Vinyl demand - again

It’s hard to comprehend that, over the last year or so, I’ve only been inside a record shop twice. I say “in” as I’ve done plenty of record shopping, it’s just that it’s been mostly via a browser. The two occasions in which I have crossed a physical threshold have been, respectively, for a private, rule-of-six-compliant gathering (when it was legal to do so), the other for a proper splurge, during last September’s Record Store Day ‘drop’, at the splendid Creekside Vinyl in Faversham. On that occasion, it was a blessed reminder of the pleasure of rummaging through the racks of a well-curated music shop. 

Nothing wrong with Amazon, of course (and without mail order, life would have been extremely dull over the last 15 months), but there is, really, nothing to beat the admittedly fetishistic tactility of bringing home fresh vinyl. Traditionally it’s been depicted as the preserve of punters of a certain gender and, indeed, age group: when I lived in Paris I regularly spent Saturday afternoons in Gibert Joseph on Boulevard Saint-Michel, gorging on new vinyl releases amid a predominantly male, middle-aged clientele. But according to figures released this week, ahead of the first of two Record Store Day drops this summer, record buyers - and I mean of the mostly black, 12-inch variety - are getting significantly younger. 

A Record Store Day survey of more than 140 participating independent record shops recently revealed a “considerable rise” in the number of younger people buying vinyl. This doesn’t come as a great surprise: for the last two Christmases, both my step-daughters - 20 and 16 respectively - have asked for vinyl - a right old mix including The Vaccines, The Smiths, Rex Orange County, The 1975, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey. Their age is one thing, their gender is another - 60% of record store owners reported in the survey a growing number of women coming in to buy vinyl. 

“Record shops have had a history of being fairly male dominated spaces,” said Ashlie Green from David’s Music in Letchworth. “But the High Fidelity-esque days are definitely over as more and more women are enjoying vinyl. Not only are there more women behind the counter but the spaces themselves are much more welcoming to all people of all ages.” Green sees Record Store Day is a great way to open up shops to a more diverse clientele. “That list of releases is so eclectic and brings in music lovers from every background for what is normally a big party!”.

Jack LeFeuvre of Dundee’s Le Freak Records has also noted the trend towards younger vinyl buyers. “Nearly every artist will release a special vinyl edition as part of their album campaign and that is something that many music fans don’t want to miss out on.” LeFeuvre even thinks that younger consumers are driving a digital backlash: “If you love an artist there’s nothing more exciting than being able to hold the artwork, read the liner notes and enjoy the experience of listening to an album from start to finish. When we first opened we were always asked if it was a fad but it’s popularity has only continued to rise and proved the naysayers wrong”.

There’s no escaping the fact that streaming and digital music formats are here to stay, but the figures show that vinyl continues to grow, year on year. When then first Record Store Day took place in 2007, the UK was selling only 75,000 vinyl albums. Last year that number stood at more than five million, representing over £110 million in value. It’s something this year’s Record Store Day ‘ambassador’ Noel Gallager wants to see continue, and not just for his own sales (well, a bit): “I think if we can keep record shops open for as long as possible, we owe it to the young people of this country,” he says, plugging a compilation (Back The Way We Came: Vol 1) of his solo career so far, which is amongst today’s releases. “I’ll be getting involved,” Gallager says. “I’ve got something unique coming out. Hopefully the fans will like it and they’ll keep the flame burning for your local record shop.”

Record Store Day may be a momentary occasion - even if spread over the first drop today and a second on 17 July - but there’s no doubt that they stimulate interest in shopping for music in a traditional record shop (and, in these COVID-impacted times, locally, too). The challenge will be, as last year, getting the footfall amid continuing social distancing requirements. In pre-pandemic times, Record Store Day would be marked by packed shops and queues snaking around the block from dawn. 

Picture: Twitter/Banquet Records

This year’s drops will require shops to be somewhat limited, despite ‘general’ retailing being allowed to open up, but not everyone will be able to even do that. My local shop, Banquet Records in Kingston-upon-Thames, has reluctantly reverted to last year’s online model due to our borough having a surge of coronavirus infections (and, indeed, the highest infection rate in London). It’s not ideal, and last year’s online experience was fraught by technical issues caused by high demand for releases - great for business, but like trying to book an Ocado slot during the first weeks of lockdown last year. 

Once inside a shop - whether physically or virtually - this year’s drops offer something for everyone, with 340 special editions in the first one, including releases from Fontaines D.C., the Beastie Boys, Lady Gaga and Wolf Alice, and a further 200 in July, including the likes of Small Faces, The Clash and St. Vincent. The full list of releases for both drops can be found here. As for me, I’ve got my eye on a green vinyl 12-inch single of Ian Dury & The Blockheads’ Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Steven Wilson’s 40th anniversary remix of Ultravox’s Vienna, new coloured pressings of Marc Bolan & T. Rex’s Star King and Mark Lanegan’s Here Comes That Weird Chill, and a couple of live albums by The Police. 

