chamb117

my newborn daughter is making me feel guilty about having so many variants... and i've been trying to pare down my collection for a while now. so, here ya go. add $5 for flat rate shipping: $50: athletics - why aren't i home (2nd press, grey with white swirl /150 [black friday 2018]) $50: athletics - who you are is not enough (2nd press, clear with black smoke /100 [black friday 2017]) this is at my in-laws' house for some reason... will figure out a way to ship if you're interested but i ask for your patience in advance $50: athletics - who you are is not enough 2xLP (3rd press, dark grey /150 [black friday 2018]) the second LP consists of instrumentals

(also kind of extremely late here)... i strongly agree with the polished/squeaky clean/sterilized take. which i think is a big reason why act IV and migrant fall super flat for me, and also why i didn't really like act V at first. (i actually hated it.) but revisiting act V... the sheer number of callback makes it worthwhile, but also the production quality really plays up the wide variety of genres throughout the album, unlike act IV/migrant (which is very uniform in their sounds). so, hopefully you did revisit act V and you enjoyed it as much as i do. but if not, it is what it is!

good to know, thanks!

welp, by the time media mail shows up, it'll be sold out. pink standalone is already gone. shell out or get out, i guess. fuckin sucks. gonna hope that white is still in stock but not holding my breath (edit: still 639 white standalone left so there's still hope)

i only checked in on VC every now and again so apologies for bumping this thread. the B&W art with gold vinyl looks sharp as fuck as long as it's actually opaque gold and not clear piss yellow. i wouldn't expect any less than the former from triple crown, but damn. my takes that are probably hot: act I is... not very good at all! at least compared to everything that came after it. extremely boring/dull to me. how can anyone listen to act I and think, yeah, this is definitely as dynamic (not to mention as well-produced) as all the later stuff? it's an absolute drag. act II is better! i'm glad i didn't quit after act I because act II is dope. some no-doubt all-timers on that one. but it still has its moments where it drags. casey hits his stride with act III. i have no idea how ethan (above) or anyone can find this album forgettable when it fuckin rips. act IV is... also not very good at all. except "a night on the town," which is unreal how good it is. everything else on the album pales in comparison. i didn't like migrant, though, and the two were written back-to-back, so i chalk it up to casey taking a different route (that i did not enjoy). i hated act V at first... but it grew into one of my favorites. and after listening to it hundreds of times i don't know how i didn't like it at first. but i think that first impression might be what deters folks like derek, too. but "the most cursed of hands," "mr. usher", "the march" – pretty easy top-10 all-time for me. i agree with ethan that "beginnings" is a woefully weak closer and was such a bummer to know it ends on that note (TBD). so........ act III > act V (open to switching them) > act II >>>>>>>>> act I > act IV. also open to switching I and IV, dgaf, barely listen to them. to reiterate: migrant is also also also not very good light me up, fellas

taking back sunday – louder now gold /800 THE JACKET IS DAMAGED (bent/creased). came that way from merchnow/hopeless and i was fuckin bummed because there were no replacement copies, being sold out. ended up never opening it... probably never will. so it can be yours for cheaper if you're not as bothered by the damage as i was/am. https://www.ebay.com/itm/293621173147

^ joe hisaishi's work throughout the ghibli universe is incredible, and princess mononoke might be his best work. absolutely kills me that it's gonna be like $60 after shipping but i'll absolutely shell out.

maybe i'm being dense but i don't understand how the clear w/ splatter variants were available "only at these shows" if those were the shows that were being recorded. ????? what fwiw merchnow half/half is /300. edit: rest of this post was idle and false speculation about press #s

yoooooooooooooo FUCK YEAH!! absolutely no joke stoked to bump the cassette in the '98 tacoma i inherited from my father-in-law. he painted flames on the sides. i'm gonna be the talk of the town for anyone who missed it, the 10.0 is the first in a decade, since kanye already mentioned i am absolutely ok with people disagreeing on the 10... it's almost impossible to divorce oneself from fiona's near-mythos at this point, so i'm not going to fault a trigger-happy music critic for slapping the 10 on her. like seeing a damn unicorn. even if the unicorn was not as cool as you thought it'd be, you're still probably going to hype the shit out of the unicorn to your friends edit: i would knock it down to 9.9 exclusively for the nonsense dolphin noises she makes at the end of "i want you to love me"

the $10 option on stranger in the alps (which i've been procrastinating on buying for a long time) pushed me over the top for the secretly variant. $45 is rough, especially when amoeba and landlocked were both $4 cheaper than secretly for punisher alone, but... this softens the blow a bit.

my guess for single sleeve vs gatefold is the single sleeve stack more easily, whereas stacking gatefolders would aesthetically be less pleasing. not saying that's a defensible rationale, although (again, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, which a lot of this is based on) i totally understand it

also, like highfives, i have represses of I–III and originals of IV–V. i will compare once i'm not suffocating under cardboard boxes. casey and company did a great job with art direction. all the colorways match the art extremely well. link to pics of the set: https://imgur.com/a/ZzN6uUd

here's my quick review of the contents; i won't have time to listen until at least sunday or monday (an agonizing wait) as we are in the middle of moving and renovating — new art for acts I–III same art for acts IV–V fox and the hunt art as advertised online an empty sleeve for "act VI: the hanged man"???? did anyone else hear or know about this? are we back on for act VI (was it not supposed to be empty?), or is this just a goodie for box set folks? admittedly i haven't been following the news on this too closely. i don't have many box sets, so with that caveat in mind, this box is quite nice. easily the nicest i have. very durable and sharply presented. it certainly makes the steep price point make it feel more like it was worth it. pics in my next post.

was pretty stoked to receive this (although is it worth the cost of admission? eh). i would be surprised if they ran another press only because they've had no problem leaning into exclusive releases (we look like lightning 7", most recently), but it'd be a cool 7" to have.

looks like the same guy who did that insert/poster art for the latest TWY album. not really my jam either. FYI, sold out at cold cuts, 350 left at merchnow