Most of the Record Store Day exclusives recently have not been my cup of tea. However, this year, one release in particular caught my eye after the tragic death of Richard Swift.
Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard will pay tribute to friend and collaborator Richard Swift with a new 7-inch split single featuring two unreleased tracks recorded by the pair. The A-side is an unreleased demo of “Me and Magdalena” which Gibbard wrote for The Monkees’ 2016 album Good Times!. The B-side is an alternate unreleased version of Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” from Gibbard’s cover of the band’s Bandwagonesque album, which he released in 2017. Limited to 1,600 copies, with proceeds benefiting MusiCares.
I can vouch for the quality of the album version of Gibbard’s cover of “The Concept” from his full-length take on Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. It will be interesting to listen to the alternate version. Many times, with Swift’s production, you can hear his style in the recording. I think I get just as much of Swift as I do Jurado on Damien Jurado’s “A.M. AM.”.
