The Best Vinyl Deals On Amazon This Week

Credit: Far Out

Celebrating folk: The 10 best vinyl deals available on Amazon this week

Sun 29 January 2023 17:58, UK

Welcome back to Far Out’s weekly vinyl corner feature, where we look to bring you a tempting selection of records from some of our favourite artists, bargain vinyl deals to look out for, and unmissable limited-edition releases. This week, we’re exploring folk music, old and new, with a selection of classic essentials and modern picks.

Vinyl sales grew for the 15th consecutive year in 2022, rising to 5.5million units, the highest level since 1990, when …But Seriously by Phil Collins was the year’s biggest-selling studio album. The return to plastic has steadily climbed since the invasion of streaming services in the late 2000s. While the weightless, highly accessible and practical format is great for discovering and consuming swathes of new music while you’re out and about, there’s nothing like coming home to a bit of vinyl.

Fellow collectors will agree that if there’s an artist or album you love, there’s always a good reason to have the turntable at the ready and a 12″ slot reserved on the shelf for inevitable expansion. The sound quality of vinyl brings something more hearty and vibrant with its analogue warmth and crisp definition that there really isn’t a substitute for.

So if, like me, you have a soft spot for these groovy discs of plastic, allow me to walk you through ten hot picks for this week. The list includes some early classics from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, alongside some more modern picks by Jake Bugg and Taylor Swift.

The 10 best vinyl deals available on Amazon this week:

Jake Bugg – Jake Bugg

In 2012, Jake Bugg released his masterpiece debut album, aged just 18. The Nottingham-based singer-songwriter channelled his folk heroes like Bob Dylan and Neil Young to bring a welcomed update to the folk sound mastered in the 1960s.

The songs perfectly encapsulate the working-class lifestyles of the urban north, and for this reason, the album’s lead single, ‘Trouble Town’, was used as the theme track for BBC’s Happy Valley. Other big hits on the album include ‘Country Song’, ‘Lightning Bolt’ and ‘Two Fingers’.

Available for purchase here for £25.85.

Taylor Swift – Folklore [Deluxe]

After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, Taylor Swift cancelled the supporting tour for her seventh studio album, Lover. And began making headway with her follow-up album, Folklore. From lockdown uncertainty, Swift created these evocative tracks as “a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness,” as she said in a press release at the time of release.

Swift recorded the album shortly after writing. She was helped by producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, with whom she was forced to work remotely. In a reflection of the times, Folklore took a marked turn from the upbeat pop sound fans had been led to expect. Among the folk-tinged balladry are essential hits like ‘Cardigan’, ‘Betty’ and ‘August’.

Available for purchase here for £30.77.

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

The sixth studio album by America’s most revered songwriter was originally released in August 1965. The album combines driving blues-based rock music with the subtlety of Dylan’s folk poetry. The album came right in the centre of Dylan’s early career peak, sandwiched by 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde, considered by many fans as Dylan’s masterpiece.

The music captures contemporary America’s political and cultural chaos thanks to Dylan’s unrivalled wordplay. Highway 61 Revisited includes ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Tombstone Blues’, ‘From a Buick 6’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and ‘Queen Jane Approximately’.

Available for purchase here for £19.99.

Nick Drake – Pink Moon

Nick Drake was among the most talented British musicians to emerge from the singer-songwriter boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He pushed the boundaries to explore complex and unorthodox tunings and fingerstyle patterns that express the poetry of his lyrics, often as much as the words themselves.

Sadly, Drake wasn’t appreciated in his time and would never live to see his popularity take flight, much like a musical Van Gough. After releasing his first two albums, Drake decided to record one further album, a stripped-back, gloomy acoustic masterpiece, 1972’s Pink Moon. Over the next two years, he became a recluse due to his worsening battle with depression and died in November 1974 after taking an anti-depressant overdose.

Available for purchase here for £24.09.

Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Ohio indie-folk group Big Thief give a gentle and sentimental feeling to much of their music, making it a delight for lazy Sunday afternoon listening. In their latest album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Big Thief bring a bumper selection of heartwarming tracks over two LPs. The music covers a range of moods while maintaining a dominant atmosphere of introspective optimism.

As Far Out wrote in our stellar review of the album earlier this year, it’s “a record that allows for creativity to grow and procreate among the liner notes while also staying true to the soil it was first planted in. There aren’t many albums that have the opportunity to please everyone all of the time. But there aren’t many bands like Big Thief around.”

Available for purchase here for £30.15.

Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

In 1968, Van Morrison released his second solo album, Astral Weeks. The music made for a welcomed departure from his previous pop fodder, such as ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ and ‘Spanish Rose’. Astral Weeks presents a newfound maturity to Morrison’s lyrics, and, instrumentally, a more refined and progressive take on the folk tradition.

There’s not a dry second on this late-decade masterpiece, but if I were to extract a few highlights, I would name ‘Sweet thing’, ‘Astral Weeks’, ‘Madame George’, and ‘Cyprus Avenue’.

Available for purchase here for £19.45.

Woody Guthrie – The Ultimate Collection

Woody Guthrie is most famous for his classic track ‘This Land is Your Land’ and, of course, for being the man before Bob Dylan. Dylan’s early foray into the world of folk music was guided mostly by Guthrie, whose song ‘1939 Massacre’ gave Dylan his chord pattern for one of his first-ever compositions, ‘Song to Woody’.

Sadly, by the early-60s, Guthrie had been taken ill with congenital Huntington’s disease. The pioneering anti-fascist protest singer wasn’t without good company, though. Dylan moved to New York City and would sit by Guthrie’s hospital bed, playing folk tunes and gleaning as much wisdom as he could from the master.

Available for purchase here for £26.28.

Woody Guthrie - The Ultimate Collection vinyl — Credit: Press

Neil Young – Harvest

Following his formative tenure with Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Graham Nash in various combinations over the late ’60s, Neil Young returned to a more permanent solo career with his third solo album, After the Gold Rush, in 1970. The album kicked off what would be his most prolific and indisputably vital decade.

This record is perhaps only bettered by one other in Young’s solo canon, 1972’s Harvest. Young explored blues rock and even invented grunge over his varied career, but Harvest boasted his most consummate work in the field of folk. This essential album includes classic hits like ‘Heart of Gold’, ‘Old Man’ and ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’.

Available for purchase here for £34.60.

Joni Mitchell – Blue

Joni Mitchell, often heralded as the feminine answer to Bob Dylan, laid some of the most impressive tracks in folk over the 1960s and ’70s. She came to fruition as a salient feature of the Newport Folk Festival through the mid-’60s before releasing three albums in the decade.

After splitting up with Graham Nash, Mitchell entered an intense relationship with James Taylor in the early 1970s. Her fourth album, Blue, documents this turbulent period in her young life and is widely considered her masterpiece. Prominent highlights include ‘California’, ‘River’ and ‘A Case of You’.

Available for purchase here for £26.59.

Simon and Garfunkel – Bookends

Bookends, released in 1968, is the fourth studio album of America’s most beloved folk duo, Simon and Garfunkel. After rising to prominence with Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and the soundtrack album for the 1967 film The Graduate, they decided to experiment with their sound a little, using the state-of-the-art Moog synthesiser.

What resulted is one of the pair’s greatest triumphs. Bookends is home to highlights, including the Graduate theme, ‘Mrs. Robinson’, ‘Fakin’ It’ and the jewel in its crown, ‘America’, a perfect ode to the land of the free and the Manifest Destiny.