The Dream Syndicate - How We Found Ourselves ... Everywhere! (LP)

The Dream Syndicate’s reunion never felt like a museum piece, and How We Found Ourselves ... Everywhere! makes that clear from the first needle drop. Issued as a limited Record Store Day Black Friday release on 23 November 2018 via Anti-, it’s a grab bag of live cuts, radio sessions and odds and ends from the band’s second life around How Did I Find Myself Here? The title winks at that 2017 comeback, but the music does more than nod. You can hear a group relishing its chemistry again, the old gears meshing with fresh oil.

This band built its name in early 80s Los Angeles as part of the Paisley Underground, then carved out a lane of its own with The Days of Wine and Roses. That record’s spiky guitars and circular grooves are part of the DNA here, but now they sit inside a widescreen sound the group has grown into. Steve Wynn’s voice still cuts with weary grace, and his guitar work with Jason Victor is a show in itself. They move from serrated riffs to starry drones without the fuss of a band trying to impress. Dennis Duck keeps the pulse steady and a little hypnotic, the way he always has, while Mark Walton’s bass sits deep in the pocket. On stage and in the studio, that foursome has become an engine again.

The set traces their late 2010s renaissance. You’ll hear versions that test the edges, building patiently before they hit the burn. It’s not a greatest hits or a victory lap. It feels like the tapes were rolling while the band took a victory lap and then kept running. There’s space for the long, heady builds that fans know from the early days, and room for the newer songs to stretch their legs. That’s where the record lands its punch. The comeback album came with its own stories, not least Kendra Smith’s guest turn on the closer Kendra’s Dream, and this companion piece catches the band living in that world on stage and in broadcast studios, pulling threads until new colours emerge.

If you remember Live at Raji’s, you’ll recognise the thrill of hearing them caught in motion. The guitar solos lean into ragged beauty rather than fireworks. The rhythm section keeps pushing forward, but it never hurries. There’s a constant sense of being in the room with them, the way a good live document should feel. It’s easy to picture the cramped radio booth or a theatre somewhere in Europe with lights low and a crowd that’s half still, half swaying. You get the sweat and the shimmer.

Anti- stuck by the band through this era, and critics did too. How Did I Find Myself Here? drew warm notices from places like Uncut and Mojo, and the follow up These Times in 2019 proved the return wasn’t a one off. How We Found Ourselves ... Everywhere! catches that momentum mid stride. It’s the sort of release that deepens a catalogue rather than padding it out. As a listen, it works front to back, but it also plays like a treasure chest for anyone who fell for the band in 1982 and came back for the second act.

On vinyl, this material breathes. The quiet passages have a tactile hush, and when the band opens up, the guitars bloom. If you’re hunting The Dream Syndicate vinyl, this sits nicely beside The Days of Wine and Roses and the recent studio records. It’s the one you pull out when a mate asks what the reunion actually sounds like. Put it on and let the side play out. The answer’s there in the way the band leans into a groove, then rides it.

For crate diggers and late night shoppers alike, it’s a great excuse to buy The Dream Syndicate records online, especially if you’ve been filling a wishlist with The Dream Syndicate albums on vinyl. If you stumble on How We Found Ourselves ... Everywhere! vinyl in a Melbourne record store, snap it up. Pressings like this don’t loiter on shelves in the world of vinyl records Australia. It’s a document of a band that found its way back and then kept going, not out of nostalgia, but because the songs still had places to be.