TRACKLIST

1. Prelude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2:55  2. You / Aurora / You / Seaside. . . . . . . . . . . . .3:11  3. Christmas in Adventure Parks. . . . . . . . . . . . .3:27  4. People Magazine Front Cover . . . . . . . . . . . . .4:29  5. If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting. . . . . .4:09  6. Help to Prevent Forest Fires. . . . . . . . . . . . .5:14  7. I Sold My Hands for Food So Please Feed Me. . . . . .6:39  8. We Are Safe Inside While They Burn Down Our House . .5:13  9. Born Slippy Nuxx. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4:54 10. Your Endless Dream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5:33 11. Witches! Witches! Rest Now in the Fire. . . . . . . .3:59 12. Ticktack! Goes My Automatic Heart . . . . . . . . . .3:54 13. Lost in the Mountains (Of the Heart). . . . . . . . .5:21 14. Coda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1:08

REVIEW
You hear that? Faint though it was, a definite popping noise. The sound of another heart breaking, ever so slightly, to the music of Get Well Soon, the on-record moniker of 26-year-old German Konstantin Gropper. This 14-track LP is Gropper’s debut, some three years in the making; he’s released a series of EPs over the period. Clearly not one to run when he can make better progress by simply strolling, his meticulous approach to songcraft is admirable, but while many artists polish their material to a high shine and lose the essential emotional attachment between author and audience, Rest Now, Weary Head! You Will Get Well Soon! engages on both a technically proficient and wonderfully affecting level. Early evidence: ‘Prelude’, despite not being a song proper as such, opens proceedings and heads straight for the tear ducts, the throat lumps, the finger trembles. Delicately arranged, decidedly hushed and unhurried at first, the piece erupts in a manner completely comparable to the best Arcade Fire, the more soul-swelling numbers of the Mercury Rev catalogue. And this is just an introduction, the album’s title repeated over an explosion of strings and percussion. Attentions alerted, immediately. Parallels to be drawn come quick, and easily: Beirut is in the mix of ‘You/Aurora/You/Seaside’, instrumentally, yet Gropper’s vocals lilt like Thom Yorke’s; the gentle strum of ‘Christmas In Adventure Parks’ could be Jeffrey Lewis on a handful of downers; and ‘Witches! Witches! Rest Now In The Fire’ is the greatest Jens Lekman number Jens has never written, a waltzing wonder that combines glorious backing harmonies with Grandaddy buzzes and lyricism that’s strangely touching despite the subject matter tackled (outlined fairly obviously in the title). Gropper is clearly enthralled by magic, by mystery; tall tales run through his confessionals, expanding on the everyday with out-there tangents guaranteed to take the listener on a flight of most fantastical fancy. Song titles may be wordy, but like Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois this doesn’t detract from their excellence; these are not weak pieces afforded a sense of things grandiose courtesy of some clever wordplay. A cover of ‘Born Slippy Nuxx’ down-tempos the Underworld original into a beautiful new vision of a club classic; it picks up a degree of pace, but its never arms-aloft of BPM. Imagine The Notwist tackling Fatboy Slim. Weird? On the basis of this song’s success I’d love to hear such a thing. The Karl Hyde-penned offering is the sole non-original here, the remaining 13 tracks all perfectly able to stand on their own superb merits without the overall piece being most characterised by a well-selected, and executed, cover of a familiar slice of modern pop. Gropper produces much of Rest Now, Weary Head! too, an achievement that cant go overlooked. His work at every stage of the development of this debut has been worth it; it’s a record that’ll not only serve as a solid foundation from which to build a career that should be every bit as well-revered as those of the aforementioned comparison acts, but that’ll also feature in many a critic’s end-of-year list. A quiet, confident release that won’t attract all the plaudits it deserves right now, but three further years down the line Get Well Soon should be a project winning accolades from all corners. In short: a touching, tenderly constructed record that requires investigation at your next convenience.

EAC Log

SPOILER!

