Any Joy

The end of the year is fast approaching, and I've been doing the bare minimum with this blog since this past summer... so if I want to pull together a solid End Of Year post, I've got to get some shit up here quickly. Let's see if I can hold on to some level of commitment for the next couple of weeks.

Those singles from As Friends Rust in the early 2000's easily make my list of favorites from that period... and when they reunited and released a new two song 7 inch in 2020, I listened to them more than any other songs that year. Fuck. I still go back to them often. So when I heard that they had a rew record, Any Joy, due out this year, I jumped in to order the more limited shit.

I really like the look of the special screen printed cover that End Hits did. Nice heavy card stock that wraps around the regular cover... but man, that skull and bones with the blue print looks so good.

Number 27 out of 130 on the shittiest looking clear vinyl you can imagine.

When I first listened to the album, I was a bit underwhelmed. I was expecting this thing to hook me quick, and maybe it is because I just wanted to listen to different shit, but this initially didn't do it for me. Recently though... with a few more listens under my belt... goddamn, this record is so good. The music and melodies... the smart lyrics... this record gives me everything I want from As Friends Rust. Perfect.

Jumping in to the End Hits store as soon as preorders opened up, I quickly grabbed a test press along with the screened cover version. Nothing too exciting with the plain black cover with white text, and it isn't even numbered, but I'm still happy to own one because I love this record so much. Test press is limited to 35.