Crywank - James Is Going To Die Soon

A guy I know called James started writing acoustic music a little while ago, under the unusual moniker of Crywank. He recorded an album about a year or so ago I think, and now it's been released on a limited run of tapes. I bought one. Here it is:

Yeah, Javier Bardem! The release of the tape saw 13 different covers done of various white males, with 4 copies of each cover done. I chose this one because Javier is an absolute badass. All of the covers are black and white and look really good, you can see a picture of them all here.

Cassettes aren't as nice to look at as a lovely record, but this is all white with no writing on it at all and looks neat. It also came with a little folded lyric sheet, which is nice.

The music itself is pretty good. Some heartfelt acoustic music with pretty good lyrics in parts. The recording quality isn't the best, but it does the job. The entire album is up for free download here or on a pay-what-you-want from Bancamp here, and I encourage you to at least give it a listen 'cause the first 3 tracks are genuinely awesome. If you're really interested, there are still a few of the cassettes available here for the lovely price of £3.50 including shipping. Rad.

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

Oh man. This is a huge one.  My second favourite album of all time, an album I never planned or expected to own on vinyl. Indeed, I owe a massive thanks to my wonderful friend Marcus who was considering buying it but decided not to so that I could. What a guy. The album was a spectacularly cheap £7 from Rise, which made me very happy. As with my The Winter Of Mixed Drinks post, I've included the CD in my pictures so we can see similarities etc.

I love this cover. The 12" version is a little more creamy in colour than the CD (although my crappy picture doesn't really show that) but both have the same odd sketch. I don't fully understand it, but it looks nice.

Black vinyl again from Frabbit. I wish they'd do some coloured records, but in this case it provides a nice contrast with the artwork. I also absolutely love the labels on the record being the same as the print on the CD, it's more brilliant continuity from a band who seem to like it as much as I do. The little heart model in the top-right corner of both the record sleeve and CD case looks really cool, too.

It's about now that I should try and speak about the music. Of the many Frabbit posts I've done on this blog, I've never actually covered any of the tracks from this album. It's an insular, emotional, beautiful album. I can't do it justice with words, you just need to listen to it. If you are lazy and want me to pick just one track, it'd be Old Old Fashioned. My first exposure to Frabbit came through seeing them support Biffy Clyro (who else?) on two consecutive nights. At the time, I didn't particularly "get it" but I liked one track from their set. When I got home I listened to it again. And again. And again and again and again. I then decided to listen to the other tracks I could find, and just became hooked on Frabbit. The rest, as they say, is history. That one song was Old Old Fashioned. You should listen to it. As with The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, there's a track-by-track summary of the album written by the band's lead singer Scott Hutchison. It's another great read, which you can find here.


I've delayed doing this post for a couple of weeks while I waited for this photo to surface:

Yep. I met Scott before their headlining set at 2000 Trees. I'd love to pretend to you, dear reader, that I was calm and eloquent and composed at that moment, but that'd be an absolute lie. He is one of my favourite songwriters of all time. I told him how much I love the band and basically freaked out a bit. He was nice and polite and everything I'd have liked him to be. Amazing.

Errors - A Rumour In Africa

This past week or two I've managed to amass a few new records so I'm going to have a little diversion from what could easily have become a solid chain of Biffy posts. Errors are a glitchy instrumental electronic band from Glasgow (obviously) who I enjoy a lot. I spotted this single for £2 on Norman Records (the wonderful people that they are) and had to pick it up.

The cover has a lot of chickens on it. I don't really know why. It reminds me of a kaleidoscope, which is cool. The font's nice as well.

Look how pretty that is! Half creamy yellow, half translucent red. Whoever thought of that deserves a medal, because it's superb. The back cover of the single is also a nice picture of the band looking jolly in front of a decidedly British seafront. The A-side to this single is A Rumour In Africa, the excellent second song from the band's latest album Come Down With Me. It's fairly typical of the band, and is very catchy. I suck at describing this kind of music, so you'll have to listen to it yourself if you're interested. Here's a link. The B-side is a slightly slower song called Beat The Bookies which is also pretty good. All in all, not too shabby indeed.