Our Favorite Vinyl Reissues of the Week

    This week we’re taking a look at some vinyl reissues that are basically essential for any collector. Most of these have been lovingly reissued on 180 Gram (or better) vinyl, gatefolds, and the whole sha-banger. Check em out while they’re still here, limited pressings abound.

    Roxy Music – Stranded / Country Life

    Roxy has constructed the modern English equivalent of the wall-of-sound. One instrument, either the guitar or a keyboard, will sustain or repeat a note, and the other instruments will build on top of it. Added to the thick mix is the unique voice of Bryan Ferry, who sounds alternately tormented (“Psalm”), frantic (“Street Life”), or about to sink his teeth into your neck (“Mother Of Pearl”). He delivers his consistently clever lyrics in the most disquieting baritone in pop. Everywhere there is menace. – Stranded / Rolling Stone

    Like all three preceding albums, Country Life similarly wastes no time, grabbing the listener right from the onset. “The Thrill of It All” opens with pounding keyboards, then guitar and bass entering together to rev-up the engine, rolling out the red carpet for Ferry’s vocals, which shoot in like gale winds. The next track “Three and Nine,” by contrast, is breezy and light, a song in search of a summer patio and poolside drinks with little umbrellas in them. If “Three and Nine” is a song for appetizer-hour, however, the very fun “If It Takes All Night” is for after-hours, the kind of song someone might crank out on a piano during a party at that time of the evening when everyone is vegging out on the sofas drunk out of their gourds but smiling. “Out of the Blue” is an intense classic. As it opens, you can feel the storm clouds gathering on the horizon: the phasing effects, the trepidation of Mackay’s woodwind, and the swinging undercut of strings. By the end of the song, the clouds burst and Jobson’s electric violin solo pours down furiously like rain and hail amidst the darkness. The album closes with “Prairie Rose,” ostensibly Ferry’s tribute to his Texan girlfriend at the time, model Jerry Hall. I feel this is one of the band’s all time best songs, and the interaction between the coasting whisk of Manzanera’s steel lines and Ferry’s “Hey, hey…” during the chorus is immaculate. – Country Life / Prog Reviews

    Beach Boys – Sun Flower / Surfs Up

    Without question, the resurrection of the Beach Boys in a vibrant critical and commercial capacity was a significant retrospective development of music in the ’90s. Pet Sounds becomes, now that we think about it, arguably the greatest pop production ever; a box set commemorating the album and the group’s legacy are released and uniformly lauded; pop groups everywhere shamelessly draw inspiration from the acid-tinged barbershop quartet arrangements; a handicapped Brian Wilson even manages to release something of a comeback. With this extensive overhaul, it’s right to expect some chafe only zealots with fat wallets could feel compelled to purchase. But such is not the case with this particular release, which pairs up the two first and best artifacts of the slow, golden sunset of the Beach Boys’ decline. - Pitchfork

    Big Star – #1 Record / Radio City

    Like The Beatles, Big Star had at its core two great forces: Chilton, and the enigmatic, cult icon Chris Bell. The band started with Chris at the throne, and he was a died-in-the-wool Beatles disciple. There was a tacit power struggle as to the direction of the band during their first album, #1 Record, and Alex wanted control. By Radio City, Bell was intimidated out of the band and Alex had free reign.

    No one before Chris or after ever really challenged Alex musically, and I think Alex might even admit that to himself. Radio City was Chilton’s way of showing only to himself that he could write better Beatles-like songs than Bell ever could. My theory is that Chilton’s motivation for Radio City was to show up Bell. That is the source of the passion, angst and intensity on Radio City. That type of rivalry made The Beatles great, except they stayed together despite their dissonance, creating a larger body of work. That Chilton showed up Bell with Radio City may have literally killed the late Bell, a tortured, complex man who never had the chance to find a support system that would have allowed him to accept his homosexuality. Indeed, his early death some label as a suicide was a tragedy of the highest order. – Pop Matters

    Cocteau Twins – Garlands / Head Over Heels

    the best comparison points are to the Cure on Faith and Pornography, perhaps Metal Box-era PiL, a touch of Joy Division here and there — in sum, deep, heavy mood verging on doom and gloom. Bassist Will Heggie, in the only full album he did with the Twins, clearly follows the Peter Hook/Simon Gallup style of low, ominous throb, while Guthrie’s guitar work more often than not screeches loudly than shimmers. Fraser’s singing has a starker edge, unsettling even at its most accessible, sometimes completely disturbing at other times. The strongest track, “Wax and Wane,” has the trio creating a powerful but also surprisingly danceable track, the crisp drumbox beat working against Guthrie’s compelling atmospherics and Fraser’s vocal hook in the chorus. – Garlands / Allmusic

    The album introduces a variety of different shadings and approaches to the incipient Cocteaus sound, pointing the band towards the exultant, elegant beauty of later releases. Opening number “When Mama Was Moth” demonstrates the new musical range nicely; Fraser‘s singing is much more upfront, while Guthrie creates a bewitching mix of dark guitar notes and sparkling keyboard tones, with percussion echoing in the background. Other songs, like the sax-accompanied “Five Ten Fiftyfold” and “The Tinderbox (Of a Heart)” reflect the more elaborate musical melancholy of the group, while still other cuts are downright sprightly. “Multifoiled” in particular is a charm, a jazzily-arranged number that lets Fraser do a bit of scatting (a perfect avenue for her lyrical approach!), while “In the Gold Dust Rush” mixes acoustic guitar drama into Fraser‘s swooping singing. Perhaps the two strongest numbers of all are: “Sugar Hiccup,” mixing the mock choir effect the band would use elsewhere with both a lovely guitar line and singing; and “Musette and Drums,” a massive, powerful collision of Guthrie‘s guitar at its loudest and most powerful and Fraser‘s singing at its most intense. – Head Over Heels / Allmusic