Let’s face it, who doesn’t love at least one Elvis Costello record? True, the man may be judged for his latter day sins at this point, but the man created some perfect pop records early on in his career. The Gay Blades guitarist/vocalist Clark Westfield examines Costello’s Armed Forces in his Record (Re)Collection. Check it out below. Be sure to check out The Gay Blades latest full-length Ghosts, out now from Triple Crown/4Never Records.

“Alison” is a song that lives in the ether of music history. It’s a song that everyone knows, but when you are a kid, you never bother to know who the artist is. It isn’t The Beatles or The Stones. It isn’t Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. It isn’t even David Bowie, not that you know any of his songs besides “Captain Tom” anyway. “Alison” sounds like something in which Steely Dan (who you know cause your dad loves “Reeling In The Years”) might have had a hand in, and it really is good enough to live on the fringe of the great song lists. It’s pleasant and interesting enough to remember the words, but as a budding adolescent barraged with terrible pap and no cool older siblings, it’s never intriguing enough to really turn you on.

But a bunch of years later, when the old man plays My Aim Is True in its entirety, however, I finally discover the context in which “Alison” exists. On a record of bashed out concise pop songs, so brittle and urgent, so refreshing and yet so ancient sounding, the very plain and jazz tinged ballad is luckily the red herring. It’s an important discovery, because even though I love the collection of songs, I feel myself loving the artist even more. True, My Aim Is True is as brilliant a debut as one could hope for and This Year’s Model is a nearly perfect pop effort, but Elvis Costello’s third full length, Armed Forces, is just fucking aces, and in this humble, barely literate fan’s opinion, it is Costello’s best work.

Read more after the jump.

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Tags: Record (Re)Collection, The Gay Blades, guest column by Matthew
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For this installment of the Record (Re)Collection-Fest 7 Edition, Chris Vandeviver of Sakes Alive!! writes about Crime In Stereo’s 2006 full-length The Troubled Stateside. We highly recommend that you check out SA!!’s brand new 7-inch Act I and that you go see them at The Fest 7. They will definitely be one of the highlights. Read on. 

Crime In Stereo - The Troubled Stateside
By Chris Vandeviver

I know it seems like an older record would make sense for a Record Re-Collection. And honestly, D4’s Midwestern Songs and Circle Takes the Square’s As the Roots Undo immediately jumped at me. However, these monumental albums are obvious tomes. Crime In Stereo’s Nitro effort, though, doesn’t strike me as obvious as the aforementioned. My life, however, was brought back full circle due to this brilliant album.

Imagine the image of this modern (young) man: forty hours a week at shitty, near minimum wage hell; walking half an hour each morning at 5:30 a.m. to work, and 2:30 p.m. home to being tired as hell; no direction, and musical efforts imploding to ego-maniacal twenty year olds; your roommate fucks up and sends your rent money to his school loan collector, and by the time you find out you are being served an eviction notice, thus forcing you to return to the parents that you try so hard to avoid. Did I mention life sucked? Cause it did.

Read more after the jump.

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Tags: Record (Re)Collection, Sakes Alive!!, The Fest, The Fest 7, guest column by Matthew
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When I was trying to figure out which band to feature first in our Fest 7 segment, Leatherface was the obvious choice. I am insanely excited to these punk rock legends in the flesh down in Gainesville. I recently asked the band to talk about a record that meant something to them when they were growing up and guitarist Dickie Hammond sent me a story involving the Stiff Little Fingers’ classic Inflammable Material. We’ll have some more from the Leatherface crew in the next few weeks so be on the lookout for that.

Band: Stiff Little Fingers
Record: Inflammable Material
By Dickie Hammond

It was November 1978. I had just moved with my family from Morpeth, Northumberland, England to Ryhope, which is a village outside Sunderland. The school I went to was Ryhope Comprehensive [and] it had the worst record in the North East. I was twelve and my only saving grace was the Sunderland Football Club, who I supported from the age of six. They had a school disco at dinner time and punk was the music being played. That’s when I first heard “Alternative Ulster.” It was the greatest intro and song I’d ever heard.

I had a paper round and saved up two weeks money, £5 at the time, and went to HMV and there it was. “Suspect Device,” “Wasted Life,” “Barbed Wire Love,” “Alternative Ulster,” “State Of Emergency,” and “Breakout” were the first ones that stood out. I wore the grooves out on it. It still sounds as fresh today as it did thirty years ago. Pure fuckin class!

Tags: Leatherface, Record (Re)Collection, The Fest, The Fest 7, guest column by Matthew
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For this installment of Record (Re)Collection, we’ve got an essay from Scott McCloud, singer/guitarist for Paramount Styles and Girls Against Boys.  In his column, Scott talks about Tortoise’s 1996 full-length Millions Now Living Will Never Die.  Paramount Styles’ debut album Failure American Style is out now via Touch & Go, so be sure to pick it up.

Tortoise-Millions Now Living Will Never Die
By Scott McCloud

I was on a European “press tour” in the winter of 1996; a mission to talk a good game about my band Girls Against Boys’ upcoming House of GVSB album. When I was in Berlin, someone at our German distributor handed me an advance copy of the Tortoise album Millions Now Living Will Never Die. I tucked the thin CD into my travel bag, along with the growing pile, figuring I’d “get to it” eventually (probably never).

A couple mornings later, I was waiting for a flight out of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, an old Nazi-era airport close to the city center.  Dawn was just breaking and I was sitting in a lounge looking out the window at the blue morning light across the tarmac.  Bored, I slipped the CD into my Walkman and hit play.  I don’t know if it was something about the scene being somehow absolutely ideal but when the first few minutes of the first song “Djed” played, it struck me as so perfect to the times, even to the transient setting of the antiquated airport lounge I was sitting in.

Continue reading Scott’s column after the jump!

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Tags: Girls Against Boys, Paramount Styles, Record (Re)Collection, guest column by Matthew
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We’ve got another Record (Re)Collection for you today. For this edition, Alex Tween, leader of Brooklyn’s The Forms, writes about Codeine’s 1994 full-length The White Birch. The album is seen as one of the definitive “slowcore” albums and was the indie rock band’s last longplayer. In his column, Alex talks about his discovery of the band through a Pavement show, to his full on fascination with the band’s masterpiece. Check it out below.

Codeine - The White Birch
By Alex Tween

This column, while nominally about Codeine’s The White Birch, in reality has an altogether different protagonist; the band Pavement. I think most would agree that Pavement made very good records, particularly early on in their career. They also received their share of criticism for being a terrible live band. I happened to like Pavement live, mostly because they had such a massive catalog that they would play just about any song from. However, what was always remarkable about any Pavement show was the opening acts. Many a band in Pavement’s position fill those opening slots with some friend’s band that isn’t very good, or maybe they’ll auction the slots off to the highest bidder, or perhaps let their booking agent use them to secure future favors from other booking agents. Pavement used those opening slots to expose their audience to unusually great and challenging new music that, at the time, no one had ever heard of, but that people are still listening to today. I saw Guided By Voices, Tortoise, The White Stripes, Dirty Three, and Shudder To Think open for Pavement, just to name a few. But the band that really made the biggest impression on me was Codeine.

Read more of Alex’s column after the jump.

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Tags: Record (Re)Collection, The Forms by Matthew
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