on The Band In Heaven

Wear Your Wounds was created by Converge founder Jacob Bannon. Initially conceived as a solo project, it evolved into a five-piece band that often works with collaborating musicians. In 2017 Wear Your Wounds released "WYW" (the debut double album) and "Arthritic Heart" (a New Noise Magazine single). A live band was then assembled for a number of shows including Roadburn Festival 2017 and Desert Festival UK. Later on that year their "Dunedevil" (an experimental album) was released; a companion piece to Bannon's abstract art book of the same name. In 2018 Wear Your Wounds released their "Live at the BBC" 12" LP at Maida Vale Studio (MV4). That year Wear Your Wounds also played select shows on the East Coast and Europe including an appearance at Roadburn Festival 2018, which was also curated by Bannon.

While it wasn't unexpected given his advanced age and health, the death of gospel bluesman Leo "Bud" Welch in 2017 felt altogether too soon. The Delta bluesman from Sabougla, Mississippi had been performing for most of his life. He gigged in juke joints, opened for touring artists such as B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and John Lee Hooker, and played in church, but he didn't release an album until he was 81. 2014's Sabougla Voices was a "Sunday morning" gospel-blues album of songs he'd learned, written, or improvised on the spot. He followed it a year later with his "Saturday night sinner's record," I Don’t Prefer No Blues, and toured the globe. In 2018, he was the subject of the documentary film, Late Blossom Blues: The Journey of Leo "Bud" Welch. Welch cut The Angels in Heaven Done Signed My Name in Nashville with producer Dan Auerbach and his band the Arcs (that included the late Richard Swift), at his Easy Eye Sound label and studio in Nashville in 2015.

This compilation combines Fruup's third and fourth albums on a single CD. The band offered pretty good value in LP terms, so in order to avoid the need for a second CD, one track from each had to be omitted…

Preceding Beast Rest Forth Mouth is 2007’s Red Bloom of the Boom, a 7-track, 43-minute exploration that crosses the streams of psychedelia and prog. Pitchfork called it “a true cohesive work in an era when the album-as-art form appears to be slowly dying” (7.8), and The Onion found it “a powerful, functional mix of This Heat, ‘70s soft rock, early Genesis, and oddly, later Pink Floyd.” The album was further informed by a collection of remarkable music videos by the band and their collaborators, providing a mirror into both the creative scope of the Bear In Heaven consciousness, not to mention the day jobs they keep as editors, filmmakers, and designers. The packaging and visuals for Beast Rest Forth Mouth continue in this tradition, the band collaborating with artist Laura Brothers to create the tactile doorway into the sonic swirl of the album.

The Verve‘s first two albums, 1993’s A Storm in Heaven and A Northern Soul from 1995 were both reissued by Virgin/EMI in September 2016 as multi-disc super deluxe edition box sets…