Matador (2013)
I'm going to start writing about the new Merge singles club pretty soon, so I figured I should probably wrap up last year's Matador club. This is the last "bonus" 7" and the neat little box that Matador sent over to hold the whole series. This series was plagued with delays that Matador had to continually apologize for, but honestly, it didn't bother me much at all. The entire series was wrapped up just a couple of months later than expected and when you are putting out 13 7"s, delays are to be expected. I thought they did a great job keeping everyone in the loop and I would definitely subscribe again.
The quality of the records was all over the place to me. There were stellar entries that made the whole series worth while like Superchunk and Royal Headache. But, there ware also a ton of 7"s that I will never play again. Even though I'm sure many people were thrilled to get Mission Of Burma as the bonus 7", I can't say that I cared that much. They've always been one of those bands that everybody likes, but they don't do anything for me. This 7" doesn't change my opinion.
It starts off with "Youth of America," a Wipers cover. They do nice work with the lead guitar riff intro, but once the vocals kick in, I'm checking out. Echo-y yelping in the background that sounds like they turned on the wrong mic where ever they recorded it this. The chorus is a bit better, but it doesn't live up to the downstroke fueled energy of the original.
My reaction to the B-side "Tremelo" is as follows. It has a lot of tremelo on the guitar. Wow this is a pretty long intro. Wait, has the song started already, is it an instrumental? OK, it must be an instrumental. After about half an hour the drums finally kick in. There's some minor 'ahhhh-ing' in the background that sounds more like a ghost from Lord Of The Rings than any sort of vocals. The tremelo effect gets turned off at the 7 hour and 45 minute mark. I'm literally counting the grooves in the record to see how much longer this cursed song is. And it's over. Not a fan, but again, I'd sign up for another Matador club in a heartbeat as the good far outweighs the bad.
My reaction to the B-side "Tremelo" is as follows. It has a lot of tremelo on the guitar. Wow this is a pretty long intro. Wait, has the song started already, is it an instrumental? OK, it must be an instrumental. After about half an hour the drums finally kick in. There's some minor 'ahhhh-ing' in the background that sounds more like a ghost from Lord Of The Rings than any sort of vocals. The tremelo effect gets turned off at the 7 hour and 45 minute mark. I'm literally counting the grooves in the record to see how much longer this cursed song is. And it's over. Not a fan, but again, I'd sign up for another Matador club in a heartbeat as the good far outweighs the bad.
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