23 & 24 March 2013 (Days 82 & 83) – Recent Purchase Update

With Friday night’s function out of the way and a couple of huge nights coming out, this weekend has sensibly been very much low key.  Strangely enough, when these weekends do occur, I don’t tend to listen to much preferring DVDs, napping and cooking.  I did manage to shake off my ennui enough to listen to the following albums over the weekend which I had purchased over the week.

(235) Mogwai – Mr. Beast

This was one of three Mogwai albums I managed to buy during the week.  It starts Auto Rock a title which could be taken as a comment that they are going through the motions.  Certainly it is a typical Mogwai tune albeit a little bit quieter than most.  The next track, Glasgow Mega-Snake, ups the ante and the tempo leading into two tracks (Acid Food and Travel Is Dangerous) with – wait for it – vocals.   The best tracks are in the second half of the disc with Friend Of The Night, Emergency Trap and We’re Not Here ending proceedings with a suitably epic flourish.

(236) Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble – Live At Ripley’s Music Hall Philadelphia, 20 October 1983 (Texas Flood Legacy Edition Bonus Disc)

The Legacy Edition of Stevie Ray’s debut has not been released here yet but I was able to score a copy for a very reasonable price from overseas.  This is now the third version of this album on the market after the original release and a reissued version in 1999 that contained 5 bonus tracks.  The Legacy Edition provides the original album with only one of these bonus tracks and this live recording as the bonus disc.  Recorded only a few months after the album was released and a live radio broadcast to boot, it is an adequate representation of SRV in concert.  It kicks off with two instrumentals (Testify and So Excited) which continues into his cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return). A run of SRV standards follow – Pride And Joy, Texas Flood, Love Struck Baby, Mary Had A Little Lamb and Tin Pan Alley before the set closer and disc highlight, an absolutely brilliant version of Little Wing/Third Stone From The Sun.  Not the greatest live SRV I’ve heard but certainly not the worst.

(237) Camper Van Beethoven – La Costa Perdida

Released earlier this year, this is a marked improvement over their previous comeback album New Roman Times.  It harks back to the musical diversity of their earlier albums albeit with a more laid back feel as evidenced in tracks such as Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out, Northern Californian Girls and A Love For All Time.

(238) Okkervil River – The Stage Names

I first heard of Okkervil River when they worked with Roky Erickson (ex 13^th Floor Elevators) on the marvellous True Love Cast Out All Evil album.  I wasn’t impressed that much by their most recently released album I Am Very Far and so approached this with a bit a trepidation.  I needn’t have worried.  This album released in 2007, is a real grower comprising great musicianship with intriguing lyrical content.  Three tracks stand out to me; Savannah Smiles about a porn actress who committed suicide after a car crash, Plus Ones which tells a story essentially by throwing in lots of references to songs well known to the indie crowd and the final track John Allyn Smith Sails, another account of a suicide, this time of a poet.