Silver Lining

This is one of those ‘Damn, this makes me feel really old’ posts. Have Heart’s landmark LP The Things We Carry was released 17 years ago. I was still in my 20s when this came out and now I’m definitely not in my 20s anymore. What hasn’t changed is my love for this band and this LP. I’d still like to get a complete collection of the this album all through the first four pressings, but those record release and EOSJ variants are hard to come by. Not to mention tests pressings. 

I decided to quit on all subsequent pressings because there are just too many. Which is certainly impressive and great for the band and the label, but I never felt excited about all of these represses. 

The silver edition that Bridge 9 came up with to celebrate the label’s 25th anniversary is a little different though. This caught my attention for some reason and I felt like I should get a copy of this particular repress. As with all Have Heart represses of the LPs there are 1000 copies (13th press). 

Of course this opened up the can of worms of me debating with myself whether I should get ALL of the records that were treated to a silver edition or not. There are some records I love, some I don’t care for at all, and some in between. Time will tell. 

I also picked up a copy of Have Heart’s second LP Songs To Scream At The Sun. When this record came out in 2008 I wasn’t into it at all. I loved The Things We Carry and this was not the same. It wasn’t a millions miles from their first LP either, but back then the difference was big enough for me to not like this album. 15 years later this feels pretty damn stupid. The record grew on me over the years and if you catch me on the right day, I’d say that Pave Paradise is among the top 5 Have Heart songs. 

I remember pre-ordering the record from Bridge 9 and getting copies on blue, white and yellow. I also remember selling my white and yellow copies in the early 10s because I wasn’t into the album that much at the time. Nowadays of course I wish I’d kept them. Actually I wish I had even more copies than I had originally, but there’s always time to fix that. My consolation prize for now is this sweet silver edition that came out last year. I just checked the B9 discography page and it’s crazy that this record is currently also already on its 12th press and each repress is, as mentioned above, out of 1000. C-R-A-Z-Y!