radio_city raze this is an awful pressing of a brilliant record. give me a goddamn lathe and i could make you something better than this hunk of shit with its smeared soundstage, blunted dynamics, and strident upper register. and i don't know a thing about cutting vinyl. still. the harshness has a way of bringing out the latent desperation in the music. "mod lang" has never hit harder. "daisy glaze" and "september gurls" are two of the best things to ever touch a reel of tape no matter what shape they're in. and chris bell's ghost still haunts the hardtop on "back of a car". once i was a teenage train-wreck listening to those two minutes and forty-six seconds of inchoate longing on headphones, waiting for my long-distance love to call, when the phone rang in the middle of the instrumental break. i've probably heard that song another hundred times in the two decades and change since then. when alex chilton doubles the guitar line with his voice, i always have to stop what i'm doing to make sure someone isn't sending smoke signals through a coiled cable. even now, memory makes a mockery of all i think i know. 240531 ... releaseofwarmth Knew them from covers. From Cheap_Trick and the sitcom with the scientologists. From Lucero. Had looked them up, put them on to-do lists, but I'm only just now sitting with it. And yeah, I get it. The straightforward rock of a ZZ_Top, with the playfulness and brightness of a Kinks, with the simple and sneaky good songwriting of a Warren_Zevon. The music nerd in me can't help but reaching for points of reference. But it's a compliment. I know they're not the next (blank) they're the first and only Big_Star. It's merely a library loan, a 2-in-1 CD in which the first 13 tracks are occupied by #1_Record. But I'm very glad I got around to it. 240904 ... raze (if you're up for it, give "third/sister lovers" a try for a totally different listening experience. out goes the power pop, and what you get instead is a dark night of the soul i'd put up there with "tonight's the night", though it's very much its own thing and the emotional turmoil isn't always obvious in the lyrics.) 240904 what's it to you? who go blather from