Sep 24 2021
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The Smashing Pumpkins
Still canât forgive Billy Corgan his voice or lyrics, but a wondrous album all the same.
4
Sep 27 2021
Horses
Patti Smith
At first - harder work than Iâd hope from a classic album. Perhaps Iâve not the patience, as itâs sounding pedestrian (and perhaps even indulgent). As the record warms up, I begin to hear the artists who must owe Patti and incredible debt: Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, Kathleen Hanna. By the time âFree Moneyâ is done Iâm several shades more optimistic about the record.
3
Sep 28 2021
Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod Stewart
A lot more American Songbook than Iâd have guessed.
Hadnât noticed how similar the end of Maggie May is to âLosing My Religionâ.
âMandolin Windâ is a song that transforms at the halfway mark, from dull to wonderful. In a way that serves as metonym - an album thatâs half pretty dull, and half absolutely wonderful.
3
Sep 29 2021
Transformer
Lou Reed
3
Sep 30 2021
The Village Green Preservation Society
The Kinks
Wonderful record. Hadnât realised that it was so ignored initially. ââŠWalterâ a standout track for me.
5
Oct 05 2021
Chirping Crickets
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
4
Oct 06 2021
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
3
Oct 11 2021
Automatic For The People
R.E.M.
Night Swimming <3
4
Oct 12 2021
Diamond Life
Sade
I sit in the global coffeehouse, second hand smoke atop first. Frasier Crane sends me a drink. I resolve to later memorialise him as a neon statue.
3
Oct 14 2021
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
5
Oct 18 2021
The Stranger
Billy Joel
Challenging on many levels, and none of them good.
1
Oct 25 2021
Power In Numbers
Jurassic 5
3
Oct 26 2021
The Number Of The Beast
Iron Maiden
Ba wi wi wewww, ba wa wa wewwww.
Is it possible to listen to this album and not find another layer to love about it? A taste I am grateful for having taken the time to acquire.
4
Oct 28 2021
Actually
Pet Shop Boys
Eat the rich! For all the damage that privatisation has done to the U.K. â and continues to do; how lucky am I to have been directly engaging with a deep historical legacy every time I lost three hours to getting back to Brighton from London? â the upside is that in 1986/87 there was plenty of subject matter for socially-conscious pop to contend with.
âItâs a sinâ is the standout track â and with thanks to the Russel T Davies drama, contains lyrical ideas that still feel as vital and pressing as they must have in the 80s â but bops like âWhat have I done to deserve this?â (featuring Dusty, of course) and âI want to wake upâ are brilliant deeper cuts. The former of which puts me in mind of Jermaine Stewartâs âWe donât have to take our clothes offâŠâ, a hit from the year previous â though âWHIDTDTâ was maybe composed even earlier; Dusty took a while to reply apparently.
(Side note: I wonder how many influential one-hit wonders are forgotten in a list like this? Feels unlikely that weâll see Jermaine Stewart, King, etc.)
So deeply of its time while so completely timeless, âActuallyâ is sophisticated pop made by brilliant people. Simple as that.
5
Oct 29 2021
If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears
The Mamas & The Papas
4
Nov 02 2021
Ten
Pearl Jam
3
Nov 03 2021
The ArchAndroid
Janelle MonĂĄe
Full to the brim with afrofuturistic big bops, massive ideas and winning collaborations. Some brilliant pop songs and lovely melodies. Not really my scene, but I love the audacity of it and so appreciate the talent.
3
Nov 04 2021
Giant Steps
The Boo Radleys
Decadeologists, Iâm reliably informed, look upon the â3s as transitional years. The dawn of a new decade is slow to break â and it takes a year or two for the morning stars of the previous era to fade into blue sky.
For that reason, and many more, this feels like a record caught between multiple different states.
There are ideas here that the Boos have taken and run with from various giants of genre (MVB, Beatles especially). And then there are ideas â riffs, atmospheres, sound textures and compositional choices â that will be picked up and refined by bands throughout the 90s (by the Manics, Radiohead, Creationâs entire roster, etc.).
There are even concepts that, seen in the context of the next recordâs contribution to britpop cannon, feel work in progress within The Booâs own career, too.
And so it is that, on this album from the 90s own â3, we find our Boos still slightly shoegaze snoozy and just now rousing.
While this album will mean more to many than my âa prelude to the 90s properâ allows for â itâs also exactly that. Itâll be a year or so before the stars are fully faded and they yell out âWake up, itâs a beautiful morning.â What a thing it must be to be able to say you were there first.
4
Nov 09 2021
Exit Planet Dust
The Chemical Brothers
Iâm in, characters fizz over the membrane. Thereâs risk here, but no jeopardy: they might notice somethingâs different, can happen, theyâre not total brats; but Iâll be in El Salvador - Dios, UniĂłn, Libertad - by the time theyâve got a handle on the damage. Iâm riding higher, every touch magnetic, the thrill in the code adrenaline-sugar-seduction. Underneath the beat of the taps in the deep dark humming between those bleeding pixel greens though, itâs her. Raven-haired, always somewhere else, her. But thereâs no place in the interface for her, and she isnât hiding. I keep looking all the same.
3
Nov 11 2021
Greetings From L.A.
Tim Buckley
3
Nov 16 2021
Vivid
Living Colour
I was surprised by the opening riff of âCult of personalityâ â to put immediately in mind of a sort of post-cock rock, sedate Killswitch Engage was not what I was expecting. A ripping solo later and, in spite of my better judgement, Iâm ready to throw some horns up and worry about authoritarianism with LC.
And then it comes crashing in, for better or worse, my better judgement. The record starts to ask me if Iâve wondered what âSussudioâ would sound like with Iron Maiden stood in front of Philâs kit â and I just havenât. I have never wondered.
There are a couple more jams in there: âFunny Vibeâ is like a less nauseating this-era RHCP, and âWhich way to Americaâ moves at precisely the same tempo as my poolâs pump (I was guiding the creepy crawler around by this stage of the album) â fun! But then thereâs âWhatâs your favorite colour?â â sidebar: grammatical inconsistency is sort of Living Colourâs thing; a British-English U in their band name, but not in their song titles; a question mark when asking about colour, but not when asking for directions â a question the band answer in the song ⊠yes, Living Colour, or âGlamour Boysâ which sounds suspiciously like the inspiration for âUnder the seaâ from the Little Mermaid.
Thereâs nothing to dislike here, really. Tight, accomplished musicianship and a well-committed to bit. But dear me must the world have been ready for grunge by the time âVividâ had finished with it.
2
Nov 17 2021
Beyond Skin
Nitin Sawhney
Wonderful, visionary work. Everything about this feels so neatly stitched together â a seamless patchwork of lovingly curated influences and perfectly executed ideas. To have harmonised so many disparate impulses â let alone to often breathtaking effect â is something, but to have made it feel so immanent (as in: necessary, essential, teleological) is another. Thereâs a blueprint for a better world inside here, I wish we lived in it.
4
Nov 18 2021
Remain In Light
Talking Heads
Isnât David clever! Lots of groove, fantastic guitar work and a stone cold classic song (universe level) too. Iâm never sure if I like Talking Heads as much as I should, but not to worry: the album enjoys itself whether Iâm sticking with it or not. Very good.
4
Aug 04 2023
MTV Unplugged In New York
Nirvana
5
Aug 07 2023
Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine
Itâs a rare kind of alchemy found in these tracks. The words, grooves, attitudes fit like tectonic plates â first locking in, then finding friction, then pushing up together into the sky, building mountains.
Iâm always on the lookout for emotion-, feeling-, impulse-defining combinations of musicianship and lyricism â the sort of moments that take you to wherever the artist wanted you to go no matter your previous headspace. âFuck you, I wonât do what you tell meâ, sat atop that preposterously dialled-in groove is canon. It is slam dancing rebellion that throws everything at you and then its limbs; bratty rage against the machines of loving grace. (âMotherfuckerâ, it should be noted, is delivered with a similarly emphatic aplomb.)
Thereâs more to this record than just that track â the 2009 U.K. Christmas number one âthough. Lots. So much so that a whole generation can claim to have come of age bouncing around (moshing, pogoing, etc.) either under RATMâs direct influence or in the bombtrackâs aftershocks. I was in the latter camp; 12 years of age and tragically romanced by the concept of being âa mosherâ.
RATM are forever âfuck you, I wonât do what you tell meâ â but theyâre also battle of the bands nights at the local theatre, school talent shows, all ages gigs at struggling pubs (ones that let you buy beer if you could grow a moustache!), late-late nights drinking vodka red bulls in your matesâ garden. Theyâre a community, a kind of belonging through music that transcends a lot besides. And when that sort of togetherness is addressed to the forces of alienation and atomisation âthat which tells us to jump and expect us to say âhow high?â â there can no greater âfuck youâ than that.
4
Dec 09 2024
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
Itâs THEBOSS. Undeniable hits, but a lot that leaves me cold in between.
3
Dec 10 2024
Green Onions
Booker T. & The MG's
Enjoyable! I clicked properly into it toward the end. Toe tappers all, though. The guitars were often surprising, in a good way.
3
Dec 11 2024
The Man Who
Travis
Loved it. A time capsule, and âSheâs so strangeâ was a fab surprise!
4
Dec 12 2024
A Nod Is As Good As A Wink To A Blind Horse
Faces
Toe-tapping, brilliant stuff. Love the guitars especially. Couple of healthy grooves too. I enjoy how organic it feels.
4
Dec 13 2024
25
Adele
Really couldnât get along with it. Songs felt either forced or almost cringe. A difficult third album.
1
Dec 19 2024
Blur
Blur
Highly enjoyable. 3.5 but rounding up out of Christmas spirit.
4
Dec 20 2024
Head Hunters
Herbie Hancock
Perfect by the pool, and encourages a deeper exploration into Herbieâs career. Iâm not sure this music will ever be the mood for me ⊠but it certainly helps contribute to one.
3
Dec 23 2024
Young Americans
David Bowie
Today itâs the beginning of summer holidays, and we listened to this in the pool (along with PJâs Ten). Funky! Reminder to check where it slots in with Parliament and Television, which this record feels poised between.
I would listen to it again. I donât feel like Iâve ever totally connected with Bowie, and this wasnât the moment either. Letâs see what else is in store âŠ
(Dot liked it.)
3
Dec 24 2024
The Wall
Pink Floyd
I may return to this with a five. I might just do it. Iâm not sure. Itâs grown on me hugely over the past two days. My first meaningful engagement with a PF album and I suppose it came at just the right time. I was far more âup for itâ once Iâd read the Wikipedia and understood the concept. Musically, I hear the influence this has on some of my favourite albums (Tranquillity BaseâŠ) and many, many others besides. Compelling.
4
Dec 25 2024
A Girl Called Dusty
Dusty Springfield
Full of iconic songs, this album is a total delight. (Whether or not some of those songs would have so successfully stood the test of time had they not been sung by Dusty⊠I suspect not.)
The perfect soundtrack to Christmas morning in many ways â even the heartbreaks are sunny. Iâm landing on four stars because the album itself didnât have that artistic cohesion that I expect from a five star record (Iâm sure that having had Pink Floyd recently has had an influence). Still, bangers.
3
Dec 26 2024
A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector
Various Artists
A bit of fun! I recognise a couple of these as the canonical forms of the songs ⊠and a couple that most certainly are not. It might have registered another half star had it been listened to on Christmas Day (tâwas Boxing Day down here in Aus) but I dare say Iâll keep it in mind for next year. The wall of sound and Christmas make for great friends.
3
Dec 27 2024
It's A Shame About Ray
The Lemonheads
Is that you, Foos? I donât have immediate access to a dorm so Iâm not sure Iâll ever be able to totally understand this record, but I do remember being a teenager and suspect Iâd have hated this if I was one in the 90s. Thankfully, Iâm now in my mid 30s so donât mind the outwardly anodyne just as long as it isnât insultingly so. Which this isnât. 3.5 because I like âRudderlessâ and hear points of influence for lots of other bands I like.
3
Dec 30 2024
Pretenders
Pretenders
Highly, highly enjoyable. The music is pitched â temporally, stylistically â between Television and Sonic Youth. Chrissie Hynde stands alone. A fantastic record (tragic about half the band, though!).
4
Dec 31 2024
Beauty And The Beat
The Go-Go's
Perfect summertime record â I can imagine it was a total breath of fresh air in the early 80s. The punk influence is nicely weaved in (more than once I felt like I was listening to a slowed down Iron Maiden, oddly). Whole thing feels like a California lost to time. Lovely when paired with a palm tree. 3.5.
4
Jan 01 2025
I'm Your Man
Leonard Cohen
First we take Manhattan ⊠THEN WE TAKE BERLIN! Great fun introducing Fleur to that song (I was very pleased with myself for having remembered the track was on this record specifically), but barring a couple of grooves this wasnât a great record for me. Still, enjoyable enough. 2.75.
3
Jan 02 2025
The Trinity Session
Cowboy Junkies
Not at all what Iâd expected from a band called âCowboy Junkiesâ â I hope I never find out why theyâre called that, but why are they called that? With one exception (â200 more milesâ â a beautiful song that Iâll be revisiting for sure) there wasnât much here that stuck with me. I guess thatâs fine; the album created a pleasant enough atmosphere, and the gentle rumble of the tracks left plenty of space for reflection besides (some inspiration here for Malkmusâs traditional techniques?). I wonât be rushing back to it, but if ever I need an album to prove that restraint can be a genre in itself ⊠here itâll be.
(Really cool that it was recorded around a single mic, and explains the SUDDEN guitar licks somewhat.)
3
Jan 03 2025
This Year's Model
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
An absent possessive apostrophe on the cover notwithstanding â YES. This is such a great record. âThe Beatâ; âLipstick Vogueâ; âBig Tearsâ (and the ones Iâve heard before) ⊠itâs just tune after tune. Musically it feels so in conversation with its influences â punk, reggae, Beatles â while also, somehow, knowingly portentous (is all of pop punk contained in that first song?); perhaps easier to just say âa musician who loves musicâ. The best part of 50 years after it was released, it still sounds so fresh and immediate.
4
Jan 06 2025
The Band
The Band
Not for me, Iâm afraid.
2
Jan 07 2025
With The Beatles
Beatles
My eyes glaze over halfway in ⊠but the fiercest numbers are front loaded, and, dare I say, portend awesome things to come. I canât help but feel like better bands were out doing more interesting things in 1963 â but maybe this record needed to be made so theyâd never again be so bloody twee. A 3 by the Beetles standards, so unfair in many ways. But Iâm willing to say it: itâs only OK.
3
Jan 08 2025
All Directions
The Temptations
Absolutely brilliant. That first three mins of PWARS is 1) what the 70s sounds like in my imagination, and 2) surely lifted by Daniel Striped Tiger for âSlalomâ. This record has awoken in me a desire to go deeper on The Tempts and their biography.
4
Jan 09 2025
Pelican West
Haircut 100
Where were they getting all these bass lines from? Iâm fond of a few new wave and new wave adjacent groups (Duran Duran, WHAM!, Spandau Ballet, TFF) but hadnât listened to the Haircuts before â my error. A sprightly, sunshiny record that has most in common with Duran Duran (though contains much less in the way of lascivious undertones â I canât imagine DD calling a song âBaked Beansâ). At times the looser jam feel creates an atmosphere reminiscent of Orange Juiceâs jangly navel gazing (âSurprise Me Againâ, for example).
Itâs a shame they only lasted the one album. Highlights: âLove Plus Oneâ; âLemon Fire Brigadeâ
4
Jan 10 2025
Entertainment
Gang Of Four
I first listened to this album in 2007, or thereabouts â some time in my own âart schoolâ phase (doing cultural studies at uni, as good as the late naughties could offer me really). Alongside Wireâs Pink Flag, this record made an immediate impression, and has stayed on rotation since. (I must have listened to âReturn the giftâ 1000 times since then.) I tend to use these reviews drawing parallels or trying to chart the provenance of ideas; not that it matters necessarily where something came from or who used the idea next, itâs just fun. In this instance, suffice it to say this record must have inspired 90% of the music I hold dearest in some way or another. For me personally this album inspired something a bit different â a feeling I canât entirely put words to, but maybe âcommunityâ is closest. Iâm a happier person for knowing something as exciting as this album exists. I knew Iâd get what I asked for.
5
Jan 13 2025
Aja
Steely Dan
If globalisation had a soundtrack, this record would â and, I suspect, self-consciously â be it. âAjaâ, pronounced âAsiaâ, features a cast of 60 musicians; surely, though I havenât checked, among them some of the late-70s finest (not counting the Dans themselves, of course).
If I were to hear this album without knowing who it was, I figure Iâd have a 1000-1 shot at guessing Steely âReelinâ in the yearsâ Dan first time. What I would have said, and did, was âis this where vaporwave came from then?â Turns out yes; Aja is a preeminent example of âyacht rockâ (buoyant west coast AOR primed for taking out the marina and into the crystalline waters); the stuff later sampled by Saint Pepsi, Luxury Elite, Floral Shoppe. Itâs the sort of smooth audio postmodernism that presages the entire 80s: a pastiche of styles â curated, elevated â that, had he been given better taste in pop, Patrick Bateman wouldâve swung an axe to.
And, yes, four decades later, from yacht rock comes Vaporwave, a genre that for me satirises and romanticises the emergence of global corporate capitalism equally (tapping into/enjoying the same cultural preoccupation as Vice City, San Junipero etc. too). Vaporwave is a hauntology fixated on what might have been (fully automated luxury capitalism) made in a time that isnât (techno-oligarchies in the ear of 1% leaders). Yet this record, so substantial and beautifully produced, is all flesh and blood. So much so that one wonders if thereâs a clue as to where it all went wrong here ⊠or, at least, pause to reflect on wether that kind of wish fulfilment is the subconscious aspiration at the heart of all our revisionist attempts to resurrect the spirit of the proto-global coffeehouse.
âDeacon Bluesâ is a standout track for me, but the whole album draws you in and in and in. Love, love, love.
5
Jan 14 2025
Crime Of The Century
Supertramp
I only know Supertramp from the hits, so went into this with an open mind. The first two songs inspire much more headbanging than I expected before hitting play; lots of big, chunky power chords in lockstep with the rhythm section. Eventually â and after third track âHide In Your Shellâ (a loud, quiet, loud banger) has all but thrown away the best chorus of the album by adding a theremin â the Pink Floyd via the Monkees schtick collapses in on itself; a high budget piece of regional theatre backed by an eccentric patron (not far from the truth, of courseâŠ) or the Dorking Community Players staging The Nightman Cometh.
2
Jan 15 2025
Idlewild
Everything But The Girl
I had no idea that EBTG were even active in the 80s, let alone churning out the hits. I say âhitsâ; most of this record is new to me â Iâm giving it 3 stars rather than 2 simply because of the enduring brilliance of âI donât want to talk about itâ â and itâs mostly miss. Some real twee stuff, musically and lyrically, to the extent that when they do find a bit of edge (âTears all over townâ, or the lyric âa widow on a honeymoonâ in âShadow on a harvest moonâ) itâs sorely appreciated.
