“The first LP I ever purchased was Brandi Carlile’s Bear Creek at a rare solo show in Northampton, MA in the fall of 2011. I didn’t even have a record player at that point, but it meant so much to purchase that album and wait for the day I could take it out of its sleeve and play it the way Brandi wanted people to hear it.”
“I didn’t grow up listening to vinyl. I am, however, the daughter of HUGE music lovers—particularly my father. From Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and The Police to The Beatles, Madonna and ABBA, I had an eclectic childhood filled with music. The only thing to rival my Dad’s love of music is his love for technology. He will always be the first person in line when Apple releases their latest gadget and will probably be reading nonfiction iBooks from his iPad on his death bed. Because of this, we always consumed music in the newest way possible—first tapes and CDs, then the first iPod and beyond. I knew vinyl existed, I guess, but it was considered the “latin” of music formats—a dead format.
So how did I ever get into vinyl? I like to think the journey started when my Dad asked me if I wanted this new thing called an iPod and I said, “heck no! I want a Walkman!” I went back in time from there.
No, but really, I started getting into vinyl when I got to Smith College in Northampton, MA. If anyone knows the folk music world, you know that Western Mass has a strong and thriving scene. My goal when I first got to school was to see as much live music as possible—alone or with friends—but to get out and experience the artists coming through town. I noticed many artists started selling vinyl at their merch tables, and thought it was pretty cool and unique, so I started to investigate. (I like to stay hip, who doesn’t?!) I was simultaneously learning the difference between analog and digital in my courses at school, and knew I needed to get my hands on the way music was originally produced.
NEW RELEASE PICKS: Gwenifer Raymond, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (Tompkins Square) You Never Were Much of a Dancer, Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond’s debut from 2018, was a knockout that underscored the perseverance and the sheer reach of the American Primitive style while driving home the pure skill and the youthful energy of its maker. Now, ability is an essential baseline ingredient in the expression of the American Primitive, but the spirit of young is by no means a prerequisite. In Raymond’s example across this oft exquisite set of eight pieces, the spark is distinct, in her estimation punkish, and coupled with raw power and edge that took me to some rather unexpected places; during “Gwaed am Gwaed” for instance, I couldn’t shake thoughts of Sonic Youth, which might not seem like a big deal, except that it’s just Raymond playing an acoustic guitar in her basement flat (the album was recorded in quarantine). The artist describes this LP as an expression of Welsh Primitive (channeling her country’s folk horror in the process), which unwinds here as a striking new development in Guitar Soli. A
Sam Burton, I Can Go With You (Tompkins Square) Burton hails from Salt Lake City, UT but currently resides in Los Angeles. Although he’s had a CDR and a pair of cassettes released on the Chthonic label, this is his proper full-length debut, and it’s a wonderful trip into the folky singer-songwriter zone. In the PR for this release, John Tottenham describes Burton as extending from the “downer folk” subgenre and specifically names Bob Desper, Dana Westover, and Tucker Zimmerman as antecedents. I think that’s cool, but I’ll merely add that these 11 songs also strike my ears as reflective of Fred Neil and the Tims, Hardin and Buckley…make that prime Tim Buckley. Now, many capable contempo songwriters can strap on a guitar, step in front of a mic, and play the approximation game (which might be why Tottenham chose a different route of comparison), but Burton elevates matters significantly through compositions that reveal nary a hint of anxiety over any perceived similarities. The production by Burton and Jarvis Taveniere is faultless, and the playing is simply exquisite. One of the surprises of 2020. A
Susan Alcorn Quintet, Pedernal (Relative Pitch) Alcorn is well-described as a pioneer of the pedal steel guitar in improvised music, though most of her work has been in solo or duo settings. However, along with the size of the band, Pedernal is further distinguished as the first release devoted to Alcorn’s compositions. Her cohorts here are Mark Feldman on violin, Mary Halvorson on guitar, Michael Formanek on bass, and Ryan Sawyer on drums, a group of stellar players that can bring these elevated pieces to life without a hitch. There is familiarity here, as Alcorn plays in the octet of Halvorson, and with the guitarist and Formanek comprising 2/3rds of Thumbscrew. Indeed, a stated goal of Alcorn’s was to make this album with friends, but the pedal steel/ guitar/ violin melodic core and the sheer individual distinctiveness of the three raise Pedernal to rare heights. Formanek and Sawyer are expressive in the rhythm spot, and Alcorn’s compositions are splendid; I adore finale “Northeast Rising Sun.” Note: the CD and digital are available 11/13 but pressing plant delays have pushed back the vinyl until December. A
REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICK: Love Tractor, S/T (HHBTM) For the October 23 drop of Record Store Day 2020, Love Tractor released new versions of two songs from this 1982 album, the Athens, GA band’s first (which has itself been remixed for this rerelease). The year of release positions them as one of the foundational acts in their scene, which became a huge deal in the College/ Alternative rock scheme of things, but if you are unfamiliar with Love Tractor and are imagining some variation on bookish jangle mumble, well don’t. If this non-vocal unit is reminiscent of any of their Athens contemporaries, it’s Pylon, but only a little bit, and mainly because the songs on this record possess an undercurrent that could be considered dancy. Really though, Love Tractor’s instrumental nature and the slightly Wavy angle of the songs has me thinking of the Portland, OR band of the same era, Pell Mell. Many outfits that operate sans a singer attempt to impress the listener with sheer ability. Love Tractor’s approach lacks ego, which nearly 40 years hence remains refreshing. A-
