Tuesday 31 July 2012

Your Favorite Trainwreck LP

Probably about two or so years ago I got some email from someone in the States asking me to review a split 7" featuring a band called Your Favorite Trainwreck. It did peak my interest a bit because the email said it featured the vocalists from Farside & Gameface, two bands that I enjoyed a lot when they were active. I think the email may have linked me to an mp3 or something. Dude seemed to have missed the point of what my blog was. I said I would feature the record if he actually sent me a record. He never did. A couple of years later and a full length has just dropped. I wasn't sure whether to bother with it, but after checking a couple of songs online and finding them better than I expected, I figured it was worth picking up.

I got this from RevHQ. It's not on Revelation, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was as bits of the packaging look just like Rev releases, such as the 'color vinyl' sticker and the Revelation logo on the back of the sleeve.

As much as I like this record, I think this is a poor example of a gatefold sleeve. Pictures of some random crap. I'm getting a massive deja-vu vibe from this but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is that this reminds me of.

After being initially unimpressed with this LP, I have since found myself playing it every day for the past week or two. Popeye from Farside takes lead vocal duties on a couple of songs, and the way I see it, his voice is/was Farside. So these songs may as well be Farside songs in my book. And given that Farside are one of my all time favourite bands, this is not a bad thing. Jeff Caudill also has a great voice, and the songs that he leads on are also good, and again, because of the vocal, just make me think of the later Gameface stuff. Ok, so there are a couple of songs that have keyboards in, and although these irritated me at first, I now barely notice. And as was the case with the Gypsy LP a couple of months ago, I can feel this LP still growing on me with every listen. At this rate it may well make my best of the year list, if I do one. It's just a shame about the record cover though, which is (by anyone's standards) pretty damn awful. Still, once I file it away I'll never have to see it again, so it's not too much of an issue.

3 comments:

J@screamingforrecords said...

I've seen this band mentioned and this LP for sale but had no idea it featured Popeye until I read this. Think I'll have a listen based on that.

Mike said...

I want to like this, but unlike Gypsy, I don't think it'll win me over no matter how many times I listen to it. Maybe I just need to find and listen to only the songs that Popeye sings.

Jeff said...

There are a couple of songs that I'm not wild about, but overall I am really liking this record. The songs that are good are really good, I think.