Wino Wednesday: The Obsessed, Incarnate in Full
The long-established tradition (around here) of Wino Wednesday returns after a two-week absence. Last week, with the Quarterly Review, there wasn’t really time to get one together, and the week before that, hell, I don’t even remember what was happening, but something that felt like a valid enough excuse at the time. Nonetheless, we’re approaching ever-closer to Wino Wednesday #200, so the only thing to do is plunge ahead once again like we never missed a beat. Did you notice it was gone the last two weeks? No, probably not. You have a life. I’m the only one who notices this stuff.
All the same, we come back to Wino Wednesday in style today, with The Obsessed‘s 1999 compilation, Incarnate. The first Wino-related release on Southern Lord — it was catalog number “sunn3” — it was a posthumous issue, The Obsessed having broken up following the release of 1994’s The Church Within, though a split 7″ with The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight also surfaced in 2001. By the time Incarnate showed up, Wino was about four years deep into the tenure of Spirit Caravan, who started out as Shine in 1995, and had released their debut album, Jug Fulla Sun, the year before. Still, the collection of demos and other odds and ends served well to tie up The Obsessed‘s run, and its 2003 reissue (also on Southern Lord), along with Wino‘s involvement in Dave Grohl‘s Probot project, would help introduce him to a new generation of fans.
It’s a 59-minute run, so not a slight undertaking, and of course being a comp it brings together recordings from various sources, but if you’re going to listen to it front to back, it’s probably not your first time hearing this stuff. Playing it now to write up this post, it seems eminently worth a revisit. Still not sure the status of The Obsessed‘s reunion, as it seems to have given way to that of Spirit Caravan, but we’ll see how it shakes out. In the meantime, enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:
