Music
Sebadoh's Harmacy Returns: Sub Pop Sets 30th Anniversary Reissue
Sub Pop will reissue Sebadoh's 1996 album Harmacy on November 20 with 16 rarities, including five previously unreleased takes and BBC session recordings.

Sub Pop will reissue Sebadoh's 1996 album Harmacy on November 20 in 2xLP, 2xCD, and digital formats, returning the record to international availability after a period out of print.
The Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition) appends 16 rarities to the original 19-track album, five of them previously unreleased. One of those unreleased tracks, an alternate version of "Beauty of the Ride," has already surfaced ahead of the release. The remaining rarities include alternate versions of "Willing to Wait," "Worst Thing," "Beauty of the Ride," and "Too Pure"; an acoustic demo of "Open Ended"; the studio B-side "Real Deal"; and a run of live recordings, among them the band's BBC sessions from the period, including a John Peel session version of "Crest." JJ Golden at Golden Mastering remastered the album.
Harmacy marked a minor commercial breakthrough for Sebadoh, the band led by Lou Barlow, formerly of Dinosaur Jr. But Barlow has not always welcomed the idea of a reissue. "I don't know how we could improve upon it unless we included the B-sides from that time," he told Stereogum's T. Cole Rachel in 2012, when copies of the album were still easy to find.
In that same interview, Barlow described the record as "a real heartbreaker." He explained: "It was meant to be the triumphant follow-up to Bakesale, but in reality Sub Pop put an enormous amount of money into that record and they put us in a studio and immediately the guy we were working with was like, 'You've got to fire your drummer.' And I was just like, 'Oh fuck.' He was telling us that the songs would never really explode unless we got a different drummer, which put us in the position of making this really difficult decision which, of course, we didn't make."
The new edition effectively grants Barlow's 2012 condition for a reissue: the B-side "Real Deal" appears both in its studio version and in a BBC Radio 1 live recording, alongside further live takes of "Willing to Wait," "Psyched to Die," "Mind Reader," "Can't Give Up," "Worst Thing," and "Love to Fight." BBC Radio 1 live versions of "It's Gonna Be Loud" and "I Feel O.K." complete the bonus material.
The expanded tracklist runs 35 songs in full:
- On Fire
- Prince-S
- Ocean
- Nothing Like You
- Crystal Gypsy
- Beauty of the Ride
- Mind Reader
- Sforzando!
- Willing to Wait
- Hillbilly II
- Zone Doubt
- Too Pure
- Worst Thing
- Love to Fight
- Perfect Way
- Can't Give Up
- Open Ended
- Weed Against Speed
- I Smell a Rat
- Willing to Wait (Alternate Version)
- Worst Thing (Alternate Version)
- Beauty of the Ride (Alternate Version)
- Too Pure (Alternate Version)
- Real Deal (Studio B-Side)
- Real Deal (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
- It's Gonna Be Loud (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
- I Feel O.K. (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
- Open Ended (Acoustic Demo)
- Crest (BBC Live Version, John Peel)
- Willing to Wait (Live)
- Psyched to Die (Live)
- Mind Reader (Live)
- Can't Give Up (Live)
- Worst Thing (Live)
- Love to Fight (Live)
The reissue arrives nearly three decades after an album its own songwriter called a heartbreaker, and it gives listeners the most complete document of the Harmacy era yet assembled.
Original: us.list-manage.com
Tom Whitfield
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Market editor covering industry trends and analytics at Arts & Voices.




