Big Star is sort of before my time in the sense that it came out in the 70s, but both of these records were on heavy repeat by my father when I was growing up. Going back to them when I was older I realized that they might be the greatest things yet created by man.
You've probably already heard Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl (a generationally defining song for like 3 generations now), but I promise that every single other song on YFIIP is just as good if not better. My pick for the greatest Indy record ever recorded
Big Star's #1 record is almost incomprehensibly good. If I told someone a record this good existed, where every song was *that* good, I wouldn't be able to properly convince them if it's existence without just showing them the record in full.
May 13, 2025
Related Recs
this isn't a particularly rare vinyl release at all - it's still widely in print and very affordable. it's an album very very widely considered a classic. but it is, I think, the moment when I realised what makes buying music more satisfying of an experience than the lifetime of piracy I'd built up to that point.
it comes with a handful of prints and illustrations that really expand upon the feeling of the album. the record itself isn't even labelled, there's no tracklist, the sides are engraved with their descriptions "nervous, sad, poor" and "bleak, uncertain, beautiful". but most notably of all, each of these releases comes with a penny flattened on train tracks behind the studio it was recorded in. I've heard stories of copies of this album coming with handwritten notes of thanks from the label.
it was the first time I think I realised the love and the immense effort that goes into putting music out independently like this, even long after the recordings are done. I mean, I get that this one's a very special case - a lot of high-effort touches to really drive home the art, and to keep doing them decades after the album released. but I think picking this up is a big reason why I'm still buying vinyl ten years later.
the album still absolutely rips, of course.
Jan 10, 2025
Happy 2nd Birthday to what is, without a doubt in my mind, the greatest album ever made.
I found this band back in 2019 when their second ever single, sunglasses, popped into my youtube recommended. It had maybe a few thousand views at the time. That song was revolutionary for me, unlike anything i’d ever heard. I resolved to follow the band like a zealot from there on out. I read every interview, listened to every live bootleg, etc.
Their first record finally came and went in early 2021 with reasonable acclaim. I adored it and spoke about it with fervor upon release. I sent it to anyone and everyone. But there was a small nagging part of me that thought the band had not reached terminal velocity just yet.
I remember being slightly disappointed that a newer live staple “Basketball Shoes” (a 13 minute monster of a song) was noticeably missing from the track list. When I first heard a live recording of it in 2019, I already knew that it was quite possibly the best song ever written. (I looped this recording so many times that every aspect is committed to memory, even the distinct crowd noises.)
AFUT released 2 years ago today, and it was a revelation. A 10 track, hour long, jam packed record of nonstop hits. Anthemic and yet equally frenetic, Ants is nearly impossible to describe. I have to imagine hearing this album is what hearing Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea for the first time must have felt like. Somehow both alien and feeling as though it has always existed, it is impossible to imagine a world, or a time, where this record does not exist.
It is a generational record that words will simply never do justice. Thank you BCNR, Thank you Isaac Wood.
concorde will fly.
Feb 4, 2024
To be very honest, I think a favorite album in general (in my case Pet Sounds) should have no skips so I'm just naming one that I think fits here.
This is definitely one of the best debuts ever and the bonus tracks could have all been included in my opinion
May 1, 2025
Top Recs from @AscensionDay
Apr 11, 2025
😃
Count Bateman by Frog
Suburban Light by The Clientele
Magnolia Electric Company by Songs: Ohia
Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty by Felt (1981 not the 70s band Felt lol)
Those Who Throw Objects to the Crocodiles Will Asked to Retrieve Them by Bruno Pernadas
Apr 11, 2025