Don't Call Home

So I didn't get to see Shellac today. Fuck. So I got to go to a record store. And was so excited when I found the "I Will Dare" and "Sliver" vinyl singles. But I couldn't buy them. There were so many bootleg CDs it was ridiculous. There must have been 10 Zeppelin ones and maybe 3 or 4 Pixies. So I got a cheap Breeders one. So not a total loss.

Hello Baton Rouge! - The Breeders. Pretty cool. I was a bit nervous about how the sound quality was going to be, but it's a pretty crisp digital audience recording. It's a 1994 Last Splash show, and the setlist is split pretty well, mostly relying on Last Splash standards (nice doubled vocals on "Divine Hammer," like every performance), with the rest of the songs mostly spit between Pod and their multiple EPs (although it would have been nice if they played "When I Was A Painter" or "Opened"). Kim seems out of breath on most of the songs and has to breath in deeply, especially on "Fortunately Gone" and "Happiness Is A Warm Gun." But unless someone ripped her tongue out, there's no way her voice is going to be bad. Am I right? (The CD also has some split second dropouts between tracks, or maybe that's just me)

Title TK - The Breeders. Recorded by the brilliant Steve Albini, using the All Wave philosophy. So of course the album sounds fantastic. Everything sound warm and intimate, like vinyls supposedly sound (I don't know how they sound, but they're bound be good). Even though Josephine and Jim are sorely missed, Kelley is still onboard, leaving Kim as the only original member. "Off You" is usually pinpointed as the best song on the album, and right now, I think it is. It's nice and peaceful, just Kim and an acoustic guitar. And some weird synth thing at some point.

Alien Lines - Guided By Voices. There are 28 songs on this album. And it's only 41 minutes, since none of the songs (if they're even long enough to be called songs. "Cigarette Tricks" is only 19 seconds!) only breach the 3 minute mark. This is one of GBV's more popular "lofi era" albums, and for good reason. "Game of Pricks" (NOT thrones) is one of those songs that makes me wish I lived in a simpler time. Where you actually had to meet with people to finish work. And where gossip wasn't posted on Facebook. Where the internet never existed. Lo-fi can do that to you.

Hold On Hope - GBV. These are demos for the "Do The Collapse" album (one of their cleaned up albums), produced by Ric Ocasek. I'd rather listen to Alien Lines right now. The EP's probably pretty good though.

Pleased To Meet Me (Deluxe) - The Replacements. I kept telling myself I was going to get this (for the bonus tracks), but I never did. I also told myself I was going to get Chinese Democracy but that didn't really work either. Most of the bonus tracks are already on the Flowers in the Dark booleg, albeit sped up and lower quality. The funny thing is that there's only 6 new songs on the Tim reissue, and 11 on the PPTM one. The highlights are "Photo," which is way better than some of the songs actually on the album (comparison to "Nowhere Is My Home"), a demo version of "Valentine" (interesting factoid; according to the liner notes, "Valentine" actually got rejected for the album, but was later quickly finished up and hastily pushed onto the album, so it would be for sure classfied as an album and not an EP), a rawer alternate take for "Alex Chilton" with a failed beginning (but sadly without the solo), and a stripped down version of "Can't Hardly Wait," which is not as good as the full band version on the Tim reissue, but much better than the overproduced crap version that made the album.