the awesome rockitude of single “Juicebox.” The muscular bassline and dissonant guitar reveals a band that could actually kick ass when it felt like it. The flipside overdoes it with a live version of the song, but at least I get B-side “Hawaii.”

My two great loves are my girlfriend and my music collection. Both require an unselfish attitude.

Camera Obscura - 'My Maudlin Career'

*Le sigh* I have a weakness for Scottish women. The burning passion. The alabaster skin. The ever so slight connection to Star Trek’s Scotty. Which reminds me… the accents. YES.

Of course, to use that attraction as a means for explaining my severe crushing on Traceyanne Campbell’s songwriting on My Maudlin Career, the latest orchestral twee pop smash from her band Camera Obscura, would be a redundantly sexist viewpoint (and prolly get me smacked by my Scotch-Canadian special lady friend). See, the band continues to outpace their peers in Belle & Sebastian with a fine mix of shimmering musicianship, evocative lyrics and gorgeous vocals.

While My Maudlin Career isn’t quite as immediate as its predecessor, 2006’s Let’s Get Out of This Country, it still delivers a similarly infectious track listing. But where Let’s Get Out of This Country was about being sick of people in general, My Maudlin Career is an adult break-up record.

It doesn’t start that way, though. The glorious single “French Navy” opens the record. Campbell meets a French sailor, which sends the singer in a tizzy. “Relationships were something I used to do,” she writes. “Convince me they are better for me and you / We met by a trick of fate / French navy my sailor mate.” By the second track, “The Sweetest Thing,” she’s already trying to forget the salty dog, something that fails time and again throughout the record. I’ve always had it in for the French, and I can add breaking Campbell’s heart to my list of complaints. But while Campbell tries “going on a date tonight / to try to fall out of love with you” on “The Sweetest Thing,” she’s also “innocently learning your language / You’ve been taking full advantage haven’t you? / Don’t say it’s true” on “Forests & Sands.”

I’m gonna have to play the emo card on My Maudlin Career. Not in the New Jersey mall-core style that the double nils have developed, but in the ’90s indie sense of the term. My Maudlin Career is about a grown-ass woman who finds out her life isn’t as sophisticated as she thought. She’s still caught up in melodramatic teenage traps, falling for the bad guy she thinks she can change (or least fluently speak with). It’s a mature emo record that goes beyond the Madonna/whore complex that’s plagued the genre for some time now. That it’s sugarcoated with such stellar musicianship, including but not limited to haunting piano, soaring strings and the occasional driving drum beat that’s used so sparingly that you really appreciate its presence, makes My Maudlin Career that much easier to swallow.