It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 191 Medium Build - Country

 

            'Alaska can kill you. Like there's wolves and bears in the weather.' Nick Carpenter

Anchorage, Alaska,  I will never make it to Anchorage, Alsaka. I'm not entirely sure I'm missing out entirely It always sounds the slightest bit bleak to me. The thought of Anchorage, Alaska always makes me think of my friend Andy who I met in the first term at university. I'll always think of Andy on the dancefloor of Santana's in Norwich. Thursday night 60s Disco. Almost forty years ago. You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star or California Dreaming playing.

Andy was into Michelle Shocked. 'Anchored down in Anchorage.' It always struck me as a place at the end of the world where the streets are full of refugees on the run. From other people, possibly from themselves.

Country Nick Carpenter's record as Medium Build is heavy with this weight, The heaviness of being alive and conscious with the awreness of it. Sparse, troubled songs. A man with a bad moustache and a tattered shirt, smoking a cigarette. It's always great to find a record that I feels worth writing about. A story worth telling. Something worth sharing.This isn't necessarily the happiest story or the happiest record you'll hear. But it's one worth telling.And a record worth hearing.