VINYLEXAMS

Is... Anyone out there? Is this thing on? Do I still listen to records and take pictures of them? Sometimes! Grad school is destroying me, though. Sorry about that. The Crow Soundtrack #vinyl #vinylestimes #vinylrecords #vinyljunkie #vinylcollection #vinylexams #recordplayer #vinilo #vinilos #vinyle #vinylcollector #recordcollection #music #musica #albums #albumart #nin #nineinchnails #thecure #brandonlee #thecrow #stp #stonetemplepilots (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLxhBIQMbw4/?igshid=1qe8zawcnq8u3

The Casket Lottery - Short Songs for End Times @thecasketlottery The Casket Lottery is a band I grew up seeing nonstop in and around KC and Lawrence and I love everything they've released to date. This newest album is yet another album full of rippers that sound exactly true to form but not repetitive or derivative in any way. I don't know that I can think of another post 2000 band from the area that has had as consistently good output for their entire career except for maybe Appleseed Cast. Outstanding work, ya'll. Someday I'll come back to KC and catch you live again. https://www.instagram.com/p/CKaGN1FMHMa/?igshid=1ds63yuc8qe9d

In The Pines - Slow Blink⁠ ⁠ @inthepinesmusic @soulsteprecords #inthepines #inthepinesmusic #soulsteprecords #soulstep #psych #psychrock #garage ⁠ ⁠ I'm a day late and unfortunately the ltd white colorway is long gone, but I KEEP TELLIN YA'LL to get on that totally free mailing list so you have access early so, etc. Soul Step Records just dropped this new In The Pines album called "Slow Blink" yesterday and if you are even remotely interested in the mellowness of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and/or a less ornery garage rock a la Ty Segall, then you're going to want to check this out stat. Not mentioned in the press kit is the super early Dandy Warhols vibes I got on the back half of this album, and for me that is a VERY good thing. Dandys Rule, OK and Come Down are two of my fav albums of all time, and "Naked Eye" sounds like it could have been an outtake from the first album, if we're being real. It's jangly, it's got a nod to the pseudo-Brit-rock that came out of the lower PNW in the 90s, and it's got some sax here and there to keep things fun and sleazy. If ...Come Down is the soundtrack for taking a bong rip way too big for your lungs to process, Slow Blink is the the soundtrack for your engineering friend who can make a bong out of literally anything in house to focus to. It's a little clearer, a little cleaner, a little more precise. The mix is crystal clear which is a nice surprise because I typically assume that any band that uses the label "psych" anywhere on their hype sticker or press kit is using at least 45 reverb pedals. This is spacious and dense but it's still quite easy to sit right inside of the mix and hear beautifully panned instruments hanging out together in perfect blends. I loved this entire album, but I REALLY loved the back half of it. It spoke to me the same way those early, spun-out Dandys albums did and well, I hope you dig it too. Incredible work, In the Pines. Looking forward to whatever comes next (and if you hit Seattle, I'll be there). https://www.instagram.com/p/CJrsmUuneHF/?igshid=wffia12nidpv

Collective Soul - S/t It's a house cleaning day which means it's time for 90s guilty pleasures which means it's finally time to drop the needle on Collective Soul. Let it gel, etc. (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJWmvrjsduC/?igshid=13brcbh2mkuoh

Red Snapper - Prince Blimey I was tragically late to the Red Snapper party, despite being a self-professed lover of all things early 90s UK trip-hop adjacent genres. The first track on this album showed up randomly in one of those auto-generated thematic play lists that are usually garbage (and somehow always fucking sneak on at LEAST two totally unrelated tracks by The National 🤣) and I was hooked. I got the trip-hop connection sure, but its lacking vocals, turntables of any kind, and the general glitchy effect of most mainstream trip hop that followed it. It's probably at least half in the real-life drum n bass camp, it's a touch jazz (sort of forefathers of Bad Bad Not Good, if you will), and it's moody as hell, an absolute requirement for being in the same zip code as trip-hop. This is the first of many great albums in their catalog, but the one that hits me the hardest. Do you know this album? Do you love it as much as I do? #vinyl #vinylestimes #vinylrecords #vinyljunkie #vinylcollection #vinylexams #recordplayer #vinilo #vinilos #vinyle #vinylcollector #recordcollection #music #musica #albums #albumart #vinylrecord #musiclover #triphop #redsnapper #ukmusic #uk #90s (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIzDYpNpSAn/?igshid=1jzh8hi8i76za

