We buy a lot of used vinyl here at The Record Exchange, and every day we’re surprised but what comes through the door.

But last week, our jaws hit the floor. Hard.

A collector brought in a lot of 500+ LPs covering the ’60s through the ’90s. Classic rock, old punk, new wave, post punk, ’80s college rock, ’90s alternative, metal, hard rock, hip-hop. And rare stuff. Imports. Nearly full runs of the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin catalogs. Tons of Smiths 12-inch singles. Bunch of Cure and New Order stuff. All of it in great shape — some of it still sealed, even.

And then another collector brought us 100+ contemporary indie releases — Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Woodsman and much more beard-stroking wonderment.

All week long, we’re working on adding all this beautiful vinyl to the racks. Get it before it’s gone, because this is stuff we don’t see every day.

BUY THE VINYL HERE

Recorded during the same session as last year’s sublime Angels of Darkness I, the followup sees Dylan Carlson’s Earth take their panoramic instrumentals, heavy on improvisation this time, into uncharted territories. Releasing twin albums a year apart might seem like excessive prevarication, but in the context of Earth’s lugubrious pace, that’s practically a simultaneous release. As with so much of Carlson’s work, these five songs suggest a mournful last dance in the decrepit roadhouse of some faded midwest mining town. But its the little flourishes that make them truly majestic: the droning psyche-folk thrum of “His Teeth Did Brightly Shine;” the country twang and graceful melodies of “A Multiplicity of Doors;” and the warm, reverb-heavy funk (and, yes, that’s a word you don’t hear often attached to this four-piece) of the album’s closer, “The Rakehell,” which brings to mind Lalo Schifrin’s Dirty Harry soundtracks. This is easily the equal of, if not superior to, its illustrious companion. — Guardian

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Delta Spirit Delta Spirit
Lucero Women and Work
Cannibal Corpse Torture
Say Anything Anarchy My Dear
Justice On’n'On
Holly Golighty and the Brokeoffs Long Distance
Corrosion of Conformity Corrosion of Conformity
Laura Marling Alas I Cannot Swim
Laura Marling I Speak Because I Can
Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason Solaris

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The latest 12-inch single from the Grammy-winning(!) Bon Iver features “Towers” from his Grammy-winning(!) album Bon Iver, plus a b-side cover of John Prine’s “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow),” which originally appear on the tribute compilation Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine.

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Bruce Springsteen Wrecking Ball
Andrew Bird Break It Yourself
Todd Snider Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables
The Magnetic Fields Love at the Bottom of the Sea
The Doors L.A. Woman: The Workshop Sessions
Bright Eyes A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997
Good Old War Come Back as Rain
Xiu Xiu Always
Every Time I Die Ex Lives
Captain Beefheart Merseytrout

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With their sparkling 2009 debut, Reservoir, Fanfarlo carved out a place in a fantastic year for indie rock as joie de vivre pop-folk darlings. Their yearning, raw-edged orchestral style still remains on Rooms Filled with Light, but they take a more exploratory approach to ’80s-inspired rhythms and lush, charming composition.

“Replicate” unveils an album rife with energy, waiting to bubble over. Staccato strings and spacey keys build this urgency, bottled up and thus released on the excellent subsequent track, “Deconstruction”. Here, Fanfarlo reminds you that their music just makes you happy to be alive. The most striking difference between their debut and Rooms Filled with Light is the tighter, artier vocal approach. Front man Simon Balthazar finds a happy vocal medium that sounds like a British amalgamation of Win Butler and David Byrne. This choppy, glottal-heavy style is punctuated by quirky New Order and Cure-inspired synth angles and makes for an album with much more texture and risk than the Fanfarlo we knew three years ago. Trademark, chiming 80s guitars and glimmering cascades of harmonies are there, but Fanfarlo adds a dash of horns and strings to fixate their style in the current age. — Consequence of Sound

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Pink Floyd The Wall
Jay Farrar/Will Johnson/Anders Parker/Yim Yames New Multitudes
Dirty Three Toward the Low Sun
School of Seven Bells Ghostory
Johnny Cash Live from Austin Texas
Willie Nelson Live from Austin Texas
Susan Tedeschi Live from Austin Texas
Hank Thompson Songs for Rounders
Keith Whitman Fullerton Generators
Christian Mistress Possession

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Claire Boucher works across many media. In addition to making music, the restless producer and mesmeric voice behind Grimes is an artist (she makes her own album covers), a filmmaker (she directs her own music videos), and a dancer (she choreographs them). Her most ambitious project, though, may be herself. Over a rush of ever-stronger records, she’s molded herself into a bizarro pop star, bridging the chasm between the leftfield home recordings of so many cassette-only releases and the picture-book confections of her idol Mariah Carey. On her 4AD debut, Visions, she continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop.

Like all Grimes albums, Visions was tracked alone in Boucher’s bedroom and pieced together on GarageBand, but it’s crafted with such attention to detail that it makes its predecessors feel like test runs. The album’s big dance pieces, “Vowels = Space And Time” and “Be A Body,” are the first Grimes tracks that could play in clubs. The cleaner fidelity and tighter song structures haven’t hampered Boucher’s sense of exploration, though. She still cycles through influences voraciously, using sprightly Korean pop, Cocteau Twins-styled dreamscapes, and Depeche Mode’s nocturnal synths as springboards for ever-weirder explorations. In other hands this lattice of unrelated strains of dance, New Age, bubblegum, and R&B could collapse under the weight of its own busyness—or worse, its own preciousness—but Boucher’s command of mood is so strong, and her ear for melody so selective, that she handily avoids those traps. — The A.V. Club

OTHER NEW VINYL ARRIVALS:

Josh Ritter Bringing in the Darlings
Sleigh Bells Reign of Terror
Bonobo Black Sands Remixed
Cursive I Am Gemini
Lana Del Rey Born to Die
Archers of Loaf Vee Vee
Fun. Some Nights
Fun. Aim and Ignite
Battles Dross Glop 2
Tindersticks Something Rain