At War With the Mystics: The Flaming Lips - 2006

USA Pressing, 2006.

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The Flaming Lips are one of the great band of freaks and I love them for it. However when this album came out in 2006 the feeling was that they were kind of careering into the realm of overfamiliarity after the ubiquity of the brilliant albums The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002). At the time I thought that At War With the Mystics was merely a pretty solid album that my Rasta friend and I certainly enjoyed when in the mood. However recent listens have convinced me that it’s really a great album and it’s more overtly cultural/political moments are fit for our extreme times, perhaps more so than during the Bush era (not the band, hahaha etc…). Trump even gets a mention  - “Oh no no your’e turning into a poor man’s Donald Trump, I know these circumstances make you wanna jump…”. But it’s the beautiful, proggy Floyd-like psychedelia on this album that really holds up today, songs like Vein of Stars, My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion and Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung absolutely pulse through the body when played loud through a late 70’s Kenwood amp. 

This pressing, a double, with one blue and one red, was bought in the year of its release from Dada Records for $48, which was quite expensive at the time. But as usual, some 14 years later I’m not thinking that I wish I had that money, but instead thank fuck I have this awesome record!

Remote Luxury: The Church - 1984

Australian Pressing, 1984.
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The Church are one of Australia’s greatest bands and also one of my favourite bands of all time. EPs really came into their own in the 1980s and The Church released a fair few; Remote Luxury is quality work, despite it containing Maybe These Boys... a very obvious stab on the part of Steve Kilbey at writing a commercial song, one that he would go on to dismiss vehemently as the years went by. Predictably, however, I fucking love it. I also love EPs as they represent a perfect snapshot of the true nature of a band, allowing the release of some songs that might not quite fit thematically onto an album; songs that display another side to the band, or that have been born oddly shaped, but need to be loved non-the-less. Often they contain unheralded gems, in this case A Month of Sundays, a truly great song relegated as the fourth track and that would have had little impact beyond the year the EP was released if it hadn’t been included on Hindsight 1980-1987, a fantastic compilation that emerged in 1988. Best listened to with your Rasta friend, as with most of their releases, and due to its brevity at the beginning of the night, whilst you are still capable of getting up to change the record over - you know what I mean...

Everything’s Alright Forever: The Boo Radleys - 1992

French Pressing, 1992.
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The Boo Radleys were a true shoegazing band who were signed to the legendary Creation Records before the advent of Oasis, who basically swept everyone else on the label aside in terms of priority. I thrashed this album in the early nineties - I was totally enamored with their pedal driven sky-scraping sound and melodic sensibility. My most significant memory of this album was listening to it again and again one afternoon spent on the front porch of a rental in Mt Hawthorn sitting on a beat-up flower patterned couch with a couple of fellow mushroom-men watching the sunlight dapple and shine on the trees in the front yard. Let me tell you, it was totally appropriate music for such activities.

I bought this record second hand from Bowerbird Records in Highgate. This record store was one of those stores in which everything was a bit skewed toward the unusual. The two guys who ran the store were singular characters. One lurched about, hunched over and suffering from narcolepsy; the other always wore tight brown footy shorts with a tucked in white shirt whilst he examined some horse-racing booklet. They always sat on opposite sides of the counter. Bowerbird’s shtick was to have a permanent 50% off sale, which they’d remind you of every time you entered the place, even though you’d been there many times before. Subsequently the price tag on the inside of the album (I nearly always put the price-tag inside as a record of its cost and provenience) says $15, but I picked it up for $7.50, a bargain!