| Author | Message | ||
     Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 805 Registered: 03-2007 |
Does anyone have their copy of the new album? I received an e-mail from Microcultures on 2 April, 2015, stating that the cd pre-orders had been dispatched but I am still waiting for delivery. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3491 Registered: 03-2005 |
I have the exact same report, Hugh. I'm kind of relieved to hear that I'm not the only one. | ||
| Andreas Severins Member Username: Andreas_severins Post Number: 303 Registered: 11-2007 |
me the same, guys - still waiting... | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 975 Registered: 04-2005 |
Same here, but I had ordered the vinyl. Think that they had said that there was a 3 week delay with that format, but no news since... | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 55 Registered: 05-2005 |
Received my CD a few days after that e-mail. I've listened a few times. 8 songs - four of them about his son, I think. The Evening Visits ... remains the best album. The re-issue price looks ridiculous, however. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3492 Registered: 03-2005 |
Hi Burgers, I recommend the "Evening Visits" reissue for the great booklet and also for the somewhat improved sound and most of all for the added tracks released prior to "Evening Visits." There are also a handful of demo versions of songs on the album which I think are really worth having but I'll also admit that they are for anoraks. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 807 Registered: 03-2007 |
Burgers, I assume you are referring to the vinyl edition which is selling on AmazonCo for between £28.00 and £36.00. A two disc set and small production run probably helped bump up the final price. I am happy with the cd which cost me a lot less. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 976 Registered: 04-2005 |
I feel that I must be missing out on something here regarding "The Evening Visits..."! Apart from the wonderful "Mr. Somewhere" it is my least favourite of their albums. It feels a bit like "Send Me a Lulllaby"; too atonal and Walsh's voice really grates for me. About half of "Drift" is great and then "Life Full of Farewells" and "Apart" are just brilliant. Hmmm. I'll give it another go... | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 977 Registered: 04-2005 |
Just checked out Walsh's Facebook page and it seems that CDs have gone out (some people have commented on getting them already) and vinyl arrived a few days ago...maybe a enquiry to contact@microcultures.fr if you are worried ? Great interview http://gonzai.com/the-apartments-intervi ew-un-jour-comme-un-autre/ in which he mentions the possibility of September dates (in France) | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 808 Registered: 03-2007 |
Andrew, I e-mailed JC at Microcultures earlier today and he is investigating. Given that Randy, Andreas and I reside in different countries it looks like the problem may lie closer to home. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 809 Registered: 03-2007 |
Andrew, 'The Evening Visits...' was my introduction to The Apartments and it remains one of my favourite albums by an Australian artist / band to this day. His later albums are wonderful but I would argue he never released anything better. Timeless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfadSp3x D5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGqaP96- 08Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-AA4lql dU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmVE0LJL QN8 | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 810 Registered: 03-2007 |
Randy / Andreas, Did you order the cd or vinyl? I have had a reply from JC and there was a problem with my order so he is sending out a cd tomorrow. He seems to think that everyone who placed an order for a copy of the cd should have it by now so, if you ordered one, I would suggest you e-mail him. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3493 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, Hugh, I will contact him. I ordered the CD. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 811 Registered: 03-2007 |
Randy, I was unable to place an order via the Microcultures website in December, 2014, so I e-mailed JC who did so manually. That may explain why my cd was not sent out with the others. | ||
| Andreas Severins Member Username: Andreas_severins Post Number: 304 Registered: 11-2007 |
Hi Hugh! I wrote him a short note and his reply came immediately. My package is on its way! The only thing is that he thinks that Apartment fans in germany are not so common. That's why PMW may have no plans for coming to germany! I hope my answer mail could change his mind a little bit! | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 978 Registered: 04-2005 |
Got my vinyl copy. A beautiful package. And Amanda Brown plays on it too ! PS Anyone else think that "September Skies" is very Grant like ? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3494 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, I finally sent an email. Hopefully it works. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 813 Registered: 03-2007 |