The drums, the sort so lively in, e.g. WHAM! or Tears for Fears, here drag and distract. The guitar licks donât, but do need, to stop.
Thank god for the richness of Traceyâs voice (as Iâm sure Mr Watt c.1988 would agree).
The second half of the record marks an improvement - more than a bit of The Smiths about songs like âLonesome for a place I know â but the record never really recovers from the high heights it drops you from between tracks one and two.
3
Jan 16 2025
Shalimar
Rahul Dev Burman
One two CHA CHA CHA. This record got the girls up and dancing â Dorothy treated us with an enigmatic saunter around the room over dinner. A really brilliant record that, and without meaning to sound at all patronising, has touches to it that feel so modern as to be portentous.
The title track, in particular, is an astonishing jam. Has a crispness, flow and energy that Iâve felt from Blaxsploitation cinema but never Bollywood (surely my error). Anyway, if J Dilla had it on âDonutsâ it wouldnât be at all surprising.
Brilliant songs littered throughout. Bravo.
4
Jan 17 2025
L.A. Woman
The Doors
An album that grew on me as I listened, as much as because I was learning more about its context as I went than because it simply gets better and better (which it does). A stomach flu will prevent me saying much more â but this is an album that sounds like a goodbye. âRiders on the stormâ is Universe-level.
4
Jan 20 2025
Doggystyle
Snoop Dogg
Itâs 2025. A time for the morally dexterous to make hash out of old beefs. The chameleonic, iconic Snoop finds time in his calendar to play for a pardon. A generous gesture; will it that history doesnât look upon it as a kindness.
Thereâs fun to be had rolling your shoulders to the big hits. An instrumental would be preferable.
1
Jan 21 2025
Is This It
The Strokes
There are at least two of the best songs of the 21st century on this album (âLast niteâ, âSomedayâ) and plenty of honourable mentions (âHard to explainâ, âTrying your luckâ). Iâm not going to check the chronology â I donât want the spoilers: I have âMeet me in the toiletsâ on my bookshelf, waiting to be read â but I have to imagine that this record influenced, in some way, everything I listened to growing up â whether because it wanted to be it, or wanted to be its opposite.
And thatâs not hyperbole. I remember seeing the grainy video to âLast niteâ on GMTV, the becouched co-hosts portentously asking âis this the future of music?â and laughing at the front cover (funny that America was spared the joke) and feeling excited.
And I remember being 11 or 12, walking down a rainy street in Retford after school, evening drawing in, hearing a school band trying out a cover (how straightforward songs like âLast Niteâ were for kids to play being an overlooked but crucial factor in The Strokesâ then seemingly infinite scalability).
I remember hearing that band bringing that song fully to life in their own way and thinking I could probably do that too. So I did.
4
Jan 22 2025
Tommy
The Who
The first âsuccessfulâ rock opera is a story of a boy who retreats within himself as the result of trauma. Itâs a trope that weâll see again and again, whether in âThe Wallâ â where our hero builds a literal wall around himself, substantially achieving the same thing as Tommy does here â or the later biographies of many youthful, rebellious rock and rollers (a genre thatâs perhaps always thought of itself as safe harbour for misunderstood or under appreciated artistic genius).
Anyway, Tommy. To put it gently, by the time âFiddle Aboutâ had finished its first chorus of âfiddle, fiddle, fiddle, fiddleâ you too may want to achieve a dissociative state of semi-torpor.
The rock opera, it turns out, walks a fine line. Done well itâs expansive, a rousing appeal to what can be achieved with fairly limited means. Done poorly, as here, itâs almost an indictment on the whole genre â an incoherently rambling, serially uninteresting solipsism that dares to reveal the superficiality of all that pretends to rock.
I feel sorry for Tommy, I really do.
2
Jan 23 2025
The Atomic Mr Basie
Count Basie & His Orchestra
At this moment in time, I struggle to wrap much of a frame of reference around this record; Iâm afraid to say too much because I just donât feel qualified.
Itâs maybe something (a lack of imagination?) that the first thing that springs to mind for me is the New York of Home Alone 2. The big blasts from the big band rushing through my speakers feel as exciting and overawing as the imposingly tall, impossibly alive city must have felt to Kevin McAllister â a figure central to my own childhood who is also, in the there and then of Home Aloneâs NY, a lonely witness to so many of the icons of Americaâs great imperial phase.
And thatâs really what this record sounds like to me: a glorious echo from the American century. Itâs one that remains vital not because America does â far from it, really â but because the brilliant people who contributed to that cultural hegemony are made no less brilliant by America having been brought low.
Back to Home Alone, and in the hotel lobby Kevin sprints past a tall man in an expensive coat. The man might be on his way to the roof, spoiling to find a vantage from which to survey the worldâs most significant skyline. Itâs a skyline men of his appetite typically want to make their own, of course, shoving their overcompensations evermore inelegantly into the clustering mass. In short, synecdoche of a nation.
Itâs a shame that America hasnât had someone of Basieâs erudition and skill to lead its own metaphorical band. Getting the best from each other starts with getting the best for each other; Americaâs century, so spiritedly captured on albums like this, was built on principles like that. Principles now under threat of total dismantling by tall men in expensive coats.
4
Jan 24 2025
Who's Next
The Who
A couple of stone cold classics, monolithic in scale, scope and impact. And then a couple that felt pissed up the wall! Hayooo â I joke. (Best album cover of all time? Itâs always resonated with me, even before knowing whatâs on this record.)
I enjoyed this album as much in a kind of âthank youâ sort of way as I did actually and viscerally the music. Certainly, thereâs plenty on this record to back Eddie Vedderâs âthey left us no new places to exploreâ sentiments ⊠even if that sentiment only strictly applies to acts with the imagination of Pearl Jam.
Thanks for the power chords, the Marshall stacks, and the tunes, Pete. And thanks for the attack, everyone else. But more than anything, thanks for not playing âFiddle aboutâ again. (Fave song besides the obvious: âMy wifeâ.)
4
Jan 27 2025
Raw Power
The Stooges
Fleur says she feels cooler every time she listens to The Stooges. As a review, as an idea, as a fact â itâs tough to improve on.
5
Jan 28 2025
Pearl
Janis Joplin
It perhaps goes without saying, but quite a lot will rest on how well you get on with Janis Joplinâs voice. Icon of the counterculture, preternaturally gifted performer and still part of the conversation a lifetime after her tragic death â her voice is as distinctive as her enduring place in culture. While I wonât be hurrying back to this record, trying to argue against the brilliance of some of these songs and renditions is like trying to argue with the wind â or a big crashing wave, perhaps; she had both in the locker â so itâs a 3 from me.
3
Jan 29 2025
D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
In 2008 I headed into a double-feature: âFlicKeRâ was the headline with âDo you love me like I love you (Part 5: Tender Prey)â opening proceedings. I immediately headed over the road to buy âTender Preyâ, Bobby Gillespieâs testimony on âMercy Seatâ more than enough to encourage a purchase.
Iâll save my thoughts about Nick Caveâs masterpiece - and how young the interviewees in that film now look, almost 20 years on - for another time, as the film that followed, âFlicKeRâ was just as influential to the next years of my life. I responded strongly to Brion Gysinâs ideas, was already enamoured of William Burroughsâ whole vibe, and spent a fair bit of time trying to make my own Dream Machine (having missed an opportunity to see a Dream Machine in person during COVID, I still occasionally check if theyâre freely available ⊠be a shame to not try it one day).
The documentary featured various musical artists, all pretty cool, talking about their experiences with Gysinâs hypnotic, hallucination machine. Sonic Youthâs Lee Ranaldo was among them, offering his thoughts to camera in a way Iâd be reminded of years later standing in Coventry watching The Cribs play âBe safeâ â a connection made through time that was pure lightning on both sides.
Also on that documentary: Genesis P-Orridge, mid pandrogyne project â so complete a presence, spectacle and aura that I misremembered having seen a Throbbing Gristle documentary distinct from âFlicKeRâ.
It stuck with me, suffice to say. And then, again, years later, Iâm reminded of it. Iâm in the Tate Britain at, probably, âWomen in revoltâ and thereâs a whole section given to COUM Transmissions, the precursor to Throbbing Gristle. I remember being humoured by the comments of an offended Tory politician â âdesecrators of civilisationâ or similar, heâd called them in the 70s. Good on Cosey Fanni Tutti, and good on COUM.
Somehow, I again miss the call. I spend a couple of seconds remembering once maybe listening to Throbbing Gristle in 2008, and I move on.
And so today, in 2025, I am so grateful for this project. A third invitation to fully engage with Throbbing Gristle is met ecstatically. From the first track, a darkness of beeps - a year earlier in time, but with the feeling of Joy Divisionâs âUnknown Pleasuresâ stripped of what joy and pleasure it holds - I am held in place. Thereâs so much space to move inside music like this, angles to explore, moods to drown in, atmospheres to let crystallise and sit gargoyle-esque atop your central nervous system.
âHamburger Ladyâ is a standout track; though itâs not album best thought about in that way, really. So soon after the passing of David Lynch - a time that we realise that his work canât really be taken apart as a filmography; it really demands to be seen as one â Iâm pulled into a similar orbit by similarly iconoclastic artists. This is a piece of real, enduring art arriving from within a series of lifetimes that will never be repeated.
5
Jan 30 2025
Cut
The Slits
Weâve spun this four times now; peeling back the layers thereâs a strong, strong argument emerging for it being the most influential of the post-punk records of the late 70s.
It still feels the freshest too. The drums tick and roll and batter; the bass wonders, punchdrunk and charismatic; the guitars canât stay still, maybe they donât want to be guitars anymore?; the voice somersaults, careens â gymnastically controlled, poised, enjoying itself, solidifying its dimensions while forming them into an archetype.
This is a record I hadnât realised I should say so many thanks to. Itâs also perfect for a day thatâs too hot to be in a house thatâs without aircon â yet still pretty much feels like paradise. Fitful sometimes just fits.
4
Jan 31 2025
Untitled (Black Is)
SAULT
Iâm not convinced Iâm in the right headspace at this very second to give this record its due â though Iâll also say that itâs 2025, the White House is again living up to its name, and maybe I should be making more of an effort to be in that headspace. (To that extent, maybe I can say that this album continues to do a job alerting the privileged to their position. Fair play to that.)
Black Is is a rich and varied assemblage of musical styles, genres and moments. âWildfiresâ is one of the defining tracks of the past decade; âWhy we cry why we dieâ bops soulfully, disarmingly; âBlackâ puts me in mind of J Dillaâs musical eclecticism (while forcing some potentially tragic bobble-headed participation on my part); âEternal lifeâ is afrofuturism in the key of divinity.
The production, the message, the talent and now the legacy. Itâs a special record, and Iâll be making time to give it its due.
4
Feb 03 2025
Deep Purple In Rock
Deep Purple
The glabella, I recently learned, is the part of the face atop the bridge of the nose and between oneâs eyebrows.
Itâs a funny sort of joy, to suddenly discover that something youâve taken for granted for so long has a name â and thus presumably features, characteristics, nuances and specificities deserving of investigation.
Back to âIn rockâ. Iâd only really begrudgingly put the album on; unenthused at the prospect of a full hour of plodding bluesy dad rock (I canât emphasise enough how shallow the logic of that deeply held conditioning was: I might as well have been calling the band âSmoke on the waterâ such was the extent of my knowledge of their work.)
So, first, âSpeed kingâ â and Iâm laughing at the intro guitar which sounds ⊠a bit lame. Up the scale we go, then back down; not exactly Hendricks and not yet Iron Maiden. But then something interesting happens. It starts to, and I pardon my language, fucking slap.
Galloping rhythms that the aforementioned Iron Maiden are still a decade from becoming synonymous with; guitar solos that arenât Hendricks but arenât yet Maiden but now in a good, exciting way; that drum roll moment in âChild in timeâ; the totally unexpected funk-out in âFlight of the ratâ; âLiving wreckâ serving moody; ALL THOSE RIFFS (that experiment with chromatic scales in âInto the fireâ has no right to work so well, really).
Finally itâs âHard lovinâ manâ, which, and I mean this sincerely, exhibits art rock levels of commitment to the bit. A final track that sounds like a band attempting to put its live lightning in a bottle - and succeeding.
There are things about this record that Iâd say arenât completely to my taste, but thatâs almost not the point here. I learned something new today, something that forces my glabella to crease with embarrassed consternation: Deep Purple fuckinâ rocks.
4
Feb 04 2025
In Utero
Nirvana
My first interaction with Nirvana was via a hoody. I was 11 or 12, early into my first year of secondary school and for the first time rubbing up against a subculture with a dress code that wasnât just âthe latest Manchester United kitâ. Soon after that I got hold of Nevermind, which was hidden in the bottom of my parentsâ wardrobe for a month waiting for Christmas.
And then, after Nevermind, it was everything I could get my hands on. The next year or two a frenzy to acquire as much Nirvana â albums, bootlegs, both respectable and entirely unofficial biographies about Kurt, the band, whatever; greeting âYou know youâre rightâ and the journals like a second coming (rather than an invasion of privacy) â as I could carry home from the record fair, the HMV, the shops that stank of incense, wherever.
It feels significant to me â and not just because I can still imagine the burning hot shame of being accused, accurately, of wearing a Nirvana hoody without knowing any of their songs; the spotlight that lingers over those preteen and early adolescent years becomes an X-ray in the decades that follow â that Nirvana has always been a puzzle for me. It wasnât that big a jump in time between working out the identity of the band represented by that cool smiley face thing I liked wearing, to trying to work out why someone who could write songs and lyrics that stuck in my psyche like gravel sticks in the waffle soles of skate shoes would choose to ever stop doing that (âHeavier than Heavenâ, another six months later, got me to understand how little a role âchoiceâ played in all of it). A gap of maybe a month between overhauling my identity in reaction to a clothing trend, and reflecting on the real existential jeopardy that might break cover at any moment.
âIn Uteroâ sits right in the centre of my Nirvana puzzle. Let alone the fact I didnât know what a âRadio friendly unit shifterâ might be (I suspected something mechanical, which I guess was sort of right) and struggled to fully get across most of the albumâs themes, the primordial soup of angst, anger and antipathy from which âScentless Apprenticeâ, âTourettesâ, âRape meâ, âVery apeâ, âMilk itâ and even âHeart shaped boxâ emerged was a swamp I was willing to get bogged in.
As the years rolled on, I found that âIn Uteroâ jagged and caught on my loose threads in a way that Nevermind didnât. Iâd come back to find âServe the servantsâ â for me arguably grungeâs greatest song - had clicked, or suddenly with a start realise that âFrances FarmerâŠâ had a story with energy and intensity to match its bombastic middle-8 freak out. Iâd listen to âAll apologiesâ bleed into âYou know youâre rightâ on DIY playlists and pretend theyâre part of the same breath. Iâd discover Leonard Cohen entirely because âPennyroyal Teaâ told me to.
Throughout all this â 20 plus years of my life â there sat at either end of âIn Uteroââs emotional polarity âDumbâ and âRFUSâ â the first a song that lets itself be âjust happyâ and the other a song that demands to know âwhat is wrong with me?â Two totally contrasting attitudes to life, incompatible to the point of mutual annihilation â fittingly, completely sonically distinct (vale Steve Albini) from one other too. âDumbâ is dipped oneiric syrup and conjures pastel shades of diaphanous colours; it weighs you down while it lifts you up. âRFUSâ is noise as geometry, wave forms crashing atop one another; an exhibition in art punk overseen by a mumbling, desperate, anxious, aggressive, defeated curator.
Poles apart in almost every possible sense, then â but hereâs where we come back to the puzzle. Because for a thinking, feeling person the idea that the contrasting perspectives of âDumbâ and âRFUSâ ought be mutually incompatible will make logical sense, but also wonât ring true in the slightest. Weâre all in moments one or the other, sure, but weâre all also often both.
23 years after I first heard âIn Uteroâ I know that. I know that ambivalence is a fact of life; I even suspect that learning to self-regulate might be the whole point of it. Kurt perhaps didnât, and certainly never had the chance to offer himself that kind of grace. Itâs a puzzle, all this.
5
Feb 05 2025
Tom Tom Club
Tom Tom Club
Songs with steel drums, songs that bounce
Songs to dance to in your underpants.
Instrumentation sparse around beats that groove
Or the lush lake of funk that is âGenius of Loveâ.
Is it a holiday diary, or songs dreamed up in incarceration?
For these two, is that two sides of the same equation?
Enjoy the trampoline made of sunbeams, retire to a hammock for a bed
I loved my time inside the laughing heads.
4
Feb 06 2025
Like A Prayer
Madonna
Iâve never thought of Madonna as an âalbum artistâ ⊠and I still donât!
I joke, I joke â but only sort of. I would seriously suggest that if this record was just the single âLike A Prayerâ and then 10 riffs, remixes and reworkings itâd be phenomenal. (It might be that a better album exists simply by chopping everything between âLike A Prayerâ and âAct of Contritionâ out entirely and then looping it around six times.)
Anyway, utterly glorious first track aside* â Iâm afraid it doesnât do much for me. There were better pop records made in the 80s â the high points of this album canât shake off the shadows of those (how âOh fatherâ is Tears for Fears without the conviction, for example) â and will be better ones coming in the 90s (the legacy of this record is all over the careers of The Spice Girls, Britney, Christina).
âKeep it togetherâ kicks it up to 2.5 but simply too much sloshy bumph to take it any higher.
*Very, very fond memories of bopping hard to âLike A Prayerâ at Fleur and my wedding. Wonderful moments, big singalongs, heavy swooping dance moves. Iâll hold onto that one forever, thanks, Madge.
3
Feb 07 2025
Hunky Dory
David Bowie
Itâs fine. âChangesâ is âChangesâ. âLife on Marsâ is a lovely shade of lost-electrons melancholy featuring some tight, bracing, elastic vocals. âQueen Bitchâ starts off toe-tapping and ends up dancing on the tables. Itâs better than fine, itâs objectively really good.
And. Yet. I. Just. Canât. Make. Myself. Connect. To. It.
Fleur says that itâs how I donât really like Star Wars; sheâs totally right that I donât always click with things that an otherwise overwhelming majority of people do â hot I canât stress enough that itâs not on purpose*. Iâm not trying to be âout thereâ. Fuck, I wish I got it. But honestly, I joked âCome on Dave, I could be listening to Chat Pileâ as we listened to this. And I meant it. I could have been. Chat Pile rules.
2.5. Weâll try again with the next record, Dave love.
3
Feb 10 2025
Lady Soul
Aretha Franklin
Cha-cha-chaiiiin. Can any syllable boast so rich a contribution to music as âchaâ? Aretha Franklin has the sort of voice that can give any syllable substance, form and impact â and there are some properly iconic songs on this record, big tug at the heart moments of musical history. Unfortunately, I feel a bit like those songsâ ubiquity distracts a bit from their effect; kind of precession of the simulacra style. Itâs not much of a criticism, granted ⊠but if Iâm destined to be a link in a chain of fools then on my head be it!
