Uncharted

So in early December last year I spent a few days in Florida, and as a late decision one day we decided to drive north and spend a couple of days in Gainesville. It was a place I knew next to nothing about, other than the University of Florida is based there, and it's the hometown of the band Less Than Jake. So of course, the two hour drive up to Gainesville was spent listening to Less Than Jake songs whilst we looked forward to exploring 'Gainesville Rock City'.

So here's the thing - back at the end of the 90s I was quite into Less Than Jake. It started when the label that released their first LP sent me a copy for free, and I decided to check it out and found it incredibly catchy... even though it was definitely not the usual thing that I would have listened to. So I then got into them, and I still have a bunch of their records, although I probably haven't added to my collection since the year 2000 when 'Borders & Boundaries' came out. But listening to those songs again in the car made me curious as to what the band were up to now, which ended up with me discovering that they had just put out a new record. So of course, given that they were once again the best band in the world to me on that particular day, I decided to order one.

This record is titled 'Uncharted' and it seems that it is neither one thing nor another. It has 7 songs, so feels like it's too short to be an LP, but a little too long to be a 12" EP. But hey, maybe these are just old fashioned concepts in 2025?

Also, given we are in 2025, we're playing by modern record pressing rules, meaning that there are (I think) 7 different vinyl colours of this record. The copy I ordered is known as 'electric blue glitter' and seems to be one of the the most limited colours out of 250 copies (there are two others, also out of 250 each, and then a bunch out of 500 or more). I mainly chose it as it sounded like the least offensive colour from the list.

As I mentioned, I haven't listened to anything new from this band since 2000, but these songs are good fun, and I've enjoyed this the past couple of weeks. Heck, I might even start trying to work my way backwards through the other records I have missed out on the past twenty years or so. We shall see.