About A Million

 

About A Million hails from the tiny city of Coatesville, PA. To say this band is unique would be putting it lightly, there are so many things going on in this band it's hard to pick a place to start; To start I feel like I should mention that this is a family band. Family bands aren't all too common when thinking about songs of this style. I'd compare them to something like twee, jangle with a mix of Alex G. and garage. 

Going back to the family band point, this band consists of the Leitch siblings, the siblings being.

Scotty Leitch, Anthony Leitch, Kyle Leitch & Jessica Leitch. some of these names might sound familiar, primarily Anthony and Scotty due to their other side projects. Scotty has been featured on my blog before under the band "Pirouette" but is now better known as "Shelf Life". If you haven't yet listened to Pirouette I recommend you do so ASAP.

The "albums" I'm sharing today I forgot I had and can't find anything about them online at all, nothing, 0, zip, nada. The reason why I call these songs "albums" is because I would consider these more of something like home recordings and demos more than full fledged albums, these don't even have album art or lyrics which is why I'm borrowing the photos from the bands facebook which also does not have much info about that band but I digress. 

as well as not knowing much about the recordings or having album art / lyrics, I also don't have any release dates for any of these albums but I'm guessing maybe around 2003/4? sometime before pirouette but I could be wrong entirely. Regardless I hope you enjoy these long lost tracks.

DREAMING IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE

1) Gentile Rubber

 2) Hallucination

3) It's called well love 

4) Plastic Black 

5) Since We've Been Apart

6) Something About Hannah

7) Surviving a Plane Crash

8) The Stereo Had it Cumming

9) This Cocoon is Cacomfortable

10) His Girl Fridays

11) In Our Dreams

12) Nah, I Think I'll Just Go Home

13) The Yearbook That Gave Birth To The Dictionary

14) Krystal Boll

15) Matt's Black Haircut

16) Technilogical Composure (bass) 

Man Made of Paper

1) Air

2) Dirty Mafia

3) Drunken Spaceship

4) Last Chances are Hard to Breathe Without Anyone

5) Man Made of Paper

6) Oh

7) You Gotta Know

Don't let our chord break

1) 12 year old with aids

2) Don't Give Me That

3) I CAN'T BE FREE

4) She Won't Say Anything

5) Since We've Been Apart (Acoustic Version)

6) Something Random Something Weird

7) The Truth

8) You were telling the truth

9) All the hours

10) Animals eating animals

11) Cars are retro

12) His girl friday1

13) I Hate Breathing

14) Lullaby

15) Makeout session with the enemy (4 Miles Ago)

16) Makes Sense

17) My Only Friend

18) She won't say anythingg

19) Techincal Difficulties 

20) The Jealous Sound

Veronica Lake

FFO: Shoegaze, Lo-fi

Veronica Lake was a pop band formed in 1990 in Ann Arbor Michigan. The band consisted of Tim Sendra as well as Christopher Chip Porter and R. Scott Kelley previously of down MF. Veronica Lake released "The Man Who Was Not With It E.P" in 1990 on Bus Stop and two 7"s- "When You Smile/Insecure Baby" in 1992 on spinART and "Threnody/In the Clouds" in 1993 on Audrey's Diary. They appeared on several twee and indie comps including Simple Machine's "Working Holiday!: May" 7". An insert for their first 7" describes them as, "dedicated to flexidiscs, exclamation marks, and hopelessly derivative, instantly forgettable songs".

-Taken from Last.Fm

As said above most of these songs were taken from 7" records on labels that are now very much defunct (RIP) but their music will live on; That being said these recordings are low quality with pops crackles and all included. I wouldn't want it any other way.

An interesting thing I found when going through these files was their split with Crayon that was released on Cher Doll Records which has a slight connection to another band featured on this site which was Gaze. Gaze's "So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) EP covers Crayon's song "Pedal", don't you love making connections?

I'm including the songs from all splits/ singles and EP released from 1992-1993, each of these releases had their release name and album art but for neatness I found a generic album art and id3 tagged that so they all share they same art as well as album name.

as of the time post (8/21/19) Veronica Lake had reunited once in 2015 playing PopFest in NYC, with their reunion came a compilation CDr that was titled "Ballad Of The Band" and features three songs not heard on any previous releases, this was being sold directly through the band in person so I feel it isn't right to share something currently being sold, especially by a band without a label. Veronica Lake makes infrequent posts on Facebook so they might be active once again but I wouldn't put money on it.

Favorite Track : This Is My World (You Can Have It), From the get go this song is interesting as it starts with an excerpt from a Steve Martin SNL skit so bonus points there, when the song starts it's what you'd expect from a 90's shoegaze band, soft voices and guitar with fuzzy guitar effects and somber whistling to follow, good song to sit in your dark room under the covers and think of better times to.

Veronica Lake (1992 - 1993)

1. Daisy Kiss

2. Emma Maybe

3. In The Clouds

4. Insecure Baby

5. Saints Above

6. See Me When You Are 16

7. Sleepyhouse

10. This Is My World (You Can Have It)

11. Threnody

12. When You Smile