This Music Is Ours - a tribute to Galaxie 500

This Music Is Ours - sleeve

Because of the strangeness of 2020 I very nearly let This Is Our Music’s 30th anniversary pass by unheralded. But in the last week in August I decided that would just be like giving in to the shitshow of a year it’s been. So I put out a call, with less than two months to turn this around. The response was phenomenal.

This Music Is Ours features 10 fantastic covers of all the tracks from Galaxie 500’s This Is Our Music - plus the b-side of the Fourth of July single - and features bands from around the world putting their own unique take on the songs.

There is also a beautiful 16 page book with a piece of art representing each song on the album.

Pre order This Music Is Ours

Sleeve notes

Galaxie 500 called their third album This Is Our Music. Which I suppose it was.

This Music Is Ours - reveerse

Within six months of its release the band had split up.

Maybe you can hear the end of the band on the album, but I never could. Maybe “way up high and going too fast” or “seems like everything is business” should have clued me in but I was never so astute.

All I heard was the band I loved still progressing, not necessarily getting better, or worse, but getting on.

When you have three near-perfect albums the very idea of ranking or rating them is ridiculous. But the internet loves a list, and music publications love a score, and when that happens with Galaxie 500 it’s This Is Our Music that invariably props up the list, and has the fewest stars.

But then you look at the track listing and you have to wonder how that can be. This is the album with Fourth of July, and Hearing Voices, and Summertime, and Listen, the Snow is Falling. It’s inconceivable that an album this strong could be anything but top of any list.

When Dean says that “half of it is good” or Kramer suggests that “it could have been twice as good” I think that they’re hearing more than the album. I think they’re hearing the making of the album, the friction, the frustration, the anger and impatience. Maybe they can hear the end of the band. I don’t hear that.

Perhaps the album’s title isn’t being said by the band - maybe it’s being said by us.

This music is ours.

Andy Aldridge - October 2020