A Year of Vinyl

I have always freely admitted that I have some glaring blind spots in my musical knowledge. And some of them are embarrassing. It’s not unusual for me to miss important artists in scenes that I follow closely—sometimes that have even toured with my favorite bands (see: Manchester Orchestra, Touché Amoré). But what is unusual is ignoring what many regard as the best album from one of my favorite…

There are fixed points in music history. Records that are so singular that they transcend reality and become the thing of myth. For U2, that mythology is The Joshua Tree. While people can debate what their best record is all day, The Joshua Tree is certainly the U2-iest. All of their tendencies are indulged to satiety. All of their sonic experimentation, spirituality, sociopolitical…

After War its subsequent tour made them into The Next Big Thing, U2 pushed back. Per Bono’s own account, the world was waiting for the next The Who or Led Zeppelin, and it seemed that they were poised to fill ascend to that throne. But they didn’t want to be “the Next” whoever or other. They wanted to be the first U2. And so they eschewed the throne waiting for them and took a hard left turn…

For all of their innovation in the studio, it is impossible to fully grasp U2’s body of work without considering their live show. They are the posterboys for arena rock, which is less a genre than it is a touring designation, and a cursory look at any of their live shows will show you why. Even if you don’t consider their inventive use of multimedia elements (see: ZooTV, US 360º Tour, their…

It’s hard to quantify just how big of a record War was. Up to this point, U2’s brand of anthemic post-punk had brought them modest success, but they were hardly a household name to anyone. War, on the other hand, knocked Thriller off of the top spot on the UK charts. Thirty-one years later, it remains one of the group’s most definitive and celebrated works, and with good reason. For my own part,…

In the scope of their immense body of work, U2’s sophomore album is often overlooked. And if you ask me, it’s an absolute travesty. October captures all the energy of Boy and juxtaposes it against a newborn social consciousness that presented a difficult crossroads for the band. Continue reading Record #997: U2 – October (1981)

After a career of arena tours, high-profile philanthropy, Platinum records, Broadway soundtracks (remember the Spider-Man musical?), unsolicited album releases, and more hits than you can shake a stick at, it can be hard to remember that U2 was birthed out of the same scene as the Clash, Wire, Joy Division, and the Cure. But even the most shallow listen to Boy will snap that picture into focus,…

I admit, I’ve been a bit of an ABBA hater in the past. While we were dating, when my now wife named them among the bands she liked, I rolled my eyes and teased a bit. I’ve endured plenty of nights helping in the kitchen while she played their Pandora Station as she cooked. But after visiting the ABBA Museum in Stockholm…well, I’m not sure I’d call myself a fan, but I’ve been far more convinced of…

I have spoken at length about the incredible talent in my area. From widely celebrated acts like Cloakroom and Locktender to more underground sleepers like analecta and Jagalchi. Add to that list the juggernauts Arcem from Valparaiso, Indiana, an hour and some change west of me. They offer the sort of massive, sludgy, post-metal that you might expect to hear emanating from Scandinavia, not the…

Few bands have had the run that The Flaming Lips had between The Soft Bulletin and The Terror. They managed to several albums of remarkably consistent quality while also sounding nothing alike, traversing from baroque symphonic rock to technicolor glam pop to dystopian psych freakout. While you could easily credit their entire body of work as one of the most singular and inventive careers in…

As compulsively as I buy records, if vinyl copies of an album are prohibitively expensive, it’s often easier to pretend it just doesn’t exist. But when you’re dealing with a record as monumental as Converge’s Jane Doe, that ignorance is pretty hard to feign. It is a singular masterpiece in the world of heavy music, offering up a record that is superlative in every aspect—including asking…

A lot happened in the year between John McLaughlin’s first album as band leader and his second. Extrapolation was recorded in the UK right before moving to the States to join Tony Williams’ Lifetime. By the time Devotion was recorded, he had also recorded three groundbreaking records with Miles Davis, served as a sideman for Larry Coryell, and had a single all-night jam session with Jimi…

I have spoken at length about the opposing camps within the history of post rock: Team Mogwai and Team Tortoise. It seems that by and large, Team Mogwai has been the victors. These days, the term generally refers to the dramatic, climax-chasing narratives of bands like Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, and MONO. But across the pond from the Glaswegians, you have Tortoise, whose…

I’m not sure how it’s taken me this long to add this record to my collection. Back when Enema of the State shockingly wound up on the Top 40, I was a blossoming punk who was a firm adherent that any band’s earlier stuff was always better. While I’ve since learned I was wrong about that, you can probably understand why Cheshire Cat would have solidified that idea for me. While its decidedly less…

I’m not reviewing records for other sites quite as much these days, but when I did, it was often a huge exercise in self control to not buy ever record I listened to. It’s still a mystery to me how I would decide to buy some records but not others, but it was not a foolproof system, and sometimes I erred. One of the more grievous errors was to not buy Time in the Lighthouse, the debut of Michigan…

One of the biggest misconceptions is that metalheads aren’t completely huge nerds. Take for instance the UK outfit DVNE, who offer up a powerful blend of progressive metal, sludge, and psychedelia that is largely based on the writings of Frank Herbert. Their Bandcamp URL is even Songs From Arrakis. But however nerdy they may be, there’s nothing wimpy or asthmatic about them. Voidkind, their third…

Very few releases had as profound an impact on my teenaged music tastes than Deep Elm Records’ Emo Is Awesome, Emo is Evil, Vol 1. And few tracks on that compilation had the impact of Benton Falls “Angel on Hiatus,” a shapeshifting track that traverses the full spectrum of emo’s moods and dynamics with a powerful climax. But like many of the bands discovered through that comp (see also: The…