Take Back The Night

I've been grabbing a few bargains recently on eBay. Well, maybe not 'bargains' exactly, but I've managed to buy things cheaper than they would usually sell for on discogs. This is a great example. 'Take Back The Night' is one of the later Dwarves albums, released in 2018. By my count, this is their 11th studio LP. I actually gave up on this band years ago, after the release of their 6th LP, 'Come Clean', in the year 2000. At that point I realised that they weren't quite the same band I fell in love with back in 1992 and decided to ignore them. But somehow they have carried on going and continued to churn out records, and even though I thought I wasn't overly interested, I saw this on eBay for relatively cheap and decided to buy it.

I have no idea on the pressing info for this record, but it doesn't feel that red vinyl is particularly rare. But I am pretty sure that this is a first press copy.

The biggest surprise about this record is that it's really, really good. I mean, obviously it's not on a par with 'Blood, Guts & Pussy' or 'Thank Heaven For Little Girls', but it is really good. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but the guitars sound really strong on this, and some songs sound kinda hard. This has been a getting a lot of play the past week or two and now I'm more interested then ever in trying to track down more of the later Dwarves albums that I have ignored over the years.

Misshapen World

A couple of years ago I bought a record by a band called Sinking, which I found out about from a promotional postcard that I received inside a parcel of records. At the end of that post I wrote this:

It also now turns out that they have just released another 12" EP for which there are less than 200 copies total, with 25 copies coming in a nice Rival Schools rip off cover that are long gone. Damnit. I get a record I am stoked on and then it leads to getting bummed out that I missed another.

Well, two years later and I got lucky, and got a copy of the second record with the limited cover. The record is called 'Misshapen World' and came out in 2022 on Patient Zero Records. It's a 5 song 12" EP (with three live songs on the flipside) that clocks in at around 16 minutes, and continues in the same vein as their first record with a hint of Mineral & Sunny Day Real Estate style mid 90s emo.

As is often the case, the limited cover is a folded sheet stuck over the top of the regular sleeve.

It's kinda cool to see a Rival Schools rip off sleeve, rather than some older 'classic' record... although that said, 'Unified By Fate' is now itself 23 years old, so I guess by definition it probably is fair to consider it a classic by now.

I don't listen to too much stuff that sounds like this these days, but this is really good. After a quick look it seems that both records are still available from the band's bandcamp page, which I am surprised about. But could be good for you if this sounds like your cup of tea.

Anthropocosmic Nest

A few months ago Nico told me that he had just ordered a new record by The Messthetics. He seemed quite excited about it. I only had one question - who the hell are The Messthetics?

Somewhere I missed the memo, but it turns out that The Messthetics is a band that features two members of Fugazi (Brendan Canty & Joe Lally) plus some other dude. That information was enough for me to check them out, and within about 5 seconds I was super into it. I made a mental note to pick up a record at some point.

Anthropocosmic Nest is the band's second album, from 2019. Clear vinyl is a second pressing, which I am ok with as the first press was black vinyl only.

So without wanting to ruin the surprise if you have never heard this band, there are no vocals. This is kind of like a funky Iceburn update. The record starts out so strong and fast, but then slows as it goes on. The second half is definitely very chilled and quite heavily jazz influenced. Once you get the first couple of high energy songs out of the way, it's perfect background music for when you need to concentrate on something. I see that the first album has also been repressed on clear vinyl so I hope to pick that one up too at some point.