<img class="alignleft" title="The Caseworker" src="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/thecaseworker.jpg" alt="" width="114" height="171" />Ahead of the release of his band's stunning third album <em>Letters From The Coast</em>, Conor Devlin from <a href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/artists/the-caseworker/">[The] Caseworker</a> throws down some musical love via the joy of vinyl. But before you get distracted by this wonderful read, be sure to grab your free download of the bands latest single '<a href="http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;cPath=52&amp;products_id=176">National Runner</a>' and also head to <a href="http://n5mailorder.com/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&amp;products_id=1530">n5mailorder</a> to pre-order the album on CD (with immediate digital album download) before its release next week. Enjoy!

Cam

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We’ve been moving around for the last few years so all our records were abandoned to a damp storage facility out near San Francisco airport. All our music listening was done via an ipod….I’m talking about the <em>dock</em>. The dock provides an approximation of a record you like. We convinced ourselves it was okay (“it’s so much handier!”, “oh I agree!”), but it’s <em>not</em> okay and the weak sound quality burrowed deep into our souls and made us question records we love. Now that we’re finally settled in Lausanne, we got a new turntable, a tuner donated by our friend Duncan from ‘round the corner and speakers that were way too expensive from the nice man at ABC HiFi on Rue des Echelettes. Then we bought some records to listen to, properly, and remembered that there’s really nothing like it. It was great to re-learn and appreciate the process of listening to music in that familiar way again after three years of <em>docks</em>. Getting up to flip it over. Marvelling at the artwork. Feeling the warmth of the sound in the room. And of course sticking your hand up the other side of the gatefold in case they’d hidden something in there. There’s two great record stores in Lausanne – Disc a Brac and Belair Records. Both are stocked really well with new and old vinyl. Belair even has a Guru Guru vinyl section: their own tab and everything! Really impressive. We’ve spent the last couple of weekends buying records around town. Some highlights:

First up was <strong>Low</strong>, who’ve returned from a four year hiatus this year and released “C’mon” on Sub Pop. I’ve run hot and cold over the years with Low, but they always seem to be there if I want to come back.  As I listened to this new one, I began to think that the Neil Youngish “Witches” might be one of my favourite Low songs of all time. But then “Especially Me” got completely under my skin after a few listens.  (To these ears) it’s another one of Low’s deadly accurate takes on a disintegrating relationship, which, considering they’ve been partners since high school and are happily married with two kids and seem to live a very tranquil church-going life up by the Great Lakes… is a very odd thing indeed. Or perhaps not.  Anyway, this is Mimi Parker’s tour-de-force, with glorious keening harmonies on the chorus. As she sings “cause if we knew where we belong, there'd be no doubt where we're from; but as it stands, we don't have a clue, especially me and probably you”. It’s the ‘don’t have a clue’ that grips, the total helplessness in her delivery. Fantastic stuff.

<strong>Gateway I</strong> – I found this in the Salvation Army store. Mint condition, and only one franc. I bought it because Dave Holland plays bass on it and I dig him. It’s 70’s avant garde jazzy fusion stuff but it’s a really warm listen for a lazy afternoon and God does it <em>sound</em> amazing. There’s double bass, electric guitar and drums and…..that’s all there is on it. So each instrument sounds crystal clear and right in the room with you. There’s also a tonne of “studio-air” 70’s vibes on there. It was released in ‘75 and it’s a great record to test speakers with and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Then there’s the new <strong>Iron Maiden</strong> record: ‘The Final Frontier’. Yeah yeah, Up The Irons and all that. 35 years, 15 studio albums, and, hilariously enough, this is one of their best. The first one I bought was ‘Number of the Beast’ back in ‘83 for 2 pounds second hand, and this time we spent 45 goddamn francs on the brand new double vinyl gatefold picture disc edition. It looks fucking awesome and sounds massive. The walls shook, the dog left the room etc. Three songs are about ten minutes long so it takes a lot of time to get familiar with them; you have to work at it. Hard concentration. The lyrics are printed on the inner sleeves and the thank you lists are still really long. Bruce Dickinson remains at full air raid siren level and you wonder how he crams all those words into ‘The Alchemist’…speaking of which, McBrain does this great tom-roll down the kit behind Dickinson’s vocals just before the second chorus. If you’re a Maiden fan you know what I’m talking about and you know it’s Heaven.

<strong>Bill Callahan</strong>’s “Apocalypse”. What’s left to say? I remember seeing him (when he was still going by the name of Smog) at the Kilowatt in San Francisco in 1995 on the ‘Wild Love’ tour, just after Cindy Dall had joined. Her sister climbed up to add backing vocals to one song which soon disintegrated into a giggling impromptu ‘Happy Birthday’ to their father who was in the crowd. Meanwhile, Bill stood at the back, facing the wall and playing random distorted chords on an out of tune Flying V. The drummer stared into his unplayed ride cymbal. I was never sure if the whole show was an elaborate art-joke on the bewildered crowd, but I guess that was Smog: you never knew what you were going to get. This time around we get his third record since dropping the ‘Smog’ tag and it’s flawless. Easily as good as ‘Red Apple Falls’ or ‘Knock Knock’, if you’re looking for a Smog quality check. You’ve probably heard the clumping ‘America!’ by now, his bizarre love song to the USA, but there’s also “Free’s” strange combination of flute and whistling, the menace of “Drover”, and the sheer random beauty of Universal Applicant’s lyrics – “I found the bee’s nest in the buffalo’s chest” and “without work’s calving increments, or love’s coltish punch, what would I be? An animaless isthmus, beyond the sea”. Who the hell writes lyrics like that? They’re incredible. Bill Callahan is a genius, and I think I can say this with some authority after 18 years of listening (and staying to the end of that Kilowatt show.) Seven songs, and the vinyl is a lovely thing.

This one’s a year old but still worth mentioning: <strong>Black Mountain</strong>’s ‘Wilderness Heart’ on Jagjaguwar.  It’s a good confident step up from ‘In The Future’ - they sound more swinging, the songs are better, the production is thick with low end and there’s cool shades of Sandy Denny era Fairport Convention creeping into their Sabbath-plays-Zeppelin thing. It all works, and you get the sense they’re really enjoying this. Every Black Mountain song sort of reminds of you some old classic rock song but, at the same time, you can never name it. It’s weird. Is that a Bad Company chord change? A Zep riff? A BOC vocal? No, it’s all Black Mountain!

So it’s nice to have the vinyl bug again, even if we are paying astronomical amounts for the imports here in Switzerland. But Disc-A-Brac does the buy-10-vinyl-albums-get-one-free thing, so we’ll be busy earning that privilege again and again over the next few months……