Tom Petty - Wildflowers & All the Rest @tompettyofficial #tompetty #wildflowers #tompettywildflowers There's something sort of magical about growing listening to "oldies" and the music of your parents' generation and then getting to experience those same musicians in real time with a new release. Tom Petty was no stranger to me growing up, my mother loved some of his music and I remember getting so attached to the song "Runnin' Down a Dream" the summer after I turned 10, around the same time I bought my first guitar. Later that year, Wildflowers was released and "You Don't Know How it Feels" absolutely dominated the airwaves (for good measure, it's a classic jam). I saved up some mowing money and bought a copy on CD (I got a CD player that year, too!) and started to have my own experience with Tom's music. I usually skipped the single and I listened to "Wildflowers", "Honey Bee", and "A Higher Place" on repeat instead. I didn't quite know what to call the music and it wasn't too folksy to be misclassified as country (something I would not have been able to admit to friends), and some of it was real crunchy and bluesy in a way I hadn't really heard before. Honey Bee, in particular, was a song I really FELT because of the way the guitar parts sounded so brash and bold and in stark contrast the crisp acoustic sounds of most of the rest of the album. The title track was one I loved from the first day I heard it, but it would eventually become one of THOSE SONGS, you know...the kind that evoke so much emotion that sometimes it's a blessing and sometimes its a curse to hear them again later in life. I could barely understand what it meant and when I tried to learn more about it, I read that Tom was ad-libbing the lyrics. Looking back, I see that song as being less of a happy accident and more of a product of the subconscious of a remarkably talented songwriter and storyteller needing to tell a story that frankly, some of us needed to hear. I raise my too-strong coffee to all of you who belonged among the wildflowers, too. "You belong among the wildflowers You belong somewhere close to me Far away from your trouble and worry You belong somewhere you feel free" https://www.instagram.com/p/CItXmgdnW-w/?igshid=1smefprn75y5e

Atlas Sound - Logos There aren't a ton of you that know me in real life but those that do and who have spent any amount of time talking to me about music know that I am fanatical about Bradford Cox and just about everything he's ever written. For those not on a first name basis, Bradford is one the primary creative forces behind the ultra successful indie darling of the 2010s, Deerhunter. Before and during Deerhunter's rise to fame, he also wrote and produced albums as a one-person-band called Atlas Sound. Logos, with its artwork seen here as an overexposed photo of Bradford showing his Marfan Syndrome related sunken chest, is a gorgeous, sad, and sort of haunting album. The artwork, in my opinion, is as exposing as the music and serves as a sort of visual metaphor for what it feels like to be fully on display for the judgment of your peers...in this case, the music scene. I relate a lot to this album not just because I personally enjoy listening to it, but because I wrote an album not entirely unlike this one years ago, though to much less critical acclaim (lol, not much at all, if we're being real). I felt like I knew how to write music and I wanted to get my music out there, but I was shy, I didn't have a band behind me, and I liked the idea of hearing what a band of only myself would sound like. Bradford took songs that very well could have been (and in a few cases were) Deerhunter tracks from his Atlas Sound portfolio and recorded this eclectic and moving collection of tracks on Logo. He also had some pretty talented and famous friends like Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear aka the voice you probably recognize most from Animal Collective) and their collab track, Walkabout, was a DEFINITIVE JAM for the entire summer of 2010. If you know it, it probably soundtracked your trip to SXSW, your late night backyard kickbacks, your basement parties, and your windows-down roadtrips. Whether you use the literal Aborignal definition of "walkabout" being a rite of passage or the casual definition being more along the lines of finding yourself on your own, that song alone captured what I think Bradford meant to do with this album and well, I think he did it beautifully. https://www.instagram.com/p/CIosMnojAwM/?igshid=1i2mds3vrszqa

