Category: Reviews – Vinyl

Metal still sounds best on large, round pieces of pressed vinyl. The smell, the artwork – and it gets played through a needle.

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Into The Great Wide Open (vinyl reissue)

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Into The Great Wide Open (vinyl reissue)

    Abraham Lincoln once said (to a delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate) that, “It is never wise to swap horses in mid-stream”. After the popular breakthrough that his solo album made in 1989, Tom Petty clearly took that adage to heart when it came time to…

  • Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever LP

    Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever LP

    There’s no way to say for sure if the reason Tom Petty elected to launch his solo career with Full Moon Fever was because the singer felt like he had a surplus of songs that he didn’t want to bring to the Heartbreakers, or if he was just trying to make a point. If it…

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) LP

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) LP

    Twelve years after they started, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers found themselves in a fairly unique position in pop music: they’ve been working long enough and had been influential enough that radio waves were beginning to get crowded which artists who cited the band as an influence – or at least seemed like it. On…

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Pack Up The Plantation: Live! 2LP

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Pack Up The Plantation: Live! 2LP

    It’s far a far less common occurrence now (when virtually every band in the universe releases a live album and, thanks to digital technology, is able to “fix” every flaw in the show in post-production) but, at one time, the release of a live album meant that the band in question was confident enough in…

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Southern Accents LP

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Southern Accents LP

    Throughout music history, many albums have been made which are said to be conflicted due to the tensions apparent within the band coming out in the music. Some of those albums turn out to be phenomenal – there was conflict brewing in Nirvana and it came out in In Utero and it was great. The…

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Long After Dark LP

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Long After Dark LP

    In the first half-decade of their association together, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had already hit some pretty spectacular highs and lows on a condensed timeline. Virtually from day one, the group established that they had some great potential to write hits (see “American Girl,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Refugee” as easy and fantastic…

  • Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – Hard Promises

    Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – Hard Promises

    When it comes to making a follow-up for a career-defining release, the catch is that whatever comes can often feel like a diminished return no matter how good it might be – because the new music simply does not have the same spark which ignited the breakthrough of the previous album. It’s kind of heartbreaking…

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedoes LP (reissue)

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedoes LP (reissue)

    It might sound like a grandiose claim to say something like, “Truly and genuinely rare is an album like Damn The Torpedoes – it has really introduced some of the biggest and most respected institutions in the modern music industry,” but those who might think so simply do not know the whole story of the…

  • All Them Witches – Sleeping Through The War LP

    All Them Witches – Sleeping Through The War LP

    They might not actually be from the desert (in fact they’re from Nashville, TN), but that doesn’t mean All Them Witches haven’t channelled the heat, aridity and all the weirdness normally associated such a landscape and front-loaded it onto their fourth full-length album, Sleeping Through The War. This time no introductions get made: none are…

  • Various Artists – Singles soundtrack

    Various Artists – Singles soundtrack

    Singles (Original Film Soundtrack):  25th Anniversary 2LP/CD Reissue While there are several great soundtracks which were released in the 1990s (soundtracks for Tank Girl, The Crow and Great Expectations all leap to mind), arguably the greatest and most culturally important of the lot proved to be that of Cameron Crow’s first “rock memory scrapbook” picture,…