3
Feb 11 2025
Meat Is Murder
The Smiths
At first I resist this album, almost certainly because I know where itâs taking me.
Itâs all here, though. The sound of everything happening at once. A crooning voice bowing across fizzing arpeggios; rhythm section, disciplined while encouraging â often to the extent of being doting or parental. In The Smiths you meet pure conceptual perfection; proof of why bands exist and why they should forever.
The ultimate charm of this record, for me, resides in a sort of paradox. Why, since what The Smiths is doing here is so, so much greater than the sum of its parts, do I not feel happy about it?
Weâve Johnny, busy tinkering at melodyâs atomic level while the mononymous one intones another of his jeremiads (âI want the one I canât haveâ) â this charming man brittle before his reflection. Weâve the slicked back hair, oily rag smell of âNowhere fastâ â so coyly propulsive with its rockabilly shuffle. And weâve the weaving bass and funk flourishes of âBarbarism begins at homeâ â a shot fired back across time to the previous incumbents of Britainâs teenage imaginary (Duran Duran especially).
âWell I wonderâ and âMeat is murderâ offer two poignant counterpoints to the thrill of the albumâs three-minute pop songs. (The former being another entry into Johnny Marrâs âd minor hall of fameâ; the man just knows how to use that chord, I donât know what else to say.) Itâs a more obviously political record; you have to hand it to the lads that the final minute even works. It probably shouldnât.
I read that âHow soon is now?â was added to this record for the US release â and Iâd perhaps have liked to hear it kicking off the second side. But, realistically, if this album had gone on forever it wouldnât have been long enough. For the sake of our sick hearts, we should be grateful that it didnât.
So back to what I was resisting: Iâm there. Iâm back to putting âI want something I canât haveâ on repeat and thinking that if the edge of the universe doesnât sound like The Smiths â if the force pushing it out into whateverâs beyond isnât exactly the feeling contained in a record like this â then Iâve read this whole thing totally wrong.
I hope not.
5
Feb 12 2025
Cafe Bleu
The Style Council
It might be that sophisti-pop just isnât for me. Itâs not for nothing that Iâd rather listen to almost anything else Paul Wellar has done (âalmostâ because thereâs no way Iâve heard all of it ⊠demonstrably, thereâs some skeletons in the closet alongside all those parkas and nicely cut suits). And nor did I love EBTGâs â who appear on Cafe Bleu â early 80s sophisti-pop output either (to the extent I had to chase it with hits from âAmplified Heartâ just to resettle myself).
It feels like, in Cafe Bleu, Paul Wellar is forcing me to listen to what he learned on his gap year inter-railing around Europe. But also, in a self-reflexively superficial way, it might also be his most punk statement. Thereâs a ready-made antagonism shot through it; like it wants to be misunderstood, under-appreciated or even disliked â all so that it can turn around and tell you that you just donât get it.
And I donât, really. Thereâs plenty of evidence of Wellarâs songwriting chops (âMy ever changing moodsâ; âYouâre the best thingâ; âHeadstart for happinessâ) but then thereâs also lots to make me cringe (including some of the lyrics in âHeadstartâŠâ â syrupy stuff even by the standards of the early 80s).
Iâm happy for the Modfather that he branched out. And dear me, havenât we all been invited to think a little deeper while surveying the scene in a Parisian cafe? But I guess thereâs a reason Dave didnât include the Style Council in my musician education. 1.5.
2
Feb 13 2025
A Night At The Opera
Queen
If the 90s is Sega Megadrive and the 80s is nuclear weaponry, then the defining toy of the 70s has to be the yo-yo.
Or the space hopper.
Or the pogo stick.
Itâs befitting that a decade so enamoured of things that go up and down should gift us â and pretty much bang in the gravitational middle of itself â âA night at the Operaâ. Not that the recordâs happy with bouncing up and down just the one axis, of course. Itâs quiet-loud at whiplash pace; this way and then that with no warning or, often, return; totally genre-bending (and probably genre inventing); genius and gimmickry (or âeffectologyâ according to one contemporaneous NME review).
âDeath on two legsâ starts us on a high with some devilish guitar work and Mercury giving us full bared teeth bastard-snarl, but from there the quality skips a song each time (the exception being âIâm in love with my carâ â which is probably also terrible, but I like because it reminds me of Big Business â into the undeniable classic âYouâre my best friendâ).
While loose enough to get along with a song about auto-vehicular romancing, I will likely never be loose enough to enjoy the genuinely anxiety-inducing taxes of âSeaside Rendezvousâ or ââ39â, two songs about which I said, quite sincerely, that Iâd like to never hear them again.
Not to worry, though â as thanks to their pendulous formula youâre only ever a few minutes away from a stone-cold classic. Hearing Mercury wrestle the spotlight away from May on âThe Prophetâs Songâ or, of course, âBohemian Rhapsodyâ is a true musical treat. In those moments of flight theyâre an unbeatable force; ecstatic, elemental.
So, while patchy, this is still the album with âBohemian Rhapsodyâ on it. And while some songs here might be irritating, theyâd have to be capable of launching actual napalm into my ears to detract from the good things Queenâs signature song has done for the world. Silliness is temporary, joy is eternal. 3.5.
4
Feb 14 2025
Hot Fuss
The Killers
The way memory functions is weird â if âSomebody told meâ was released six months after Funeral for a Friendâs debut album then why do I remember being a child when listening to the former, but feeling like a grown up listening to the latter?
It might be because The Killers â purveyors of absolutely OK, post-punk-ish, synthy-sort-of pop that youâre always happy to hear at weddings, or playing in the background of a pub youâre at for a 50th birthday, you know, adult occasions â are totally and utterly grown-up. Theyâre Interpol for mums; knowing better than to do something unexpected (might throw your back out!). Safe.
And to that end we have a record that starts with back-to-back bangers. Twenty minutes of top ten material that twenty years on has your listener saying âwas this our millennial Nevermind?â
The thing about 20 minutes though is thatâs pretty much as long as it takes to drive to the supermarket and back. And I feel like thatâs not an accident. This record was made to be listened to on the way to Tesco. It was made to deliver a feeling thatâs a bit like nostalgia â itâs fresh material, but it nods back hard enough to get your Gen Xers suddenly feeling 18 again. How else can a person be expected to get through the weekly shop?
The first half is an embarrassment of riches, but it isnât hyperbole to say â and certainly in the context of epochal hits like âMr Brightsideâ, âSomebody told meâ and jams as solid as âJenny was a friend of mineâ â that the second half is a bit embarrassing.
If memory serves, then The Killers give us a better album with âSamâs Townâ. But then memory is a funny thing.
3
Feb 17 2025
American Idiot
Green Day
Capitalism, according to various thinkers concerned with the cultural mode of postmodernism, is fantastic at absorbing its critique. So good that it often goes one better â commodifying the terms of its deconstruction, always-already negating its critics ⊠to the extent that if theyâre especially charismatic and/or unlucky, theyâre turned into t-shirt designs.
In the early 00s, Greenday was smarting. âWarningâ had represented a doomy portent only to the band themselves: they were in danger of becoming obsolete. Greenday huddled, began tracking a new record ⊠and then the tapes were stolen. Itâs a sliding doors moment, as had they released âCigarettesâŠâ they might have disappeared forever. Instead they scrapped the project and began working on what would become âAmerican Idiotâ.
And the rest is history; or, as the angel of history might put it (and in more ways than one), âa bad record.â As the angel sees history piling up before her, destructive winds driving her forever backward, this album can boast a mounting body count of better artists and their ideas. Here thereâs melodies lifted from Bryan Adams, Joann Jet; riffs and ornamentation seemingly lifted completely (surely Dillinger Four got an out of court settlement?); and then â not content with having âmusically quotedâ from The Kinks on the abortively boring âWarningâ â thereâs the one where our Anglophile magpies return to Blighty to the answer the question of âwhat would happen if âHow soon is nowâ was also âWonderwallâ?â
I wouldnât mind it â in fact I might even enjoy it â if it werenât for the fact that it feels so nakedly cynical. Everything about this album feels like the result of focus group testing: the âemoâ uniform, the accusatory anti-government stuff (âthis trended great with the NOFX kids, Bill, just consider itâ), the âconceptâ of a âJesus of Suburbiaâ â a figure who might be the target persona of this elaborate marketing action brought to musical life.
And then thereâs the âpunk rock operaâ element: songs that blend into one another, a creative choice that feels grafted onto the whole thing late in the piece after someone noticed that everythingâs in pretty much the same key.
Itâs enough to have one wondering whether the âAmerican Idiotâ being narrated isnât actually you, the listener, for ever letting yourself think that this meant anything more to Greenday than revivified album sales numbers.
So, while Iâve been trying to keep my cool through this review, I also need to be fair to myself: this felt fucking lame in 2004 and it feels fucking lame now. This is not an album of rebellion, these are not songs of resistance or hope. This is a pastiche of punk, the sound of the end of history. There is no alternative. Suburbiaâs soundtrack is the only game in town.
For 15-year old Matthewâs sake, here are three albums released in or before 2004 that I loved back then, succeed where American Idiot fails, and actually should be on this list: âSticks and Stonesâ by New Found Glory (pop-punk that looks for you, finds you, and stays with you; actual magic); âCasually dressed and deep in conversationâ by Funeral for a Friend (the ultimate melding of post-hardcore and emo, unapologetically hi-fi and edifyingly anthemic); âTell all your friendsâ by Taking Back Sunday (atmospheric, antagonistic, bratty, brash, brilliant â gigged into shape, never knowingly focus-grouped).
1
Feb 18 2025
Tapestry
Carole King
From a seat on the windowsill, a bejumpered Carole gazes back at us â weâve interrupted her reverie, but thatâs ok. Sheâll tell us what sheâs been thinking about.
A problem shared is a problem halved, and this record doesnât scrimp on problems. Nor does it scrimp on quality; whatâs here is perhaps the neatest distillation of Carole Kingâs genius available. The song craft, the choices, the melodies, ideas and lyrics that ought to have existed forever â and in a way did, in so far as they perfectly capture something common through human history.
Itâs a melancholy affair, and the whole thing â from the palette of the album art, to the slightly dusty feel of the mix â amounts to a thorough exploration of our collective autumnal soul. That bit we have thatâs caught; that enjoyed the light and warmth of all before but feels it, inexorably, cooling.
Carole takes us there and keeps us there. Her characters are always somehow doubting something â never whole, and careful not to totally let themselves feel so. Theyâre either busy configuring themselves around anotherâs affections or intentions, or basking in the edifying glow (albeit temporarily, cautiously) of an otherâs unbroken gaze.
It is to our eternal lack, the bit that wants to know for sure, that âTapestryâ is addressed. And for the simple fact that none of us is ever fated to fill it, be glad that we have a friend.
4
Feb 19 2025
69 Love Songs
The Magnetic Fields
If youâre to go to the effort of conceiving, writing, practising, refining, recording, mixing, mastering, distributing performing and touring a 69-song concept album then I feel that itâs only fair that I judge you exclusively on the merits of your 69-song concept album. Did the concept, in that most ineffable manner of speaking, succeed? Did it justify the additional demands placed on vinyl producers, warehouse logisticians, shipping and last-mile delivery companies, record shops, listeners and anyone else involved in the process of creating and participating in art? Did The Magnetic Fields manage to make something thatâs greater than the sum of the sixty-actual-nine parts presented?
From the offset, Iâm unsure. Iâm into song two (admittedly, still less than 3% of the way through the record) and Iâm fearing that what Iâm about to spend almost three hours subjecting myself and my family to is an exercise in the art of the possible. Yes, a good enough 69-song record about love can be made, just donât expect it to move you beyond a polite toe-tap. Enjoy the concept because itâs the concept that really sells it!
A minute or so later those clouds of doubt are further massing. My mind has raced off. What if the 69 OK songs about love leave me little space but to conclude that all of this is, this whole thing, creativity, concepts like âessential listeningâ, all of it, is just so many appeals to a completely predictable cultural median value. The joking use of â69â isnât in reference to, ahem mutuality, but is rather a coded message about music itself being a sort of analogue for a composite number â multiply two positive integers and anyone can score a hit. What if this album about love forces me to fall out of love with ⊠music?
As is so often the case, âA chicken with its head cut offâ forces a sharp re-centering of perspective. Itâs a funny song, honky-tonking its way around the place like the titular beheaded chook. But then it starts to dawn on me â this isnât a throwaway line. Itâs actually a really quite perfect analogy for a set of feelings that might be best captured by the image of that poor bird. Who, I ask you, hasnât been made to feel like a chicken with its head cut off by love? Have you ever lived otherwise?
It all clicks into place for me from here. There are truly fantastic standalone songs that Iâll cherish forever (âSweet-Lovinâ Manâ, âNo One Will Ever Love Youâ); surreal ditties (âPunk Loveâ, âLetâs Pretend Weâre Bunny Rabbitsâ); tunes that, given their subject matter, make me feel appropriately uncomfortable (âI Canât Touch You Anymoreâ) or bittersweet and wistful (âI Donât Want to Get Over Youâ) or reflective of how profoundly in-love one can be lucky enough to be (âNothing Matters When Weâre Dancingâ). Even the stuff that doesnât really work as âa song I likeâ doesnât fail to move me (a boudoir is the last place âFor We Are The King of the Boudoirâ should be experienced).
This is an epic kaleidoscope, a constantly shifting tangle of states. Weâre in love, out of love; experiencing love unrequited, giving love, returning it with interest. Weâre also in ourselves, in our beds, at our best or brought low by it. Itâs visceral. Itâs essential. Itâs fucking everything, the whole fucking point.
When I proposed to Fleur, I wrote an accompanying letter. In that, I borrowed from Alain Badiou, for whom âLove is a quest for truth.â Itâs a line given fresh resonance by this collection of songs. And itâs a collection of songs that gives the most important thing in any life exactly the attention it deserves.
So yeah, Magnetic Fields âsucceededâ. This is a masterpiece.
5
Feb 20 2025
Blackstar
David Bowie
Last we spoke, only a couple of weeks ago, it was Hunky Dory â âChangesâ, âLife on Marsâ. So itâs a little confronting to so soon find myself here, Davidâs momento mori. His autoepitaph. His goodbye.
With this record, I finally get it. And not just because this is an album charged with reference points and influencers I get along with already â although that helps â but because of what that actually means. Why is a man who had been one of cultureâs most chameleonic, mercurial and successful lights for 50 of his nearly 70 years listening to Death Grips and Kendrick Lamar a few months before he died â let alone using those records as reference points for his final creative sign off?
And smuggled away in that question is the thing I wasnât getting about David Bowie. His ultimate vitality. I was so busy looking at him as a leader that I never really, properly let myself see him as the devotee to sound, colour, light and life that he was.
And thatâs in evidence here. Songs like âBlackstarâ, âLazarusâ, âGirl loves meâ are sombre while sprightly, look backwards while thrusting forwards; theyâre legacy while never letting themselves become eulogy. This is something new, another contribution to the conversation David was having with us, with music and with posterity throughout his incredible life.
And so here we are. Blackstar is seven songs sent from just this side of the event horizon, a postcard from the most alive person to have ever lived. I finally got it.
5
Feb 21 2025
Dog Man Star
Suede
I have scattered memories of Suede from childhood. Thereâs one thatâs just Brett Anderson going up (or âcoming upâ?) on an escalator â weâre at the top but crouching down, seeing him steadily appear â thereâs a lot of blue and black, and Iâm wondering why theyâre in Meadowhall after everyoneâs gone home to bed already.
Itâs around that time that Iâm told by various men about the importance of a good hifi (perhaps not literally, but rather through the decisiveness of their actions when around a tall all-in-one and general seriousness of their expressions). Thereâs the bloke my mumâs mate is going out with who likes to play Garbage on repeat. Thereâs the fella next door who puts Toploader on and has it blasting out his conservatory while he tends to the BBQ. And then thereâs grandad, who I donât actually remember ever seeing interact with his hifi system but had some cool looking CDs.
Itâs the 90s, and we are shiny disc â donât scratch it! â worshipping audiophiles. And itâs here, in this groove of memory (Iâm analogue, sorry), that I place my impression of Suede. A band who could give a home speaker system a ruddy good run even if they donât do much else for a listener like me.
This is all absolutely fine. There are really well crafted hooks (âThe wild onesâ), very tasteful nods to their influences (Bowie, especially throughout) and some stirring atmospherics (âThe asphalt worldâ is a personal highlight).
Thereâs often a bit too much â guitar, whining, strings, song, songs â though, and the accusation that this is a pretentious record certainly starts to feel fair by the âStill lifeââs final âswellâ.
But itâs also a portentous record, in many ways â something like âThe Black Paradeâ, for example, feels like a spiritual cousin. Iâll pay it the due respect, but likely no more.
2
Feb 25 2025
Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin
I just canât connect with Led Zeppelin. Obviously, itâs all in there: riffs, rocking rhythms, âStairway to Heavenâ etc. Good stuff! Thing is, though, if Iâm going to enjoy a load of dudes taking silly things â mythical wars, outre symbology, trees, fairies â way too seriously, theyâve got to be wearing corpse paint. Itâs the only way I can handle it.
And so I get through this album twice with a smile, enjoy the occasional bop, and get on with finishing dinner. Itâs good! They wonât miss my deeper adulation, Iâm sure.
3
Feb 26 2025
Countdown To Ecstasy
Steely Dan
Iâll try and get the obvious out of the way first: the last minute of Bodhisattva is so strong a gust of what-can-make-music-so-fucking-brilliant that it threatens to capsize me (and by extension my attempts to really encounter this record) every listen. How it stumbles, twists, grows in confidence, breathes, starts to run, looks up, then screams. Ah. If it fails to make you feel alive then urgently seek help. Itâs just. Fuck. Guys.
âCountdown to Ecstasyâ is a wonderful amalgam of rock, jazz, blues and whatever else (bluegrass, skiffle, R&B, French?) the fellas fancied integrating and elevating. Itâs a typically smooth, strongly melodic bit of work, but there are edges to it to enjoy, too â âShow Biz Kidsâ swaggers, machined-in to the beat, while âMy Old Schoolâ is finger-pickinâ funk that unapologetically shreds its way towards Hendrix then bails out and scurries back to surf.
And thatâs something, really. The Dan seem to have an infallible instinct for knowing where they are and where they want to be. They feel in control; never too close for comfort to their source material â pretty much âiconic acts no one can sensibly think of approaching with anything over than reverenceâ â while also never so far out that their innovations feel obviously contrived.
