New North Carolina Reissues Getting NC-Specific Represses!
This week we've got three North Carolina Indie Record Store Exclusives! These are specific, very limited, color variants that were pressed for and are only available at record shops in North Carolina. Coming in this Friday 11/5/21, we've got...
THE BRIEF ENCOUNTER - INTRODUCING THE BRIEF ENCOUNTER LP
*Carolina Blue Vinyl
*Limited to 300 total copies
MOUNTAIN MAN - MADE THE HARBOR: 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION 2LP
*Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl
*Limited to 150 total copies
SYLVAN ESSO - SYLVAN ESSO LP
*Translucent Green Vinyl
*Limited to 150 total copies
These will likely go fast, so hit up the webstore through the linked titles above to reserve for later pickup or swing into the shop if you're interested!
Limit (2) copies of each title per person - anything over will be refunded.
INFO:
THE BRIEF ENCOUNTER's 1977 debut LP:
If you own a copy of this 1977 release on legendary Nashville deejay John Richbourg’s Seventy-Seven Records label, then you are on your way to amassing generational wealth! But it’s not just the scarcity of the original pressing that has driven prices to sky-high levels…the opening track proclaims “We’re the baddest group of people you’ve ever seen,” and it’s not wrong. Funkadelic, Isley Bros., O’Jays, Kool & the Gang…pick your favorite ‘70s R&B act and this rural North Carolina (!) band measures up with booty-shaking bass and drums, deft wah-wah guitar, beautifully arranged horn charts, and angelic group harmonies employed with equal aplomb to steamy funk workouts (“Time Is Moving”) and sublime soul balladry (“Loving and Caring”), all written by the band itself. To honor the roots of The Brief Encounter, this first-ever U.S. reissue is being pressed in North Carolina on smoky (mountain) vinyl…don’t miss this chance to grab one of most elusive soul classics of the ‘70s!
MOUNTAIN MAN's 2010 debut LP:
On an early draft of folk trio Mountain Man's Bandcamp page, the project aptly described itself as "a creature growing from the mouths of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sasuer-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath." Sparse and homespun, from the onset the voices of Mountain Man crafted an immediate intimacy. A Mountain Man song exists in a strange and wild and naturalistic world, populated with thick summer air and bright moons and chickadees, unfurling like a long night spent sitting on the back porch steps with your closest friends.
Released in the muggy summer of 2010, Mountain Man's debut full-length Made the Harbor catapulted the project into the spotlight on indie music blogs across the Internet, and then on to much bigger stages offline, too. From a MySpace buzz band to touring as back-up singers for Feist across the world, Mountain Man's Made the Harbor and the sound of their three voices tangling together had a certain magic that resonated so easily. Now, a decade past it's release, Made the Harbor celebrates it's tenth anniversary with an additional disc's worth of bonus material. The second LP here features unreleased songs, live sessions recorded at Bennington College's Greenwall Auditorium at the inception of the project, along with covers of the Mills Brothers, Arthur Russell, and then-Vermont contemporary toothache, and more. The deluxe packaging includes a collage culled from the band's personal collection and live photos from that time, as well as a personal essay by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.
SYLVAN ESSO's 2014 debut LP:
Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo's sound - a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath's voice. Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn's writing since then: "a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance" arriving as "a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term." And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there's still that argument about what pop can be at it's core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.