Sebadoh have lined up an expanded reissue of Harmacy, making the 1996 album internationally available after a period out of print. Sub Pop will release the new edition in 2xLP and 2xCD formats, as well as digitally, on November 20. Appended to the record are 16 rarities, including five previously unreleased takes. Check out one of them, an alternate version of “Beauty of the Ride,” below, along with the Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition) tracklist.
The remaining rarities comprise alternate versions of three songs, an acoustic demo of “Open Ended,” the B-side “Real Deal,” and a number of live recordings, including the band’s BBC sessions from the period. JJ Golden at Golden Mastering retouched and remastered the album.
Harmacy was a minor commercial breakthrough for Sebadoh, though Lou Barlow has not always been enthused about its 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 easier to track down. Barlow added that the record “was a real heartbreaker. 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.”
Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition):
01 On Fire
02 Prince-S
03 Ocean
04 Nothing Like You
05 Crystal Gypsy
06 Beauty of the Ride
07 Mind Reader
08 Sforzando!
09 Willing to Wait
10 Hillbilly II
11 Zone Doubt
12 Too Pure
13 Worst Thing
14 Love to Fight
15 Perfect Way
16 Can’t Give Up
17 Open Ended
18 Weed Against Speed
19 I Smell a Rat
20 Willing to Wait (Alternate Version)
21 Worst Thing (Alternate Version)
22 Beauty of the Ride (Alternate Version)
23 Too Pure (Alternate Version)
24 Real Deal (Studio B-Side)
25 Real Deal (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
26 It’s Gonna Be Loud (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
27 I Feel O.K. (BBC Live Version, Radio 1)
28 Open Ended (Acoustic Demo)
29 Crest (BBC Live Version, John Peel)
30 Willing to Wait (Live)
31 Psyched to Die (Live)
32 Mind Reader (Live)
33 Can’t Give Up (Live)
34 Worst Thing (Live)
35 Love to Fight (Live)