I So Liked Spring＜限定盤/Colored Vinyl＞

オブスキュアなニューウェーヴ/ポストパンクの再発で名を馳せるメルボルンのレーベルEFFICIENT SPACEが2016年にリリースした人気コンピ『SKY GIRL』のオープニング・ナンバーに"I SO LIKED SPRING"が収録され、注目を浴びたリンダ・スミス嬢。ホーム・レコーディング・ムーブメントのパイオニアとも言える重要アーティストの1995年カセットテープ作がCAPTURED TRACKSより初ヴァイナル化!

4トラックのテープ・レコーダーを手放し、新たにFOSTEX8トラックを導入しレコーディングの進化を本作に反映。ヴェルヴェット・アンダーグラウンドやローリー・アンダーソンと比較されるソングライティングも際立った充実の仕上がりとなっています!

Originally released in a limited-run edition of cassettes in 1996, I So Liked Spring is lo-fi pioneer Linda Smiths album of original music inspired by and written around the poetry of English poet Charlotte Mary Mew, who was most active in the Victorian era. At this point in Smiths discography, shed graduated from her gently obscured four-track recordings to the relatively advanced step-up of eight-track home recording, the results of which first showed up on her 1995 album Nothing Else Matters. I So Liked Spring has a similar tone and atmosphere as Nothing Else Matters, with instrumentals that frame Smiths weightless vocals with auxiliary percussion sounds, ghostly lead lines from post-Velvet Underground electric guitar or student-model keyboards, and nervy double-tracked acoustic guitars. Songs like "Afternoon Tea" place the album dead center in the mid- to late-90s, with naive melodic lines, open chords, and sweetly amateurish drum machine claps and plucked tones akin to the earliest Magnetic Fields experiments with electronics. The sing-song vocals of "From a Window" and the circular guitar figure that loops through the duration of the stunning title track both bring to mind different phases of Beat Happenings creative arc, from their excitable beginnings to the more thoughtful and pensive tones of their 1992 swan song You Turn Me On. Lyrics culled directly from Mews poetry give I So Liked Spring an austere air unlike any of Smiths other albums while complementing her musical style with perspectives of tenderness and unassuming beauty born of another time. The album is an essential piece of the Linda Smith puzzle, one where she reveals more about herself in her interpretations of another artists work. Its a lesser-known gem to play alongside more recognized albums from Young Marble Giants, Virgin Insanity, Marine Girls, and the like, with a sound environment thats inviting and strikingly insular at the same time. ~ Fred Thomas