Frightened Rabbit - The Woodpile

How very fitting. The first single I've bought since moving to Scotland, and of course it's Frightened Rabbit. A week before the release of their 4th album Pedestrian Verse (which, of course, there will be a post about on here at some point next week), this single is the second taste of new material after the rather excellent State Hospital EP. I picked it up at Avalanche Records, which is fast becoming one of my favourite things about living in Edinburgh.

There's only a certain number of times I can talk about how lovely Frabbit's artwork is. There's clearly a lot of thought put into it every time and it's just nice. In this case I like the little monogrammed metronomes (at least I presume they're metronomes) and the slightly worn label and the reappearance of the triple-barred cross. Consistently-themed artwork is something I love, and as such I love this.

Those metronomes reappear on the record label, and there's more worn labels everywhere. Mmmm. Still no coloured vinyl, but I'm sure we can let it slide. Apparently this is a "limited" single, but I can't find any numbers anywhere so that's a piece of information we'll have to overlook for now.

I'm going to begin, in slightly unusual fashion, by talking about this single's B-side. Today's Cross is unlike any Frabbit song I've ever heard before. It's almost a ROCK SONG, which is quite weird to hear. Definitely need a few more listens to get used to that one. The Woodpile, on the other hand, is unmistakeably the work of Frightened Rabbit. It's been up on youtube since December but it's taken me until tonight to listen to it (the entire month of December was pretty much a write-off due to overwhelming sadness about Tubelord's split meaning I listened to basically nothing but them). So I heard The Woodpile for the first time a little over an hour ago, and have just finished listening to it for the 10th time. My word, it is incredible. It starts in quite a sedate manner, and then the chorus drops and everything is amazing. There's even what might loosely be described as a guitar solo. In a Frabbit song! Madness. Between this and State Hospital, things are looking really good for Pedestrian Verse. Roll on next Monday.

Colour - Anthology

Oh. So the whole "catch up on posts while I'm unemployed" was kind of ruined by getting a job, but that in itself will provide me with a whole bunch more records to inevitably forget to write about. This is one I pre-ordered a mere two days before receiving the job offer, so maybe it was a bit of a good omen. I'd been thinking of buying the CD version for a good while having spent most of my job-hunt listening to it on Spotify as motivation, so when Kev announced BSM was doing a vinyl pressing for the first time I figured I had to do it. Making sure I got the raddest version before it sold out was an exercise in shouting at my phone until paypal decided to function properly, but as you'll see later it was totally worth it.

Really plain sleeve. It reminds me a little of the Bear vs. Shark repressing actually, in terms of the colour. Just a single label to let you know what the album is. I like it.

Just to demonstrate how plain the sleeve is, this is the back. Another single black and white label, this time just for the tracklisting.

There's also a pretty snazzy folded insert. On one side we have a whole load of little pictures of the band...

...and on the other a whole bunch of info and thanks and some more photos. I do love an insert, me.

Hoooooooooly shit you know when I said I got the raddest colour? I REALLY MEANT THE RADDEST COLOUR. Red on clear, absolutely phenomenal choice. I love clear records and I love coloured records, so this is just the best of both worlds. Limited to 100 copies and absolutely beautiful. Love you forever, Kev.

As is implied by the title, "Anthology" is a collection of all of Colour's releases. I suppose it's slightly odd then that I think it flows really well as an album. There's the right amount of respite from the glorious angular poppy songs Colour specialised in. If that last bit wasn't a slight giveaway, it should come as no surprise to you that the band are musically (and it turns out personally) close to my dear - now sadly departed - Tubelord. They're slightly less yelpy but just as catchy, the highlight of this album being the joyous Unicorns and slow-building Dinosaurs. Both great song titles, too. I wish they hadn't split up, but maybe we'll see another release from Tangled Hair (the band Alan and James formed following the demise of Colour) soon. Until that happens, this can definitely keep me ticking over.