Analog Adventures: The Get Up Kids, Sylvester, film scores, and more new vinyl releases for September 2024

Welcome to Analog Adventures, where we run down the latest stacks of wax to hit our mailbox. Reissues, new releases, and more are all on the turntable as we spin these records.

Diana Ross & The Supremes
Love Child

The Temptations
Meet the Temptations

Marvin Gaye
In the Groove
(Elemental Music)

In this triptych of Motown reissues from Elemental Music, we get an interesting set of contrasts, as both The Supremes and Gaye LPs were released in 1968, while The Temptations’ album came out way back in 1964. Hearing the socially conscious title track to The Supremes’ Love Child, along with Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and then putting on The Temptations’ “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” really demonstrates just how far these artists had come in terms of lyrical content in such a short period of time.

Gaye’s “Grapevine” would go on to be so popular that when In the Groove was reissued, it was retitled after that smash single. It’s also the song that knocked Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “Love Child” out of the number one spot. Both Love Child and In the Groove work well as albums, whereas Meet the Temptations is quite obviously a singles collection, reflecting the group’s work over the previous three years. It’s not quite as much a difference from where The Temptations would themselves be in 1968, holding on to their classic sound for Wish It Would Rain before entering their incredibly fertile psychedelic soul era in 1969.

Despite the differences, all three albums here are superb selections of music. Each clocks in at under 32 minutes and breeze by so quickly and enjoyably, you’ll find yourself flipping the record to give another chance to some songs that maybe you hadn’t paid quite as much attention as you’d planned.

All three LPs are pressed on 140-gram virgin vinyl with the original front and back cover artwork.

Randy Newman
Pleasantville

Jerry Goldsmith
The Haunting

Clint Mansell
Doom
(Varèse Sarabande)

Three scores, presented on vinyl for the first time ever, make for a solid month’s worth of releases from venerable film score and soundtrack label Varèse Sarabande. While all three have seen compact disc reissues from the label, these gatefold double LPs make for a gorgeous presentation and present a chance to delve deeply into music that you might not have paid attention on their first go-round.

Newman’s score for the 1998 fantasy-comedy Pleasantville combines his skills with “Americana, humor, and symphonic scoring” in one fell swoop, be it the theme song to the television program into which our characters find themselves transported or the grandiosity of “A New Day.” In addition to the full score, there are many alternate takes and extended versions to really showcase the magnificence on display. While the red, white, and blue swirl vinyl looks and sounds fantastic, I’m not wholly convinced as to how well artist Sim Sim’s works. It nods nicely to the film’s poster, but feels more like a sketch than a fully-realized work.

Both 1999’s The Haunting and 2005’s Doom are not good movies. One’s a Jan de Bont adaptation of a classic Shirley Jackson novel, and the other is an adaptation of a first-person shooter video game. Sure, they’re entertaining in their own way, but the music composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Clint Mansell, respectively, is far above what either of these movies deserve. With The Haunting, Goldsmith does, as Jeff Bond’s liner notes point out, show “an ability to unnerve the audience while burrowing into the emotional core of his subjects.” By the time you get to the nine-minute “Finally Home,” the listener feels as though they’ve been through something. The black/gold/grey marble vinyl and artist Sina Grace’s cover artwork make this double LP feel like it’s something you might find tucked in on a shelf in a haunted house.

Mansell’s Doom is basically the polar opposite of both Newman and Goldsmith’s work. It’s aggressively electronic, and not for nothing is there a remix by Mansell of Nine Inch Nails’ “You Know What You Are?” as the final track. That said, there is a bit of a haunted house feel as the crew explores the base in which they find themselves, but, as we go along, things ramp up, and you could make a solid case as this as a workout record, so effectively it does get your blood pumping. The green and orange smoke vinyl is both a homage to the Doomguy’s suit colors and feels appropriately gloopy. Artist Micha Huigen’s wraparound cover and gatefold splash images look pretty cool on the matte-finish jacket, but come off a bit cheesy when transferred to the glossy foldout poster included as part of the package.

Don Aaron Mixon
The Welcome Mat
(Self-released)

“Welcome to the dag blamed trailer park! This is the story of Don Aaron Mixon. True tales of being raised in the Welcome Mat trailer park, on the Florida Panhandle, in Pensacola, off of Davis Highway, in Lot D-2, from 1968 until 1988.”

So begins the southern-fried, story song cycle of musician Don Aaron Mixon, The Welcome Mat, a double LP which features most everything played and recorded by the musician, along with two guests: current Skid Row drummer Rob Hammersmith on five songs and Russian violinist Maria G on six of them. There’s also narrator Lindberg Smith reading stories as interstitials between song that encompass “emotionally raw autobiographical Americana Rock and Southern Gothic Blues Rock (and a couple melancholy rustic ballads).”

It’s a wild ride. Listening to The Welcome Mat is akin to throwing Van Halen’s first album on while also digging into some Allman Brothers on the radio as an Old 97’s song bleeds through in the background. It’s ramshackle and wild, and yet, comes across as fully formed. This is Mixon’s identity and story through and through, and at no point does anything feel forced or as though it’s trying too hard. Emotional honesty goes a long way when you’re also being pretty damn weird.

Pictures of Mixon and the titular trailer park adorn the gatefold jacket, and you’ll definitely start assigning images in your head to the people portrayed within the album’s songs and stories.

SS Decontrol
Get It Away
(Trust Records)

Given the DIY nature of punk back when SSD’s Get It Away was originally released on X-Claim Records back in 1983, the deluxe treatment given the album by Trust Records for this reissue almost feels like it belongs in a museum, rather than on one’s turntable. It’s remastered on heavyweight black and blue split vinyl, the printed inner sleeve reminds you of high-end audiophile records for fans of obscure prog bands, and there’s a bonus flexi in its own fancy printed sleeve.

