Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - This Is A Mindfulness Drill

On limited Opaque Black & White Explosion color vinyl. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that Richard Youngs's 'Sapphie' was all about a dead dog.  I don't know if someone insinuated this idea in front of me or if I psychologically tethered the title to the tenderly printed dog paw on it's cover. Either way, I've gone over a decade thinking this remarkable, windswept album of torch songs was about a dearly departed pet. And yet, as we approached a reissue of this Jagjaguwar classic and a new, reimagined version by artists Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Moses Sumney, Sharon Van Etten, and Perfume Genius, Richard Youngs was straightforward and unsentimental about it's meanings. "The lyrics are not about anything in particular," Youngs wrote. The paw prints on the cover are, in fact, that of a friend's dog ("The first dog I ever loved," Richard said.), but there is no devastating loss at it's center. And so, I want to tell Richard how this album has become a centering album for a grea