Astoria, OR | Video Horizons reopens downtown with records, vintage wear: After nearly 36 years of operating Video Horizons, Neal Cummings sees it as his duty to keep one of the region’s few remaining video rental stores going. Cummings left his expansive old location on Astor Street and reopened in a smaller storefront on Duane Street near Heritage Square. He subleased the basement to a record store and will soon have a vintage shop in his main showroom. “It’s just a matter of survival,” Cummings said of the move. “The overhead is lower here, so I’m able to survive because of it. And I love Duane Street, because it’s kind of a burgeoning area of town.” Cummings originally opened in 1984 and spent his first 18 years along Marine Drive near the site of Fresenius Kidney Care dialysis center. He moved east onto Astor Street in 2002 and stayed there until closing the doors to the public during the coronavirus pandemic and struggling to eke out enough business from a curbside pickup model. …Cummings subleased the basement underneath the video store to Richard Moore, a music collector in the process of building displays for his estimated collection of 
Rolling Stone: The 80 Greatest Albums of 1980: What came out of all this was, arguably, the greatest year for great albums ever. It was the end— the end of the Seventies — and everyone was more than a little antsy to get going on whatever was about to come next. In terms of music, the new decade started off like someone had fired a starter’s pistol. It’s fitting that the Clash’s London Calling, which is ranked Number One on our list of the best albums of 1980, came out in January of that year, and if you listen to the records that follow it on the list, there’s a palpable sense of clearing away the past to 
Little Richard’s passing has been one of the lowlights of 2020. But one of the salves to this burn of bad news has been Omnivore’s reissue of Richard’s early ’70s albums for Reprise, which help to illuminate a comeback that produced a few minor hit singles and an appealing if uneven vitality beginning with The Rill Thing in 1970 and continuing with The King of Rock and Roll the following year (both were covered in our New in Stores column the week of September 17).
Miami, FL | Sweat Records Announces $15 Wage for Employees: Last Tuesday, Florida voters overwhelming supported raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2026. It’s a life-changing result for many workers who barely scrape at the current $8.56 rate, a wage that has barely kept up with the rate of inflation in the past 20 years. There’s also the cost of living to factor in: Miami’s a notoriously expensive city, where $8.56 an hour is hardly enough to cover basic necessities like food, housing, and transport. At the Little Haiti record store Sweat Records, its eight employees were already getting more than the current minimum wage, with everyone earning over $10 an hour. On October 29, Sweat Records announced it would pay its employees $15 per hour. “Can we afford to do it? Barely. Is it the right thing to do? 
Tokyo, JP | Change of tune: Japan music fans moving from CDs to streaming services: Japanese music enthusiasts, loyal to CDs long after the rest of the world went online, have begun reaching for the eject button and switching to streaming services as artists cancel in-store events and fans stay home because of the pandemic. Despite a slow decline in sales in the past decade, CDs are still the most popular music format in Japan, accounting for around 70% of recorded music sales last year. In the U.S. and European markets, CDs have long been relegated to the history bin in favour of online downloads and recently, streaming. Streaming services, which had accounted for less than 10% of sales in Japan until a few years ago, grew to 15% last year and will likely exceed 20% this year, said Jamie MacEwan, who covers the Japanese media business for Enders Analysis. The shift is closely watched by the global music industry because Japan is the world’s second-biggest music market after the United States, worth nearly $3 billion annually. “The crossover point where total digital revenues eclipse physical production is now just 
And after that I descended into uttering outraged gibberish while my poor girlfriend cowered at the far end of the sofa, fishing around for her son’s bb gun, which she occasionally uses to put a sudden stop to my insane ranting. There is nothing like a bb to the solar plexus to shut you up, and fast.
Atlanta, GA | Giving Record Store Day a spin at Buckhead’s Fantasyland: “…We’ve been taking part in Record Store Day since 2010. It’s a lot of work, but people love it. It’s a cool, fun event, and a great promotion for indie record stores. They come up with some great limited edition releases each year. … Most people enjoy it and have a great time — even the standing in line! People enjoy meeting and making new friends with fellow vinyl lovers. As for our store, the April RSD is always our biggest sales day of the year, and the Black Friday event is always a good day…Yeah, this year’s April RSD was postponed due to COVID. They decided to stagger the releases on three separate Saturdays, at the end of August, September and October, to keep the crowds down a bit. We weren’t sure how it was going to work out, or even if anyone was going to show up for it. But we were 
New Brunswick, NJ | A Day in the Life of Hub City’s Only Record Store: For Andrew Spina, his small business is just a continuation of a hobby that started when he was a kid. “I started collecting records pretty young, probably around twelve or thirteen, just saving up money, buying a record here and there off the boardwalk,” says Spina, inside his record store on Easton Avenue. “Then I got a little older,” Spina says, “And I found my parents’ old thing of records. And there wasn’t much in there; there was like a Beatles’ ‘Help’ and some John Denver records.” A customer places a record on the counter: “I’ll add this to the bunch.” “Yeah, take your time. And uh, you know, it went from there.” He’s answering New Brunswick Today’s questions against the heat of an early afternoon rush, having just opened his doors a few minutes ago, at 12pm sharp on this October Saturday. “Vinyl Record Shop” is hand-painted in black and gold lettering on the window front. Old 45’s are strung like Christmas ornaments behind the glass, dangling atop a few records and vintage items for sale. It’s 