The Fall of Troy - Mukiltearth⁠ ⁠ @thefalloftroy @tommy_dip #falloftroy #thefalloftroy #seattle #seattlemusic #seattlerock⁠ ⁠ Whew, I just got done with my first full front-to-back listen of this album now that I have it on wax and in hand and I'm going to be real, every time I get a Fall of Troy album I get taken back to a really special time in my past. The Fall of Troy is a band my earliest band really looked up to though admittedly none of us even came close to having the chops of anyone in this band, least of all guitar prodigy Thomas Erak and his ability to precisely, clearly, and brutally shred on any guitar he touches. I spent collective months, maybe years, listening to Doppleganger and Manipulator when I was still gigging and playing shows and dreaming about living in a van with my friends and playing music for a living. I was told a long time ago that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, and this applies to musical abilities, too, I think. You'll never learn to melt faces like Thomas if you spend all your time perfecting the stuff that comes easy.⁠ ⁠ I digress, one of my favorite parts of living in Seattle is that I get to be quietly surrounded by unfathomably talented musicians all over this city. It isn't the 90s grunge wet dream that it was decades ago, but I'd argue that the later decades spawned music and albums of just as great (if not greater) importance than anything the Nirvana/Soundgarden/Pearl Jam/etc lot did, and I know that's a bold statement. But you'd be hard pressed to meet anyone between the ages of 25-40 with visible tattoos and a guitar that hasn't at least privately admitted to loving the Blood Brothers or The Fall of Troy (two bands I'd love to make play my birthday party someday when I have crazy money,etc). I'll die on this hill.⁠ ⁠ Mukiltearth is true to Fall of Troy form, it's beautiful, it's loud, it's crunchy as hell, and it's got Thomas' trademark chaos shredding throughout. It's maybe even more of a nod to this far northwest corner of the country I call home than you might realize (we see you, Mukilteo). It's a wonderful album, and I think you should put it in your brainmeat. (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CImGLaSpBT1/?igshid=niaqmu3oxj3m

Hackers - O.S.T. Alright, I'll be honest and say that I am both ecstatic and embarrassed about this one only because the movie aged so poorly (but honestly is still an all time favorite). Back in the day this soundtrack hit HARD and it introduced my young teen self to super important bands like Kruder & Dorfmeister, Orbital, Leftfield, Massive Attack, and Underworld. Looking back on it, I'm not sure I can think of a better collection of incredible mainstream-friendly mid-90s UK electronic bangers, especially that ended up soundtracking what is now a cult favorite, and not just because of the terrible, dated, mostly inaccurate quotables that will live on longer than your recollection of the plot itself. I feel like the true art of a collective soundtrack was mostly lost in the early 2000s for one reason or another but throughout the 80s, 90s, and the first few years of the new millennium, we were truly blessed with some seriously and surprisingly gnarly soundtrack that hold some of the finest rarities from monster discographies today. Don't believe me? Go back and look at the Romeo + Juliet, Godzilla, Singles, Bulworth, Romeo Must Die, Reality Bites, and/or The Crow soundtracks. Like Hackers, they're wall to wall with killer tracks from bands on top of their respective games. Now excuse me while my script kiddie ass gets back to hacking the gibson. #theprodigy #underworld #leftfield #stereomcs #hackers #hackersmovie #angelinajolie #Angelina #electronic #techno #dance #kruderanddorfmeister #orbital #vinyle #vinyl #vinylporn #vinylcollector #recordcollection #music #musica #albums #albumart #soundtrack #vinylrecords #vinylexams #recordplayer #vinilo #vinilos (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIlfADNJXpj/?igshid=elitvtcu3zds

Moonbeau - Up All Night⁠ ⁠ @_moonbeau @soulsteprecords #moonbeau #80s #synths #synthpop #dance #soulsteprecords⁠ ⁠ As I have learned over the past few years thanks to my friends at Soul Step Records, Cincinnati has a LOT going on in the way of great music and as someone unfamiliar with the area, I really had no idea. Some of my favorite albums of the last few years have come out of that city and Moonbeau's brand new "Up All Night" just might find itself in that category before long too (I need a while to live with an album before I make big declarations, ok?!). The general public sale of this album started today and I will warn you that 1) there are only 100 of these rainbow swirly pressings total and 2) they technically went on sale on Saturday to mailing list subscribers so you really don't have much time to waste if you give this one a shot and want one of your own. ⁠ ⁠ Up All Night is their sophomore effort and it does not disappoint. I spoke a lot about Multimagic over the past year and how much I found their positive, fun, and uplifting vibes to be exactly what I (and I think, you!) need during this neverending dumpster fire of a year. Moonbeau has captured my attention for the same reason...the music is evocative of happier times, late summer parties out in the back yard, beach afternoons with a little too much sun, the excitement of making eye contact for the first time with someone you fall in love with. It's beautifully crafted pop music, that is for sure, but they've also created an aesthetic that nods to both the contemporary nostalgists (think The Naked and the Famous, etc.) and also the 80s heavyweights without being derivative. No, this sounds like it should be soundtracking a John Hughes movie, but not because they've copied Modern English. ⁠ ⁠ They're easy to find on the internet and I suggest you head over to Soul Step's landing page for the album and give the tracks (and video!) a listen. But don't sleep, this one will sell out pretty quickly and you'll end up feeling like all of us who keep trading stories about how we ALMOST got a PS5 that one time...⁠ ⁠ http://www.soulsteprecords.com/ssr073⁠ ⁠ Beautiful album, friends!⁠ ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/CH8tLZqnh_c/?igshid=1qt94eirizhlk

