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Music

What Did and Didn't Suck at Record Store Day 2014

Record Store Day is a time every third Saturday in April when vinyl nerds worldwide spend hours in line outside music shops and drop hundreds of dollars on waxy black discs. Some of it's good, and some of it should be avoided like botulism.

Record Store Day is a time every third Saturday in April when vinyl nerds worldwide spend hours in line outside music shops and drop hundreds of dollars on waxy black discs. Like every Record Store Day before it, this one was the “biggest ever,” with an unprecedented amount of special releases: more than 700 in the UK and US combined.

As if music journalism needed yet another excuse to queef out more page filler, the magnitude of this year’s Record Store Day had every online publication taking the master release list (officially announced in late March) and distilling it down to anywhere from five to 50 “recommended” titles. If it needs to be spelled out, any reader who had access to the official release list should have been offended at the assumption that cognitive listeners need their hands held as they sort through a big, confusing list of 450+ releases. And let’s not get started on the percentage of those lists that are assembled with some under-the-table padding of record collections or other nefarious motivations.

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Anyway, here is my list of recommendations, along with the releases you should avoid like botulism.

KEEPERS

1.

BUILT TO SPILL
Ultimate Alternative Wavers
Modern Classics
Edition of 4,000

One of the gazillion micro-imprints or sub-labels operated or distributed by the Light in the Attic institution, Modern Classics (“Quick! You have five seconds to name your reissue label! Go!”) brings long out-of-print or CD-only albums into the world of vinyl availability. Built to Spill’s shit-hot debut appeared out of nowhere in 1993, seemingly a half hour after Doug Martsch left Treepeople, the awesome post-hardcore band he co-founded a half-decade earlier. This is the best BTS album by a long shot, but most critics and fans exposed to it over the years helped to solidify its place as a redheaded stepchild due to the frequent shredding, heaviness, noisy experimentation, and general sense of adventure with little of the indie/hippy festival crossover appeal that made BTS big fifteen years ago.

2.

TYPE O NEGATIVE
Slow, Deep, and Hard
Metal Blade
Edition of 1,500

Type O Negative’s 1991 debut Slow, Deep, and Hard kicks off with “Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity,” a 12-minute opportunity for the late Pete Steele to issue a character assassination of a philandering ex, blame himself, regret everything, and howl in emotional pain. When Pete yells “HEY! DON’T THINK I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOIN’, YOU STUPID TWAT!!!” over a tempo shift, the intentional hilarity of his chorus “I know you’re fucking someone else!” being followed by the rest of the band’s “He knows you’re fucking someone else!” will win over any smart person with a good sense of humor.

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3.

RUSH/LOVE
"7 and 7 Is"
Rhino

This year’s installment of Rhino's annual last-minute “surprise” side-by-side split is like a comforting hand on the shoulder nestled in a bloated release list overrun with hyper-cool today/guaranteed-forgotten tomorrow bullshit. Far from being some contrived “Surprise! Rush has decent taste!” gesture, Rush’s take on one of Love’s stronger songs was originally hidden as a B-side on a 2004 EP.

4.

PINBACK
Self-Titled
Ace Fu
Edition of 2,000

When it was released in 1999, Pinback’s self-titled debut full-length was the gold-standard of experimental underground pop and was genuinely devoid of any historical reference points on a stylistic basis. Little did we know that this album predicted a future that held a gelded version of Pinback’s supernaturally-catchy agenda in the unsalted rice cakes of indie-pop, otherwise known as Death Cab for Cutie, or that very faint remnants of this stuff would be heard each time a short errand was run, courtesy of Gotye’s “Someone That I Used To Know.” So yeah, try to forget all of that ever happened.

5.

LIFE WITHOUT BUILDINGS
Any Other City
What's Your Rupture?
Edition of 1,000

Here’s the reissue of a relatively unknown (in the States), way-out-of-print 2001 debut/swansong album by an amazing band of singular vision—the long-defunct Life Without Buildings. And there are plenty of copies to go around for a little while, so those unfamiliar can get turned on to a fascinating and worthy cranny of underground music’s modern history. I’m waiting on the catch…

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6.

