I was delighted to find out yesterday that one of my favorite EPs from 30 years ago, long out of print, was available on Bandcamp. I loved Peter from Eric’s Trip, but even when it was current, it was hard to obtain. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I ripped my friend’s copy to burn on a CD, a practice I was totally against, but felt I had no other choice. Now the band’s Rick White is releasing his archive through the indie music service.
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Studio – West Coast
The record label Ghostly International just reissued West Coast, the 2006 album by Studio, a collaboration between two musical auteurs from Gothenburg, Sweden. Ghostly spent months hyping the release, and it has garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, which labeled it a best new reissue. Bandcamp selected West Coast as their album of the day near the end of January.
Louis Pattison’s review for Bandcamp Daily focuses on the balearic influences that feature prominently on West Coast but what struck me most was the sense that this album fit right in with much of the disco (dance) punk revival that permeated the musical landscape in the aughts. Even the heavy reggae vibes coming from the slow staccato guitars on the expansive (almost 16-minutes long) “Out There” wouldn’t sound out of place in some of the first wave experiments in dance punk.
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Headlights Pointed At The Dawn
For this Friday Night Video, we’re going back a way, to the mid-nineties. Smashing Pumpkins had released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness a fittingly grandiose title for an ambitious and widely varied double-album. At the time, I heard the first single, the “rat in cage” song, and I thought this latest effort wasn’t for me. I actually went out and sold my Smashing Pumpkins CDs, which I had been collecting since shortly after the release of their debut, Gish.
It wasn’t until later that I found out there were some strong tracks on the third official record from the band. “1979” is a well-loved classic. Even Pavement covered the song, and they had their own song with the lyrics, “I don’t understand what they mean, and I could really give a f**k,” referring to SP.
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Recontextualization
When I heard that Starflyer 59 was releasing a new album hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed 2024 record Lust For Gold, I was a bit surprised. Once I dove further into the concept for the record, though, I began to understand why the band was able to put this out so quickly. This isn’t a collection of new songs, but rather a reimagining of previous material in a gently soporific, slumber-inducing format. I wasn’t sure about the premise, but I have to admit to being fond of the results.
The collection comes off as very similar to the Lullaby Renditions of… series that came together almost two decades ago. The series took the songs of popular bands and recreated them in a format that sounded like lullabies. Tracks by Nirvana or Radiohead or even Led Zeppelin were transformed into something that you would hear coming from the plastic mobile rotating over an infant’s crib. If it sounds hokey, maybe it was a bit, but somehow it worked. We had the volume dedicated to The Cure and used to play it to get my oldest son to settle down when he was a baby.
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