Reissues of the Year: 2013

It’d be misleading to say that 2013 was a fantastic year for reissues – after all, the nature of the beast is that you have pretty much the entire history of popular music to draw upon as your source material, none of it offering any insight in to the state of things at present. But looking at the list of our ten favourites below, you have to admit, there was some pretty fantastic stuff that either got compiled, reissued, remastered or set in a box this year.

Amongst other delights, we finally got to find out what In Utero was meant to sound like, you could actually buy Butthole Surfers records on vinyl without forking out hundreds of pounds again, and if you wanted to hear Mick Jones flushing a toilet flushed at the end of “I Fought The Law”, at long bloody last, you could.

Disclaimer: Whilst all these reissues come highly recommended, actually forking out for all of them would set you back about £1,000. Marry someone with money, I dunno.

10. The Lemonheads – When The Lemonheads Were Punk
What we said:
“Devotees of The Lemonheads may well have some knowledge of a time when the band was a Replacements-inspired garage band in which vocalist/guitarist Ben Deily occasionally shared singing and songwriting duties with spike-haired drummer Evan Dando. This was, as Fire records would have it so crassly as the title of the set (including stickers. Yay. Stickers) that collects these three releases, ‘When The Lemonheads Were Punk’. Well, it’s true. They were. And here’s the evidence. This collection is undoubtedly an interesting document of the journey Dando was starting out on. But that’s really only half the tale. The rest of the story is about how the now-forgotten Deily was a songwriter of some charm and substance whose talent was subsumed by his former bandmate’s fame. It was an undeserved fate and at least half the reason to pick up these records is to sample his offerings to a nascent punk band that went on, without him, to be a minor cultural phenomenon.”
Chris Todd

9. The Beach Boys – Made In California
What we said:
“If a new fan is brave enough to delve in and discover the brilliance of a band whose purple patch lasted nine years (‘64 to ‘73), this is the perfect way to discover every phase of what they did. Warts and all, it’s all here, the electrifying highs to the depths of the lowest lows, all with a sordidly salacious back story of inter family dysfunction, law suits, alcohol dependency, genuine craziness and debilitating drug addictions that make Mick n Keef look more like Harry and Zayn. As for the music, the sweet, sweet music, Made In California does a great job of confirming just how much more there was to The Beach Boys than sunshine and girls.”
Chris Todd

8. John Martyn – Island Years
What we said:
“At his best (basically anything recorded between 1971 and 1980, a golden era when Martyn seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong), it’s not an exaggeration to describe Martyn as a genuine musical genius, seemingly unable to do the same thing twice or follow in anyone else’s tracks, routinely rendering familiar ingredients – a basic a guitar/voice singer-songwriter template – into compelling new shapes pulsating with fresh wonder. On the albums covered here, Martyn not only developed an instantly recognisable guitar style by experimenting with the time- and tone-bending Echoplex unit; he also moulded an entirely original singing style: a slurred, syllable-blending sweep that – at its best – turned his alternatingly tender and roaring vocals into a human equivalent of a soaring saxophone.”
Janne Oinonen

7. Boards of Canada – Back catalogue
What we said:
“Most iconic bands release perhaps one or two seminal albums, game-changers at the time. Not so with Boards of Canada. All of the records re-released this autumn seeped gradually into our musical collective consciousness, without much ado. Crucially, these recording are not simply groundbreaking or revolutionary given the context in which they were originally released: they sound as if they could have been composed yesterday. A remarkable feat, considering that Music Has The Right to Children was released 15 years ago.”
Kate Travers

6. Butthole Surfers – Touch & Go reissues
What we said:
“These Texan punks never had any problem weirding people out and never compromised. Even during their brief flirtation with the mainstream in the mid 90s, where most other underground rock bands were obsessed with not selling out, Butthole Surfers‘ lead growler Gibby Haynes embraced selling out by having a good ol’ time with the proceeds and grabbing as much junk as he could get his hands on. This was a band of grubby oddballs who probably carried quarts of jack and loaded pistols in their guitar case, making Kurt look like he actually did smell of Teen Spirit. This set of four vinyl only re-issues – their first four long playing albums for the label Touch & Go – are not expanded, not noticeably remastered and definitely not for the faint hearted, but a joy to have back in print. Putting them in the place of alternative rock heritage, let’s call them the liquor sodden annoying younger brothers of Dead Kennedys and The Birthday Party.”
Chris Todd

