We did say it was a big week! Recent gems and records from a whiles back that stopped us in our tracks.
Originally released on the Prestige label in 1968, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier is the debut LP from Chicago soul singer, Terry Callier. It was recorded in 1964 but delayed - with Callier totally oblivious to its release until his brother saw it in a Chicago antiques store. "I went in, bought the album, and took it home. Then I decided to make another go of it." In fact, there is a great article about his early life in the Guardian with Will Hodgkinson (he was also a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield and a brief duo partner with David Crosby…)
Anyway, this LP is mint. A beautifully recorded mix of covers and traditionals with just Callier on guitar and vocals (besides a few bits of upright bass) and his voice is just remarkable. Commanding, controlled, soulful and so full of heartbreak. Quite the experience.
+ Pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QRP and newly (AAA) remastered from the original tapes.
Numero are in ludicrously good form this week with some beautiful archeology on a 50th Anniversary re-issue of Country singer Doug Firebaugh’s first and only recording from 1975. Recorded in three days in 1975, the 20-year-old Firebaugh wrote and played every world-weary note, besides a forgotten pedal steel man. Simple Americana and country hues, with bummed notes and hazy whispers. Really gorgeous stuff.
Originally released in 1972 on the NYC based Muse label, The Free Slave is a four track sizzler from jazz drummer Roy Brooks. The four extended tracks really are special stuff, winding and intelligent, but there are also funkier moments too and the way it all rolls along is cracking stuff. There are some serious live crowd yelps that really add to the fever.
It is reissued on Time Traveller who will also release Kenny Barron’s Sunset To Dawn (again, originally via Muse) very shortly, it might even be on the way I think.
We’ve been talking about early Aphex Twin quite a bit recently (ain’t no bad thing), and his 1995 Classics compilation is reissued this week on the legendary Belgian label R&S Records. It collects tracks from the Xylem Tube and Digeridoo EPs, plus two remixes of Mescalinum United's We Have Arrived.
We were as delighted as anyone when Grizzly Bear announced that they would be ending their hiatus late this year for a set of live dates. We don’t know anything that we don’t know, or think we know anything that we don’t know, but we’re feeling better about the world knowing that they are out there maybe doing something together. Either way, what we do actually know, is that their most recent albums - Yellow House, Veckatimest, Shields and Painted Ruins - are all back in print this week on Warp and it has been lush to revisit them. Shields was our 2012 Record of the Year and has long held a special place in our hearts. If they haven’t been on your radar, the Brooklyn band are absolutely fantastic, and actually everything they have done individually has been pretty marvellous too.
Let’s stick them all on loud.
The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree album receives a 20th Anniversary Remaster this week on 4AD. Originally released in late April 2005, it was the third 4AD record from singer-songwriter John Darnielle, a confessional set. Pressed on Apricot colour vinyl, the audio has been remastered at Abbey Road and features a new OBI strip designed by Chris Bigg.
On the stereo, we started today with the eponymous debut LP from Vancouver rock titans Black Mountain (which isn’t necessarily something that hasn’t happened on many occasions here, also with their exceptional In the Future LP), a fairly seismic entrance to the new week. Full and always heavy, there are some lush synth squelches that fill the space between the cavernous riffs, chanted vocals and shimmering drums that really kept them weird. Great band.
+ Pressed on "Shadow Wave" colour vinyl.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Gomez’s Mercury Music Prize-winning debut album, Bring It On, the band’s first four albums - Bring It On, Liquid Skin, In Our Gun and Split The Difference - are all repressed this week (in various colours).
Too Pure present an expanded edition of Pure, Impure, the collection that compiled Seefeel’s gorgeous first three EPs - More Like Space, Plainsong, and Time to Find Me. Remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road Studios with newly reimagined artwork. Noice.
Also this week; We have a 10th Anniversary edition of Ghost’s hard rocking third LP, Meliora. Pressed on double Green Smoke vinyl and including a commemorative 'Papa III Mummy Dust' buck… which we do accept as legal tender at Drift. We mentioned a limited double transparent vinyl pressing of Beauty Behind The Madness from The Weeknd the other day. Well, he here! The Coral’s self-titled debut album and following Magic & Medicine albums receive much-needed pressings this week. Musically tighter and way more psychedelic than anyone else around at the time. Such good boys.
Lastly for today, and four decades after it lit up college radio and launched R.E.M.’s storied career, Radio Free Europe is sending out a brand-new signal with a limited edition - 10” orange vinyl - repressing. The 5-track set also features rarities from 1981 - including the Original Hib-Tone Single mix of Radio Free Europe, B-side Sitting Still, plus demos Wh. Tornado and Radio Free Dub. Tell you what we could really do with some new pressings of the I.R.S. albums, right?
