Expect Fireworks this Record Store Day - Kevin Buckle

I’ve always struggled to enthuse on a weekly basis about the many new releases, but over the last 40 years of Avalanche I have come to love many albums and none more so than the second album from the band There Will Be Fireworks, The Dark, Dark Bright.

Second album from the band There Will Be Fireworks, The Dark, Dark Bright

I came across their first album in 2009 when several customers all came in the shop one week to ask for their self-titled album after seeing them play. I later learned they had been the support band at an Edinburgh gig playing to about 35 people, so their hit rate was exceptional.

It also turned out they had failed to bring the album to the gig, hence the requests. The band, it has to be said, are as badly organised as they are good at making music, even odder when it is considered they were final year students in Glasgow who all went on to have professional careers.

I was amazed to hear they had already sold 600 copies of the CD after a Pitchfork review of one of their songs, Foreign Thoughts, compared them to The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit long before either band were big. It was also a miracle they had received a review at all as they had no contacts in the music industry.

The album has a striking intro by author and poet Kevin MacNeil including the lines “For there will be fireworks And they will light up your eyes” a perfect start to an album that went on to sell hundreds of copies in the shop simply by us playing it.

Years went by with no more news and it was thought the band had all left university, gone their separate ways and might never make another album again.

Then in 2013 there was news from the label Comets And Cartwheels who had already released another Avalanche favourite by the band Quickbeam that there was to be a new album.

Never great with their timings, the album was finally released exactly a month before Christmas. The reason there is no other album I love more is that the first album had been so good it seemed impossible to follow it with a second of the same quality.

However, right from the start with another trademark spoken word introduction the album promised to live up to expectations and did not fail.

While most bands would be rushing to release a tenth anniversary edition, it looks like a third album instead will appear exactly ten years after the second.

However, after years of being asked for both albums on vinyl, and while the stems for the first are still being tracked down somewhere in America, the band have finally taken delivery of 500 copies of the second on gatefold double vinyl.

Due for release in early May the band asked if I would like a few copies to sell early. For virtually any other band trying to sell an album around Record Store Day when not one of the official releases it would be madness, but this is so highly anticipated we will start selling it on the big day and we have 50 copies.

So for Record Store Day next Saturday we have no bands playing this year but there will be fireworks!