John Ralston

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What would become the jangly, densely layered Sorry Vampire (Vagrant, 10/2), the second full-length from John Ralston, began as just a few basic elements and eventually snowballed into over 50 songs with almost twice as many individual tracks on each song.

The record was built to give the listener the experience of hearing something new with each repeated listen – you’ll likely never hear this record the same way twice. The final dozen tracks also speak to the ‘luxury’ Ralston experienced by not having time constraints and being able to home record.

The Florida-based musician began work on Sorry Vampire almost immediately after self-releasing his debut, Needle Bed, in 2005, which was picked up by Vagrant and re-released in 2006. When he arrived in Knoxville to record the album and Needle Bed’s producer Michael Seaman, he’d formed his plan: “To make the record sound beautiful, but in a different way than you’ve heard before.” This is when he began experimenting with his songs, tossing out leftovers and writing new parts.

The first song, “Fragile”, was one of the first Ralston began crafting with onetime Wilco keyboardist/engineer Jay Bennett and Ralston’s then-bandmate David Vandervelde. Even though they recorded “Fragile”’s basic elements three years ago he didn’t finish the song until 2007, over the course of three or four sessions. “Oh man, it was something! There are so many tracks and so many songs and so many takes on so many songs,” says Seaman, erupting in laughter. Seaman estimates they took a cumulative six months across their sessions in Tennessee and Florida.

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singer-songwriter, acoustic, indie, emo, indie rock
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Top Tracks

1	Second Hand Lovers full track	146
2	Gone, Gone, Gone	40
3	The Only Evidence full track	33
4	When We Are Cats	31
5	Beautiful Disarmed full track	28
6	Fragile full track	27
7	When I Was A Bandage full track	26
8	No One Loves You Like I Do full track	23
9	I Believe in Ghosts	21
10	I Guess I Wasted My Summer Now full track	20
10	No One Said It Was Easy	20
12	Time for Me to Ruin Everything	19
13	It's Not Your Fault	18
14	Keep Me	17
15	Haven't Missed You All My Life full track	14

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superbuyo wrote:
Thursday morning

Love him<3 Some of the most beautiful lyrics.

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WheatieKnees wrote:
last month

Why does he have so few listeners?!

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SLEV7N_ wrote:
June 2009

Second Hand Lovers

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hatten49 wrote:
March 2009

sorry vampire that is

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hatten49 wrote:
March 2009

anybody wanna share this album with me

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dothejas wrote:
February 2009

Fuck he's awesome. I just wished he'd dropped the hobo look.

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logimiri wrote:
December 2008

wow!

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briightest wrote:
December 2008

This guy in a genius.

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justadrienne wrote:
July 2008

he's absolutely awesome :)

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TacoShitter wrote:
July 2008

sweet songs. :)

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loveaslaughter wrote:
May 2008

Yum.

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kattyvongrimm wrote:
April 2008

does anyone have everything to be afraid of that they could send to me? because it's not on itunes and i can't seem to find it anywhere! thankyou x

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blueskysuicide wrote:
March 2008

for as long as i've been listening to john, i only ever really vaguely heard the elliott smith vibe. but with the new white spiders ep, it is all over the place. i heard a lot of dylan in it, too. what a great record.

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porscheyy wrote:
February 2008

one of the nicest mucisians.

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shesheretic wrote:
February 2008

i heard him like a year ago and it still hasnt caught on. i'm shockeddd.

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pianistman1337 wrote:
January 2008

yeah; very unique, and i agree completely with the baroque-pop comparisons to elliott smith.

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hurricane_xX wrote:
January 2008

I agree. I just came across him a month ago, and some of his stuff reminds me of a poppy Elliott Smith. He's really unique, which is hard to find these days =D

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drego5 wrote:
January 2008

John Ralston is one of the most talented musicians ever. He is so sadly underappreciated.

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star_struck_one wrote:
December 2007

Sorry Vampire is reeeeeally good.

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king_tobo wrote:
October 2007

His voice is like Elliott Smith :)

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