CODE Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 24. September 2008, 15:04 Get Well Soon / Rest Now, Weary Head! You Will Get Well Soon Used drive  : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4163B  Adapter: 1  ID: 0 Read mode              : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache      : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction                      : 667 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks  : No Null samples used in CRC calculations      : Yes Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface Gap handling                                : Appended to previous track Used output format              : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate                : 128 kBit/s Quality                        : High Add ID3 tag                    : No Command line compressor        : C:\Programmi\Codec Audio\FLAC\flac.exe Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s TOC of the extracted CD     Track |  Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector     ---------------------------------------------------------         1  |  0:00.00 |  2:55.30 |        0    |    13154          2  |  2:55.30 |  3:11.22 |    13155    |    27501          3  |  6:06.52 |  3:27.45 |    27502    |    43071          4  |  9:34.22 |  4:29.38 |    43072    |    63284          5  | 14:03.60 |  4:09.67 |    63285    |    82026          6  | 18:13.52 |  5:14.45 |    82027    |  105621          7  | 23:28.22 |  6:39.00 |    105622    |  135546          8  | 30:07.22 |  5:13.40 |    135547    |  159061          9  | 35:20.62 |  4:54.23 |    159062    |  181134        10  | 40:15.10 |  5:33.15 |    181135    |  206124        11  | 45:48.25 |  3:59.65 |    206125    |  224114        12  | 49:48.15 |  3:54.12 |    224115    |  241676        13  | 53:42.27 |  5:21.60 |    241677    |  265811        14  | 59:04.12 |  1:08.58 |    265812    |  270969  Track  1     Filename C:\CDRip\01 - Prelude.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.00     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 04E25DC4     Copy CRC 04E25DC4     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 16)  [26BC2606], AccurateRip returned [A470B088]     Copy OK Track  2     Filename C:\CDRip\02 - You,Aurora,You,Seaside.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.35     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC FC24BD6E     Copy CRC FC24BD6E     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [3A1EE8EB], AccurateRip returned [7C0FB65F]     Copy OK Track  3     Filename C:\CDRip\03 - Christmas in Adventure Parks.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.12     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC F8A29E24     Copy CRC F8A29E24     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [56766186], AccurateRip returned [4B087FD8]     Copy OK Track  4     Filename C:\CDRip\04 - People Magazine Front Cover.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.00     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC BB514EFB     Copy CRC BB514EFB     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [1289E4C3], AccurateRip returned [46460815]     Copy OK Track  5     Filename C:\CDRip\05 - If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.43     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 81200361     Copy CRC 81200361     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 16)  [726086FF], AccurateRip returned [CF751E19]     Copy OK Track  6     Filename C:\CDRip\06 - Help To Prevent Forest-Fires.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.55     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 6848A25B     Copy CRC 6848A25B     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [6C53836A], AccurateRip returned [CA8E9BAE]     Copy OK Track  7     Filename C:\CDRip\07 - I Sold My Hands For Food So Please Feed Me.wav     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 8B33C621     Copy CRC 8B33C621     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [CE02DBD3], AccurateRip returned [D54C2296]     Copy OK Track  8     Filename C:\CDRip\08 - We Are Safe Inside While They Burn Down Our House.wav     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 91450497     Copy CRC 91450497     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [DFA2DFD6], AccurateRip returned [414F033B]     Copy OK Track  9     Filename C:\CDRip\09 - Born Slippy Nuxx.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.05     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 91F345E7     Copy CRC 91F345E7     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [1FA83BAF], AccurateRip returned [C06F1D65]     Copy OK Track 10     Filename C:\CDRip\10 - Your Endless Dream.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.05     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC BB14A761     Copy CRC BB14A761     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 16)  [C0B04C72], AccurateRip returned [78FA9A7C]     Copy OK Track 11     Filename C:\CDRip\11 - Witches! Witches! Rest Now in the Fire.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.53     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 9763D7B1     Copy CRC 9763D7B1     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [B3A93F00], AccurateRip returned [D50DF660]     Copy OK Track 12     Filename C:\CDRip\12 - TickTack! Goes My Automatic Heart.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.05     Peak level 55.7 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC FDDAC405     Copy CRC FDDAC405     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [FC7C24DF], AccurateRip returned [617FAF9B]     Copy OK Track 13     Filename C:\CDRip\13 - Lost in the Mountains (Of the Heart).wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.40     Peak level 97.9 %     Track quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 080B7842     Copy CRC 080B7842     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [DD6CFAB5], AccurateRip returned [1BD1AAB1]     Copy OK Track 14     Filename C:\CDRip\14 - Coda.wav     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.65     Peak level 74.0 %     Track quality 99.8 %     Test CRC B602C942     Copy CRC B602C942     Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 15)  [916649E7], AccurateRip returned [C55DAF59]     Copy OK No tracks could be verified as accurate You may have a different pressing from the one(s) in the database No errors occurred End of status report

... Something like Radiohead meet Beirut... Enjoy!