Not only is this way late, but I'm not even gonna put my album list in here yet! Just... have... a few more... albums to listen to...

But taking a cue from k, I'm gonna go ahead and list out my favorite reissues from 2014, just to have something to post.

Ranking reissues can be weird because some of these were just no-frills vinyl reissues with no added content and minimal "remastering", if any. So even though the album itself might be a masterpiece, I might rank the reissue lower than something else that added some meaningful and worthwhile content or offered an actual improvement in sound.

Best of 2014: Reissues


1. Songs: Ohia - Journey On
This was a kind of expensive Record Store Day release, and also a somewhat flawed reissue of this material. The flaw, which is a pretty big one, is that the version of the song "How to Be Perfect Men" is the one from the album Axxess & Ace, not the 7" version which is what should have been used here. To make matters worse, I believe people from the label actually tried to dispute this fact with fans. But anyway, this is still a fantastic set and something that I think makes for a surprisingly good retrospective of the first half - the Songs: Ohia phase - of Jason Molina's career. And from the his very first single, the powerful and surprisingly accomplished and distinctive "Soul", all the way through the excellent "The Gray Tower" 7" from the masterful Didn't It Rain sessions and the "Keep It Steady" 7" which was his last real Songs: Ohia release before the Magnolia Electric Co. phase, it's quite a journey.


2. Unwound - Rat Conspiracy
The first of two Unwound box sets released by Numero Group in 2014, also the 3rd in this series (202), is built around the band's first two officially-released albums, Fake Train and New Plastic Ideas. Prior to this reissue, I was only familiar with the second of those two albums, and Fake Train hit me like a ton of bricks my first time hearing it, right from the opening track "Dragnalus". In general, the amount of love poured into these Numero reissues has been infectious, greatly increasing my appreciation of this band in particular (and also drastically improving my opinion of the band Codeine). After building up to this release with reissues of pre-Unwound band Giant Henry and the earliest Unwound material on the box set Kid Is Gone, hearing the fully-realized opening track to Fake Train is immensely satisfying. The stuff before this had all been good, but now it's for real. I've always liked their second album New Plastic Ideas, and here it sounds better than ever, not necessarily due to remastering or anything like that, just as another facet of Unwound's world from a time when they were performing at the highest level. There are ample extras on this set as well, possibly the highest confluence of quality and quantity of bonus material on any of these sets so far.


3. Bedhead - 1992-1998
This set was a dream come true for me even if it didn't offer much of anything in the way of unheard extras. I've particularly wanted a vinyl copy of WhatFunLifeWas for a few years now, and this both sounds and looks fantastic. It's a beautiful box that smartly rounds up everything they put out minus the collaboration EP with Macha (understandably), plus just a couple of rarities that I didn't already have. I only just discovered Bedhead a few years ago, and they quickly became one of my favorite bands of all time. This set came along at just right time. Well... almost. I kind of wish I hadn't bought Beheaded and Transaction de Novo on CD already, but oh well. I'm just really happy to have this.

4. Songs: Ohia - Didn't It Rain
Another kind of disappointing Jason Molina reissue in that it offers no new tracks from the Didn't It Rain sessions, something I always hoped existed and would someday see the light of day. I guess not. It also does not contain what I would have thought would be a no-brainer for this reissue, the previously-released extra songs from these sessions, "The Gray Tower", "Black Link to Fire Link", and the Didn't It Rain sessions version of "The Lioness", all of which were released on 7"s and previously reissued in 2014 as part of the Journey On box set. Since they were included in that set, I can see why they were left off of this one, but they still belong here regardless of that. But anyway, what we do get here are the previously-unreleased demos for this album, and they are excellent. The only song from the album not included in the demos is "Steve Albini's Blues" which was presumably written in the studio (and is the weakest song on the album anyway). In addition to the album tracks, we also get demos of "The Gray Tower" (here titled "The Gray Tour" for some reason) and the song "Spectral Alphabet" which would later surface on the Pyramid Electric Co. album released under Molina's own name. They're all Molina playing solo and all sound great, a closer representation to what he sounded like playing live after the release of this album during the first half of his sets (the latter half featuring his Magnolia Electric Co. band).

5. Unwound - No Energy
The second of the two Unwound box sets from 2014, this one centers around the albums The Future of What and Repetition. Repetition may actually be their best album, at least in their heavier, more abrasive phase before becoming all post-rock on Leaves Turn Inside You, but I had never really been that fond of The Future of What. As with almost everything else they've reissued, though, this release greatly improves my opinion of that album, and it certainly helps that they chopped off that interminable extension of "Pardon My French" that closed out the old CD version. That track works fine as a little minute-and-a-half segue but is painfully dull as an indulgent 20-minute closer. Even though album-wise the quality of material here is equal to or better than what's on Rat Conspiracy, there's very little in the way of unfamiliar bonus material, and it's main improvements are made with the aforementioned subtraction rather than any worthwhile additions. It's for that that I've ranked it lower.

6. Mike Cooper - Trout Steel
Paradise of Bachelors, kind of a folky-ish label that's been putting out recent albums by Steve Gunn and Hiss Golden Messenger among others, reissued some early-'70s albums by British guitarist Mike Cooper. These have a West Coast '70s folk-rock singer-songwriter vibe, and apparently after making this batch of records, Cooper took his music in a more experimental direction and left this more straightforward approach behind. This is the only one of these records that I've really listened to so far, but it's great. I plan to move on to the next two albums in this series - Places I Know and The Machine Gun Company - very soon.

