Today marks 20 years to the day that The Optimist Lp by Turin Brakes was released. While this is not the only anniversary this week (03-03-03 was the release date of Ether Song, which makes last Wednesday exactly 18 years since the release), it’s a real milestone for the band’s debut. Congratulations!!!
The band marked the occassion with a video on Instagram here. And while this is an excellent day to dive into the album once more, there’s more you can do today. So here we go.
Listen
- Listen to the album on a physical medium of your choice, but also on a streaming platform (like Spotify, Tidal or Apple Music). This gives the album (and our favourite band) a little boost in the world of streaming. Which is a nice thing, you know.
- You can also listen to to The Optimist Live album, in anticipation for the 20th Anniversary tour (hopefully this October).
- Olly did a few podcasts recently talking about the album and the band’s history. There’s the first episode of Tuned, or you can listen to The Song Sommelier. There’s also the previously reported excellent Demo Tapes podcast and last year’s Britpop Banter podcast episode (Turin Brakes things start 51 minutes in).
- I did an interview for Ether Site with the band at the O2 ABC in Glasgow in 2011 talking about the tour and the album. There’s a Part 1 and Part 2. (be kind to me, I know I say a lot of “OK” and “Yeah”, I was gonna write it out at first so I didn’t realise people would hear my voice – also maybe I had a bit of a cold?).
Read
- Back in 2011, we did an The Optimist Gallery feature where people shared their Optimist stories which are still very much worth reading! Olly wrote a piece himself.
- Earlier this week, Olly and Gale looked back in The Guardian on the band’s history through 10 songs that reminded them of tours and years gone by.
- You can order the ‘When Quiet was the new Loud’ book, which features a chapter on the album and the band, for future reading.
Watch
- You can watch this video of the first Optimist Anniversary Tour in 2011.
Buy
- There are no pre-orders for the reissue album up yet, but you could invest in tickets for the anniversary tour, if you haven’t bought them already.
Let me know if you have any ideas on how to celebrate today and the album!
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