{"product_id":"greg-mendez-first-time-alone-vinyl","title":"Greg Mendez - First Time \/ Alone","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDetails: \u003c\/strong\u003eFirst Time \/ Alone, Greg Mendez's new EP and first release with\r\nDead Oceans, came together in late summer and early fall of\r\n2023; the songs here appear in the order in which they were\r\nwritten, recorded straight to four-track in the small spare room\r\nof his West Philadelphia apartment. It's a four song arc, a\r\nspectral passageway, one brief and fluid body of work that\r\nhangs together from the mournful opening of \"Mountain Dew\r\nHell\" to the pitched-up vocals on \"Pain Meds,\" a tiny song\r\nfloundering in the enormity of grief. The experience of listening\r\nthrough is like waking up from a half-remembered dream, a\r\nshadow in the corner of the room, a strange solitude, a temporal\r\nNew York autumn with gray skies and naked trees. But while\r\nthe release is sparse and spontaneous, it's tactile and\r\nconsuming, a glimpse into the beautiful, lonely worlds that live\r\nin the core of a Greg Mendez song.\r\nFirst Time \/ Alone is the inverse of his 2023 self-titled album, a\r\nmeticulous and labored-over collection of songs that went on to\r\nbecome a surprise slowburn success. Mendez has released\r\nmusic in various capacities across 15 years living in Philadelphia\r\nand New York, but the self-titled was what propelled him to a\r\nwider attention, a critical breakthrough on best-of lists from\r\nRolling Stone, Pitchfork, Paste, and more. That forward\r\nmomentum came to a quick halt following an intensive surgery\r\non his right wrist in the summer of 2023 - a four-month\r\npurgatory of bad TV, canceled touring, and physical therapy\r\nensued, a painful stretch of boredom leaving Mendez unable to\r\nplay guitar. \"Mountain Dew Hell\" and \"First Time,\" the funereal\r\nA-side of the EP, are time capsules of that fever-dream; \"Alone\"\r\nwas the first song Mendez wrote once he was able to play guitar\r\nagain. Likely none of the songs would have existed as-is if\r\nMendez's right hand hadn't been out of commission, but they're\r\nartful in their directness and simplicity. He initially thought he\r\nwould need to refine them, building them out to the same scale\r\nas self-titled, but the more he returned to the work, the more it\r\nfelt complete and true as-is.\r\nMendez is an intuitive songwriter, melodies channeled through\r\nether, a storyteller who across his catalog has chronicled vivid\r\nviolence and instability - a wallet chain to the head, a crack\r\nhouse arrest, the misdeeds from addiction that hang around\r\nlike a ghost of past lives - but it's threaded together with love\r\nsongs, too, with odes to friendship, true dedication, the things\r\nthat can buoy one through the worst. Mendez has a habit of\r\nnoticing those things, of finding the light, exacting poetry from\r\neven the bleakest, shit-caked situations. In his songs there is an\r\ninnate ability to balance grit with gentleness, cruelties rewritten\r\nthrough preternatural sweetness, a heart thrumming\r\nunendingly, confidently, through the dark.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alliance Entertainment","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54875989803354,"sku":"7656605767773","price":4.55,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0977\/2692\/3098\/files\/4376062-3271418.jpg?v=1790666826","url":"https:\/\/groovedeck.shop\/products\/greg-mendez-first-time-alone-vinyl","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}