If, however, push comes to shove, and I can have only one album from this first round, it’ll be The Truth by Prince. Originally only available as part of the Crystal Ball CD box-set, Record Store Day sees the first ever vinyl release of what has generally been described as one of the Purple One’s lost gems. Much of his work has been defined by relentless funk with a rock and pop edge, but on this recording Prince applied his bluesier instincts, with a more organic, acoustic sound that many felt, when it originally appeared in 1998, provided a fascinating insight into the late genius’s songwriting skills. 

The Truth also whets the appetite for the release, at the end of July, of Welcome 2 America, an apparently “lost” studio album recorded in 2010 and then shelved. Five years after Prince’s death, it will be a point of curiosity, especially amongst fans, but also from sceptics who feel that such posthumous releases were held back to begin with for a good reason. We shall see. Certainly won’t stop me buying it, however. Because that’s how we record buyers roll.

Toppermost of the poppermost: Paul Weller’s Fat Pop

Another year, another Paul Weller album. That might sound wan-with-care but is anything but. For today sees the arrival of Fat Pop (Volume 1), the Woking Wonder’s fourth album in as many years (and 16th solo release in 29 years) and you have to wonder how he does it. 

I could, easily, just rewrite my intro from just last July, when On Sunset, Album 15, came out: “It's actually become boring to talk about Paul Weller’s rich vein of form. Because, for a purple patch, it's been going on a mighty long time.” But I won’t. We can all cite musicians into their fifth decade of productivity churning out poor quality albums featuring lazy retreads, standards, ropey covers or half-baked collaborations with their chums, which they end up hawking on The One Show. Even so-called legends. Weller, on the other hand, continues to churn out records with the same rapidity as Nissan produces Qashqais in Sunderland, but without any breach whatsoever in standards. In fact, I can’t think of any one of his 16 studio albums as a solo artist that you could ask, timidly, “Was that wise, Paul?”

That Fat Pop (Volume 1) is an album of 12 songs is also testament to the restless creative soul that Paul Weller is. No sooner had he got On Sunset saved on the hard drive, he already had the basis of “four or five” new songs stored on his phone. With lockdown enforced, and his beloved touring off the cards for the foreseeable future, he took himself off to his Black Barn studio in Surrey to work on the basics of the new album on his own, gradually bringing in regular cohorts like guitarist Steve Cradock and bass player Andy Crofts to overlay their parts, effectively by e-mail. 

“It was a bit weird not being together,” says Weller, “but at least it kept the wheels rolling. I’d have gone potty otherwise.” By the time lockdown restrictions were easing last summer he was able to get everyone together at Black Barn to finish recording. This wasn’t, however, an exercise in T-crossing and I-dotting, but an opportunity to truly coalesce the concept that had emerged of a dozen “fat” pop songs. Such was their “strength and immediacy” that, at one point, there was the idea of progressively releasing each track as individual singles before putting out the album. The idea was eventually dropped due to practicalities but, says Weller, “I quite liked the idea and every song does stand up as a single, I think.”

Picture: Sandra Vijandi

On paper, it’s hard to know what to expect from that premise, but as you listen you quickly become accustomed to the abruptness of each track. Fat Pop? Fat-free more like: there’s no filler here. Each three-minute entry has a vibrancy, every one delivering a statement of Weller’s restless creativity, of his disparate tastes and application of it. It’s a veritable compendium of pop music, whatever that is (frankly, whatever you want it to be). It fizzes and scampers over stabs of pop, nu-funk and old soul, flitting from the Ian Dury-like synth punk of Cosmic Fringes to the summery, hand-clapping ease of the title track - Weller’s personal favourite on the album - which is reminiscent of Long Hot Summer, but refreshed with a Westway-flavoured dub beat. 

On Shades Of Blue - the single Weller premiered on The Jonathan Ross Show (with daughter Leah on backing vocals, spookily recreating the beauty of her mother, Dee C. Lee’s voice) - he mines his gift for concise, English soul. Its choppy piano and joyous chorus harks back to The Kinks and Small Faces - even the press release describes it as: “A classic three-minute English pop kitchen sink drama”, co-written with his daughter. It is probably one of my favourite of all the tracks he's produced during this run of albums.

Another gem is Testify, one of the tracks recorded in full and live at Black Barn and featuring the legendary Andy Fairweather Low. It’s a bright, boppy beat of a tune, possessing just the right amount of power to fit the album’s pop remit without straying into classic rock. “We had actually done it live two or three years ago,” says Weller, “but while I loved the groove I never really got a grip on the song.” Then, just before lockdown, he played a charity gig in Guildford, performing some Stax songs with Fairweather Low and they just gelled. “Our voices sound so good together and he’s such a lovely fellow, so I sent him the backing track. As soon as lockdown was lifted he came down to the studio for the afternoon. We cut it live and that was it.”

On Moving Canvas, a song about Iggy Pop, Weller gets choppy with a riffy stomper that he predicts will be a great track live, especially with the middle eight offering all sorts of potential for extended guitar and Hammond organ wigouts that would extend the song way beyond the album version’s run time of just under 180 seconds. The album’s final two tracks, which perfectly underscore the importance of good programming when doing a track listing, also bring out the gift Weller has for understated emotion. For a man so often depicted - still - as the stony-faced angry young mod of his Jam days, he has always been able to apply layers of texture to his songs. 