Back to Bodhisattva. Itâs true that it ends with a sort of triumphant freak out, but itâs equally the case that the songâs already been excellent for three minutes or so by then anyway. In each cycle through the verse, chorus structure itâs changing things around, giving vent to different harmonic expressions, picking up speed, accumulating ideas, placing motifs that youâll delight in hearing again later â played a little quicker or with a little more brio.
Again youâll feel itâs all completely under control, right up until the moment you canât be. And for this the song is, of course, a countdown to ecstasy properly.
Theyâre the real deal, what else would you expect from them?
5
Feb 27 2025
Fragile
Yes
Itâs Thursday February 27 and Fleur, Dave and I have been to see Fontaines D.C. The Dubliners feel at the peak of their powers, touring their fourth record, âRomanceâ â primed now to push them that bit closer to whatâs undoubtedly their goal: world domination. Itâs eleven very good songs that you feel, at times, might have quite stretched the lads creatively. And it starts with a swelling, droning din that cuts abruptly to a melancholy jangle of notes.
Itâs Saturday March 1 and Iâve some catching up on albums to do! I start with Thursdayâs record, Yes â the sort of band Iâve spent a listening life aware of but ignoring. âFragileâ is their fourth studio record; nine songs showcasing a band at the peak of their powers, stretching themselves creatively, aiming for world domination ⊠and it all starts with a swelling, droning din that cuts abruptly to a melancholy jangle of notes.
Iâve spent a lot of time thinking about coincidences. How they might happen, what factors make them more likely â why a person can sometimes feel and then be portentous in the most incredible or unlikely ways. And while Iâm not necessarily given to magical thinking, I love letting a coincidence maybe mean something â if each instance is a single clap, then let the series be the sound of the universe applauding itself.
âFragileâ is, first things first, a fantastic record â prodigious musicianship, production. Thereâs a humbleness to it, too; a dash of humour accompanying all the âbig visionâ theatrics. Itâs serious on all the levels that matter for a record like this.
I play the album a couple of times while making dinner for my visiting in-laws, then leave it on in the background while we eat. As it happens, Fleur had also noticed the Fontaines parallel, Bernadette hears âRoundaboutâ â âthey had a couple of good songs, this is the bestâ â and it triggers a memory of having seen Yes years ago. Tim, sat beside her, hears track two (âBrahms and Cansâ) and asks âIs that Brahms? It is, after a fashion, anywayâŠâ and by âHeart of the Sunriseâ â my favourite track â Iâm wondering why the Wikipedia for Televisionâs âMarque Moonâ mentions a jazz influence to Verlaine and Lloydâs guitar work but doesnât cite a Yes influence. (I do a similar bit later with The Number 12 Looks Like You â a mathcore band I loved in the 00s who surely owe a similar debt to Yes and/or prog bands just like them.)
No moment around that dinner table is strictly a âcoincidenceâ (not in the spooky-synchronicity sense), granted â but our collective experiences feel like they amount to something. Itâs Yes in the middle of the centrifuge, spinning sugar into strings. It is distinct experiences characteristic of totally different lives lived across three separate continents and seven decades, here assembled â coincidentally â around a table in Rockingham, Western Australia.
It might be tempting to ask here whether everything, all shared culture, experiences, perspectives etc etc is then, by my generous definition, a big coincidence â and on a particularly existential day a person might say, for better or worse, that it is. But I doubt that just any record could have encouraged so many personal reflections on that day. And to that extent, âFragileâ felt meant to be.
Returning to thoughts on coincidence; in short, I think itâs a numbers game. The physics of co-occurrence deem it that the more experiences a person collects, the more coincidences theyâll uncover. The echos a person will apprehend, both in the moment and through time, just have more to bounce off. Put a record as filled up with ideas as âFragileâ on and somethingâs bound to resonate.
It might sound un-magical, even boring to say as much â but it neednât be. The edifying truth is that thereâs poetry in the everyday, and coincidence is cosmic rhyming.
Say âYesâ to more. Youâll eventually be glad you did.
4
Feb 28 2025
Roger the Engineer
The Yardbirds
Iâm only ever a right-shaped moment in time away â as we all are from anything, pretty much, of course â from being shown to be a right fickle sort, but as things stand Iâd answer the question of âClapton, Beck or Page?â in the same way Bartleby did when asked to do his job. âI would prefer not to.â
I donât know what it is about the words âguitar legendâ that so throughly chills my blood but Iâm starting to suspect itâs actually simple. Maybe I just don't really like it. Iâm, and with respect, a bit bored by the output of these grand juggernauts; these behemoths; these elder statesmen of the six, twelve and occasionally seven stringed vessel of etc etc amen. Maybe itâs a reflection of a personal limitation somehow, Iâm open to the idea ⊠but yeah, no thanks lads.
This record is absolutely fine. It anticipates a whole load of stuff I love*; and I bet had I been bouncing around watching England bring it home in â66 Iâd have been entirely enthused by the ecstatic portions of sound presented herein. But for all the clear and obvious good gamesmanship of an album like this, my soul remains unstirred. No heroics, no goals scored in extra time.
A good record that I doubt Iâd be able to say Iâve heard in a yearâs time. Who knows ⊠maybe Iâll be better placed to get it by then. 2.5
*Full credit to Beckâs riffs on that front, admittedly.
3
Mar 04 2025
Metallica
Metallica
To the bottom right hand corner of the all black front cover of Metallicaâs Metallica sits a coiled timber rattlesnake. In early pressings of the album the snakeâs made almost imperceptible by its dark grey colouring, but I promise itâs always been there.
The snake design is borrowed from the 1775 Gadsden flag, a banner that gives the snake a thorny subtitle: âDonât tread on meâ (also the title of track five of Metallica, for the avoidance of any doubt regarding the snakeâs provenance). Initially designed by Christopher Gadsden for use by the American Continental Navy (whose chief task then was intercepting British supply ships en route to arming their countrymen in the Revolutionary War), in its 250 year history the flag has seemingly meant something to everyone across the American political spectrum.
Libertarians globally have stood under the flagâs bright yellow, appropriating it as their signature shade; abortion rights activists have twisted the snake into the shape of a uterus, a warning to anyone who thinks they have sovereignty over a womanâs body; Jan 6 rioters paraded it around the US Capitol as the world looked on, horrified.
(My favourite âDonât tread on meâ fact concerns Nick Offerman. Both his Libertarian turn in Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson, and his romantic survivalist at the end of the world in The Last of Us, Bill, are seen with Gadsden flags in their possession.)
Having shifted millions of albums worldwide since its release in 1991, youâd have to say that Metallica has as broad a valency as Gadsdenâs flag. People click with it; âEnter Sandmanâ, âSad but trueâ, âNothing else mattersâ â these are songs that the numbers indicate itâs safe to assume someone will like by default. And yet âŠ
Few records elicit as many groans for me as this. Time and again Iâm left begging them to get on with it, assuring them I get it, willing them to play âMaster of the puppetsâ instead. From the often turgid lyricism to the lame use of an orchestra (something they doubled down on in the utterly fucking woeful S&M) this is exactly the sort of album youâd expect a thrash band who want to make some money to make. (That they chose to do it under the watchful eye of Motley CrĂŒeâs producer itself tells you plenty.)
Itâs profoundly big enough and profoundly bad enough, unfortunately, to bring us back to Gadsdenâs flag. Shorn of any properly political dimension â seriously, just try to bleed any actual perspective or insight out of the macho fightinâ talk on this record â the snakeâs nobly pugnacious sentiments feel only sneering. Bellicose. Stupid. And to that end, perhaps Metallica is a fitting final form for the plucky serpent.
Maybe that revolutionary spirit embodied by âDonât tread on meâ has now turned in on itself for good â coincidentally, Hetfield has said this record was the sound of the band turning âinâ. Maybe the aggressive-seeming-but-ultimately-nonsensical snarl we hear on tracks across this record actually anticipates American exceptionalismâs collapse into American isolationism. Itâs a bloody minded mentality; and this is music for picking fights to.
Revolution. Independence. Expansion. Petulance. Ostracism. Sad but true.
1
Mar 05 2025
OK
Talvin Singh
3
Mar 06 2025
Dr. Octagonecologyst
Dr. Octagon
Weird, fun â out there in a way that stops it ever fully coming in here. Thanks, Dr.
2
Mar 07 2025
Dare!
The Human League
There was much I hadnât realised until I finally put this record on. For one, the origin story. Initially asked to sing because he dressed interestingly on nights out, Phil Oakey was barely even in the band when they rebranded from The Future to The Human League. And by the time Dare was released, the founding lineup had entirely changed out (âThe Ship of Theseusâ might have been a more apt band name, on reflection). Then thereâs the sort of embarrassing penny drop that Phil Oakey is also the one singing about electric dreams. Under different conditions, I might have gone my whole life never knowing that.
The thing that most surprised me, though, was the appearance of âDonât you want meâ right at the back of the album. Now, had this been an AOR record, it being track 10 would have made sense to me. But this isnât AOR, itâs big pop bangers (might this record, and that song, even be the birth of the modern concept of the âpop bangerâ?) â you donât put your strongest material at the least accessible part of the vinyl. And you certainly donât fight your management and record label when they suggest releasing it as a third single from the album. Phil, what were you thinking?
Track one might help get us to half an answer. âThe things that dreams ofâ â a Kraftwerkian verse into an anthemic, singalong chorus; a formula that repeats on âThe sound of the crowdâ and others also â puts me in mind of not The Nolans, Brotherhood of Man or ABBA ⊠but Gang of Four (who, it transpires, also released music through Fast Records). Sharp angles, sparse melodic arrangements, sprechgesang lead, call and response dynamics in the backing vocals â everything I love about Entertainment is here, itâs just been blown out, lacquered and given a smokey eye mesmerising enough to hold a whole generation of TOTP viewers hostage.
âDarknessâ is a particularly arresting tune; essentially three well crafted sections welded together with heavy atmospherics, it has â and, arguably, to an extent, sort of throws away â the albumâs only big crescendo. (That Iâve felt compelled to listen to the song at least 20 times this week may indicate that it isnât at all a âthrown awayâ opportunity ⊠itâs a guarantee youâll be back.)
Not that itâs all moody dramatics, though: âDo or dieâ is a full colour bit of buoyant dance floor bait; and has me wondering how much The League were listening to Talking Headsâ Remain in Light from the previous year. At any rate: so far, so post punk.
And then we come to that final track. Iâve been hearing this song my whole life â but then havenât we all? Itâs a song so good and so ubiquitous that Iâd be surprised if thereâs anyone out there who doesnât have a story they attach to it, a memory or an anecdote. (Full disclosure, hearing âDonât you want meâ for the first time through a proper pair of headphones recently was completely exhilarating.)
So what is it about the song that works so hard for so many? Is it the completely unapologetic run up and down the scale; is it how that same dynamic â up, down, building up, breaking down â bares out in the story arc presented in the lyrics, right down to the prevaricating âchange of mindâ reflected in that pre-resolution note noodle; is it how it taps into a whole spectrum of feelings â in the process nailing the relationship between bratty arrogance and aching vulnerability; is it simply the fucking âwoah oh ah woahâ of it all? Yes, probably, definitely, certainly and a million other things.
What âDonât you want meâ definitely isnât is a post punk song. Itâs a big behemoth of a pop banger; an archetype; an apex type, even, whose place at the top of the synth pop food chain will probably never be seriously challenged (that the group were jealous of Gary Numan feels, years later, especially cute on that score). The thought occurs that â since it sits on an album full of songs that had me drawing connections with some of the more serious reference points listed above â maybe âDonât you want meâ is the most contrarian, punkest thing about Dare.
Anyway, let it retain some of its mystery. For as long as there are hearts in our chests to yearn with, âDonât you want meâ will resonate. And if you know whatâs good for you, youâll listen to the nine songs before it on Dare too.
5
Mar 10 2025
Queen II
Queen
Now this is a Queen I can get on board. For all its whinnying on about ogres and fairies â literally â there sits on this record a handful of hip-swinging heavy rock songs. Ah, hold on, Iâve just had a thought âŠ
While considering why these songs about profoundly daft mythologies feel also so in possession of a profound sense of the libidinal, it finally dawns on me that the ogres and fairies may be euphemisms. And before you try telling me that something a black queen is just a black queen, youâll first need to clarify what it is Freddie means by âIâll be your bad boy, Iâll be your bad boyâ if not âheâll be your bad boy.â
Queen II isnât just a Queen I can get on board with because itâs heavy. Itâs a Queen I can get on board with because itâs barely concealing its true intentions. Thereâs a freedom to this whole thing that Iâm not convinced Iâll find anywhere else in their catalogue (I didnât in the doldrums of âA night at the operasâ circus silliness anyway).
Big riffs, bonkers production ideas, moonshots that actually come off and more falsetto shrieking than the Bee Gees trapped in a temperamental shower. This is a Queen album I can finally lose myself to, perhaps because it feels like Iâm hearing a member or two of the band finding themselves, musically and otherwise.
Let the ogres do battle, indeed.
3
Mar 12 2025
Come Away With Me
Norah Jones
Boredom is a necessary condition of adulthood. Not the skittish boredom of hyperactive childhood, or the âIâve got nothing onâ boredom of oneâs teenage years â a boredom freighted with anxious-joyous anticipation â but actual, brain-numbing boredom that threatens to form an ocean of apathy so vast that you canât hope to ever be rescued from it.
Bored as you may be, itâs your duty, as an adult, though, to get on with it. Youâre invited to find in the tedium rhythm, in the dull a purpose. Youâre reminded that if it didnât feel like work you wouldnât need to pay someone to do it. Youâre alienated from your labour, of course you are, but thatâs the cost of living. Get on with it.
If that attitude of corporate ascetic were to be transformed into aesthetic, this record would likely be the result. This is the soundtrack to the hump days of your life; a bland and anodyne tour of an uninteresting series of emotions. Itâs the musical equivalent of an anonymous message scrawled into a card passed around the office. While no one knows who said that mildly pleasant thing, it doesnât stoke anywhere near enough intrigue to merit a follow up.
And so I fail to finish this album, and experience that as an act of defiance. My fate might mean being bored awfully often, but I can still say ânoâ sometimes. Good for me.
1
Mar 13 2025
The Score
Fugees
I was six when this album came out, and when Fugees dominated the Top 40 countdown Iâd pretty much live by between the ages of six and twelve. Six was a difficult age, I think. I have this memory of being quite uncomfortable in an indoor playground, maybe 20 ft high at the time, holding a bottle of Panda Pop blue flavour â tired, grumpy. The Fugees is on, âKilling me softlyâ.
Even then, under those most testing of conditions, I liked it. I liked âReady or notâ too, even memorised some of the rap. Later Iâd like Lauryn Hill, and, against all odds, Iâd like Wyclefâs early solo chart hits too. (Thankfully, this record is much, much better than Mr Jeanâs solo work.)
Of course, that memory isnât of the tiredness or grumpiness, or even necessarily of Panda Pop, itâs of that solo vocal that opens the track. A generational voice, which feels fitting since itâs one of my earliest musical memories (Spice Girlsâ âWannabeâ, released the same year, is another early memory; another strong emotional response that will, now Iâm thinking about it, form the template of all excited future reactions to new music). 29 years later, the effect isnât any less.
Fugees may have been my first ever melancholy, which is to say that I heard them at exactly the moment I needed to. Six was a difficult age, but it was made easier by moments like that.
3
Mar 14 2025
Music For The Jilted Generation
The Prodigy
This record is a wily, wiry, often incandescent bricolage of sound. Its textures and rhythms inform towering compositions that do so much more than provide a blueprint; they throw down a gauntlet.
Itâs ironic, maybe, that the thing my mind first conjures when listening to this sample-heavy affront to UK policing overreach is the classic 90s anti-pirating public service video familiar to VHS viewers everywhere â âyou wouldnât steal aâŠâ â and its iconic soundtrack. Surely a Prodigy rip off?
While thereâs a somewhat dated sense of the thing having been quantised to within an atom of the grid lines at times â resulting in a rigidity that threatens to flatten the atmosphere â the propulsive momentum of the tracks will carry you through. Itâs a big record, full of iconic moments; but whatâs in here is also a sophisticated sort of musicality that scavenges and builds to produce its affects (what postmodern philosophy might identify as evidence of a âdeterritorialisingâ impulse). Itâs a good punk record, an excellent electronic album, and raveâs true claim to immortality.
3
Mar 18 2025
Parachutes
Coldplay
Itâs the most milquetoast of ironies; Coldplay, a band with so amazingly few characteristics to remark upon have, for a quarter of an actual century, managed to inspire the most intense of reactions from seemingly all who hear them. Good or bad, you have an opinion on Coldplay. And that opinion is either âworld-beating stadium-eating monsters who have totally reinvented what it means to continually reinvent yourselfâ or âChris Martin is the audio equivalent of finding out your house has been floodedâ. No in between.
And this is the sense in which Coldplay actually matters. Not as musicians â fucking hell, imagine! â but as early bellwethers of the defining cultural shift of the 21st century â the embracing of antagonistic dichotomies. Coldplay is a significant early entry into the pantheon of things that we love to love or love to hate, a trend they commenced but that soon swept up the likes of Nickleback, James Blunt, immigrants, and latterly the environment.
What do I think? I think we live in a beautiful world, and I think thatâs a really true and fair thing to say. And I think the stuff around it that heâs singing to is lovely, too. In fact, I doubt you could objectively argue against that assertion. Really, everything here is absolutely as it should be.
But then, that feeling again. That feeling that Coldplay isnât good. Coldplay doesnât care. Coldplay isnât here to be anything else than another reason to hate my neighbour.
Weird. I swear it just sounded like safe indie miserablism.
2
Mar 19 2025
Coat Of Many Colors
Dolly Parton
Thereâs an introduction to Baudrillard that, talking about the precession of the simulacrum, presents an image of visiting an American desert only to feel like youâve already been there on account of how many western movies youâve seen.
Iâm not totally convinced by the philosophical implications of that thought â nor do I think thatâs what Jean was aiming at â but itâs always stuck in my mind as a sort of warning, in its own right. Donât let the aura of a thing be eclipsed by your familiarity with its representations.
So with Dolly, I try to keep it situated. I try to hear it in-itself. And I hear, in that in-itself, an album thatâs plainly country; well intentioned; and full of the sort of judgemental rhetoric youâve come to expect from Americaâs specific take on Protestantism.
Iâve never met a Dolly I too fondly liked.
2
Mar 20 2025
The Low End Theory
A Tribe Called Quest
Thereâs this pretty unsubtle, absolutely excellent (perfect?) moment in âEverythingâs fairâ as the front-of-the-mix Funkadelic sample meets the bass line in the crossfade then disappears, leaving us with Q-Tip telling a story about unrequited lust, ambition and money. (But in a way thatâs never more dramatic than âcasualâ.)