Then you find the band logo stencil, drop the needle on the record, and, as soon as “Glue” kicks in, you’re like, “Oh, this sounds way better than it ever did.” As it’s shaking the walls in your house, you begin to wonder if sneaking into an alley in the middle of the night to do some spray painting might not be a bad idea.

Sadly, there are no liner notes, which is a big surprise, given the sheer amount of care which went into every other part of the Get It Away package. A brief primer on the Boston hardcore and straight edge scenes would’ve gone a long way to placing this album where it belongs in both the punk rock canon, as well as that of Trust Records’ reissue campaign. While the label’s put out classics from Circle Jerks and Youth Brigade, this marks their second SSD reissue, alongside two 7 Seconds records and a just-announced Stalag 13 album.

That’s a lot of straight edge hardcore for such a small discography, and one wonders how it came to be, but it’s mostly musing. While Get It Away and other Trust reissues might be deluxe, the price point is pretty reasonable for what you’re getting, and given the time and effort put into them, it’s worth every penny.

The Get Up Kids
Something to Write Home About
(Polyvinyl Records)

While this isn’t the first reissue of The Get Up Kids’ breakthrough sophomore album, with original label Doghouse releasing a tenth anniversary edition in 2009—plus further reissues in 2015 and 2022—it’s certainly the definitive one. This 25th anniversary double LP not only has been completely remastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound, it features an entire second disc of demos and rarities. The gatefold jacket is embossed and features silver foil lettering, and slotted up next to the silver nugget vinyl is a 28-page large format booklet with “handwritten lyrics, photos, and other ephemera from the era.”

It’s an embarrassment of riches, to be quite honest. Also, it sounds fucking amazing. I’ve owned a couple of Doghouse reissues over the years, and while they sounded pretty good, the sheer oomph of this new remaster feels like seeing the band live in their heyday. While The Get Up Kids are still touring and playing shows (including a current tour playing Something to Write Home About in its entirety), the vibrancy of a band on the verge of something big is palpable here.

The demos do what they’re supposed to do, which is demonstrate these tracks in their nascent forms. The four-track demos, especially, do an amazing job of foretelling where the band would head for their follow-up, On a Wire, in 2002. The acoustic versions of “Central Standard Time,” “Long Goodnight,” “The Company Dime,” and “I’ll Catch You” are rougher versions, to be sure, but that quiet, introspective, loping folk sound is exactly what would lead to “Campfire Kansas” and “Overdue” just a few years later. It’s a delightful contrast with the punky basement feel of the full band demos, especially on full-tilt rockers such as “Ten Minutes” and “Holiday.” Glad to know that pick-slide on “Holiday” would eventually get put front and center, too. It’s such a perfect album opener, Something to Write Home About wouldn’t feel right without it.

Sylvester
Live at the Opera House
(Craft Recordings)

While I was taking my first listen to this triple LP—recorded live at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House on March 11, 1979—I was in the middle of reading Doug Brod’s Born with a Tail, a new biography of Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. It might seem odd to pair a massive disco concert with such a book, but the fact that both lived and worked within San Francisco, and were intimately associated with the city, makes for a perfect way to spend an afternoon.

For the first time, you get to hear the entirety of Sylvester’s concert, which was released in an abridged form as 1979’s Living Proof on Fantasy Records. That double LP features only about half of the material available here, and even the tracks on Living Proof aren’t in as full a form as can be found on this triple LP. The disco diva’s best-known tracks, “Dance (Disco Heat)” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” stretch out into 13 and 15-minute versions, respectively, each spanning their own entire side, rather than truncated to fit together on one, as they were originally.

In this triple LP form, one can, as Joshua Gamson’s liner notes point out, experience the show as it was presented live, in three acts, as much a disco opera as any other program which had heretofore taken the War Memorial Opera House stage: “Its design is operatic: an elaborate overture and opening act; a quieter, bluesier center; and a high-energy, allegro third act, ending on a quiet, bittersweet hymn.” There’s a 26-piece orchestra, full band, and, of course, the “Two Tons O’ Fun” backing singers, Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes.

Live at the Opera House is pressed on purple vinyl and housed in an embossed cover gatefold jacket, featuring recently discovered photographs from the show, along with the very excellent liner notes by Gamson. It feels as though you were there, even though you likely weren’t, and you can almost smell the gardenias as you feel the need to check to see if there’s glitter everywhere.

Chalino Sanchez
Nieves de enero
(Craft Latino)

Originally released in 1992, Nieves de enero sees the “Godfather of the Corrido,” Chalino Sanchez pairing with Nacho Hernandez and Los Amables del Norte to craft, what would be, in retrospect, the singer’s own epitaph. Released the same week Sanchez was murdered, both the album’s narcocorridos and love ballads would come to be legendary norteño cuts. Famously, Sanchez was an untrained singer, and by singing as the native Sinaoloan he was, he became beloved by fans on both sides of the border.

The rough and ready performances on Nieves de enero will be instantly familiar to anyone even remotely fond of norteño music, and even those without a passing understanding of the Spanish language can hear the passion in Sanchez’s voice on the title track. The “gritty, real-life docudramas” of narcocorridos “El crimen de Culiacán,” “Hermanos mata,” “Juan Ayón,” and “Martin Félix,” are “epic tales of tragedy and bravery,” as well.

Pressed on 140-gram vinyl, featuring all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, with the original artwork replicated on the LP jacket, and is definitely more readily available than original pressing fetching nearly half a grand on the secondhand market. You might not know you need this, but once you drop the needle on it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.