Have Heart formed in Boston in 2001 and spent the mid-2000s becoming one of the most emotionally direct hardcore bands the city had produced since the genre’s earliest local heroes. By 2006 they were ready to commit their full statement to record. The Things We Carry, released August 8th of that year on Bridge Nine (catalog B9R075), arrived with eleven tracks and an album-length ambition rare for the genre — songs about fathers and sons, about shame and community and what it costs to stay present in your own life. Kurt Ballou recorded and mixed it. It quietly became one of the most important hardcore albums of its decade.
The original first pressing is one of the most obsessively documented releases in Bridge Nine’s catalog. Per the label’s own pressing history: 1,000 copies were pressed total, split between brown marble and blue marble vinyl, housed in an expanded gatefold LP jacket. Of those 1,000, the most sought-after copies — roughly 100 total, split between 60 brown marble and 40 blue marble — received hand spray-painted covers made by the band themselves for the record release show. Each one is unique. No two look the same. Bridge Nine notes these hand-painted record release covers as among the most collectible artifacts they’ve ever distributed. The gatefold jacket was discontinued with the 3rd pressing, which means only the first two pressings come in the expanded packaging. The 4th pressing introduced a surprise variant: 100 additional copies on black vinyl, using leftover gatefold jackets, sent unsolicited to random mail-order customers as an upgrade in lieu of the red vinyl they’d ordered. This listing is the 2024 pressing — the 14th pressing of the record — on yellow vinyl out of 600, new and sealed, from Top Rated Plus seller Zion’s Gate Records out of Seattle. For collectors entering the record for the first time, this is a clean and reputable way in while originals remain scarce and trade for multiples.