I mention this moment specifically because a) driven by a beat I can only, feebly and in awe, describe as âsickâ, it slaps, and b) it feels like a nice little metonym of whatâs so spectacularly cool about this record and Tribeâs whole thing. The nods back, the moves forward, the feeling of effortlessness about it all; the knowing youâre in safe hands, so letting your guard down and having a dance. The 90s that this record helped to shape might not have been âmyâ 90s â unless the vibe they cultivated had any bearing on Space Jam or upstream influence on The Fresh Prince? â but here in 2025 this record still feels sharp, organised and focussed.
That this is a great record feels evident in it being as available to me while Iâm making pizza on a Saturday night as it was while waiting for a bus on an early Tuesday morning.
You donât need to be in the mood, because itâll transport you. Props.
4
Mar 21 2025
The Yes Album
Yes
Throw enough spaghetti at the wall, and some of itâs bound to stick. And, in this case of this most profligate pasta bowls of an album ⊠it does. A bit. It sticks until itâs wiped away by the next load of spaghetti flung at the wall, anyway. Fine. No, donât worry. I wasnât hungry anyway, Yes.
I donât mind this record, and there are sections of it I quite like â but itâs often quite abstruse. Would it kill them to let the dish sit for a minute? Would it kill them to offer a Parmesan garnish? Why must it always be more spaghetti?
2
Mar 25 2025
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Today, Marlais received his first pair of proper shoes. And so itâs a divine cosmic coincidence that todayâs record starts with âBlue suede shoesâ (a reasonable description of his baby New Balance trainers).
We spend the first spin of this record largely talking over it; itâs Elvis, we get it. Weâve been getting it since before his millennial revival, even. Cool. We let the thing spin down, then we talk a little about it. What was it that made this the biggest thing on the planet? How much can we say we meaningfully owe to Elvis Presley.
A second listen through starts, and things begin to click into place. The bass finds its focus; the guitars spring suddenly to life; the caterwauling â so charged with energy that it cycles between states of wobbling, then teetering, then feels temporarily back under control, until⊠â becomes a cry through time; but this doesnât feel the stuff of a hedonistic death drive, but rather its opposite. Something's being born here, itâs completely undeniable.
This shift in perspective is not, as you might expect, because weâre listening to the record any more closely; instead, itâs come about purely because weâve had a minute to reflect on Elvis in history, so to speak â everything from his musicâs largely ignored antecedents, to the enormity of his fame, which then must have been totally without precedent.
And from that vantage, weâve imagined ourselves, for a minute, still closer in thought to turn of the century Victorians than we ever possibly could be to mid-70s punks. In that moment weâre caught, anxiously and with trepidation, between youth and young adulthood, between wartime regimes of thought and peacetime motions toward liberalism, and weâre looking for an outlet, or more accurately perhaps a lightening rod â something, whatever it is, that weâre grateful to find Elvis offering us.
The significance of that moment canât be â isnât, really! â overstated. Hearing Elvis in these songs give shape to adolescent hankering is to feel yourself being thrown back in time â not to the 1950s, but to your own brief spring of limitless potential.
And thatâs what this Elvis record is, really. An invitation to experience an emotional immediacy youâre encouraged, as an adult, to dull; and a nice reminder that to find the magic in something, sometimes all it takes is to let yourself walk a mile in someone elseâs shoes.
4
Mar 27 2025
No Other
Gene Clark
I tell Fleur that Iâll buy her âsomething amazingâ if she can guess who this record is by. She throws out Crosby, Stills and Nash and Jefferson Airplane and even Bob Dylan ⊠and Iâd have probably done something similar. My own ballpark explanation as to why Gene Clark felt so foreign a name was that he âmust have been in another band firstâ â accurate enough, but in practice as helpful (and safe) as saying I suspect he had hair.
Anyway, Gene exists. Gene was in The Byrds. And Gene had hair. Gene also wrote some stirring, melancholy songs that walk a line between folk, country and rock in often surprising, sometimes mesmerising ways (for example thereâs a section on âLady of the Northâwith a violin thatâs simply sumptuous musicianship).
But it does feel like Geneâs memory is under attack. And thatâs a huge shame, because âNo Otherâ is a fantastic record thatâs surely within a shout of being one of the most sophisticated pieces of Americana out there. Itâs baroque, effete but also knowing â too clever by half, perhaps, to have remained a fixture in many minds for long.
Itâs not like you can say this record has been forgotten everywhere, though. Iâm time and again reminded of Stephen Malkmusâ âTraditional Techniquesâ â and surely itâs the song craft of the likes of Clark that Malkmus is apeing across that (very good) album. Iâll certainly be returning to it, anyway; be it directly, or in another such hagiography later on.
4
Mar 31 2025
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
The Kinks
That The Kinks â chroniclers of the British experience (though, if weâre being honest, isnât it just âEnglishâ?) â managed to put out a concept album that covers emigrating to Australia tickles me enormously. I suppose I hadnât ever fully considered just how important a strand of the British psyche âgoing to Australiaâ has been (and for well over a century now); the lingering upside down uncanny, as if at some stage Britainâs history decided to pack up, leave and live out an alternative destiny at the global antipode. Itâs a place that you lose people to.
This is another absolutely solid Kinks record. There simply canât have been a bigger chorus in all history up to that point as in âVictoriaâ â I will happily be corrected on the idea, but might it be the first big indie rock banger? It sounds stadium even sitting on the train, off to service my mortgage (Rayâs ongoing patronising of the routines of adult responsibility portends punkâs most petulant attitudes).
Songs like âYes Sir, No Sirâ (a sort of Catch-22 come to melodic life), âMr Churchill Saysâ (a codex for literally every guitar band in the 80s and 90s), âBrainwashedâ (unbelievably stylish in every facet) and âAustraliaâ (direct, wild; the sound of a promise not being kept) cement in my mind the idea that there was no better band active in the UK than The Kinks until culture pivoted to reimagining them through those guitar bands.
Pairs well with sunshine, too.
5
Apr 01 2025
The Gershwin Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald
Is it sad to see the American century (+) drawing to a close? Yeah, maybe. Itâs uncharted waters, anyway. Itâs odd to think that my children will grow up with a different locus; they wonât watch Friends and feel desperate to live that (sic) NY life, or crave, deeply, a twinky without knowing for certain what one is. Among the various items of cultural detritus they might wade through as they attempt to gain a sense of just what America meant to mum and dad they might find this epic. And they, as I have, may arrive at the unkind conclusion that only in a century dominated by a certain kind of cultural mode could an album like this be elevated to âclassicâ. 1.5.
2
Apr 02 2025
Mermaid Avenue
Billy Bragg
Oh last night I put this album on (I wonât say which album) and sure, I thought it started strongly (I wonât say how strongly) but then sure enough I started to lose interest (I wonât say which interest) until finally I read a Wikipedia page (I wonât say which Wikipedia page) and then I saw that this was the result of a project (I wonât say which project) that was bringing to life the works of famous songwriter (I wonât say which songwriter) who had died an untimely death (I wonât quite say how he died) and whose legacy deserves to draw fresh breath (I wonât say what kind of breath) and I realised this endeavour is the result of an awesome idea executed thoughtfully and with so much love â even if thereâs only one song I actually really liked (I wonât say which song I liked).
3
Apr 03 2025
Kick Out The Jams (Live)
MC5
So while reviewing RATMâs debut, I said a whole lot of stuff about that word âmotherfuckerâ, and oh oh oh did I not then totally grasp precisely how loaded with rock nâroll history that tight little portmanteau is.
âKick out the jams motherfuckersâ might have been a call to action too far for mainstream America to get behind in 1969, but I guess thatâs their loss. Five minutes into this album, Iâm telling Fleur that thereâs no way I could have liked the Beatles in the late 60s if this is what they were up against. This is simply fucking fantastic â not a single moment wasted, every moment demonstrably wasted.
Almost 60 years later, my enthusiasm for this record transforms into a mess of limbs. Iâm air guitar. Iâm air drums. Iâm warbling along like whatever that dudeâs doing in the background too. I just love it.
MC5 need no introduction, but if we must insist on one â let it be âkick of the jams, motherfuckersâ and let that be that forever.
4
Apr 08 2025
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
Aretha Franklin
2
Apr 09 2025
White Ladder
David Gray
I guess that some of these songs were among the first âhitsâ I ever properly clocked. Songs like âBabylonâ and âThis yearâs loveâ were, at the turn of the millennium, absolutely massive. They kicked off a rude run of form for the perma-troubled troubadour, one that hasnât really ever concluded (what is a Benson Boone if not, ultimately, just a sexier shade of Gray?).
And yet the story of White Ladder â a self-produced effort by a young artist that didnât much bother listeners first time around, but found a global audience (including, at one point, 1 in 4 Irish households) upon rerelease 18 months later â is, for better or worse, more interesting than the record itself. Take the hits away â songs which themselves excel at giving precious little more away than one or two charming melodies â and youâve not a whole lot to shout about.
I struggle to believe this wasnât always drab; tales of heartache delivered by a particularly heavy raincloud. And it strikes me that to happen upon White Ladder, you first need to subtract something (The Smiths without the energy; Magnetic Fields without the magnetism; U2 without the spine).
None of that is necessarily criticism, of course. Certainly, the sparseness of this album creates space for some punishingly bleak atmospherics. But it is a shame that one of the defining albums of that time feels like itâs lacking much by way of definition.
2
Apr 10 2025
Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
Otis Redding
Dazzlingly good, really. Muscular, confident songs that stride out the speakers and demand attention.
When you learn most of this album was recorded in a day, you first gasp but then can sort of start to believe it â if the rest of the room was even nearly as talented as Otis, magic was never unlikely.
Itâs a profound shame that Reddingâs career was cut so cruelly short; for a minute, he might have been the brightest light in music.
4
Apr 11 2025
Hybrid Theory
Linkin Park
I got Hybrid Theory for Christmas in 2001. In January I listened to it maybe 60 times all the way through on my bedroom CD player. In February I took it to the hairdressers because I wanted Mike Shinodaâs hairstyle on the back cover. In March I listened to it laying on my mateâs bed at a sleepover while we looked at glow in the dark stars on his ceiling and took it in turns to do the singing bits and the rapping bits. In April it was the first thing me and the hardest lad in the year talked about that didnât involve a threat of immediate violence being visited on me. In May I decided âPoints of Authorityâ was my favourite when it came on Radio One as we drove past a petrol station in Barnsley. In June I learned how to play âIn the Endâ on a keyboard (in Barnsley, too). In July and August it was summer holidays, playing âCrawlingâ loudly on guitar in someoneâs music room in the morning before booming around on bikes until it got dark. Through September and the rest of the year it was time to talk about something else, while also still watching that world tour VHS every couple of nights for all the live footage.
A year of a life, at that time of a life, is a long, long time. You pack a lot in, and donât much think about what thatâll mean for you. And as sure as Iâve a nicotine addiction to this day â I still struggle to look past Linkin Parkâs Hybrid Theory. At 14 I saw them play Leeds, at 28 I sat on the couch in Finsbury Park as we got our heads around Chesterâs passing; at 32 we had a table at our wedding named for âPoints of Authorityâ.
This is an album Iâll carry around for life, now. What joy it is that Iâm still finding things to love about it.
5
Apr 15 2025
Van Halen
Van Halen
Prochronism describes a moment when something from the future is placed in the past. And right up there alongside a baroque blockchains or rococo smartphones is Eddie Van Halenâs âEruptionâ â a guitar solo that would have sounded pretty out of joint on any playlist of 1978âs most popular tracks (think Chicâs âLe Freakâ into ABBAâs âTake a chance on meâ).
No doubt, EVH was a genius. (Perhaps, at times, too great a genius for his bandâs own good â why, Mr Lee Roth, must you feel the need to compete?)
Itâs a struggle to find praise high enough for the guitar playing on display here, or to adequately capture the impact of Eddieâs innovations without lurching into sickly hyperbole â so instead Iâll do what we all wish David Lee Roth would do at times, and shut the fuck up.
4
Apr 16 2025
Rio
Duran Duran
I was surprised to learn that Duran Duranâs fun-loving, vibe defining, feather-headed hedonism â an attitude since tousled by timeâs limitless libido into a sort of archetype of a version of masculinity â wasnât well received by critics in the early 80s. And then I thought about the sort of person offering a published opinion on new music in the early 80s ⊠and it clicked into place. (Strikes me the Duran Duran boys might have been doubly confused by their critical panning â itâs unlikely theyâve ever had cause to experience envy themselves.)
Not to worry, the casting vote on this occasion was the publicâs â and thank the saucy gods it was so. To have risked losing this album to historyâs unkindness would have been a crime, really. âRioâ, âHungry like the wolfâ, âSave a prayerâ; not so much âsongsâ as cultural quilting points, moments where music, art and general horniness meet to, erm, snog?
Anyway⊠Duran Duran looked the part, acted the part, and sounded the part. The songs here feel remarkably fresh â surely a function of the largely live feel of the recording â and thereâs plenty of strong playing and solid compositional chops. At the edges of Simon Le Bonâs debonair delivery thereâs even a suitably post-punk angularity, too. Never do we go full synthy-slick. Duran Duran is always definitely a band. (With the exception of âChauffeurâ, a charming song that, pleasingly, reminded me of where Arctic Monkeys went with The Car.)
Given how poorly they were reviewed in 1982, itâs almost poetic that Duran Duranâs impact on pop and 20th century music is still under-celebrated, especially compared with some of their contemporaries (and even those they blazed a trail forâŠ). While the historical revisionism applied to this album may be unanimously flattering in tone, it might still be Duran Duranâs fate to forever be jealously held off to one side a bit. And what a legacy that would be.
4
Apr 17 2025
Live At The Witch Trials
The Fall
Mark E Smithâs nimbus â part beer soaked carpet, part full ashtray, part fruit machine emptying sounds â hangs so heavily across my impression of The Fall that it acts as a sort of plasma wall; heâs forever stooped over a jar in a Wetherspoonâs in Salford called The Surface of Last Scattering.
Just as well weâre here right now, then â ready to be reminded that thereâs more to The Fall than just what can be seen through a pint glass, amber-ly. âLive at the Witch Trialsâ is a coy, lithe record that sort of charms you with its repeated threats of teetering â repetitious without becoming droning, atonal without becoming discordant, scuzzy without becoming sleaze. Itâs always just about at the edge of itself; and while it pushes at plenty of boundaries, the songwriting, playing and togetherness keeps the record entirely on track (and âseriousâ too; thereâs certainly plenty of humour in here, but itâs never cartoonish).
Itâs a cosmic blessing, I suppose, that The Fall and this record â which was almost derailed by Smithâs being taken ill â ever came into being in the first place. From nothing, a spontaneously occurring assembly of elements â then quickly thrown to opposing corners of the universe to propagate, or synthesise, or become entirely new things. Behind the plasma wall, though, theyâll forever be playing this.
5
Apr 21 2025
Superfly
Curtis Mayfield
Seriously, seriously, seriously good. Everything lines up so neatly on this record; smoothed out jams juxtaposed with stirring string arrangements, moments of individual flourish from each player at different moments ⊠all of it organised around whatâs surely one of the most gorgeously soulful vocal performances ever recorded.
It feels quite brave, too, to have scored a film that might otherwise be seen as pretty ambivalent about drug crime with a collection of messages about healthy mindsets and getting high on life. Good for you, Curtis.
All that might be a maybe, but whatâs for sure is that this album, in so many ways, stands alone. Just wonderful.
5
Apr 22 2025
One Nation Under A Groove
Funkadelic
Every atom of your being BE ALIVE. Funkadelic â a frequency beamed in from a future to cool for the past to sustain â has found your antenna. This is groove that doesnât just come from another dimension: it literally is a dimension all of its own.
Sit back with an awestruck gawp as âOne Nation Under a Grooveâ moves you, improves you, then rifles through the record collection of your mind and does the same. Thought you loved that Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever song âDive Deepâ before? Youâre going to love it even more now youâve heard and felt âPromentalâŠâ (I simply cannot believe that guitar tone is a coincidence â no species gets that lucky twice). Didnât know why it was the 16-bit soundtrack to Toejam and Earl has stayed so fresh in your mind for the best part of 30 years? Funkadelic knows.
Anyway, whatever youâre doing drop it and put this record on. Itâs that good. Enjoy the songs. Submit to the swing. Marvel at how effortless the corralling of a dozen super-talented artists can be made to sound. Everyone under my roof has been singing âOne nationâŠâ all afternoon, nothinâ can stop us now.
5
Apr 23 2025
Amnesiac
Radiohead
Iâm interested in why it is I donât like Radiohead as much as I think I should. I suppose you either celebrate Radioheadâs jukebox albums of jealously guarded influences or you donât. You either do or donât think they went from being a shit Nirvana rip-off to a shit amalgam of Aphex Twin, Portishead and whoever else Chris Cunningham was making music videos for at the time. You either do hear Coldplay with more self-consciously avant garde production choices or you donât.
Hyperbole aside, though, the cavernous spaces opened up on this album offer me good perspective from which to clarify my thoughts. I think my problem is rooted in a general premise â that while some albums give, others subtract. And while Iâve plenty of time for music that takes more from you than it gives â albums that involve you, moving you beyond where you were before in a totally altering, necessarily engrossing way â thereâs something about Radiohead Iâve always found unjustifiably draining. In short, the juice hasnât ever felt worth the squeeze.
And so we are again. Blippy glitch thatâs then so fashionable in Berlin rubs shoulders with warm and cosy Sunday roast Indie; boiled up pastiches of various global music curios condense on the cold, cold windowpane of Thom Yorkeâs flawless but really a bit too often deployed falsetto. The moments come and go â the drums in âDollars and Centsâ, so reminiscent of Mogwai â but it never, for me, amounts to more than a treadmill of effects; precisely good enough to have me tying myself in knots trying to like it.
And thatâs my overwhelming feeling, really. Radiohead, arch postmodernists, take more than they give. Youâre either into that, or youâre not.
2
Apr 24 2025
John Barleycorn Must Die
Traffic
Thereâs a richness to this record that feels utterly wasted on a heathen like me. Songs â while each uniquely compelling, presumably â bounce off me like water off a competition-banned Speedo. At times my toe taps, at others I say âoh this must be where Chris De Burgh got âSpacemanâ from.â And as the album finishes a second play through, I realise that all I really have to say is that, above all else, this was the moment I broadened my knowledge of Steve Winwood beyond the Itâs Always Sunny reference. (âThatâs a gift for you, bumblebeeâŠâ.)
2
Apr 25 2025
Too Rye Ay
Dexys Midnight Runners
Memoryâs a fickle thing. But as cruel as posterity has been to Dexys â who had at least a couple of hits in the U.K. â itâs also true that you can only be a one hit wonder for as long as youâre remembered. Better a one hit wonder than a never was.
