Beggars Arkive is excited to put three Buffalo Tom albums back in print on standard black vinyl. Birdbrain (1990), Let Me Come Over (1992) and Big Red Letter Day (1993) will be available everywhere on November 8th.
Buffalo Tom (Bill Janovitz, Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis) formed at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1984 – a breeding ground of post punk guitar bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies. The three longstanding bandmates recognize the achievement of their longevity as a creative unit. Initially offering a raw, propulsive sound that emphasized Janovitz’s imposing guitar squall, Buffalo Tom’s early approach gave way to a more melodic, yet no less distinctive, style. They have released ten studio albums and their most recent, Jump Rope, was released earlier this year.
Birdbrain is the band’s second album produced with help from by J Mascis. Songs from Birdbrain have become live favourites including the epic title track and ‘Enemy’. Bill Janovitz spoke about their songwriting process on this record and said “I think the interesting stuff about Birdbrain is that the songwriting was changing. I had written everything on the first record. ‘Birdbrain’ is kind of a melancholy track but most of it, like ‘Fortune Teller’, ‘Skeleton Key,’ ‘Enemy,’ ‘Directive,’ those are very angry songs in a lot of ways. It was way more punk rock feeling to me but we moved in that direction and I don’t know why. But Chris was starting to write. Chris sings and wrote ‘Baby’ and the way we wrote—we didn’t write in the same room together—but we brought these ideas to each other and kicked them around.”
In 1992 the band recorded their third album Let Me Come Over with a varied group of songs they had been developing at home and on the road – mixing their live power trio sound with some more acoustic based guitar ballads. The album’s single ‘Taillights Fade’ would become their signature song. On its first two albums, Buffalo Tom constructed towering guitar-scapes and mastered a naturalistic version of quiet-to-loud dynamics. So, for its third, we found Buffalo Tom shedding a bit, but not all of the skin it had worn and emerging with its charms more front and center. Let Me Come Over is the sound of the trio exiting the insular underground for the wide world of “alternative” rock–but more or less bringing its best moves along with it, too.
Big Red Letter Day was released in 1993. Their fourth album found them doing what they do very well indeed, but with more body and gloss to the production. The album was recorded in LA by The Robb Brothers and features numerous crowd favorites, in particular: “Sodajerk”, “I’m Allowed”, “Treehouse” and “Late At Night.” The band was brought to new levels of fame when “Late At Night” was heavily featured in a pivotal scene of the short-lived mid-90s cult TV show “My So Called Life” which starred Claire Danes and Jared Leto. The song was not only in the episode, but the band was also shown performing it. Rolling Stone, in a feature of the band called it a “collection of inspired, straightforward power pop” and Spin said “the passion feels genuine and the music sublime.”
