The two halves of Our Better Halves

'Our Better Halves' by Latterman. As far as I'm concerned this is one of the coolest releases I have in my collection. Because it was so weird, and great.

Here's the story. Band breaks up, soon to follow should be a compilation of all early/ rare/ unreleased material right? I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wanted to see a vinyl re-issue of None of These Songs Are About Girls (which I think was previously available on cassette?) and a long awaited re-press of the Nakatomi Plaza split, which sold out before we ever heard of it and it never pops up, anywhere. I would have really liked this to happen, as an upside to this band disappearing. They took a different, and perhaps way better approach to this idea. Along comes 'Our Better Halves', a 1 song, single sided, self released 7" that contains the last track Latterman had to offer I suppose; an anthem from a compilation that never happened came to light.

So this was what we got. Only available at their reunion shows, this was such a sweet send off for fans. Any leftover copies were given to distro's, notably No Idea Records. This meant that I bugged the good chap at Different Kitchen Records (he's probably going to get a lot of mentions in this here blog) Alan Beningfield, and two weeks or so later this arrived.

It was just perfect. Printed on cheap, thin stock card sleeves, plain centre labels and a plain B-side (no etching or screening). It also comes with a small insert with the lyrics printed on (more on that a little later).

Fast forward a few months, Latterman comes to England on this reunion tour business. And again, thanks to DiffKitch (see what I did there?!) boss man, caught wind of a second press of this sucker, just for us European lot (I think I mentioned before that this is a rare occurrence, so when it happens I get giddy). Like the true gentleman Alan is, he also scored me this one no problem; which was especially nice as I couldn't get to a show due to work.

Same deal as before, plain B-side, plain centre labels. Too cool. Pressing numbers are as follows: 1000 (ish) of the black and 300 of the white as a Euro tour exclusive. Again, this release appealed to me because in it's second/ Euro press because things got changed up a little...

For anyone with sharp eyes or better pixel resolution, you can see the right (euro press) sleeve is much brighter and a clearer picture. The sleeves are thicker too, which is always nice I suppose. Word is that these got printed up by Jan at Yoyo records (I think I'm right on that one).

The Inserts were changed up a little too.

Again, first press on the left, Euro tour press on the right. I like how there is a clear difference in the inserts for the two versions. Even the handwriting is different; tons of quirky stuff to like about this release!

This shouldn't be overlooked at all, the fact that it contains only one song is awesome. It finally completes things. And the song is a good one, a really damn good one. If you like Latterman you're going to like this because it's great. Full of posi vibes and awesome bass lines. A belter of a chorus aswell. Last time I checked you can also head to the Different Kitchen big cartel and score the /300 variant for a little over £3 too. No point in arguing with that logic. Do yourself a favour.