In its way, itâs a poetic irony that a band who managed to put out so timeless a party hit as âCome on Eileenâ should have done so as part of an album that sounds so totally not of its time. âToo Rye Ayâ is significantly more sophisticated, assured and complete than youâd be forgiven for thinking it should be. Not only does their inimitable mix of Celtic folk, blue-eyed soul and skiffle actually work (seriously, did anyone ever even try to imitate it?) ⊠it manages to move the listener through a full range of emotions. Thereâs whimsy (âLetâs make this preciousâ) and ecstatic joy (their cover of Van Morrisonâs âJack Wilson saysâŠâ); triumphant table dancing (âCome on Eileenâ) and measured introspection (âLiars A to Eâ). And then thereâs the textured delicacy of âAll in all (This one last wild waltz)â, a 3/4 (what else?) swagger of jagged gentleness and heart-rending harmonies that had me wondering if Messers Morrissey and Marr werenât themselves early fans of DMR.
In short, thereâs far, far more to this whole thing than the âone hit wonderâ tag could ever begin to communicate. Itâs an injustice that prompts in me a sort of melancholy that no volume of dungarees â the happiest of all garments â could ever quite fully disabuse me of.
And speaking of those jolly dungarees ⊠it strikes me now â reflecting on how it is that things steadily recede from the collective memory memory â that, one day, âCome on Eileenâ will be played at its last wedding. The strings will for a last time dizzy; the chorus will stand up tall and puff out and beat its chest; the middle eight will drop the pace, build it up again toward one final crescendo. And at that point, weâll have just the object oriented ontologists (whose general position on music and memory Iâd love to see articulated through the concept of âone hit wondersâ) to debate whether itâs still, ever was, or forever could be a hit.
Or, as is more likely, we will stop hearing âCome on Eileenâ only when the sun swallows us all up completely.
Anyone complaining about it can, frankly, get stuffed. Because in that moment â as with every other one â it will have meant everything.
5
Apr 28 2025
Jagged Little Pill
Alanis Morissette
Iâm tempted to dismiss this record out of hand â those awful gated drums so common in 90s/00s pop; that bouncy-bouncy vocal rhythm in every bridge thatâs, and perhaps sensibly on reflection, just shy of an actual rap; that overwhelming feeling throughout of being trapped in a teen drama with a legion of floppy-haired, lachrymose middle-Americans â before arriving at a totally transformative perspective: this 90s tropeapaedia feels so not because it was a product of its time, but because it did so much to produce its time.
Today, Alanis is here to remind us of the mess they made in the nine-ta-heys. And, yes, you ought to know â it feels a shame that the corporate grunge inspired production choices betray not much more than an opportunistic short-termism. (Itâs not quite Avril levels of insincerity, but itâs far from PJ levels of authenticity.)
Canât blame an artist for wanting to sell some records, though â and youâd have to be a total bore to call âIronicâ, âHand in my pocketâ and âYou oughta knowâ any less than classic.
Fave song: âWake upâ. (Ironically, the worst offender for trope soup!)
3
Apr 30 2025
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd
With the weight of public opinion so dreadfully pitched the other way, Iâll just have to wear the accolade of âmost tedious contrarianâ when I say that âWish you were hereâ, one of the 20th centuryâs most popular and regarded songs, does Pink Floyd a disservice.
For the longest time â 35 and a half years plus âShine on âŠâ and a minute of âWelcome to the machineâ â I thought that Pink Floyd was essentially âThe Wallâ and milquetoast soft rock (would we say pumice?). You have to laugh.
Or, more accurately, you have to join the millions before you who, hearing âWelcome to the machineâ for the first time, had sat and felt the synths slicing through their matter; calved as the down stroked acoustic guitar startled them into an alertness that, with a simple vocal harmony, so quickly becomes transcendental; rising, rising; back down to the interminable throb of the machineâs whirring engine. And all of that over the course of about a minute. (Note: a quick search reveals Iâm not alone in hearing Stranger Thingsâ theme here⊠but itâs a small club!)
This album puts me in my mind of early Mars Volta, contemporaneous Steely Dan (Iâd imagine there was some mutual admiration going on) among others â a good mind to be put into. âWish you were hereâ? Nah, still a bit fusty for me. The rest of it? FucccckkkkkkkkkkâŠ
5
May 01 2025
Music for the Masses
Depeche Mode
Religious tropes, shorn of their unifying context, creating a bleak and otherwise unholy dimension; themes of longing, melancholy and tortured sadomasochism; total, spectacular, irredeemable horniness. Clive Barkerâs The Hellbound Heart was first published around the time that Depeche Mode would have been in the studio recording âMusic for the Massesâ â coincidence?
Well, yeah. Probably. In the early-mid 80s, it feels like there might have been something in the air. And that something might have had to do with an ongoing moral panic around sex, fuelled by (but far from limited to) the AIDS epidemic.
Is it any surprise we get a glut of stuff coming out from the shadows? If itâs the case that the perpetrators go where you go, do what you do, love who you love ⊠then youâd be forgiven for wanting to check-in with your inner monster over your outer Dr Frankenstein.
Thankfully, what we have here â and see so much across the cultural artefacts of the time â is far less a return of the repressed than a refusal to ever repress it. Defiance went hard in the 80s, be grateful it did.
While I wouldnât go so far as to suggest that either Barkerâs novella or âMusic for the Massesâ is a direct response to the AIDS epidemic â thereâs no denying theyâre both wonderful examples of a very specific, time-bound gothic impulse. A double, as it were â split aspects of a tendency that starts with the Marquis De Sade, moves via Crowley, Bataille and becomes ⊠well, Iâm not sure to be honest. (We do still do goth here in 2025, but sometime after Buffy it all, as with a lot about culture, feels to have become a lot less horny.)
And so my celebration of âMusic for the Massesâ is also, sort of, a celebration of the libidinal charge of the dark side; the freedom it implies, the diversity of love it allows. Darkwave floor fillers like âNever let me downâ, âNothingâ â Killing Joke via Duran Duran â and âStrangeloveâ â surely the first track on Lady Gagaâs moodboard for The Fame Monster â bop along majestically, unapologetically, fucking huge. âSacredâ, âPimpfâ and âAgent Orangeâ (a bonus track originally) help embed the atmosphere, rehearsing the theme while elevating the record.
âMusic for the Massesâ is far from a Frankenstein â the recordâs creative vision is far too expertly executed for that. But it is, like the eponymous monster, a whole thatâs so much greater than the sum of its parts. And, like LeMarchandâs Box in The Hellbound Heart, itâs a record that has a transportive power â to a place thatâs dark, sure, but thatâs all the more prepossessing for it.
4
May 05 2025
Imagine
John Lennon
Hyperbole finds in âImagineâ a true nemesis. Itâs is a song thatâs so elemental that itâs difficult to believe it hasnât always existed (like Auld Lang Syne or Jack and Jill); a song so earnest, direct and vulnerable that hearing it always feels like your own discovery; a song so beloved that even an attack from a cadre of global actors armed with iPhones and fronted by an actual IDF soldier couldnât sink it. A beautiful song. Itâs a shame that it might now best represent a facile gesture concealing an absence of tangible care (or, perhaps, as preface to Fukuyamaâs âend of historyâ). But thatâs on us, really, not John.
Back to the album, though, and unsurprisingly, perhaps unavoidably, weâre quickly heading downhill. The bluegrass of âCrippled Insideâ is annoying in its bit too clever juxtaposition of musical tweeness with lyrical anxiousness. âJealous Guyâ gets us back on track â a song Alex Turner would have loved to write, perhaps has been trying to for the past decade â and âItâs so hardâ does a job, but itâs really at âI donât wanna be a soldier mammaâ that my interest is again piqued. It feels like the blueprint for Madchester, for Primal Scream â a band named for Arthur Janovâs therapeutic remedy, which, pleasingly, Lennon was undergoing around the time of writing â for the Bad Seeds ⊠. Itâs joyful, urgent, and deadly cool.
âGimme Some Truthâ begins the recordâs second side, offering a Weltschmerz-textured reimagining of âImagineâ that feels straight out of the local newspaperâs letters section. I donât disagree with him. By the time the thunderously trenchant âHow do you sleep?â rolls in, weâre really cooking. A diss track for the ages, itâs mean-spirited â but undeniably funky, and likely funny enough to be quickly forgiven (especially if its target technically started itâŠ).
Itâs a shame, then, that itâs with the dampest of the albumâs squibs that John follows âHow do you sleep?â. âHow?â â a quarter of the song of its predecessor in so many ways â is a forgettable ramble through a collection of ersatz philosophical aphorisms; not for the first time on this record, it feels a bit too clever.
Album closer, âOh Yoko!â is, for an album that started with âImagineâ, an appropriately disarming number. On the surface a saccharine pop song, there eddies beneath that sheet of melodic icing sugar a steely sort of poignancy. For a moment, caught in the whimsy, it might feel like all lovers answer to âOh Yoko!â.
I leave the album that bit better informed as to why John Lennon occupies the space he does in 20th century music. Heâs one best songwriters to have ever done it. No hyperbole required.
4
May 06 2025
Moon Safari
Air
I try not to touch the meta of this thing as I go. Itâs not fair â or even particularly interesting â to reflect on what I do or donât think should be in a 1001 list. Iâm thankful someone(s) has tried.
I must briefly break my own rule for Airâs âMoon Safariâ, as I feel Iâm being harsh for the silliest reason. Quite whether it âbelongsâ here is totally beside the point (if itâs here on this curated list, it belongs). What Iâm struggling with is a realisation â a realisation that Iâve been regarding this exercise, without any invitation to, as a âchallengeâ. And as a result, in encountering an album this completely unchallenging I feel somehow ripped off; suddenly lurching toward hyperboles of the order âwho on Earth could ever have any sort of feeling about any of this (except âSexy Boyâ which is and always has been a bop)?â
On another level, the meta thing feels apt. âMoon Safariâ sort of does feel like music about music â thereâs a curatorial zeal that sits across the songs, so slickly produced and pristinely packaged. Iâm hopscotching through a musical museum, being smoothly transported through a range of fleeting feelings by a guide whoâs achingly clever, aloof, cool (âFrenchâ, in short).
Thereâs nothing wrong with it. It doesnât need to be a challenge. It can just be, and thatâs great by me.
2
May 07 2025
Garbage
Garbage
That Shirley Manson and the rest of Garbage ever found each other is a remarkable story. Serendipity, tragedy and perseverance; itâs an origin story thatâs located directly atop a great, heaving fault line in 90s culture.
For me, personally, this record is a bit of a missing link between two of my first musical loves: Nirvana and Linkin Park. The former represented here by, yes, Butch Vig, but also by the swaggering attack of âIâm only happyâŠââs first eight bars and plenty of moody moments besides. The latter by the feeling that this is a record born in and around a studio rather than a practice space; a triumph of studied creative process more than spontaneous creative prowess.
As with âHybrid Theoryâ, Garbageâs debut packs hooks on top of hooks on top of hooks. And as with Linkin Park, thereâs a serious risk that the smell of all that polish would grate and nauseate if not for the rawness and brilliance of the singer in front of it all.
Itâs a marvellous pop album; seriously clever and self aware but never aloof or unapproachable.
4
May 08 2025
Music From The Penguin Cafe
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
I remember reading Raymond Tallisâ phenomenological excavation of the human head in âKingdom of infinite spaceâ maybe 15 years ago, where Tallis articulates the specific absurdity of spit; ok to swallow when itâs rolling around your mouth, but utterly wretched to conceive of repatriating once expectorated into a cup and left to sit for any duration of time at all.
Evidently, some things â and some thoughts â should remain in the head they were born into. Thankfully, âMusic From The Penguin Cafeâ isnât one of them.
Simon Jeffeâs delightful album puts me in mind of the more contemporary Rachelâs. Both groups demonstrate common compositional sensibilities â not quite rock, enough to suggest itâs pop, folkish in attitude. And both â through a mix of imagination, craft and talent â are capable of inspiring a dozen emotions in as many minutes.
Itâs a joy to be inside the world of the Penguin Cafe; a tremendous feat of creativity that also feels like an analysis, through music, of the spontaneous joys and myriad diversions of a creative mind. And in so far as it really does â as Jeffeâs sort of said, and Fleur definitely did â sound like a tour of the inside of oneâs head ⊠itâs not too much to say that Penguin Cafe Orchestra do a job of reinforcing whatâs so joyful about being human.
A kingdom of infinite space, indeed. (Just keep the spit stuff to yourself.)
4
May 09 2025
Eternally Yours
The Saints
The first thing that surprises me is the horn section. And then, itâs that thereâs less than six months between this record and The Sex Pistolsâ âNevermindâŠâ. And then, for about seven songs itâs just that it gets better and better, right until the cataclysmic crescendo of âNo, your productâ. (Not that Iâm suggesting thereâs a drop off in quality â far from it.)
This is one of those albums â one thatâs an entire genreâs output presented as synecdoche; track after track so completely full of potential for others to unravel. Thereâs âKnow your productâ (ska punk), âNo, your productâ (grunge â Kurt Cobain was a fan of The Saints), International Robots (pop punk, obviously) ⊠whole sub genres sketched out in 3-minute bursts.
Aside from whatâs immanent and what it portends, itâs also a bloody brilliant punk record. Tune after tune, stomp after stomp â pound for pound as perfect as a punk record is likely to ever be.
So while they might not have sneered controversial things toward completely safe targets or bopped their way through any bangers wearing occlusive bangs ⊠The Saints could write, and The Saints could play. Maybe better than any of them. âEternally yoursâ is punkâs first triumph of substance over style.
4
May 12 2025
Moving Pictures
Rush
Serious question, does everyone secretly love Rush?
Theyâre rocking 3.1 million listeners on Spotify, about the same as the tremendously hyped Fontaines D.C is today ⊠and yet no one has ever mentioned them to me.
This despite the fact that so much of this record is so obviously influential to any number of bands Iâve enjoyed, from the relatively popular Coheed and Cambria to the almost completely obscure Capsule (go listen to âCobalt Connectionâ and tell me the riff 30-seconds in isnât a second cousin of âTom Sawyerââs most brooding bit of guitar).
Anyway, no great issue. Iâve found Rush perhaps exactly when I was supposed to. This is a highly enjoyable record that gets better every spin. The playing is phenomenal* while always rewarding the song; the vocals are pretty daft but plenty charming (so much personality!).
Rush appeals to the geek in me, I guess. Letâs keep it our little secret.
*On that: I feel like the fact Rush are known as such prodigious players was part of why I avoided them for so long. It could be said that much of my listening life so far has been characterised by a youngsterâs mistrust of anything all that technically adroit (following a simple logic that playing from the heart means, necessarily, bypassing oneâs finer motor skills). To now have released that hang-up and realised thereâs a whole universe of excellent music out there for me to discover is a source of no small volume of bittersweet contentment.
3
May 14 2025
Don't Stand Me Down
Dexys Midnight Runners
Thereâs a meme that does the rounds occasionally, pulled from Family Guy. AFAIK (itâs a meme, who knows how far itâs drifted from its original context?) patriarch Peter explains The Godfather as âinsisting upon itselfâ â a criticism that does a laudable job of sounding comically faux-intellectual while also sort of nailing it.
Because yeah, you do want The Godfather to be self-serious. Thereâs little mirth to be extracted from the mafia (see: Mickey Blue Eyes) â so for the whole enterprise of The Godfather to even stand a chance of working, it has to insist upon itself (see: best director wins and nominations).
With that in mind, itâs a bit of a shame that the Dexys of âDonât stand me downâ initially seem to be guilty of insisting upon themselves. Gone is the triumphant buoyancy of âToo Rye Ayâ and its anthemic choruses; in its place a mopey-toned, albeit sonically sophisticated, collection of intriguing but ultimately unrewarding, overly esoteric musical essays.
Itâs a fruitless first listen â no one last wild waltz â but I steady myself, itâs only a first listen. Underwhelmed as I am, itâs an album Iâll return to.
And return to.
And return to.
And return to.
Five spins in and Iâm comforted to find my favoured collection of wonderfully esoteric, sophisticated musical essays is still holding up. The pastiche elements, spoken word breakouts and musical quotations â some of them self-referential â add to the sense of this being a properly postmodernist, academic piece of work. Gloriously so, I come to conclude.
But it is âworkâ; make no mistake, you have to bring a lot to this record before you start getting something out of it. For me, thatâs not a point around which to be critical â Iâm happy to put a couple of yards in my side to meet a band whoâve traversed entire landscapes to find themselves on the ground that they stand. But I can, equally, see how a listener might feel short-changed; not everyone can be expected to extend Dexys such grace, nor should they be. (I gather that Kevin Rowlandâs efforts in promoting this album on its release wouldnât have exactly helped manage anyoneâs expectations around its contents, too.)
Anyway, 8 minutes into âThis is what she likesâ the band rouses. Itâs been a variable, captivating seven minutes previous â weâve had a spoken word skit, a warbling vocal solo, some signature Celtic-rock-cum-blue-eyed-soul, a bit of piano, a couple of ruminations on poppy ostinatos, harmonies, tempo shifts ⊠lots. Enough that you might be forgiven for thinking thereâs not much more left to be done. And yet. For anyone whoâs ever struggled to put into words a feeling, itâs familiar territory. Thereâs not a runway long enough â youâll keep talking forever, whether mellifluously or tediously, if you need to. But by minute 11 weâre all there. Weâre dancing, weâre smiling, weâre sharing something. Itâs what sheâs like.
And itâs clearly, clearly Dexysâ masterpiece.
5
May 15 2025
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo
Devo
Grateful.
Devolution.
Understood.
Brevity.
Inventive.
Fun.
Q: is this not a great album?
A: yes. Thanks, Devo.
3
May 20 2025
Ill Communication
Beastie Boys
The process by which ideas, observations and sensations are sublimated to raw materials, reorganised â either loosely, or through focussed theming â and then leveraged into singular narratives and innovative, surprising rhymes lists among the 20th centuryâs greatest contributions to music â up there with sampling, jazz, funk, hardcore punk and ⊠ah hold on, I see what Iâve done there. Anyway, itâs a poetry â in some respects itâs maybe poetryâs final movement.
Like poets, hip hop artists are necessarily eclectic. Theyâre also â the good ones at least â magicians. Skilled producers who can move a mood, force action through distraction, delight through sleight of hand.
For all of those things, Beastie Boys are among the all time greats. Theyâre magicians so skilled they can sustain the illusion that you, listener, have any stake at all in a record thatâs essentially three men (and some friends) locked in hyperactive conversation with a thousand influences and points of reference. They can put a run of seven songs together that magpies â confidently, competently and never condescendingly â from six genres (and genres as distinct from one and other as hardcore punk, funk and rock are at that) without it ever feeling effortful or trite.
Ill Communication is a fantastic record. Itâs just about every adjective you could throw at it â jagged, smooth, accessible, pretentious, urgent, relaxed â and a few more that the English language canât quite accommodate besides (do we need a word for âsomething thatâs so cool to behold that it makes you want to put on sunglasses?â).
A true head bopper of an album from beginning to end, itâs a cohesive creative work that manages to find time and space for so many changes in mood and pace; the perfect home, really, for a song that belongs on any mixtape of the 20th century â âSabotageâ.
