Trip #6: There is Nothing You Keep, There is Only Your Reflection
Highlighting 25+ vinyl worth adding to your collection, including Wednesday, The New Pornographers, Yaeji, Manchester Orchestra, The Flaming Lips, and much more!
Welcome to The Wax Museum, where we showcase vinyl from the past, present, and future. Two new playlists each week. Enjoy your stay, new trips every Wednesday!
Your Museum Guide for Wednesday April 12, 2023
The FUTURE Exhibit (Upcoming Vinyl Releases)
The PRESENT Exhibit (2023 AOTY Playlist)
The PAST Exhibit (2017 Hall of Fame Playlist)
The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit
Exit Through the Gift Shop
🎧 Listen to this Trip on Spotify and Apple.
The FUTURE Exhibit
Discover what’s upcoming this week in the world of vinyl.
Here’s all the vinyl out this Friday, April 14th that I have my eye on:
Bernard Purdie - Purdie Good! | Legendary jazz drummer Bernard Purdie is the creator of the drum pattern Purdie Shuffle, which is a blues shuffle variation with syncopated ghost notes on the snare drum. He plays this shuffle on Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” and “Home At Last”. I could watch these Bernard videos all day.
This 1971 album features three Purdie originals with three covers, with the highlight being James Brown's "Cold Sweat." Purdie Good! is remastered from the original tapes on 180 gram vinyl.
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You | One of The Wax Museum’s AOTY candidates finally on vinyl.
Get Vinyl: Amazon (copper variant) | Rough Trade (milky clear)
Feist - Multitudes | If the singles are any indication, this one will be a banger. Feist’s sixth album and first in six years.
Get Vinyl: Amazon | Feist Store (green) | Rough Trade (clear)
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots | The 20th Anniversary of The Flaming Lips’ classic gets the 5 LP box set treatment, featuring original album, B-sides, demos, radio sessions, and other rarities. There are 56 tracks in the set, 30 which are previously unreleased, and 40 that will be pressed to vinyl for the first time.
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Florence + The Machine - Dance Fever | Double vinyl set featuring live recordings from Madison Square Garden in September 2022. Great setlist!
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Kara Jackson: Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? (no stream yet) | The debut album by Chicago-based Poet Laureate and singer-songwriter Kara Jackson arrives on streaming and vinyl this Friday. Excited to give this one a listen.
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Kid Koala – Creatures of the Late Afternoon (no stream yet) | This is a fun one. Not only do you get 20 new Kid Koala tracks, the gatefold doubles as a board game!
Get Vinyl / Board Game: Bandcamp
Larry June - Spaceships on the Blade | Great timing as Larry June’s 2022 album gets released on wax right as the acclaims come in for his newest album The Great Escape.
Get Vinyl: Amazon (Orange and Bone Quad Vinyl)
Masayoshi Takanaka - Seychelles | Japan guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka's memorable 1976 solo debut album gets a much needed repress. Seychelles is filled with tropical grooves perfect for summer listening.
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Metallica - 72 Seasons | Metallica’s 12th studio album, 72 Seasons, is the band’s first full-length collection of new material since 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct, and it’s a doozy, clocking in at 77 minutes.
Get Vinyl: Amazon
Michael Abels - Get Out | Us | Nope Original Soundtracks | Jordan Peele’s movie soundtracks are now available on 180 gram vinyl, with a new matte coating artwork by Ethan Mesa, 12 x 12 booklets, and liner notes. I need to hear that “I Got 5 on it” tethered version on my set-up ASAP.
White Reaper - Asking for a Ride | Another of our AOTY candidates, Asking for a Ride is 30 minutes of garage rock hooks that should sound great on the turntable.
The PRESENT Exhibit
Tracking Album of the Year 2023. Two tracks from three new albums added each week! We only feature albums worth having in your vinyl collection.
This week features Wednesday, The New Pornographers, and Yaeji.
♫ Full AOTY 2023 Playlist: Spotify / Apple ♫
Wednesday - Rat Saw God | We have to talk about “Bull Believer”, the eight and a half minute track on Asheville band Wednesday’s new album Rat Saw God. If you haven’t heard it yet, stop what you are doing and strap in.
Whew, now that was an insane journey. The Mortal Kombat “Finish Him” outro screams reminds me of Isabelle Adjani’s subway scene in Possession. Just pure emotion from Karly Hartzman, an epic about death, grief, and high school ending in a catharsis crescendo.
And that’s just track two! We have a lot of bangers left. Be sure to check out the guitar riff on “Chosen to Deserve” thats tailor-made to get stuck in your head.
It’s all good stuff, and once you exhaust Wednesday’s back catalog, check out guitarist Jake Lenderman’s own music as MJ Lenderman. His 2022 album Boat Songs stays in this lo-fi, alt-country lane. Opening track “Hangover Game” is my favorite, the perfect dudes rock track about Michael Jordan drinking too much before his famous flu game. Thank you Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, 90’s nostalgia never sounded so good.
The New Pornographers - Continue as a Guest | Sweet melodies from A.C. Newman, Neko Case, and the crew at The New Pornographers, who have been getting after it for over 25 years now. Continue as a Guest is their ninth album and the energy is still there, with dopamine highlights like “Really Really Light” and “Firework in the Falling Snow”, a collab with Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis.
Yaeji - With a Hammer | This is my first taste of Korean-American artist Yaeji and it really hits the spot. With a Hammer is Yaeji’s full length debut and features drum and bass meets synth mashups like “For Granted” and “Passed Me By” that will stay in rotation for awhile. Diving into her past stuff, I found this Boiler Room DJ set from five years ago that hypnotized me for an hour.
