rcafilm

Both songs are terrific, but the ending of Cathedrals is insane. These guys keep impressing me every time they release new music.

I did see that in my email not long after I posted. The only thing I halfway buy from it is "complicated licensing reasons", but if that's the case then they should really just lead with that ("hey guys, sorry, we were only allowed to press X many and decided the best way to do this was FF") instead of some weird sidetrack about how people who buy vinyl online apparently don't support musicians (...?) and an accusation that anyone who doesn't understand why a release would be eternally limited to one festival doesn't want other people to have nice things. I generally like what I see of the UOV guys and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because they probably get a lot of rude correspondence, but that answer rubbed me the wrong way.

Can someone explain to me what's the point of going to all the trouble to press these records and make a nice package and inserts and whatnot, only sell them exclusively physically in one location once ever? This is taking the rarity aspect of vinyl way too far.

I hate everything about this. Glad I already own the old pressing.

I'd be tempted to pay VMP prices for that if it was 45, but for some reason it's not?

Okay so I finally got around to listening to my first pressing and it was quite the journey. It's never spectacular, but it starts out sounding very competently pressed, surprisingly good clarity, presence, and dynamic range. There's an interesting analog tone to it that's surprising for a digitally-sourced master pressed in 2012... doesn't have the harshness of the CD rip pressings so many other albums of this era got. As you can guess, there's inner groove distortion on each side of this 89-minute behemoth (if somebody really wanted to do this right, they'd need a third disc), but the degree and length of the IGD varied pretty majorly (side A wasn't too bad, side C was rough). I did completely forget that Spay Me somehow got punted onto the end of Disc 1 for this, which is weird and a bummer because it was a victim of quite a bit of IGD. My copy does have a bit of surface noise, too, but it's only occasionally distracting. Overall, when it's good, it's actually quite good, but I'd say about 40% of the tracks are affected by IGD to some degree. I'll be curious to hear the reviews from this pressing, but I don't see it solving the biggest issue, so I'm not planning on shelling out for it.

That was my thought as well. Guess it's time to give it another spin.

Hard to watch one of my historically favorite songwriters descend like this the past several years. I listened to the album once through today and don't foresee ever needing to revisit it.

Now you just need to hope someone on here got two A/B discs.

I can actually really dig the new song. The last 2 albums were great but a little samey sounding, and I think NJ is at their best when they reinvent their sounda bit with each record. I like the look of the splatter but I assume it'll sound pretty rough, so I guess I'll go for a sea blue. "Electric" blue seems intriguing but I assume it's just cokebottle in reality.

Finally got a chance to listen to this today. Sounded better than I expected but not as good as I hoped. For being under 20 minutes per side, I expected less IGD. Clarity and dynamic range are uneven throughout but never amazing. There's definitely a source-inherent crunch to this album, and I think they did a pretty good job of making it listenable in the transition to vinyl, but it's still definitely there. I was listening via headphones, so maybe speakers will be more forgiving. For a long awaited pressing, I think it could've been worse, but I'd like to think it could have been better too, even considering source limitations. I have a yellow copy, so I'd be curious to hear any comments about the quality of the other variants.

The same thing that's going on with every vinyl release: Production delays. If it helps, this PO dropped shortly after the PO for He Is Legend's I Am Hollywood, which just arrived today for me. I would expect this one to ship within a month.

Hard to PO with no tracklist, but I do love this version of Coffee.

Eh, give it another year.

Music video was kinda lame, but the single is really great. Will be picking this up for sure. Seems from the press release and single like this is going to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from the sonic darkness of the S/T album and the distorted loudness of their most recent LP+EP. Something closer to the brighter aspects of Antics and Admire with softer, more present vocals. I can really get into that. Looking forward to hearing more.