7. Lewis - L'Amour
Yeah... I got sucked into the Lewis hype which seemed to reach its peak when label Light in the Attic released the lost follow-up to this album Romantic Times and subsequently finally succeeded in tracking down mystery man Lewis and confirming his true identity. Still, once the excitement of all that mystery faded, I've found that this record still holds up perfectly well as a truly bizarre, almost comically fragile, and genuinely affecting album.

8. Viet Cong - "Cassette"
I'm not sure I've ever been as personally invested or really "gotten in on the ground floor" of a band's development as I have with Viet Cong. I followed their formation as I was eagerly anticipated some kind of new project from the former members of the band Women, and I saw them on what I believe was their first real tour in the fall of 2013. From their merch table at that show, I bought the original version of this release as an actual cassette although for all I know I may have bought one of the ones with no actual music on it. (Apparently this was a problem they found out about afterwards when some fans emailed them and complained. I don't have an actual tape player handy to listen to tapes so I just bought this for the sake of buying something from them since it was a free show.) Anyway, I've been really rooting for these guys and looking forward to what they do next, and so when this was reissued on Mexican Summer last year, I was more than happy to buy it. It is slightly different from the original cassette/Bandcamp release in that it inserts a live cover of the Bauhaus song "Dark Entries" between the two closing tracks, trims the minute of silence off the end of "Structureless Design", and extends "Select Your Drone" with a sort of eerie synth outro. However, I'm not sure if I like this more than the original as I'm not sure "Dark Entries" really fits or adds anything. Still, nice to have this on a physical format I can listen to (vinyl).

9. Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
Nothing added, and I can't even tell that it's been remastered. It's nice to have it on vinyl, though, as the Cocteau Twins finally started to click for me a few years ago, and I've been really getting into them lately. This album is fantastic, of course.

10. Pissed Jeans - Shallow
Once I got over the notion that Pissed Jeans are "Jesus Lizard clones" and are doing "nothing new", I started to really enjoy them as just a great noise rock band. And truth be told, I like their lyrics a lot more than any of David Yow's. I also like all of Pissed Jean's albums pretty much the same, which means that even though this is early and "rough" or whatever, I really feel like it's no better or worse than anything that came after. Which is to say it's very good, and it's nice to have it on vinyl with the addition of the "Throbbing Organ" 7".

Honorable Mentions:
11. Various Artists - NME C86 (3xCD set)
12. Life Without Buildings - Any Other City (LP reissue with one digital bonus track)
13. American Football (2xCD set)
14. A Minor Forest - Flemish Altruism (Constituent Parts 1993-1996)/Inindependence (4xLP set)
15. Craig Leon – Early Electronic Works: Nommos Visiting (digital, and I don't know if it's the reissue or the re-recording)
16. Breadwinner – Burner (12" reissue, first time on vinyl, I think?)
17. Lewis Baloue – Romantic Times (pink LP reissue of "lost" album)
18. Caustic Window – Caustic Window LP (digital vinyl rip of previously-unreleased Aphex Twin album)

I just read the back story on those Lewis records and am certainly interested in hearing them now. What a crazy story dude.

I love that Viet Cong tape, so probably need to hear this reissue also. Surprised by the Cocteau Twins inclusion here for some reason.

Yeah the Lewis story was pretty fun as it was unfolding. The mystery is gone now for the most part, but I feel lucky to have started following along just as Romantic Times was surfacing and just before LITA managed to track him down. Who knows how much anybody will care about any of this in ten years, but I think L'Amour and Romantic Times will both hold up as interesting oddities and, at least in the case of L'Amour, legitimately good music.

You don't necessarily need to listen to the Viet Cong reissue if you're already familiar with the original, but you might want to hear their cover of "Dark Entries" (which is pretty faithful and straightforward):

Those Unwound reissues and subsequent renewed interest in them was one of the more out of left field stories of 2014.

Yeah? I mean it's not unwarranted, and it's not exactly random, either, considering all the other '90s stuff that's been revisited and reissued. As far as I'm concerned, they're exactly the right kind of band for this scope and this kind of reissue series. They weren't close to being as big or as well known as, say, Fugazi, but they occupy a similar sonic niche. And while they weren't as popular, their sound - which I guess you could say is somewhere in between Fugazi and Sonic Youth - appeals to just enough people (well, presumably) to make this level of reissue campaign worthwhile for a label like Numero. There are just enough people who haven't heard these records but would like to and just enough who were already fans and would want this nicely presented, complete package of their work.

I don't know, I mean that's my take. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning here, but it never occurred to me that anyone would be looking at these reissues and going, "Why Unwound? Why now?"

I guess I was just surprised at them getting ink in national publications for the reissues. Maybe I'm misremembering their popularity. I just remember going to see them in Athens when they were touring behind "Leaves Turn Inside You" and there being maybe 15 people there and this was when they were at the HEIGHT of their popularity.

Yeah, I think maybe while they were together their popularity was more regional? And they've definitely grown in stature in the years since.

Been listening to that Caustic WIndow lately as well as the new EP. The big soundcloud dump has gotten me thinking more about Aphex Twin again.