Random Spirit Lover

Between about 2006 and 2014 I occasionally participated in CD-R music swaps, where one would make a mix CD and post it out to a group of randomly-assigned recipients, who, in turn, would mail you their mixes. The highlight, for me, of one CD I received in this fashion (ca. 2008) was the bizarre and wonderful song 'Up On Your Leopard, Upon The End Of Your Feral Days' by Sunset Rubdown. I hastened to buy the album from which it was taken.

Sunset Rubdown are among the many brainchildren of Spencer Krug, some of whose music, it turned out, I already knew: his songs being my favourite parts of the 2005 album Apologies to the Queen Mary by Wolf Parade. On Random Spirit Lover, however, he is squarely and idiosycratically in the spotlight. To quote from two reviewers' assessments, the album is "part lo-fi bedroom project and part hi-fi tribute to the excesses of '70s art rock" and "like The Chronicles of Narnia re-written entirely from memory by Guillermo Del Toro".

I'm typically more one for music than for lyrics. but it's the words that really shine here, and the trebly tunes - while also very good - are secondary. If it were on vinyl I'd have a preference for side A over side B, with the former containing the aforementioned 'Up On Your Leopard...' and also 'The Mending of the Gown' and 'The Courtesan has Sung', my other two favourite tracks on the disc.

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All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo...

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Onslow

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