The feeling here is that the good stuff just spills out of them. An illusion, surely â just that being that cool must take some work, let alone the rest of it â but itâs one I want to believe all the same.
(Side note: Is there a compassionate deity who can boast more bangers as Bodhissatva?)
5
May 21 2025
american dream
LCD Soundsystem
On occasion Iâm visited by my ghost of contrarianism past. The uniform of fringe, band merch, chainsaw belt buckle and skinny jeans protects a thin skin; heâs unconvinced by any cultural paraphernalia that managed to get popular â especially so if it did so without him having felt on the ground level of it.
The fringe long since battled back to respectability and the fit of jeans finally allowing for a less restricted gait, we have space now to reflect. Stubbornness in youth, one can surmise, is mostly fine, just so long as it dissipates before it arrests development. To never let go or never let in are equal tragedies.
To be given the chance to return to the primal scene of your obstinacy is, from that perceptive, a real privilege. And so my thoughts are buoyant. What talents did I overlook? What feeling did I allow to sail by? What dances â I usually preferred to stand outside and smoke, bless â did I fail to dance?
Well, what a shame. Iâm so bored by this record that Iâll likely never get to find out. It rumbles along pleasantly enough, takes the odd risk, but it seems to lack a certain spine. Itâs a mash up of genre mash ups gone by, only with the most interesting parts of the portmanteaus filed down to inoffensive nubs. Electro pop without the pomp, new wave without the cool.
Sometimes I suppose growth means just giving things a chance â and other times, itâs knowing when to quit. I managed to stop smoking. Thatâs got to count for something.
2
May 22 2025
The Köln Concert
Keith Jarrett
I was often overwhelmed by this record.
Musically, it is sublime. So much so that I feel unqualified to say too much more about it; if it sits on a shelf above most âgreatest of all timeâ albums, then itâs several floors above many of the records I hold closest.
Its story is utterly ridiculous. Itâs not so much the heroism of Keith âconqueringâ the circumstances that appeals to me; itâs the idea that so much had to go wrong for something so perfect to ever have been given a chance to emerge in the first place. To put it briefly: youâd need to be in some sort of mood to deliver a performance like this.
And speaking of â Keith himself; his powers of articulation, his freedom of expression. Can you imagine being able to not just take yourself to these soaring, aching places â but also to be able to describe them so poignantly, in the moment, to anyone lucky enough to be sitting within earshot?
And then, the questions. I find myself, in the gaps between phrases, thinking about intimacy; the limits of self-expression; the endless potential of music to create something in a listener, and the extent to which each time a song is listened to something new is created.
I think about how it is that, from that perspective, a song is never really finished; itâs always in flux, reacting to the conditions itâs being introduced into, taking on new dimensions.
And at point â listener and creator joined across space and time by something that they share â itâs manifestly obvious that this idea of âimprovisationâ isnât a novelty. Itâs the whole point.
4
May 23 2025
Rid Of Me
PJ Harvey
Imagine a maze built tall with dense, lush conifers; exciting surprises tucked artfully behind corners that themselves seem to leap out from nowhere. A maze that teases its enigma proudly; inviting its participants to take an elevated view, to admire its complexity from on high â a maze whose architects are confident that the moment you descend from the vantage of a verdant horizon, youâll again be scratching around, none the wiser as to how to locate the core.
And now imagine that finding the treasure at the guarded centre is the least of your worries â you canât work out how to actually get in.
âRid of meâ represents a sort of musical purgatory. I was listening to this album only recently, the day after Steve Albini died â and while I enjoyed it, bristled to it, let it wash over me ⊠I never felt myself washed away by it. And thatâs flustered me; precisely because I can tell thereâs so much in there for me to delight at.
Whatever it is, though, I canât grasp at it.
For an album that does so much to trace the outline of a thoroughly frustrated mind ⊠maybe thatâs about right. Itâs a niggle I might never rid myself of. See you next year.
3
May 26 2025
I Should Coco
Supergrass
My autocorrect is utterly convinced that Iâm trying to type âSuperclassâ. And, you know what? Fair enough. In a more just world, weâd autocorrect the entire 90s so that Supergrass were de rigueur everyoneâs favourite band.
âI Should Cocoâ is, unfortunately for us today, that good an album. The first halfâs electric eclecticism welds post-punkâs tuneful passions (Buzzcocks, Gang of Four) to buoyant dancehall rhythms with such singular conviction that comparisons to Queen feel within reach (not that Supergrass sound like Queen; more that theyâre able to do pretty much whatever they want and do it well).
Using side two to showcase, literally, âa whole new side to the bandâ feels like the sort of meta Supergrass would revel in, so Iâll continue to think it a purposeful act of expectation subversion.
âI should Cocoâ did, of course, actually do very well in its time. âAlrightâ was a hit big enough to have left its mark on a six year old me â certainly the grimaces in the video did, anyway (Fleur attests to the same) â and Supergrassâ career panned out in probably exactly the way it was supposed to. There were awards, major songwriting accolades and subsequent chart successes that seemed to develop in parallel with their initial audience (âMovingâ is a gorgeous song; you can well imagine a kid who once pogoed along to âCaught by the Fuzzâ listening to it on the Sunday morning kids football run).
But even still ⊠you canât help but think the collective memory has forgotten them that bit too quickly. Victims, perhaps, of never having been in the same tabloid-courting rock nâroll star mould as some of their supernova contemporaries.
Victims of their own Superclass, if you like.
4
May 27 2025
Paranoid
Black Sabbath
Between the concepts of the âbig bangâ and Freudâs âprimal sceneâ there are some pleasing symmetries. Among them, thereâs the implication that all that now is was once âoneâ â a one that was both the impossibly expansive potential of everything that could ever be, and also, weirdly, this. This narrow now.
I guess a ânarrow nowâ might have been what Birmingham would have felt like in the 60s, too. While down the road a cultural revolution was in full swing; for the Midlands and the north it was a bit more kitchen sink. Some angry men writing angular, spiky things ⊠but a fair few more in the foundries and factories.
In one of them, a sheet metal factory, Tony Iommi was to lose the tips of a couple of fingers; initially delaying his progress as a guitarist, that is before a couple of bespoke prostheses were developed ⊠and Tony realised that detuning the guitar might help with corralling the strings.
A few years later, Sabbathâs darker, âheavierâ sound clicked magnificently into place. âParanoidâ, the bandâs second album, is perhaps their defining statement. A collection of songs so absolutely brilliant, original and audacious that the only sensible reply, here in 2025, has to be âthank youâ.
(A full list of thank yous â for Maiden, for Mayhem, for Converge and Cursed â would be daft, but Iâll say that this listen through was particularly enlightening of the debt the entire 90s counterculture owes to Sabbath, too. While itâs fairly obvious how influential Sabbath was to RATM, I hadnât ever really considered how it is that grunge might be the sound of a load of young American musicians trying to rescue and revive what they loved about Sabbath from a group whoâd pushed their Sabbath in another direction entirely. Or to put it another way, a clear Sabbath influence is about the only thing that Nirvanaâs âBleachâ and GnRâs âAppetite for Destructionâ share ⊠and that feels significant.)
While thereâs no doubting that Iommiâs gift for a riff would have seen his band right â especially when considered in context of one as individually world-beating as Sabbath were; let alone Ozzy, for godâs sake â itâs at least in some respect to the lost fingertips that we owe the âheavyâ bit. (And when I say âweâ, I really do mean âhistoryâ.)
For psychoanalysts and physicists alike, there are no accidents. And here, at Sabbathâs big bang, we find the primal scene of all thatâs heavy. Itâs a simply incredible record. Thanks.
5
May 30 2025
A Little Deeper
Ms. Dynamite
Ms. Dynamiteâs 2002 moment occupies a funny place in my memory. Sheâs sort of right on the cusp of a crucial moment in my listening life â when music went from the received wisdom of the top 40 and whatever was in my mumâs car (invariably Texas, Dido) to something I could have a stake in all of my own; something to explore, to guard (I was a kid!) and to make for myself.
Itâs for that reason that I greet this record so warmly. Certainly, itâs aged well: the âdy-na-mi-tee-heeâ is still just as iconic, âIt takes moreâ still just as resonant (women certainly havenât stopped being underestimated in the past 23 years). Itâs fun to hear âBrotherâ too and think that itâs about Akala â between a Mercury prize winning daughter and a discourse defining son, mum and dad must be very proud.
âA little deeperâ isnât an album with deep cuts Iâll soon return to, but I was glad to be given an opportunity to reflect on just how big a breakthrough Ms. Dynamiteâs was. A seismic moment in British music history (one I was too busy listening to Finchâs âWhat it is to Burnâ for the 300th time that day to appreciate at the time).
2
Jun 02 2025
Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Derek & The Dominos
Iâve spent a lifetime â or at least a lot of one â being deeply mistrusting of Eric Clapton. I think my first interaction was via an ad for a live CD, one where âLaylaâ was the centrepiece. Something about the dude just didnât sit right for me.
Over the years, I developed that opinion â not through intentional exposure to his music ⊠but rather more begrudgingly. Clapton was a fact of musical life, yet something about his whole deal felt disingenuous, inauthentic.
And here we are again. A couple of exceptions aside â the guitar work in âLittle Wingâ especially is fresh, exciting and unexpected â this is another mass of Clapton I canât get along with.
Not because itâs bad, not really â but because I just donât believe it. I donât believe what Iâm hearing loves anything as much as it loves itself. And thatâs an ugliness itâs hard to look past.
2
Jun 03 2025
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
Charles Mingus
It took me a while â and a father-in-law â to find the piece of classical music I heard stalking through this record. Itâs Griegâs âPeer Gynt, Op. 46: I. Morning Moodâ â listen to âTrack C-Group Dancersâ (2m 37s) for a runaway cassette tape meltdown rendition of Griegâs famous motif. Anyway.
I like jazz. I like difficult genius. And smack bang in the middle of that â and just about everything else â is Mingus. And what a Mingus this is. A nebula of sound; textures, moods erupting and enveloping, ebbing, flowing, stopping just as sharply as they started. Mingus drops better ideas than most have ever had (certainly Iâve ever had) within about 14-seconds of forming them. Itâs heady â both in the sense itâs celebratory (the playing is utterly immense), and in the sense itâs cerebral (to the composer, chapeau).
Anyway. I remember a painting of a fox from my childhood. In it, the fox is standing over a pile of rescued items â crisp packets, cigarette butts, cans of Coke sort of thing. And every time Iâd look at the painting Iâd notice a new detail, not because there were necessarily that many to notice ⊠but because the image itself had a way of hiding things from you (or revealing things, depending on your perspective).
It might have been Grieg this time, but Iâll bet itâll be something else next.
4
Jun 05 2025
Real Life
Magazine
Iâm sure I really enjoyed this album. In fact, if I really try, I can sort of remember half-pogoing around to it in the kitchen; comparing its release dates to those of Television; reading up on the split from Buzzcocks, trying to listen for clues as to why, etc. There were moments â during âDefinitive Gazeâ, âShot by Both Sidesâ, and âMotorcadeâ especially â that I reflected on how big a miss this had been from my listening life to date. Superb songs that clearly enjoyed their pretensions â but, and this is the sense I got, only in the name of pushing this âpunkâ thing along a bit.
And then, putting the girls to bed, I popped on the albumâs closing track, âParadeâ.
And when I left the bedroom, I encouraged Fleur into the kitchen where I popped on the albumâs closing track, âParadeâ.
And every night since â a couple of weeks now â Iâve popped on the albumâs closing track, âParadeâ. (Pardon the repetition; like any infatuated subject, just typing the name of my beloved delivers a thrill.)
The track hits me in a number of sweet spots â the slowly building opening bass line that reminds me of Stone Rosesâ âAdoredâ; the plaintive vocals and curious lyrics, sounding like a haunted Tim Booth; the goth-inflected feeling of âNight Timeâ era Killing Joke melding with a sax solo; the guitars, orbiting the action from some phased out, flange-drenched outpost.
âReal Lifeâ is an excellent record. Filled to the brim with thoughtful art punk that sounds, all too often, like a window into a time when people actually could make a living from doing things like this â getting each other to move, to sing along, surprising each other with clever tricks. And itâs there that âParadeâ really hits me. Itâs that feeling that Iâm hearing a step out beyond the bounds of whatâs accepted and toward something else completely; nothing less than the introduction of a new way to speak.
And as it turns out, itâs never too late to hear something like that.
5
Jun 10 2025
We Are Family
Sister Sledge
An astonishing collection of timeless pop songs. Thereâs a sort of paradox going on here: while itâd be wonderful to be hearing the songs on this record for the first time as a whole right now ⊠itâd be a shame to have never before heard them (and âusedâ them â a song like âWe Are Familyâ works as hard semiotically as it does sonically; it is essential cultural shorthand). Fabulous, and an immediate hit in my family too.
4
Jun 11 2025
Marcus Garvey
Burning Spear
âWho was Marcus Garvey?â was my first question. And after Iâd found out, the next was âdid I miss a reference to him in âBlacKkKlansmanâ?â Yes, I did.
This record â as well as providing a much-needed history lesson on an influential, albeit slightly outre thinker in the domain of racial politics â has some of the most buzzing dub bass Iâve had the pleasure to enjoy. Itâs a total feast of low end frequencies; whole songs, and often very enjoyable ones, hung off the robust framework of a rumbling bass note.
Mercifully, this album is far more than âone noteâ. Itâs a thought-provoking, Wikipedia-visit-inspiring collection of songs that advances its perspective with ruthless conviction and artistic vision.
3
Jun 12 2025
Heartattack And Vine
Tom Waits
Itâs always challenging to hear something authentically outsider â especially when the thing itâs outside of is, well, not your inside. Iâm not American; what I know of its myths and autofictions I know from books, TV and film. So as much as I think I recognise this America â Lou Reid, Jim Jarmusch, bits of Delillo â I do so, mostly, thanks to secondhand accounts.
Certainly, thereâs a literary quality to âHeartattack and Vineâ. Songs like ââTil The Money Runs Outâ and âDowntownâ are richly atmospheric, undeniably arresting. Thereâs a hardboiled feel to the storytelling, and I can see the appeal of Waits as a detective-slash-flaneur of Americaâs gritty backstreet theatre.
But ultimately, this album fails to totally register for me. At times I wince, even cringe as our detective assumes the perspectives of his marks ⊠and sounds more like 90s-era William S Boroughs (read: pitiable) than anything like the man in his pomp.
Itâs entirely possible that I lack imagination, that Iâm just too other to the others on display here to get it. But by the time the recordâs done, Iâm afraid Iâm left feeling more like Iâve just watched âBad Santaâ than heard a beat poet.
2
Jun 13 2025
Surf's Up
The Beach Boys
Brian Wilsonâs voice means something to me. Iâve never really known what, to be honest â Iâve just always enjoyed it, enjoyed emoting to it.
He has this knack for combining moods and feelings in the most faithful way. How a song like ââTil I Dieâ can feel like flying, floating and sinking all at the same time. The palpable ache to the songâs opening melancholy is a familiar feature of Brian Wilsonâs songs; being inside a losing struggle to name a feeling. Itâs a triumph, then, when the song arrives at its conclusion: a list of things to be grateful for.
From that perspective, itâs tempting â as it is with many aspects of âSurfâs Upâ â to read ââTill I Dieâ as the denouement of an arc begun on Pet Sounds. If âI guess I wasnât made for these timesâ is a song that peers Janus-faced backward and forward in search for sanctum, then ââTill I Dieâ is accepting the here and now for what it can be.
Thereâs a ribbon of ecological and political consciousness that runs through âSurfâs Upâ; âDonât Go Near The Waterâ â a song that slaps; is that Al Jardine breaking into a rap? â sets the tone, while âFeel Flowsâ and âA Day in the Life of a Treeâ have a more spiritual, pantheistic feel to them. âStudent Demonstration Timeâ honky tonks itâs way around the sort of subject matter history probably didnât need the extended Wilson familyâs thoughts on. Yet while it occasionally threatens to fall into cringe â while one might imagine Jim Morrison, at a push, describing âthe winds of change fanned into flameâ, I cannot force myself to imagine him quipping about âa new degree, the Bachelor of Bulletsâ â itâs just about rescued by the combined compositional talents and strong artistic sensibilities of the Beach Boys.
The albumâs closer, âSurfâs Upâ is, simply, a flawless piece of music. Whispers, moogs, horns, glockenspiel, car keys â a sonic sculpture where each and every potential has been explored before paring it back to a fully realised form. (Unsurprisingly given its accomplishment, it took a decade to refine and record.) By the time the final minute has crashed over me â the most gorgeous, most sumptuous collapse into harmony Iâve ever heard â Iâm edified, elated, wiped out and better for it.
On the whole, âSurfâs Upâ might be my favourite Beach Boys record. Its wobbly moments and goofy tangents donât hamper or distract from the albumâs treasures so much as work to elevate them. These are still all good songs, after all â itâs just that some of them are among the most wonderful ever recorded.
Which brings me back to Brian Wilsonâs voice. I suppose what it means to me now, reviewing this record in celebration of his life, and always has is something secret and specific to me. A feeling Iâll always struggle to name. Thank you, Brian.
5
Jun 16 2025
Back At The Chicken Shack
Jimmy Smith
2
Jun 17 2025
It's Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
In 2009, Yeah Yeah Yeahs â along with the rest of that scene of NY âindie sleazeâ bands â no longer owned cool. They were an established, respected group; high enough up festival bills to be legible on the backs of merch from 30 yards out.
âHeads will rollâ hit the moment perfectly; a cantankerous jam that demanded to be danced to, remixed, danced to, remixed and repeat. It did a fine job of responding, with authenticity and in artistic good faith, to the general direction indie was going in â more prominent synthesisers, less dramatic in-song dynamics. A shift across indie music that, looking back, was the start of a nudging away from attitude and toward vibe â HEALTH, The xx, Washed Out (a gentle metamorphosis that would reach its apotheosis in 2012 with Beach Houseâs âBloomâ).
Itâs been 15 years since all that; so Iâm pleasantly surprised that âHeads will rollâ sounds just as exciting today as it did when it was first released. And âZeroâ, album opener, sounds even better. All fantastic signs that Iâm in for a long overdue sitting-down-with âItâs Blitz!â in full (for better or worse, I was listening to Animal Collective on repeat in 2009).
Well, not so much, in the end. Itâs Good! ⊠but aside from the hits and a couple of others (âDragon Queenâ, especially) this is a pedestrian group of songs; fun enough but never quite getting to a height you suspect that, with just a little extra risk, it could reach.
If âHeads will rollâ was among the early triumphs of the attitudeâvibe continuum, then âItâs Blitz!â might, in its own small way, have been among its first victims. A good album thatâs somewhere between a scream and a yawn.
Lights up, indie, the partyâs over.