BREADWINNER
Burner
Merge
Edition of 500

Permanent good-people label Merge has a nice supply of important titles in the back catalogue to bring back for round two, and the previously CD-only Burner sits near the top of the heap. Breadwinner was the post–Honor Role concern of Pen Rollings, who realized his position as the preeminent guitar savant of off-kilter metal riffs as the leader of this band. Breadwinner’s blink-and-miss-it presence at the turn of the 90s was good for three 7”s and change, and it’s all collected here.

7.

SCHARPLING AND WURSTER
Rock, Rot, and Rule
Flannelgraph
Edition of 1,000

The essential book of Genesis in the hefty body of work created by radio comedy duo Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster. Originally aired on the former’s The Best Show on WMFU and subsequently released on the compact disc format in 1999, the same semi-elitist truth about the six other Scharpling & Wurster collections that followed until 2009 also applies here: Either you know they made the greatest contribution to comedy of the last 15 years… or you don’t.

8.

HEAVENS TO BETSY
Calculated
Kill Rock Stars
Edition of 1,000

Heavens to Betsy’s only proper album from 1993 will no doubt garner most of its attention because 50 percent of the duo happened to be a pre–Sleater Kinney Corin Tucker, but who cares how this badass record gets into people’s homes? Kudos to Kill Rock Stars for exhuming a scorching and intense burner from Riot Grrrl/queercore’s hidden history of under-the-radar, not-to-be-fucked-with works… like Team Dresch’s masterpiece Personal Best, if, you know, someone would step up to the plate and reissue that, too.

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9.

MEDICINE
Part Time Punks Live
Captured Tracks
Edition of 900

The year 2013 was when everyone offered Kevin Shields his first-born child, then spent 11 months uncontrollably urinating and defecating all over the house because the new My Bloody Valentine album wasn’t the horrifying catastrophe it could have been, not because it was any great shakes. So when Medicine, a lower-profile though formerly superior (on 1993’s Shot Forth Self Living album) early-90s shoegaze chestnut, reemerged with the appropriately titled To the Happy Few and it was everything MBV wasn’t, plus more—meaning a stunning, authentically futuristic and proper update of the long-expired sub-genre—heads were up asses. This is a live album by the current incarnation of Brad Laner’s Medicine, but I have no idea why it's named after a Television Personalities song.

10.

GRANT HART
Every Everything/Something Something DVD/LP
MVD
Edition of 1,750

Last year, Grant Hart released the double-LP epic The Argument, and not only is it the best album of his solo/Nova Mob career, but it’s the best album by any former member of Husker Du. Despite the greatness of the album and its marking his first time on a reputable label (Domino), the world pulled a Grant Hart on Grant Hart and responded with a deafening silence. Now here’s a lovingly crafted documentary about Grant accompanied by a bonus LP of live material, so what’s he gotta do? Come over to the house and shove it down your throat?

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11.

DINOSAUR JR.
Visitors
Numero
Edition of 3,000

Most of this has appeared as bonus content through one of the two separate reissue events over the last decade that made Dinosaur Jr.’s first trio of original-lineup full-lengths available again, and most of this is front-page old news for serious fans, but Dinosaur Jr.’s first five 7”s are still just that, Dinosaur Jr.’s first five 7”s. Here’s to Numero Group, the most powerful fighters of the good fights and vigilantes delivering blows against the historical revisionism dominating the retro-reissue wars!

GARBAGE

1.

THE PIXIES
Indie Cindy
Pias America
Edition of ???

The Pixies decided to celebrate ten years as a reformed band with this harsh reminder of why we should be paralyzed with trepidation and consumed with cynicism when the next once-loved, once-important act of the 80s and 90s announces its reunion, which will happen in the next five minutes. Not even a real proper album, this collects three previously-released EP’s (EP1EP2, and EP3)  and is as bad as, if not worse than, its embarrassing title, officially placing today’s incarnation of The Pixies in the criticism-proof territory of other pity cases like Lady Gaga or Courtney Love. Well, maybe not Courtney Love.

2.