John Frusciante - Maya Really not sure what to make of this one. Have you heard it? If so, what did you think? #johnfrusciante #frusciante #rhcp #vinyl #vinylestimes #vinylrecords #vinyljunkie #vinylcollection #vinylexams #recordplayer #vinilo #vinilos #vinyle #vinylcollector #recordcollection #music #musica #albums #albumart (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHduGMUpxpM/?igshid=jqcuhhe37eer

Parish Hall - S/t @craftrecordings #parishhall Whoo boy it's another modified Record Store Day during the surreal year that is 2020! How many of you were able to support your favorite indie record shop online or in person (safely of course)?? I spent the afternoon listening to this amazing pressing of the classic Parish Hall album from my friends at Craft Recordings. It's the first pressing since 1970 so if you've ever wanted it, now is your chance to pick it up. I can attest for the super high quality Craft puts into their reissues and this one is no different. It's limited to 1500 copies and i'm guessing most of them got picked up today. It's been on streaming services since April but we all know RSD got all funky with the pandemic and whatnot, so I'm happy to tell you about it now instead. It's blues rock so those of you who cut your teeth on much more recent stuff like Black Keys, Jack White, and that type of stuff, you'll no doubt love going back to some early works that absolutely show up in contemporary blues rock as inspiration. I knew about this album years ago because it's one my mother loved but even she didn't have it on wax. Tonight I'll play it one more time in her memory. (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFns8hQJNOo/?igshid=1513c149w5me6

Jonathan Something - Cannibal House Rules ⁠ ⁠ @_jonathansomething_ @solitairerecordings #jonathansomething #solitairerecordings⁠ ⁠ Alright ya'll, sorry for the fits and starts, I was doing better about getting posts out and then #covidanxiety hit again and I got sidetracked. Now I'm back and ready to tell you all about this incredible and very unique release from Solitaire Recordings artist Jonathan Something. Per the press kit (and better than I could describe) it's a conceptual album where we get to hear Jonathan "blending the sounds of Italo disco and top 40 new wave with John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China and Brad Fiedel’s The Terminator scores on a release that is structured to play like the soundtrack from a non-existent film." It's definitely a step back into the whimsy and future-obsessed sounds of the best 80's electro-pop and it flips back and forth between being soundtrack to a movie you could imagine seeing Phoebe Cates swimming in slow motion to OR an entire lakeside cabin full of co-eds being murdered in slow motion to, too. ⁠ ⁠ I do love a good concept album and I really love it when people are able to properly honor a period of time without being derivative of the best or worst parts that define it and Jonathan Something has achieved that here. It's even got a few tracks on the back half that could just as easily be Tears for Fears bangers if you added an Orzibalsian fog horn vocal over it, but frankly JS's much sweeter tenor voice fits the mood of this album much better anyway. This is his 3rd full-length and frankly the first two are incredible too, but really not much at all like this one. I recommend you do some googling and check out the love he's gotten from much-more-important-than-VINYLEXAMS outlets you may have heard of like NPR if you don't believe me that he's got the skills to pay the bills. Or if you do believe me, cut right to the chase and head over to his page at Solitaire Recordings' website and watch his videos (and inevitably order one of these gnarly albums before they're all gone). It's official, this is my spooky Halloween season album for 2020. ⁠ ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/CFibexQIRSQ/?igshid=1ko3ph1fiys78

We're takin over #animalcrossing too, tbh https://www.instagram.com/p/CE91sSXJMIh/?igshid=ydaswnfjjf73

