The Best Vinyl of In Between Days
Welcome to Hump Day News’ profound analysis of the greatest vinyl available from artists performing at the 2023 edition of the music festival.
Why vinyl, Hump Day?
Sure, it’s heavy & more expensive than a download & you need to keep feeding your record player new needles every so often. On the other hand, the sound quality is great, the album covers live with you forever as works of art unto themselves, and the physical format can’t be stolen off your phone by weirdo corporations that have decided the lease of the online format (which you thought you purchased) is expired. Plus, streaming sucks for artists money-wise and physical formats of whatever (records, t-shirts, beer koozies) help fund the music scene you love.
OK, on to the categories, each quantified on a 0-1 scale…
sonic fit
period-ness
posterity
novelty
cool
monumentalism
Sonic Fit
Sonic Fit is all about connecting the dots between the sound of the music and the strengths of vinyl as a medium. We’re not going to get into a debate about the superiority of vinyl over other formats, nor engage the naysayers. For our purposes here all that needs to be said is that vinyl has its strengths (and weaknesses) and some of those sonic strengths match up really well with the sound of certain instruments, certain styles of music, or a certain ethos of recording.
The Beths are a rock n roll band. You knew that. But what does a rock n roll band sound like?
On the deluxe version of the 2xLP Expert In A Dying Field, it sounds like everything under the sun. For sure it’s a guitar-led jamboree; you just never know to expect a big wall of distortion or the quiet mewling of a solo acoustic.
There are galaxies of sound buried within the outer limits of this double album. A tremendous accomplishment, and a tremendous challenge for the sound engineer. Lucky for us, it’s pressed to vinyl, which handles the range and depth and mojo of The Beths’ ambitious record with aplomb.
Period-ness
Period-ness is not a word, but what we mean is whether the historicality of the record format is being folded into music experience. Whatever the vinyl bros say about the medium’s resurgence, vinyl as a format is past its peak and never returning to its glory days. That’s OK. Music is timeless and there are many artists who live their entire creative life exploring the sights and sounds of times past when vinyl was at its peak. For artists that do this well, it just makes sense to release music in vinyl format.
Even without the cover art, Fantastic Cat’s The Very Best of Fantastic Cat would be a period-ness slamdunk. This band has that old time rock n roll mojo, from the songwriting, to recording, to the performance instincts. And you can add to that art design.
The cover for their “Very Best” album cops the look of cover art from the 60s and 70s. You know the covers we’re talking about… Holdovers from the label factory days in which musicians were slotted in and out of the studio like cattle, and the album design reflected the notion of replaceability.
The formatting for all the albums across an entire label would be the same. Paste the label imprint somewhere prominent, slot in a new title card for the new artists, throw down one cheesy publicity photo on the front, then have your in-house copywriter crank out about 100-200 words extolling the musical virtues of the artist in question.
Bob Dylan released a few records with this same basic formatting, except he started to juice the details by pasting his own beat poetry on the back cover. How’s that for a path to a Nobel?
Posterity
Posterity is about what lasts, either in terms of the physical strength of the vinyl medium, or in terms of artist’s intent, or both. As a matter of fact, vinyl records are a hardy species inasmuch as that can be said about any physical format. Sure, they don’t like scratches. But a few nicks and scrapes can add character to the playback of a record, whereas the tiniest scratch of a CD drops you straight down 700 floors into the “Infinite Skipping Track” layer of hell.
Anniversary editions scream “posterity.” You probably already own the album, or used to own it.
If you’re buying Blitzen Trapper’s seminal Furr in the 10th anniversary “Loser” edition, it’s because you love the album enough to buy the best version of it possible, and make it a permanent fixture in your music collection.
Like the leatherbound volumes on the bookshelf in a classy lawyer procedural drama, this album is here to stay.
Novelty
Novelty might seem superficial, but catching the eye in a crowded market place is nothing to sniff at. Vinyl lends itself to novelty design in many ways because the surface area of the format is BIG. Clever covers, colored vinyl, album inserts and extras. There are no limits except your imagination and your budget.
SLOTHRUST has some choice vinyl options in its discography, from Show Me How You Want It To Be to Everyone Else. But the band outdid itself with its designs for the latest release Parallel Timeline.
We’re going to have to draw in other formats here to truly communicate the vibe. It’s a strong rainbow aesthetic, and it pops up in vinyl and CD. Love that tri-color vinyl! And whatever you have to say about CD as a format, pro or con, you’re going to love that hazy, gazy rainbow spinning in your CD player.
Two other novelty shout outs. Yoke Lore put out its Absolutes EP on a 10”. The standard proportion is 12” for the full-length album. A single can be put out on a 7”. So naturally an EP, which occupies that middle territory, might be a good fit on a 10”. Makes sense, but you don’t see this size of records pressed as often, despite the fact that EPs are released now as much as they ever were. There are different legitimate reasons for that fact – most of them boiling down to the boring financials of cost/benefit. Suffice to say, treasure the format when you find it in a store.
Finally, The Gypsy Moths Wollaston Theatre is 45 RPM and 12”. That’s unusual, and definitely novel. You normally associate a 12” record with 33 RPM. Did The Gypsy Moths go for faster rotations because they didn’t have that many songs for the album? Maybe – and maybe this would have been a perfect situation for a 10”?
Cool
There’s a school of thought that says ‘Cool’ is a subjective factor. Drop out of that school! Cool Rules Everything Around Me.
Alright, we know we’re cheating by including a cassette tape and merch pin in a Best Vinyl roundup. But we don’t care. Cool don’t play by the rules! Or Cool makes its own rules? Something to that effect…
Say hello to Mint Green’s cassette format of their album Growth. No one is going to argue that cassettes give you superior sound quality (unless they’re a psychopath), but what they do offer is affordability, variety, and spontaneity. Tapes are cheap enough to manufacture that you can dream them up and push them out to fans quicker. Plus, you can dye that plastic all sorts of colors to fit your aesthetic.
And buttons? Who doesn’t love a bad ass button? Pin this “Baby Bird” from Sweet Petunia on your favorite stonewashed, bleached, tassel-strewn, bedazzled denim jacket for a look that says, “Hey world, don’t give me a parking ticket!”
Monumentalism
Our final category is Monumentalism. Probably every album that an artist has sweated and labored over feels monumental to them. But are all these albums the kind that will make the music buyer turn their head and think “What the fuck is that over there?” For better or worse – we all know monumentalism can be awful like Trump hero portraiture. The albums on this list, though, are here for good reasons.
A double-album is always going to hit that “monumental” button for us.
Once again we look to The Beths’ An Expert In A Dying Field (Deluxe Edition) and Blitzen Trapper’s Furr (Anniversary Edition).
It’s not just the two records of colored vinyl that makes a statement. It’s all the fixings jam-packed between the covers. The lettuce, onion, tomato, relish, hot peppers, pickles, bacon, and salsa slathered between the two buns.
You have to see these monumental albums to believe them. You might even want to listen to them too.
Complete Profound Algorithm Results
Sunday recap from In Between Days 2023 at Veterans Memorial Stadium.