Randy, JC usually replies to enquiries very promptly so you should hear from him soon. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3495 Registered: 03-2005 |
I just heard from Jean Charles. I ordered a vinyl copy along with the CD, something I totally forgot since I haven't yet leveled my turntable to allow it to function in my Cabinet of Dr. Caligari of a house. It should arrive soon. | ||
| peter ward Member Username: Peter_ward Post Number: 276 Registered: 06-2005 |
A review here: http://mobile.news.com.au/entertainment/ music/the-apartments-music-hard-to-categ orise-great-to-listen-to/story-e6frfn09- 1227331105229 I only have A Life Full Of Farewells, but I will be ordering this one. "21" is a very moving & beautiful song. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7318 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks, Peter. It's an incredible song. If you ever get a chance to see them live, don't miss it. I think they'd do well in Whelan's. | ||
| peter ward Member Username: Peter_ward Post Number: 278 Registered: 06-2005 |
PMW excerpt from his piece for the Volume 1 Box set here: http://rileyrecords.blogspot.com.au/2015 /05/therell-come-time-one-day.html | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3507 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thank you for the link, Peter. It's the first time I've read PMW express his esteem for Robert and Grant. It must have been unbelievably exciting for them to exchange creations. With their respective distant exiles I imagine their communications as if by carrier pigeon. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 988 Registered: 04-2005 |
September tour of France...but only the north !? https://www.facebook.com/theapartments/p hotos/a.416003361820042.98095.1558981678 30564/828024480617926/?type=1&theater | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3545 Registered: 03-2005 |
I've created a playlist of the Apartments as a sampler for a friend just on the off chance he feels reckless financially and wants to go to Paris in September. He's a big Lloyd Cole and Roddy Frame fan. My program: Help All You Wanted Sunset Hotel Mr. Somewhere The Shyest Time On Every Corner Knowing You Were Loved Thank You for Making Me Beg What's the Morning For? (Fete Foraine version) Breakdown in Vera Cruz To Live For Looking for Another Town Please, Don't Say Remember September Skies | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 999 Registered: 04-2005 |
Article from the Guardian here http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/au g/07/the-apartments-albums-birth-so-trau matic-its-a-miracle-it-exists-at-all Minor quibble :the writer's statement that on the last tour of France no-one know the song "21" is not correct. I knew it from the solo Melbourne version that was posted on Vimeo a couple of years before: still didn't stop my tears flowing though at the Bordeaux gig. | ||
| burgers Unregistered guest |
If I were giving a playlist of 14 songs to persuade someone of PMW's genius it would be highly slanted toward his earlier work TEV...ASFY all 9 songs All You Wanted On Every Corner Things You'll Keep Thank You For Making Me Beg Black Ribbons Every time I play 21 I think it's overwrought and he messed up the chorus. | ||
| TROU Member Username: Trou Post Number: 375 Registered: 05-2005 |
Nearly nothing of Drift in the lists, and I've got only Drift... I think this is perhaps my bug! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3549 Registered: 03-2005 |
Trou, my personal issue with "Drift" is Mark Dawson's heavy drumming. He's great for Ed Kuepper's records but totally inappropriate for The Apartments. As burgers says, the first album is a must-have. However, I wanted to provide a full-career sampler and I know my listener: I would not have won him over with PMW's meandering pitch on "Cannot Tell the Days Apart." And I think "Breakdown in Vera Cruz" is one of PMW's greatest songs ever. Here's my email text to introduce him to the music: "In the late 1970s Brisbane produced an improbably robust class of great songwriters in Ed Kuepper, Grant McLennan, Robert Forster and Peter Milton Walsh. Brisbane was one of those places that inspired you to dream of being somewhere else. In Peter's case somewhere else was New York City, a dream he realized in the early 1980s after a blink-of-an-eye stint as lead guitarist in the Go-Betweens and a self-produced three song EP with the first iteration of his band The Apartments. It is almost certainly because he never inducted an attractive-sounding singer that the Apartments remained a deep cult secret among the more rabid fans of the Go-Betweens, Aztec Camera, Smiths and Prefab Sprout. The closest The Apartments ever came to success was in France in the 1990s. When his young son died unexpectedly shortly after the completion of the Apartments' fifth album "Apart", the mournful sophisticated pen of Peter Milton Walsh was silenced, seemingly forever. He has returned with a new lineup of The Apartments and a lovingly arranged album available only from a French label. It is his September 23 show in Paris which has caused me such travel angst. In a short series of emails I am sending you a 55 minute playlist of songs, working chronologically from the first EP in 1979 up to the new LP." The goal is to tempt somebody who loves Paris and music to ignore his bank balance and take a September trip. I was probably too late with this effort and he probably won't. I've already decided that I won't go on my own because I just can't work up sufficient enthusiasm for dinners alone in Paris, especially since I'm not a francophone. It's not a small trip; I'm on the wrong side of the North American continent. If nothing else, it would be nice to spread awareness of PMW's merits as a songwriter. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1024 Registered: 04-2005 |