George Clanton - 100% Electronica⁠ ⁠ @georgeclanton #georgeclanton #mirrorkisses #vaporwave⁠ ⁠ I post this album a lot because it rules and I also post it a lot because its one of the few albums that prompts me to buy new colorways every time a new and cool one comes out. This yellow/orange/reddish purple blend came out a while back and I was just wine buzzed enough to pull the trigger on it before it sold out. Perfect timing, too, because it is one of those objectively perfect summer albums packed front-to-back with chill kickback bangers and summer is sadly coming to close up here in Seattle. It's been a dumb summer anyway with masks and social distancing and all the cool spots closed down off and on, but we've made the best of it in our own little bubble and music and good food/drink are always on that menu. Vaporwave got a bad rep for a minute because of two reasons: 1) it's impenetrable to people who can neither appreciate a healthy sense of nostalgia (with a touch of irony) and/or people who cannot in any way take a joke when it comes to art and 2) a lot of it was really really not very good. You had the super pure early foundational stuff like Macintosh Plus and then the later waves injected some pop sensibilities to make it a little more palatable to people who weren't just curating a very specific niche of visual Tumblr. George is a master of the vaporwave aesthetic but he's also an incredible songwriter and for those who fit into either camp 1 or camp 2 above, one of the first to use the aesthetic in a way to do more than make a statement. This will sound like a big stretch, and maybe it is, but I feel this is like the Songs From the Big Chair of vaporwave. A beautiful, staggering work of ambition and talent with little regard for who might pick it up and who might throw it in the dollar bin. George, in all of his projects, makes art, and great art at that. I know we'll have disagreements on this one and as long as you aren't a jerk about it, I'm happy to hear it. But you'll never convince me this album isn't a landmark of its own creation and one I'll cherish the whole time I'm on this nightmare of a planet. https://www.instagram.com/p/CE7hu5uFVP-/?igshid=1gwqgx7ag5vzo

Blind Melon - Soup @blindmelonband #blindmelon #shannonhoon #90s #90smusic #90srock I had a conversation with a friend about Blind Melon yesterday and he told me that they were his favorite band of all time. It felt odd that we'd never discussed it before, but after he showed me paintings of Shannon and autographed merch from the band and even a little corner of his music room dedicated to keepsakes and collectibles, I was convinced. I have an interesting background with loving this band too. My mom loved Janis Joplin her whole life until she died by suicide at the very end of my teens. I remember her listening to Pearl when everyone but she and I were in the house and I remember loving how gritty and soulful her voice sounded. One day I heard No Rain on MTV during a super hot summer spent mostly on the couch under an A/C vent and I thought about how similar their voices sounded to me. I didn't much like No Rain and that got worse as it became one of the most overplayed songs of all time, but a local pizza joint had the Tones of Home 7" on their jukebox and I was HOOKED. I mowed a couple of laws and bought the cassette and spent a lot of the summer swapping out my bootleg cassette of Nevermind with the Blind Melon s/t album. I fell in love with Dear ol' Dad next and realized this band was nothing like the dreampop revival nonsense MTV and Capitol were billing them as re: No Rain. They were roots-centric gritty rock music that had some folk and even psych influences, sure, but not so much to say they could be pigeonholed by either. It's cliché to say a band is a genre of their own, but I have never been able to think of another band that sounds like a Blind Melon clone nor can I pick out any single influence that could make them seem anything but original. Soup was my favorite release from the band and like so many amazing musicians from this stretch in time, we lost Shannon Hoon to the vices of a troubled soul thrust deep into a spotlight of pressure and criticism. I sometimes wonder if Janis's soul lived inside Shannon for a time and maybe he channeled and merged his own energy with hers to create some of the most cherished music I've ever heard. https://www.instagram.com/p/CEzX-kUHEEH/?igshid=qrl47tqo9wrh

Look, it might be the weirdest Record Store Day format so far, but I've you've got it in ya, you should think about how to support your favorite independent record stores if you can! I'm blissing out to this copy of The Land of Sensations & Delights: The Psych Pop Sounds of White Whale Records 1965-1970 and enjoying a mellow morning of browsing the inventory of a few spots in Houston I greatly miss! My friends at Craft Recordings put this lovely comp out for RSD 2020 and I can say from my long morning of jammin it that it's full of amazing psych tracks, many of which I've never previously heard. Give this one a try if you're out (being safe!) and digging in the crates or if you're playing it cool and searching from the comfort of your home. Happy Record Store Day, friends! #rsd #rsd2010 #recordstoreday #recordstoreday2020 #psychedelic #psychedelic #60smusic #psychpop #whitewhale #whitewhalerecords https://www.instagram.com/p/CEe2gEOJXy2/?igshid=fxfwsmvqv04