DRESDEN DOLLS
Self-Titled
Rhino
Edition of 3,000

Supporting the maxim that those who speaks the loudest have the least to say, there’s no doubt an introductory five-minute conversation with Amanda Palmer would reveal 100 percent of the didn’t-ask-don’t-care personal info and grab bag of obvious aesthetic/artistic interests or endeavors that beat reasonably intelligent and logical people about the head and neck upon perusal of "the official website of Amanda Fucking Palmer” or related Wikipedia entry. Combine this with Palmer’s sub-literate slaughter of the English language (she’s thirty-fucking-seven) and explain the miracle that would have to take place in order for more than 30 seconds of her music to be tolerable.

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3.

THE MOLES
Flashbacks and Dream Sequences: The Story of the Moles
Fire
Edition of 300

This to a pressing of 300 is a loathsome, collector-fodder circle jerk that just shifts The Moles’ body of wonderful, forward-thinking, and beautifully catchy experimental pop from one type of impossibly hard-to-find, absurdly expensive existence to a more topical version of the same thing. What’s the fucking point when we’re dealing with timeless stuff that a lot of people would love and that deserves historical appreciation instead of this backhanded non-effort?

4.

CARDINAL
Self-Titled
Fire
Edition of 300

But this post-Moles endeavor by Richard Davies and American Eric Matthews was a nightmare of Anglophile dandiness, dearth of pop hooks, and part of the pussification of rock. Limiting it to a pressing of 300 copies is too generous.

5.

LIARS
Mess On a Mission
Mute
Edition of 1,000

This 12-inch features two remixes (the best way to slap your fans in the face without leaving any marks) and the studio version of a track from LIARS’ recently released seventh full-length, Mess. I guess the idea is that pressing brightly colored wool yarn into clear vinyl will change the music on this 12-inch into something other than DJ Spooky, Peter Murphy (circa bad music), and Rozz Williams rummaging through some shit that didn’t sell at Alien Sex Fiend’s yard sale—or whatever you’d call LIARS' latest bathroom break on the identity-crisis highway.

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6.

CAVE IN
Jupiter
Hydra Head
Edition of 1,000

“Official CIA documentation recently declassified through the Freedom of Information Act has revealed a clandestine, black-budget project codenamed ‘Operation: Radiohead’ not only met but wildly exceeded the agency's expectations by artistically neutering and, in some cases, creatively bankrupting targeted bands in the indie-rock/alternative and underground metal communities of the late 90s and early 00s." A long list of bands’ transformational albums concludes the document, with Cave In’s Jupiter album being highlighted as “the campaign’s consummate example of success.”

7.

TAME IMPALA
Live EP
Interscope
Edition of 5,000

I suppose this is for a fanbase with little use for the fact that playing a Tame Impala album loudly in one’s house will produce the audio equivalent of seeing them live.

8.

XIU XIU
Unclouded Sky
Polyvinyl
Edition of 1,000

Yet another album that makes me feel like Rowdy Roddy Piper’s character during the few minutes in They Live! when he’s alone in his experience with the reality-revealing sunglasses. In order to not lose 100 percent of my faith in humanity I believe that musical forces like Michael Gira and Eugene Robinson collaborate with XIU XIU’s Jamie Stewart because they lost a high-stakes poker game or it’s some Make-A-Wish Foundation project, and that right after the tenth XIU XIU full-length is released (this is the ninth), a masterful cultural manipulator like Bill Drummond or the dudes in Negativland will jump out and scream, “GOTCHA!!!”

9.

FLAMING LIPS
7 Skies H3
Warner Brothers
Edition of 7,100

Jack White once again assumed the unofficial status of “Evel Knievel of Record Store Day” with the announcement and then execution of his fastest recording-to-release 7”, possibly causing the Flaming Lips to scrap some original plan to get all figuratively Carrot Top on the RSD public with a more ambitious prop and gimmick decoy to distract from a record’s lack of musical merit. This might be why we got a 50-minute edit of the 24-hour-long song the band released digitally last year, as if the world needed more audio documentation of the Flaming Lips saying, “Fuck it."