Picture: Universal Music

In Better Times is the perfect example. With its dreamscape chorus, it is Weller addressing anyone going through personal trauma: “It’s me talking to a young person who is going through something, addiction or mental health pressure, or whatever, and just saying ‘it’ll be alright’. Just get through this bit and there’ll be better times to come, you’ll look back and you’ll see it differently”. It is beautifully weighted.

As is the track that ends the album, Still Glides The Stream, a collaboration between Weller and Steve Cradock with a soaring chorus, orchestral strings and brass and a vague resemblance in the verse to the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday. Evolving initially via an e-mail back-and-forth between the two musicians, it evolved into an unintended, but still-heartfelt tribute to the unsung heroes of the last year. “In my mind, I was thinking about our road sweeper who’s a lovely fellow,” says Weller. “I started thinking that there’s so many people in this country who form the infrastructure of it and without whom we’d be fucked. But they’re looked down upon, not really noticed. So I was imagining their story.” It concludes an album conceived in lockdown, partially recorded out of it, and then released as we emerge from another, blinking into the daylight, slowly and gradually. 

There have been so many new releases recently made in much the same way, and perhaps with the same effect of providing the bright, sunny hope of normality and life returning. Paul Weller, canny lad that he has, has brilliantly tapped into that need, producing an album not of lengthy, chin-scratching complex noodling, but brisk, direct songs that put a smile on your face. Isn’t that what pop music should be about? 

Ticket to ride: The Coral return

It is the 5th of May. Spring has technically been with us since the end of March, but at the beginning of this week Britain experienced the coldest May Day bank holiday in a generation. Last night, the Etihad Stadium was coated in wintry hail. It still feels like the central heating needs to be on. 

Thoughts of a holiday somewhere more temperate continue to be dashed by that damn coronavirus and the convoluted rules restricting anyone from sensibly booking a holiday for fear of not being let back in. In fact, for the second year running, a holiday somewhere involving my dust-collecting passport seems as far away as ever. Couple all this with the fact that, post-foot surgery, I’m confined to the sofa, effectively still under lockdown, despite pubs, shops, swimming pools and all the rest being open again. I have never been in greater desperate need of escape.

Relief is at hand, thankfully, in the form of Coral Island, the bright, sparkling, nostalgia-laden trip back in time from The Coral. Drawing unashamedly from the same palette that decorated Crosby, Stills and Nash at their most whimsical (Our House), the Small Faces’ semi-psychedelic Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake or even, at an aural squint, The Beatles’ Penny Lane, Coral Island takes a thematic trip to an imaginary seaside resort, replete with funfair rides and, generally speaking, a carefree, jolly day out for everyone. And it is utterly delightful. 

It is also highly ambitious, at 24 tracks long - an unashamed double concept album in old money, not that you’ll have much issue with the length, the ambition or the music. Ah, the concept album: while the likes of Pink Floyd’s The Wall or The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis might be the examples cited by critics of the form, it shouldn’t be forgotten that many’s the record with a narrative thread running right through it. Pet Sounds, London Calling, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - the list of classics is endless, but the genre hasn’t been totally consigned to the heritage trail. So why now? ‘Why not?’, say The Coral, happy to challenge conventions by putting out a double-concept in the age of pic’n’mix streaming and audience attention spans apparently unwilling to commit to anything more than individual songs, rather than sustained album consumption, and certainly not a collection of almost an hour’s worth of material.

Radical as that might sound, there is some unwitting logic behind it. The audience is both captive right now but also desperate for escapism, and what better route out of COVID confinement than an album of such joyous sentimentality as Coral Island. Over its two discs, the album captures the two sides of a seaside resort: the boisterous summer months of excited children, organ music and ice cream, and then the downbeat winter period, with the fairground rides covered up and just the sound of seagulls piercing the tourist-free air. It’s theatre of the mind, to some extent, with the music driving the mood and frontman James Skelly’s 85-year-old grandfather providing spoken interludes in much the same manner as Stanley Unwin did on the aforementioned Small Faces opus.

So, what makes it such a pleasing excursion? Coral Island is gentle theatre, all acoustic guitars and blended harmonies, giving it a folky feel without descending into the faux street busking of the Mumford clan. More importantly, it’s the combination of the music and the lyrical scene-painting that makes it so enjoyable, whether the melancholia of Summertime reflecting on fairground arcades, or Mist On The River evoking teenage frustrations of summer love going unrequited. Old Photographs blatantly breaks out the Werther’s Originals for a sepia-tinged vignette of yesterday, while Autumn Has Come almost celebrates the end of the summer season that Take Me Back To The Summertime harks after.

I sincerely hope that I get a summer holiday this year and, in particular, get to see somewhere with azure seas and sandy beaches. That, you can safely conclude, is not going to be on these shores, not even Cornwall. But as over-privileged a statement as that is, you could do worse than to take a trip to Coral Island, to escape to a place that does still exist, and does still fulfil its purpose. The Coral may be tapping into childhoods lost (or, simply imagined), but after the year we’ve all had, they’ve delivered a delightful break from reality.