Frontier(s) 7" x 3

Here's a silly little story of how things happen in a way that they maybe weren't intended to and, as usual, I end up with more records than I intended to have. However, I'm not sure if this particular tale is funny or just tragic. You decide...

Just before xmas I found out about a band called Frontier(s). They are a newish band featuring the singer of Falling Forward / Elliott, and that was enough for me to order both their debut 7" and LP from No Sleep Records. Both were in stock on white vinyl, but I was disappointed to get a black 7" when my package finally turned up. So I emailed the label and asked if they could send me the white one I ordered if I re-paid the postage. They agreed. But then, as usual, I didn't do anything. I have seriously become THE worst person in the world at email. So many things I don't even reply to these days due to lack of time. And other things it takes me weeks to get around to replying to. So its perhaps no surprise that I didn't actually find two minutes to paypal them a few dollars for postage to get my 7".

Anyway, in the meantime, I stumbled across a test press of the 7" on ebay. A few days later I bid and won it. Turns out that the seller was the label. So I then asked if they could throw the white 7" in with the test press. They agreed. Great. But then, just before I was going to pay, a thought struck me... if I'm going to have the test press, the white 7" and the black 7", then that means I'm only missing one version - the green vinyl. So I asked the label whether they happened to have any of those left too. By chance, they found one just laying about gathering dust and agreed to let me buy that as well...

Test press, #13/20:

Green vinyl out of 100:

White vinyl out of 300:

I actually saw this band play in London a couple of Saturdays ago. It was one of those shows where you come out liking the band more than when you went in. What I liked was that Chris did lots of talking in between songs. This seems to be something that doesn't happen much these days. Most bands just play and maybe throw in the occasional "thank you" and that's about it. But Chris spent time before every song explaining what the song was about, which was really interesting. he was also very sincere, and appeared genuinely grateful to people for coming out. At one point he said something like "At this age, I know just how hard it is to make the decision to go out of your house". Funny, but true. A lot of times I want to see bands play but just can't be arsed to travel and stand in a room of fartknockers. He was also really grateful for the opportunity they had to tour Europe and to play London, and it was obvious from a couple of other things he said that making the decision to make music has had a big impact on his life and obviously made things tough at times. At points his little speeches were quite touching and at the end I just felt like I wanted to give the guy a hug. Instead though, all I did was buy a t-shirt and tell their guitarist, Matt Weider, that he looked like Christian Bale... which (unsurprisingly) he told me he'd heard before.

Here's a video I shot on my iphone for the song 'The Plains' from this 7":

I filmed three songs in total. If you want to watch the other two then I'm sure you can figure out how to do that.