Nice summary of most of the on-line articles relating to the recent tour. http://www.microcultures.fr/fr/profile/v iew/the-apartments Jérôme Sevrette's photos from Brest are lovely. It's quite astonishing how revered Walsh is by his French fans. The poor man must wonder why nobody knows him in his own country ! | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1032 Registered: 04-2005 |
From Walsh's Facebook "People say The Apartments have not played a lot in Australia—ha! I assure you we've played here at least 5 times in the past 10 years. This pattern of overexposure will continue. As part of the 2016 Sydney Festival, we'll play one Summer Sunday evening, next January 24th in The Spiegeltent—8.15pm to 9.15pm." "...featuring Eliot Fish on bass and vocals, Amanda Brown on violin and vocals, Wayne Connolly on guitar and vocals, Gene Maynard on drums and vocals...We'll have piano too. Flugelhorn. Castanets. Trumpet. Maraccas. Évier de cuisine." | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7521 Registered: 05-2005 |
Already have my ticket, Andrew. I've bought tickets for five other Sydney Festival shows too, including The Chills. | ||
| fsh Member Username: Fsh Post Number: 310 Registered: 05-2005 |
January blues alleviation available here: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/friday -nights-apartments/ | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1100 Registered: 04-2005 |
Solo Walsh in San Francisco anyone ? From his Facebook page "Stateside friends. I'll be doing a solo set in San Francisco, Sunday 16th October, my first show in the US playing Apartments songs. The club's called the Make Out Room—a beautiful room. San Francisco's Sea Dramas (drama was once my North, my South, my East, my West etc.) are playing at 8pm, I'll be on at 9pm. Doors 7pm. (Not the band The Doors—just plain wooden doors). Bringing a couple of shots of hope to the table. The first—that Sea Dramas' piano player, Raven, might join me for a few songs. The second—that an Apartment from the past whose identity must not yet be revealed—might also join me for a song. Or two. Two for the Road, as Hank Mancini would say. Like bedtime and the border of dreams, the night is full of possibilities. As always, I'm open to suggestions for the set. Posters are now up in San Francisco. Tickets go on sale Monday, US time—a link by then. Book early, book often etc. Goes for plane tickets too." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3684 Registered: 03-2005 |
Whoa. SF is only a few hundred miles away from me. I'd love to see him with a band but if this is what's on order I settle for it too. Thanks Andrew! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3685 Registered: 03-2005 |
Andrew, I really owe you for this one. I bought what might have been the first four tickets sold last night. The listing first went up on the ticket website with the distressing message "sale ended." But I'll be going and so will Jeff Whiteaker, formerly of this board, along with his wife and a friend of mine who I've been indoctrinating on the charms of Mr. Walsh. For anyone who lives on this continent and has any interest in the Apartments I really think you'd better plan a trip to SF. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1103 Registered: 04-2005 |
Hopefully it will be a memorable evening Randy. Mr Walsh seems to be a very approachable man, based on my experience in Bordeaux a few years ago, when it seemed like most of the audience wanted a chat with him after the gig. My son (who at 18 years old was possibly the youngest person in the hall) told him that "Black Ribbons" was a favourite and Walsh wrote the following on the back of his gig ticket "There's so many things that I've finished that you haven't even begun..." | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1169 Registered: 04-2005 |
I swear that I'm not on commission, but some very nice people in Bordeaux are putting out "Drift" on vinyl... http://shop.talitres.com/products/561773 -drift "Lovingly half speed mastered vinyl reissue of The Apartments' chamber-pop masterpiece drift. Out sept. 29th, 2017. 600 units only. Gatefold, 1 LP, uncoated paperboard sleeve, printed inner sleeve. " | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1118 Registered: 03-2007 |
The Apartments - Live At L'Ubu Double album ( 2 x LP ) recorded during the band's tour of France in 2015 showing on the Talitres website. Limited edition of 1000 copies. http://www.talitres.com/en/news/the-apar tments-live-at-l-ubu.html | ||
