VINYL: Ex

LABEL: Ex

COVER: VG+

The vinyl sounds superb. The cover has a crease bottom right corner, more visible from the back and a hint of the record ring. It has a faint pencil writing in the top right that has been rubbed out. Spine is excellent. Colourful, it is not.

Side 1

1. Country water
2. Three – forty eight
3. Night journey
4. Time to time

Side 2

1. Paper and smoke
2. Broken bridges
3. Now I know
4. Goodbye blues, goodbye
5. Places I know

It didn’t get off to a good start for me. Country Water is what you’d expect from the title and this genre of music only kicks me where it hurts. To be honest I was disappointed when I set the stylus down on the first track, against the rest of this LP it was a cross between boogie woogie and country. No thanks very much. Not for me. But boy oh boy, does it shift a gear with track 2, Three forty eight, which, in my view, is worth the cost of this LP alone. Oh man, what an absolute gem of a track – it really is something else. It has a gentle flow to it, much like most of Side A but in addition, a lovely little hook, subtle but appearing often enough that you simply want it to go on forever. It is breath-taking.

Likewise ‘Night journey’, is a gentle foot tapper of the best variety, underpinned with some lovely piano. Probably not one to shake your ass to, but with a pint of mild, a good companion and a beard to stroke, preferably your own, you can foot tap to this all night long in front of a roaring fire.

And Side 1 concludes with a lovely quiet section in the name of Time to time. To me a song to finish an LP rather than Side 1. But if it is intended to tempt you over to side 2 it certainly does its job in bundles. There is a slight crackle on this track towards the end.

A lesson in giving an LP more than one track before judgement day calls.