Lullaby for the Working Class - Blanket Warm (SMOKEY VINYL)

Format: LP, Smokey Vinyl
Catalogue No.: LP15P25C
Barcode: 840526516186
Release Date: 13 Nov 2026
Genre: Chamber Pop

"Praised by Rolling Stone, NME and the New York Times on release — the1996 debut from the members who went on to form bright eyes & cursive.  Back on vinyl for its 30th anniversary!

Blanket Warm is a genuine buried-treasure reissue: a record contemporary critics compared to the Rolling Stones, Guided by Voices, and Tindersticks, and one a new generation of listeners has rediscovered as a missing link to Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens’ chamber-folk.

Lullaby for the Working Class formed in Lincoln, Nebraska in the winter of 1994, when multi-instrumentalist Mike Mogis and singer-guitarist Ted Stevens began writing together.  Working from two home-recorded demos — and without having played a single live show — the band signed to New Jersey’s Bar/None Records in 1995. Blanket Warm was recorded and mixed by the Mogis brothers between December 1994 and April 1996 at their own Whoopass Recording Studio in Lincoln. Bar/None issued the album on CD in September 1996, while the vinyl LP went out through Lumberjack/Saddle Creek imprint in a pressing of just 1,000 copies — long out of print, and the edition this reissue restores to the format.

The result splits the difference between rustic and ornate: acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, and upright bass sit alongside a chamber ensemble of violin, cello, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. Critics at the time reached for an unusually wide range of comparisons — the Rolling Stones, Guided by Voices, Tindersticks, Van Morrison — united mainly by the sense that nothing else sounded quite like it. Ted Stevens’ plainspoken, image-driven lyrics and unhurried delivery anchor songs that unfold with more patience and more instrumental color than the alt-country and lo-fi indie rock the band got lumped in with on release."    A1. Good Morning | A2. Honey, Drop the Knife | A3. Turpentine | A4. Spreading the Evening Sky with Crows | A5. Boar’s Nest | A6. Eskimo Song Duel | B1. Three Peas in a Pod | B2. Rye | B3. Queen of the Long-Legged Insects | B4. The Drama of Your Life | B5. February North 24th Street | B6. The Wounded Spider | B7. Good Night