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5. The Microphones – Back catalogue
What we said:
“Listening to these records in chronological order and in close proximity, it is remarkable how cohesive and holistic the Microphones’ body of work feels. Elverum’s themes remain so steady, his ideas so tightly interwoven across them that they more feel like a single, lengthy composition made up of several movements than a disparate collection of albums. The notion of variation obviously has a long history in classical music, but rarely has a composer of “popular” music utilised the technique to such great effect. Ideas and concepts, both lyrical and musical, recur within and between albums, sometimes so subtly that you wonder if it was even intentional. Like a ghostly apparition or a half-forgotten memory, it provides a link to their past, a reminder that, in some way, this is all connected.”
Adam Nelson

4. The Mountain Goats – All Hail West Texas
What we said:
“All Hail West Texas was the last self-recorded Mountain Goats album. It came out in 2002 (so no anniversary marker here, unless John Darnielle has a thing about the number eleven), but was followed months afterwards by Tallahassee, Darnielle’s first foray into fully-fledged studio craft. Yet All Hail West Texas is the greatest thing released under the Mountain Goats banner; it’s simply a flawless collection of songs, with a spirit that Darnielle has never quite recaptured. That’s not to say his later works have been shoddy either, but this, quite simply, is the jewel in the band’s crown, the coalescence of all the myths and legends of Darnielle’s writing to date.”
Alex Wisgard

3. Nirvana – In Utero (25th Anniversary Edition)
What we said:
“Honestly, with such a ravenous, yet faceless, trend-following populace watching their every move, In Utero never stood a chance. Yet what eventually emerged was shockingly brittle, confrontational, heart-wrenching and violent – in essence, it was an undeniably effective resolution to what was, at the time, an impossible question. As expected, it was hauled over the coals and begrudgingly accepted; an album that failed to be Nevermind and yet burned with a raw quality so intense that it could only increase the band’s value as a commodity.”
Johnskibeat

2. The Magnolia Electric Co. – Songs: Ohia
What we said:
“Whether or not this is the last album by Songs:Ohia, or the first by Magnolia Electric Co hardly matters; it’s the record that remains undoubtedly not just Molina’s career high but one of the best pieces of music ever committed to tape. If you know Jason Molina at all, you’ll know his various motifs and all are present on The Magnolia Electric Co. If it’s wolves, snakes, darkness, shadows, the blues, (cross)roads, and ghosts you’re looking for, they’re here, all dogging Molina’s path, variously dragging him back or casting a shadow. We know what comes next: Molina went on to release a handful of albums as Magnolia Electric Co before finally giving into his disease, but he never sounds like giving in on any of the recordings he left us. The Magnolia Electric Co provided hope and positivity through all the darkness and the blues, the “last light you’ll see”. Although it wasn’t enough to get Jason through, it should stand as testament to not giving in. Don’t be consumed by the wolves and the snakes; don’t get lost in the dark. Let the big moon shine on you and hold on, dammit.”
Andrew Hannah

1. The Clash – Sound System
What we said:
The imposingly weighty Sound System box set is too in-depth, too baffling, frankly too expensive to offer an “in” to this most imposingly wide-reaching of groups. Who, then, is it for? One can only assume it’s the hardcore of the first group, the ones who must have everything, even if they’ve had it all before in different shapes, sizes and formats. Regardless of the fact that anyone who owns their studio records, a singles collection and the Super Black Market Clash compilation has in the region of about fifteen minutes of unheard material to discover here, what one can’t deny is that the thing looks, frankly, incredible. Housed in a sturdy cardboard replica of a boom box designed by bassist Paul Simonon, the amount of Clash ephemera that comes stuffed inside it is baffling. Ranging from the wonderful (exclusive prints, replicas of theArmagideon Times fanzine, new in-depth interviews) to the frankly tacky (dog tags, stickers, a big poster tube that looks like a cigarette), I’ve had it for a fair while, and I’m still finding hidden bits. The easily ignorable, more tawdry inclusions aside – considering it just as an object, it’s one of the best things I own, something I was sure of before I’d even played the utterly, utterly incredible music it houses. I genuinely think the world would be a better place if Sound System were handed out to new born babies by law.
Thomas Hannan