Camp Radio on Saved by vinyl

There's nothing like the single sided flexi disc to break all the rules. It can be mailed in an envelope for next to nothing and ignores the second side of the format completely. A cardinal sin of pressing....I mean if you're going to press one side, why not the other? Unless your INSANE. Actually I wonder if its impossible to cut grooves double sided on a flexi? Or it's the way they're pressed at the plant? I its possible with a lathe cut. You need a penny or something to hold these down and aren't far from completely disposable...but are they better than MP3's? Hell Yes! The label breaking all the rules of those elusive thin seven inches is called Saved by Vinyl, an offshoot of their Saved By Radio zine/radio show out of Calgary, Canada. The band on this one is Camp Radio, who got together back on '05 and according to their site are currently recording a new album. This flexi was probably recorded around the time they put together Campista Socialista a couple years back and the A-Side features "Turn up the radio" and the '90s jangle is coming across heavy on this surprisingly thin record. It's impressive that this format could really pull off this high treble jangle but then again maybe that's exactly what this made for. That and Chris Page's higher register contemplative vocals. Something like Teenage Fanclub repeating crunch and catchy loops of barely electrified bass and guitar. But it gets a little chunkier, and crisper like Apples in Stereo, a solo goes dirty but always driven by this straight beat. Chris piles on the layered polish on that vocal and they build the jangle to impressive heights by the end with full thickness. Strums laying it all out there, big and on.... right to the fade.
Single sided, all cracky and definitely sounding period perfect.

Camp Radio also had a split with Cousins I talked about a while back, which was also a limited press flexi with Saved by Vinyl.

Get this direct from Camp Radio's bandcamp page.

Cousins / Camp Radio split flexi on Saved by Vinyl Records

Got this flexi in thanks to Matt over at Pigeon Row, haven't seen a flexi in years, and it immediately brought me back to coming across Reflex magazine at the supermarket of all places in the middle of nowhere upstate NY and finding a thin black flexi stapled in the middle. My music exposure being limited to the local college radio station the records that came every month were a freaking goldmine of Killing Joke, Mudhoney and I even think there was a Smashing Pumpkins flexi? It was the perfect combination of reading about the band featured...I remember the writing being pretty decent at least, and across the spectrum of 'alternative' stuff. Did I lose them? Definitely, but it was the early push towards finding out about new music thanks to the tiny sort of vinyl. The fact they even played music of any kind was actually kind of magic, and still is thanks to this Saved by Vinyl square flexi from Cousins and Camp Radio. On white flex no less, pressed at 33 so it's a single you don't even have to flip over.

I covered a cousins single from the Noyes Records singles series a while back and this duo is back with their jittery constructed punk. "Defense" starts out with a few lonely low piano chords in an empty room, and a punchy stuttered raw guitar strum plays against this booming kick alternating between equally catchy rhythms, hacked up and sewn back together, in a patchwork of timings. You know how you tell someone not to forget about you, and then the next verse they do? I love their sense of awkward timing and ramshackle delivery. Loose and effortless, they attack this stream of narrative and it's split personality lyric. The whole thing stops and comes back under a decidedly more muted bluesy riffy section and then loses the fight with the dynamics and blows out completely in chords and super tinny reverb ALL THE WAY DOWN!

"The Girl Who Stole my Motorbike" from Camp Radio is that kind of punky '90s indie pop with direct upfront enthusiastic vocals over the catchy super pop. Big and catchy, something like Teenage Bandwagon or Apples in Stereo. Cleanly produced and driving towards the chorus, feel good optimistic comicy pop teetering between the restrained verses lamenting the wasted years. Reeling it in to actually be kind of a bummer but celebrating that anyway.

This one might still be available direct from either of these bands or asking nice over at the Saved by store, hopefully shipping from Canada for a flexi is reasonable? Now do we have to worry about the post office killing the vinyl record? Great.

Defense is the fourth track here:


Camp Radio track: