This is the first Ex-Easter Island Head record I’ve owned, after listening to their earlier work Mallet Guitars One and Mallet Guitars Two / Music For Moai Hava on Spotify several hundred times. It seemed like I should do my small part to help prevent the collapse of the music industry, and shell out for […]
Category: LP
BOYRACER: More Songs About Frustration And Self-Hate (LP, A Turntable Friend TURN 20, 1994)
This is a great album and one that I listened to very regularly soon after its release. I was a big fan of Boyracer in the 1990s, as they bridged a gap between the indie-pop and the noisy weirdo music that I was simultaneously listening to a lot of at the time. They were more […]
VARIOUS: Touchdown (LP, Fontana TOUCH 1, 1982)
Funny old compilation album, this one – record labels used to do quite a lot of ‘themed’ albums in the 1980s, although often more musically similar in theme, rather than having an out-and-out thread that tied together a disparate collection of bands. Touchdown isn’t a collection that’s built around the idea of the Moon landing; […]
THE HOUSEMARTINS: London 0 Hull 4 (LP, Go! Discs AGOLP 7, 1986)
Not a huge amount to say about this record musically – to me it represents a very mainstream and slick side to the whole C86/indie-pop scene that was flourishing at the time of its release. Songs like ‘Happy Hour’ are super-jaunty and great fun, of course, but the more ‘deep’ tunes like ‘Think For A […]
SHELLAC OF NORTH AMERICA: Excellent Italian Greyhound (LP, Touch And Go TG303, 2007)
I think this is the first Shellac record that I’ve mentioned on here. I’m calling them Shellac Of North America for this post because that’s how they specifically seem to refer to themselves on this record: on previous albums the ‘Of North America’ part has seemed more of a strapline, but on this one, it […]
VARIOUS: Easy Listening (2LP, Polydor 2675 002, ?)
I love the photographs on this sleeve – a happy female music listener on the front, and a happy male music listener on the back. The gatefold sleeve opens up to reveal nothing more than an overview of other Polydor releases that the keen easy listening fan could purchase: “Polydor and easy listening go together”, […]
SPACEMEN 3: Sound Of Confusion (LP, Glass GLALP 018, 1986)
Ah, don’t they look so young on the cover of this album? Although having said that, Sonic Boom has aged surprisingly well, and doesn’t look too much older 25 years later than he does on the front of this record. In my opinion the photograph on the back cover of Sound Of Confusion should have […]
THE GREAT SOCIETY WITH GRACE SLICK: Conspicuous Only In Its Absence (LP, CBS 63476, 1968)
Grace Slick would, of course, become more famous as the lead singer with Jefferson Airplane, but The Great Society is the band that came before, which featured other Slicks. There was Grace’s then husband Jerry Slick on drums, and Jerry’s brother Darby on guitar. A veritable slick of Slicks, indeed. Some Great Society songs came […]
BIG BUSINESS: Head For The Shallow (LP, Wäntage USA WAN037, 2004)
As I ran my finger along the spines of records on my shelves, trying to find this one to pull out and photograph, I noticed that Big Business – Head For The Shallow on the album’s spine is in bold, chunky, capitalised and unmissable text. And there’s your analogy for this band. I saw Big […]
THE DEAD MACHINES: Human Brain Wasting Syndrome (LP, Ecstatic Peace! E#100d, 2004)
Love this sleeve – two thick squares of corrugated cardboard housing the record, with a couple of colour printed inserts forming the front and back imagery. The weirdo, distorted style, and freaked-out geometry of the typography, may remind you of some of Wolf Eyes’ artwork, and there’s a reason for that. The Dead Machines are […]