Get Vinyl: Amazon | XL Recordings (pink variant) | VMP (neon yellow)
The PAST Exhibit
Each week we look at a year gone by to find 10 timeless albums that are must-haves in your vinyl collection. We started at 2022, we’re at 2017, and we’re going all the way back to the ‘60s! Yeah baby!
2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | This week is 2017
🎧 Full Essential Vinyl Playlist: Spotify | Apple
Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface |Starting this playlist off is “The Silence”, the closer from Manchester Orchestra’s A Black Mile to the Surface.
The central theme of the album is "family, the circle of life, and the significance and insignificance of yourself", says frontman Andy Hull, who had his first daughter during the making of this album, and he grapples with the complicated emotions that comes with bringing life into this world.
The first track “The Maze” and the last track “The Silence” specifically harp on these feelings of creation and death. “There is nothing I’ve got when I die that I keep” in “The Maze” is bookended in “The Silence” with “there is nothing you keep, there is only your reflection.” Your children are the closest reflection of yourself and your parenting, and they are all you leave behind. “When your life ends, all you can do is hopefully affect and influence what happens after you,” says Hull. No pressure. 😬
This is easily Manchester Orchestra best album, and hopefully it gets looked back on as one of the best of the decade.
The xx - I See You | Can you believe we’re going on six years without new music from The xx? Fortunately the trio are all making solo work. Romy dropped a catchy new single “Enjoy Your Life” yesterday and Oliver Sim created a deeply personal album Hideous Bastard last year. Excited to see how these solo projects evolve The xx’s sound when they do come back.
The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding | Just like A Black Mile to the Surface, The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding is a beginning to end masterpiece that sounds better each year. The raw lyrics, the sexy bass grooves, the drums, the pianos, the flawless production. Soul pouring out of the speakers when you throw this one on. Also, you’re in luck if you don’t have this one on wax yet, as a new tangerine variant will be out April 21st!
Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy | Tyler the Creator’s Flower Boy is filled with songs and beats no one wanted. “See You Again” was written for Zayn Malik, who according to Tyler, "flaked on studio time twice" so he kept the song for himself. “I Ain’t Got Time” was made for Kanye’s The Life of Pablo; Kanye declined and then Nicki Minaj said no. “Glitter” was written for Justin Bieber, who didn’t return Tyler’s phone calls. “Who Dat Boy” was also rejected by Shoolboy Q. Jokes on them as Flower Boy debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with six figure physical units sold.
Alvvays - Antisocialities | I’ll say it again, I don’t think Alvvays has put out a bad song yet across three albums. Even the B-sides for Antisocialities beat most artists’ A-sides.
The Menzingers - After the Party | “Lookers” is the lead single on The Menzinger’s After The Party. Like most songs on the album, the punk rock band from Scranton know exactly how to hit that nostalgia section of your brain. Just a fun album that sounds great on a turntable or a jukebox in a noisy bar.
Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds from Another Planet | Hypnotic beauty of a second album by Japanese Breakfast. Michelle Zauner wrote “Road Head” about someone who told her she wasn’t cut out for a music career. If you’ve read her autobiography Crying in H-Mart, you’d know that even her mom was one of those naysayers, and it’s a damn shame she wasn’t around to see Zauner’s success.
Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. | DAMN. cemented Kendrick Lamar as one of the greatest rappers to ever do it. The album became the first non-jazz or classical work to earn a Pulitzer Prize for Music. Another fun fact, DAMN. was designed to be played forward or backwards, which changes the story and rhythm depending on how you listen. Kendrick hilariously flexed when he released DAMN. COLLECTORS EDITION, with no B-sides or anything, rather the tracklist was just inverted.
Lorde - Melodrama | New Zealand pop star Lorde says each of her three albums correlate to the drugs she was taking while making them: 2013’s Pure Heroine is alcohol, 2017’s Melodrama is MDMA, and 2021’s Solar Power is weed. Well you can’t spell Melodrama without MDMA, and euphoric opening track “Green Light” is electropop made for the dancefloor.
The National - Sleep Well Beast | Sleep Well Beast is the seventh studio album by indie rock band The National, and this track was inspired by the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump, but feels just as relevant today. Frontman Matt Berninger explains:
That one, for me, is a hibernation—the dark before the dawn sort of thing. That one’s less about relationships than it is more of the strange way our world and our idea of identity mutates—sometimes overnight, as we’ve seen recently. It’s an abstract portrait of a weird time we’re in.
The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit
Get sucked down the pop culture rabbit hole with new recommendations each week.
📺 Videos from all trips can be found here. Shuffle for optimal enjoyment. 🔀
Barry | The fourth and final season of HBO’s dark comedy and crime drama Barry premieres Sunday with two new episodes. The final eight episodes are all directed by Bill Hader, who orchestrated one of the coolest scenes in TV last year. You can watch it below, featuring commentary by Hader with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey.
Couchella | Coachella weekend 1 is this Friday-Sunday, and it will be streaming live on YouTube! The stream starts at 4 PM PDT. Coachella will live stream all six stages across both weekends on YouTube for the first time in the festival's history.
Exit Through the Gift Shop
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Congrats to Carlos, the winner of March’s vinyl giveaway, who coincidentally has his own Substack you should follow too. There will be another contest next week so stay tuned!
Be sure to fill out a comment card on the way out, and we’ll see ya next Wax Wednesday!
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Dude that Kid Koala album is seriously so cool, what a great idea