| Fred Tadrowski Member Username: Ftadrowski Post Number: 90 Registered: 03-2015 |
Good news! According to the Apartments website, there will be a new studio album in 2020. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 108 Registered: 05-2005 |
I managed to get a copy of Live at L’Ubu this morning. Seven Songs was originally a Record Store Day release but Talitres started selling it directly some time later. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the same with this one. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4129 Registered: 03-2005 |
Burgers, thank you for your mention of Seven Songs. I didn't even know of its existence until your post. I've ordered a copy. Weirdly, Amazon US lists Live at L'Ubu as available. Because it's a vinyl-only release I'm giving it a pass. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 109 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, You do get download codes with the vinyl of Live at L’Ubu but you may prefer to wait to wait for a CD release. I haven’t played the new record yet but I really like Natasha Penot’s vocals on No Song... so I’m looking forward to it. Talitres are promoting this as the first live record but Seven Songs is live, albeit in a radio station, and there is a bootleg you can easily find online called Live On The Outside. You’re not alone in being unaware of some of their catalogue, I only recently realised there’s an album called Apart which I’ll get around to acquiring. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4132 Registered: 03-2005 |
Burgers, Apart is (for me) two-thirds a great album. It's more keyboard based. It has two of his songs that are all time favorites for me. These are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2TopYqt wDc and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yivMq2I1 g9Y This is his last studio album of new material before the long silence. Musically, it's where the newest album picks up. In its best moments it is transcendent. Someone this sensitive was NOT going to be able to absorb the loss of his son. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4133 Registered: 03-2005 |
Are you aware of Fete Foraine? It's a collection of "unplugged" versions of already-familiar songs. Somebody somewhere described it as a 3:00 a.m. record. He managed to take his songs and make them MORE doleful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGl6UYMk rBY | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 110 Registered: 05-2005 |
It’s available from Talitres now. Left over vinyl and digital only. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 162 Registered: 05-2005 |
New album just announced by Talitres | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 163 Registered: 05-2005 |
A slew of new releases from The Apartments. A live EP last week and now rereleases of Drift and Seven Songs. Postage from France is pretty steep. It’s a pity they didn’t coincide the rereleases with the new album. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1293 Registered: 03-2007 |
Burgers, I purchased a CD copy of Seven Songs when it was released some years ago. I also have 'Drift' on CD but I may pick up a copy of this reissue for the three additional tracks. Shipping for me is only £2.31. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1387 Registered: 04-2005 |
An interesting interview here https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2020/11/16/i nterview-with-peter-milton-walsh-the-apa rtments-part-1/ https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2020/11/23/i nterview-with-peter-milton-walsh-the-apa rtments-part-2/ Says there's a part 3 but can't find it What do people think of the record ? Can't say that I'm that enthusiastic. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9948 Registered: 05-2005 |
Andrew, I’ve only played it once and was disappointed. I subsequently spoke with one of the musicians who played on it and he said it was recorded in a very different - much more straightforward - way to previous Apartments albums. It seemed a reasonable explanation for my initial experience of it. I’ll give it another go, of course. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4518 Registered: 03-2005 |
I also played it only once. My first blush impression was that it was too similar to the last album. But my attention has been on stacks of Argentine indie pop CDs right now so I haven't circled back around to it. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 179 Registered: 05-2005 |
It looks like A Life Full of Farewells is being rereleased. Not sure if it’s remastered or anything but it’s on vinyl for the first time. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1465 Registered: 04-2005 |
Apparently a European tour in March ? Seems a little crazy given the current Covid situation but let's hope that it happens ! Already a date in Bordeaux and another in Rennes (La Route de Rock festival) | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1539 Registered: 04-2005 |
Reissue of "Apart" https://shop.talitres.com/products/75012 5-apart |