Introduction
“Anticipation is so much better” – Delta 5, 1980
This blog is dedicated to vinyl: current releases and reissues. I am splitting each review into two parts: Anticipation and Realisation.
Anticipation is so much of the pleasure.
Speaking as someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time digging through charity shops, record fairs and water-damaged boxes labelled “Everything £2”, I’ve come to realise that expectation forms a huge part of my relationship with music. “How much of this stuff do you actually listen to?” someone asked me recently.
Not all of it. Not even half of it.
That isn’t the point.
Finding a classic Nick Lowe single for 50p. Spotting an original copy of Gaye and Other Stories by Clifford T. Ward. Bringing home a Springfields LP for less than the cost of a chicken bake slice from Gregg’s. Those moments provide a peculiar kind of reassurance. Proof that my life happened. Proof that the things I cared about 40 years ago still matter. The rush is immediate. Stronger than any substance or alcoholic drink I’ve encountered.
I pick up a copy of Black Sabbath Vol. 4. A Violinski album rightly disappeared in the mists of time. A rare Lone Justice single. Carmel (yet again, I cannot resist those Serge Clerc covers!). A Madonna single that’s eluded me for decades. Linton Kwesi Johnson. More Specials. Records I’ve loved for years. Records I’ve never come across before. The familiar. The elusive. The unexpected. And the music is already playing in my head.
I have aphantasia. I cannot conjure visual images in my head. I possess no visual memory. But music, I know. Sometimes it’s a record I know intimately. Sometimes it’s a record I’ve never heard before. It doesn’t matter. The expectations begin firing instantly. Possibilities. Connections. Half-remembered stories. Imaginary sounds. That’s where the magic lives.
And for me, the artefact has to be physical.
Vinyl, preferably (but CDs and cassettes work too). A stream on a screen does not. Fairly or unfairly, the spell refuses to work the same way.
People ask if I regret selling my record collection.
Mostly no.
I miss my copies of Au Pairs, Transmitters, Cassius Clay, Sonic Youth, The Mob records. But the thrill of rediscovery outweighs the regret. Finding a favourite again after 30 years. Wondering whether it will sound as glorious as it does in my head.
And if I never find it again?
So what?
There is always something else waiting. New, old, whatever. Another record to discover. Another possibility to imagine. Another expectation to nurture.
After all, anticipation is so much better.
32. Ria Rua – S C A P E G.O.A.T.
(self-released)
Anticipation
Well… it’s a beautiful package. Nice chunky vinyl, just the shade of yellow that I like. Back in the day, before I learned to refuse to answer the question “what’s your favourite colour?”, I would say yellow, and I would have had nearly precisely this shade in mind. I think. (I have aphantasia, remember?) Gatefold sleeve, big lettering on the back, plenty of lyrics and photos inside. Clearly, a lot of care has gone into this. Beautiful.
This was sent to me quite a while back, February this year, almost certainly an example of where I would have tried to dissuade the eager sender because I didn’t have anywhere to write about vinyl and vinyl is hellishly expensive both to create and to post. I have somewhere to write about it now. Unfortunately, I no longer know who sent it to me. Sorry.
A little rudimentary research is required here to aid my anticipation.
Here is AI for you:
S C A P E G.O.A.T. is the debut album from Irish neurodiverse queer artist and former drummer Ria Rua. Ten tracks, 34 minutes. Explores women’s rights, dealing with assault and harassment, and confronting societal and political division with a mix of dark humor and raw vulnerability. Features heavy percussion, snarling guitars, industrial grit and dynamic tonal shifts from biting sarcasm to explosive vocal release. Nine Inch Nails and Kim Gordon cited as inspirations.
OK. I am already drawn favourably towards Ria Rua. Deffo. The fact that a 10-second listen to the video for ‘Mad As Hell’ puts me in mind of Courtney Barnett makes me more favourably inclined towards them. Much more than the Nine Inch Nails reference does, for sure. Anyone who cites Kim Gordon directly is cool by me. She removed her music from Spotify, too. So anticipation is reasonably high.
Ria Rua means Red Queen in Irish. Yeah, OK.
I’m listening.
Realisation
I like the way they sing. Yeah, definitely.
There is something immediately physical about ‘Ass Movin’’, the way the song comes charging straight at me that makes me think of righteous feminist shows down the London Musicians’ Collective in the early 80s. Not that it sounds like those bands. It’s the attitude I’m remembering, the sense that music is there to be used, pushed around, shouted through, made personal and political and FUN. There is a touch of Amyl & The Sniffers here too, that same glorious lack of concern about behaving yourself.
The drums help. Once you know Rua started there, it becomes difficult not to listen for them. ‘Mad As Hell’ is aptly titled but refuses to confuse seriousness with solemnity. This is protest music that knows protest can involve noise and jokes and people bumping into one another.
There are moments where I’m less convinced. Occasionally the big alt-rock production threatens to tidy up the qualities I like most about Rua, makes everything a little more conventionally ROCK when I want it stranger, nastier. The Nine Inch Nails influence is probably more useful to Ria Rua than it is attractive to me. Fine. We can disagree.
Because when the personality wins, which is most of the time, this record is tremendous company. ‘You’ll Only Like Me When I’m Dead’ has the sort of title that already feels like half the song has been written before anyone plugs anything in. ‘BITCHSHEMIAN RHAPSODY’ is ridiculous, knowingly so, and all the better for it. Songs lurch between industrial thump, pop hooks, guitar abrasion and the remnants of Rua’s percussion-first musical upbringing without settling politely into any one of them.
And there is something underneath all this noise which I warm to enormously. Ria Rua talks about feeling alone as a teenager and discovering that singing these things onstage can make someone else feel less alone. You can hear that impulse in the record. For all its FUCK YOU energy, S C A P E G.O.A.T. doesn’t feel exclusionary. Quite the reverse. The shouting is an invitation.
By the end I’m thinking less about Courtney Barnett, Amyl & The Sniffers, Kim Gordon or any of the other useful little hooks we use to persuade ourselves to listen to someone we haven’t heard before. I’m thinking about Ria Rua.
Which is how it should be.
Anticipation: high. Realisation: higher.