Directed by Christopher Boone and Kevin Smokler
Not rated
Running Time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
Available digitally April 19

by Iran Hrabe, Staff Writer

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past decade or two, you are probably aware that people aren’t really buying CDs anymore. Such is the world where for $9.99 a month you can stream pretty much any song ever released on Spotify and anything that can’t can be pulled up on YouTube or some other corner of the internet with a simple Google search. For better or worse that is the nature of our late capitalist society where some monolithic corporate entity is willing to give you everything you could ever desire like a monkey’s paw wish to keep you docile enough to keep any thoughts but the every-growing income disparity at bay Idiocracy style.

That said, despite the decline of the CD and the rise of streaming, sales of vinyl LPs are booming. The trend of people being burnt out on the intangibility of the music media world and turning to the archaic but infinitely charming world of vinyl has been going on for a while now and it’s gone from something that used to be a niche thing into something corporate America has put its greedy little mitts on. Go into any Target and you will see the hottest releases by the biggest artists of the day on vinyl while the CD section shrinks by the year.

It makes sense that someone would make a documentary about vinyl’s resurgence. After all, at least once a year an article drops about how the vinyl supply chain is so overcrowded that the few remaining pressing plants can’t keep up. Delays are inherent, and with major labels now on the bandwagon the indie labels who never stopped peddling vinyl are the ones getting elbowed out. There are so many interesting angles one could take when making a documentary about vinyl, and Vinyl Nation examines none of them.

While it’s not unwatchable and has some interview subjects that broach some of the more interesting facets of vinyl’s resurgence, it mostly feels like a short YouTube documentary where everyone just talks about how nice it is to listen to music on vinyl. It fetishizes the format in a way that makes the doc feel totally non-essential. Sure, buying records is fun and it’s nice to have a big tangible thing that reshapes the way you listen to an album, but do you need a 90-minute movie that is mostly comprised of people reiterating this basic fact? 

The two talking heads who have legitimately interesting stuff to say are both from the indie music industry. Singer-Songwriter and producer John Vanderslice—who owns Tiny Telephone Studios in San Francisco—and Superchunk bassist and Merge Records co-founder Laura Ballance both provide interviews, and the filmmakers totally whiff when it comes to picking their brains. Vanderslice is the sort of obsessive audiophile who started hoarding analog tape when it stopped being produced in the 2000s and while his interview segments are full of personality, the filmmakers neglect to dig deeper than the basics. Where Laura Ballance could provide fascinating insight into supply chain issues for an indie label when majors are taking a bigger stake in the vinyl market, the filmmakers primarily feature her so she can talk about how record collecting is mostly seen as a boy's club but hey, girls collect records too! It’s the sort of missed opportunity that feels like straight-up malpractice. All of this is just a roundabout way of saying that this is barely a movie and you would be better served going down a YouTube rabbit hole about the resurgence of vinyl than watching this.