3
Jun 18 2025
Lam Toro
Baaba Maal
Iâm trying to give this record and its songs a Google, and itâs interesting how many of those searches just point me back to the 1001albumsgenerator website. I canât, for example, easily grasp what âSy Sawandeâ means â but I can see what another reviewer thought of its âdiscursive reachâ. Good for them.
This record floated by in a pleasant enough way. Iâm occasionally reminded of Electric Fields, a contemporary act Iâd do well to check back in with. And the aforementioned âSy Sawandeâ inspires a return listen â thereâs a tenderness to the track that communicates regardless of how little else I understand of it.
A lovely collection of songs from, by all accounts, a quite remarkable man.
2
Jun 19 2025
Honky Tonk Heroes
Waylon Jennings
That Waylon Jennings could maintain a career as a recording artist and performer while wearing so much plot armour is worthy of the deepest respect.
Itâs fitting, really, that the 20th centuryâs most notable musical survivor would go on to play such a pivotal role in keeping a receding musical tradition alive. And while all that honky tonk isnât totally to my taste, thereâs something genuinely charming about the country music outlaws â rage against the winnowing machine? â and their sticking it to the Nashville man.
This is a solid collection of songs that â and one presumes by design â sounds like itâs beaming in from a time long before it was recorded. And as silly as Iâll admit to finding its themes, Jenningsâ baritone keeps the sweet molasses from getting overwhelming. Surely â this is a man who launched a thousand parodies. Yet youâd struggle to ever call anything here a joke.
With something of this quality as its guarantor, honky tonk forever lives to fight another day.
3
Jun 20 2025
90
808 State
Has there ever been so compelling an eruption of musical talents as Manchester in the 80s? 808 State â just about squeezing into the decade in November 1989; this albumâs lead single was charting in the U.K. the day I was born â here give the blueprint for an entire generation (at least) of bedroom musicians and big room aspirants alike to follow.
Bass out, break in, vocals hover, beat syncopates, all stop, bass splash back in solo, and then all back in together on the beat. (If they ever lost an ostinsto, youâd suspect itâs because it was already making its way to the Balearics.)
As to the quality of the songs, I just find this record so intractably cool that it hardly matters. Iâm confident theyâre good songs, maybe ever great ⊠but when, for example, the glassy synths in âAncodiaâ meet that sampled, swirled guitar lick and then combine with the house beat Iâm totally disarmed of any critical faculty (anything capable of more sophisticated phrasings than âfuck thatâs coolâ, anyway).
Luckily, this is a record full of âfuck thatâs cool.â The crunchy, video game drawl and rhythmic contortions of âCobra Boraâ; âPacific 202â and its era-presaging call to arms; the multilayered textures of âDonkey Doctorâ working the beat up and down simultaneously; âMagical Dreamâ â a truly transportive piece of sound design â being exactly as lush and oneiric as its title promises.
Whether itâs the futurism of the synths or the fact Iâm personally anchored in time by virtue of this recordâs release date, Iâm put in mind of Mark Fisherâs reading of âhauntologyâ. Fisherâs spooky sounding concept describes a feeling that weâre being haunted by the ghosts of futures that never came to pass.
The ghosts in the drum machines here still feel ready to pounce though; and while the party might have been over for a while ⊠you wouldnât bet against the repressed returning one day.
Fuck, thatâd be cool.
5
Jun 23 2025
Court And Spark
Joni Mitchell
Itâs easily the most swayed Iâve been by a Joni Mitchell album ⊠but thatâs not saying much, unfortunately.
Thereâs a sort of guilt, maybe shame that attaches itself to my inability to enjoy the obviously brilliant songs of Joni Mitchell. Itâs nothing personal; I find much of that slice of seventies West coast boho counter cultural ra-ra to be disingenuous and, to use the parlance of today, icky.
Itâs an unpopular opinion â perhaps even an actually wrong one, they do happen â but Iâve never heard a Joni Mitchell song I wanted to listen to again. And so while I donât find this record offensive, neither do I find it even the remotest bit charming, beguiling, intriguing or, ultimately, enjoyable.
2
Jun 24 2025
The Queen Is Dead
The Smiths
It feels like the right time of the year for The Smiths. A cold July; wet out, sky slow to brighten â daylight hours an impressionist vista of bruised purples and blue, jagged clouds bisecting the occasional window of pale blue sky.
Iâm projecting onto the weather a melancholy that this album is more than capable of communicating come rain or shine ⊠at best itâs a lazy on my part (pathetic fallacy, hack!). At worst, unchecked, itâs a risk Iâll ignore everything thatâs joyous about âThe Queen is Deadâ.
About that âŠ
First things first, âThere is a light that never goes outâ. A song I might have known since the age of 10 but had never fully clicked with until feeling legitimately lovesick when first getting together with Fleur (âgetting togetherâ over âdatingâ because thatâs what it was; decisive). I remember craving, viscerally, that five note run; sitting on a bed in a Helsinki hotel (Kamppi, soviet brutalist facade) listening to it through the trebly speakers of a company laptop like the violins might eventually give me answers to feelings I couldnât yet corral into questions.
That song would be performed as our first dance, wonderfully, by members of the band I was in at the time. In the memory of that moment, surrounded by family and friends (and interrupted, charmingly, by our scene-stealing daughter) there is nothing but happiness.
While âThere is a lightâŠâ might have the sort of emotional dexterity to suit any number of occasions (comfortably handling a spectrum ranging melancholyâcelebratory), it hadnât until now occurred to me how perfectly âCemetery Gatesâ recalls the day I met Fleur, July 22 2013:
âA dreaded sunny day, so I met you at the cemetery gates. Keats and Yeats are on your side.â
On that day, a sunny one early in July 2013, walking around the cemetery nearby Old Street, it was Blake Iâd visited. I told Fleur about it. As first impressions go, it perhaps wasnât as slickly intellectual as Iâd been aiming for; I got the (unpaid, crucially) job she was interviewing me for, anyway. Funny how nearby those two songs sit on a single record â the sort of sweet cosmic coincidence that, just now being realised, totally revitalises songs on a record Iâve listened to hundreds of times.
I spend a lot of this record â and the multiple times I return to it â feeling grateful. Grateful in the first instance for the opportunity to reminisce that a collection of songs like this creates (âFrankly, Mr Shanklyâ catapults me back to year 11; âBigmouth strikes againâ to a musty practice room in Croydon). Grateful for each of those beats in a life; milestones to which, and no matter to what small degree, those songs are linked. Grateful too for whatâs still to be revealed, what comes next (Tabby, it must be noted, likes âSome girlsâŠâ â a song admittedly primed for bedtime, âsend me your pillow, the one that you dream onâ â in a very serious way).
And itâs there that you sort of have to stop thinking about it as just a record. Itâs something embedded. Concrescent. Something you grow with, and something that grows with you. At once a scrapbook, an invitation and a reminder to never take any of it for granted. A light that never goes out.
5
Jun 25 2025
Superfuzz Bigmuff
Mudhoney
There are a lot of boring things a person could say about this record. And you can bet theyâve all been said, ad nauseum across magazines, message boards and subreddits for almost 30 years, too. So Iâll try to avoid the obvious pitfalls associated with talking about âa big influence on one of the 20th centuryâs biggest influencersâ and focus on this album purely for what it is. And that is: the essential link between Nirvana and Bunbury, Western Australia.
Thatâs right. The lineage is clear. Kim Salmonâs Scientists write and record a clutch of early 80s âpunk bluesâ, which somehow finds its way to the other WA, and plants something like the blueprint to grunge in the heads of a few angry young Seattlites. They run The Scientistâs âSwamplandâ back through The Stooges and Sabbath, release Superfuzz â and bang, the rest is Nevermind.
âSuperfuzz Bigmuffâ fkn rocks, man. Itâs sludgy, ugly, primordial; a coelacanth of a record. âSweet young thingâ, âMudrideâ, âNo one hasâ; songs seemingly regurgitated by a bottom-dwelling living fossil rigged with a reinforced bite force (and an appetite for stray fingers).
And just like our lobe-finned friend, whatâs most vital about Mudhoney seems to exist outside of the usual parameters of evolutionary continuity. Lineage, legacy, whatever â here and now, this still feels like mud, grungeâs true currency, slung at mottled, bare skin.
Itâs abandon, really. An abandonment that doesnât worry about getting fixed to a particular point in time â and accidentally transcend it entirely.
4
Jun 26 2025
Funeral
Arcade Fire
Oh, dear. Itâs 2025 and all this bloviating baroquery â songs that sounded so clear-minded and agenda-complemingly progressive 20 years ago; part of the soundtrack to, no need to whisper it, change â sounds sickly-pretentious to the point of hostile-facetious.
Not strictly Arcade Fireâs fault â though lighting the path for the nightmare of stomp-clap-hey, a subgenre of indie so indulgently anodyne that it killed guitar music for the best part of a generation, sort of might have been â but all the same ⊠âFuneralâ now sounds like just that, only itâs millennial optimism weâre grieving.
I didnât like this record. It was almost so many things but not quite anything â âThe Black Paradeâ without energy; Dexys Midnight Runners without charm (nothing here comes even close to DMRâs âThis is What Sheâs Likeâ) ⊠ultimately, a fitting soundtrack to our squandered opportunity for, whisper it now, change.
2
Jun 27 2025
Halcyon Digest
Deerhunter
15 years Iâve been meaning to actually sit and listen to this album, fifteen. I had friends, acquaintances I suppose, who swore it was the second coming of something. âDeerhunterâ Iâd hear time and again as we talked about bands all night, danced a bit, smoked a lot of cigarettes, pretended we were across each otherâs book recommendations. It was usually The Bird, or that venue behind it where the bigger acts would perform (Machinedrum, Lapalux, OneOhTrixPointNever) â the name escapes me. Always interesting nights; conversations that youâd be all in on, half out of it, in between and in the middle of. People youâd see in new lights, under different lights, in new circumstances, in the background. And always, always horrific mornings after. Ones youâd recover from, but maybe only just. Fifteen years. Wow.
Anyway, thereâs a record on. Itâs good, yeah, who did you say it was by again? Oh yeah, Deerhunter, I just couldnât quite hear it properly thatâs all, yeah. Itâs good this, Iâve been saying so for weeks. The second coming of something, surely.
3
Jun 30 2025
All Things Must Pass
George Harrison
Is George Harrison historyâs most talented other bloke on the stage? Judging by this record â which is several shades more nuanced and textured than anything Dave Grohl, for example, has managed â the answer would be âyeah, just aboutâ.
This is a lovely record; a little over-generous in its articulation, perhaps, but who can begrudge a creatively constipated man his musical Metamucil? (âAll things must passâ, indeed.)
What you get from this record â and, to be fair, what you get from Lennon and McCartneyâs solo efforts too â is a real sense of Georgeâs singular personality. A fabulous songwriter, a fondly regarded character, and a happy-clappy-sappy chap.
And for all that, thereâs no Beatle Iâd rather sit beside at the local pond.
3
Jul 01 2025
At Folsom Prison
Johnny Cash
The audience â whose caterwauling would indicate theyâre being held captive by Cashâs charisma just as much as by the actual law â whoops notably a few times throughout this record. âThe green, green grass of homeâ gets a sentimental, spontaneous applause; June Carterâs gravely attack in verse two of âJacksonâ inspires some audible excitement; there are titters, I think, through the whole of âFlushed from the bathroom of your heartâ. But the big one, for me, is the âwooo!â won by Johnny for killing a man in Reno âjust to watch him die.â
For a long time Iâve wondered whatâs behind the longevity of Cash. It might be that his songs, sparse and direct, are the absolute embodiment of keeping it simple; or, on the flip side, that his talents go so far beyond those typically expected of a musician that he could stand as an important figure in a number of fields. What heâs doing is equal parts literary, historical, sociological, folkish and comedic â a special and refined artistry.
So while my incarceration in this challenge might be voluntarily, itâs a pleasure to join the ranks of the late 60âs wrong-uns for a run through Johnnyâs âidiot sheetâ. My conclusion: this is a timeless collection of songs performed in a place where time is the ultimate punishment â a subtle symbolism that amplifies every intensity of the material, lionising the character at the centre of it all in the process.
An experience that delivers you back to the moment every single time you play it. Johnnyâs moment, forever.
4
Jul 02 2025
Feast of Wire
Calexico
Iâve never been to the American desert, but I feel like I have. In my mindâs eye, the Road Runner speeds through establishing shots from Breaking Bad while Carlos Castaneda converses with the talking dog from that episode of The Simpsons where Homer hits the habanero too hard.
My hyperreal American desert didnât have a soundtrack â until now, the âmeep meepâ was fated to echo through the canyons like the snap of a bullet from a Salamanca sidearm. Enter Calexico.
I was quick to jump to comparing the indie elements of this record (âNot even Stevie NicksâŠâ) to Death Cab, Bright Eyes and the ilk ⊠but even then I knew I was missing the point. Thatâs part of it, sure â but to let my summation of this record sit there would be the equivalent of spending a single night by the campfire and claiming to have tamed the wild westâs great outdoors. Thereâs just way more to this album: cinematic cuts (âBlack Heartâ, âNo Dozeâ), songs that flicker with a delicate intensity (âWoven Birdsâ, âPepitaâ), cantina jams (âGuero Caneloâ, âAttack El Robot! Attack!â).
Itâs nothing short of a psychogeography â the sound of a desert overrunning; spilling beyond its physical bounds and into that unknowable space where only symbols survive.
âFeast of Wireâ â a curious record that, in turn, rewards a listenerâs curiosity â is the sound of myth brought to life. Fantastic.
4
Jul 03 2025
Kings Of The Wild Frontier
Adam & The Ants
Iâve listened to this album a good six times now; a couple of the songs a dozen times over. And honestly, I still couldnât tell you whether I like it or not.
Obviously, âAnt Musicâ is a bona fide bop. âFeed Me To the Lionsâ is a worthy earworm (and, if Iâm reading it correctly, a wounded âfuck youâ to creepy old Malcom McLaren). But then for every serviceable bit of new wave (âDog Eat Dogâ, âThe Human Beingsâ, the title track) thereâs an odd, slightly annoying shanty or something that you canât wait to be done (âJolly Rogerâ, âLos Rancherosâ ⊠though I do have to admit to begrudgingly enjoying the latter on its fifth go around; the melody sounds enough like the hymn âLamb of Godâ to give me a laugh).
This album feels like an essential bridge between the art punk of the late 70s and the hyper stylised, aesthetically pruned pop of the 80s â validation of the idea that the DIY approach offered a viable route to creative product for artists beyond punk.
But itâs not posterity that wins me over in the end; itâs the cover. Gazing again at its âfrom the feedâ array, it dawns on me. Iâve struggled to arrive at an opinion simply because you cannot understand Adam and the Ants without reckoning with Adamâs made-up face. The âlookâ is at least half of it â if you canât manage your way through that, youâre only ever listening to the record with one earphone in.
Adam and the Ants â an ultimately daft range of personas projected onto an assembly of talented musicians â must have looked a lot like permission to push it. And not in the snotty way that punk had â instead in a way that allowed a person to be heart on the sleeve sincere one second, Jolly Roger brandishing the next.
Without the visual panto, this is a confusing collection of songs. But factor the performance in (as the cover does â itâs from a taping of them rehearsing for a TV spot) and itâs a collection of songs designed to confuse.
And those are two very different things.
4
Jul 04 2025
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Big heavy thumping clumsy rock nâroll nâall that jazz. Once Iâd finished the record â or, really, once it had finished with me â I remembered the Satie at the top and had a genuine chuckle. Itâs a bit of very well done fun (though I might have had a cringe at some of the vocal intonations). Che-yeah! 2.5.
2
Jul 07 2025
Aladdin Sane
David Bowie
A few thoughts flash across my mind as we listen to this record. My 18-month old sonâs immediate bopping along points to something; my immediate recognising of âTimeâ though I canât place why is another something; the significance of the clear artistic confidence on display throughout is a couple of somethings. I canât quite develop the thoughts though, not when thereâs always a bigger moon to eclipse them. Fleur loves the piano on âLady Grinning Soulâ.
3
Jul 08 2025
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Neil Youngâs always been around. Heâs been that spectral character with those lyrics that were referenced in that letter. Or that mercurial artist who would perform at my honours thesis supervisorsâ birthday parties. Or this curmudgeon-guy who said stuff about illegal downloads or the quality of vinyl or something. For me, heâs been shorthand for âIâm a serious personâ for as long as Iâve been a conscious one.
Which is all to say â with âEverybody Knows This Is Nowhereâ, I finally have a chance to put to rest another absolutely ridiculous suite of assumptions Iâve been porting around. The albumâs so much more of a jam than Iâd have ever expected; rambling, sweeping compositions that might at times threaten to stay a little bit too long but â and thank god â kick around long enough to inspire innumerable guitar bands and future indie musicians (a great many of them among my favourites).
âCowgirl in the sandâ stands out (and reminds me a fair bit of âMy My Hey Heyâ; itâs the melody and softness of his vocals, I think) â a lucid dream of a song (and proof that intermediate shredding is well and truly enough if the backing track is doing its fair share of the lifting).
Neil Youngâs having a moment again now, so it might be Iâve come around at just the right time. He wonât always be around, after all.
3
Jul 09 2025
Tea for the Tillerman
Cat Stevens
This couldnât be over fast enough. And because it wasnât, we stopped it. Even the albumâs standout â âWild Worldâ â failed to bring merriment, proving in the moment only that familiarity is a fickle thing. (While at times the pleasure of recognition overrides any critical faculty, at others it breeds only contempt.)
And this was a contemptuous experience; a chimney of exhausting whimsy that befouled and smogged the air. Never again, please.
1
Jul 10 2025
Violent Femmes
Violent Femmes
They used to play âBlister in the Sunâ at lights-up at Perthâs indie nightclub, Amplifier Bar. I was never there to see it, but itâs the sort of thing I found so fundamentally unfunny that Violent Femmes, as a band in their entirety, became collateral damage. Fun dude.
Thatâs a shame for me, as the next track on their 1983 album â âKiss Offâ â would have almost certainly disabused me of my overly-earnest opinions, and might have even cheered me up a bit in the process.
This is a fine album. It feels a touch unbalanced, maybe â the first half being much stronger than the second â but that also might just be because the whole âIâm horny and frustratedâ thing stars to grate after a while (wearing as thin as thoroughly dry humped pants, one might be tempted to conclude).
I hear moments that will later find further vent in a whole constellation of American indie bands, from Bright Eyes to Cloud Nothings; raw, tuneful, full of that specific cheerful-cynical swaggering attitude unique to American punk.
A record gratefully rescued from the dustbin of my own history. And as for the onanism ⊠well. Sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and acknowledge that lights up or not, itâs you thatâs the wanker.
3
Jul 11 2025
Killing Joke
Killing Joke
The sentiment behind the name âKilling Jokeâ â a contrivance of Jez Combesâ, who explains it with reference to a dying soldier realising he is a pawn in the game of âa cuntâ â is one of something apprehended too late.
Itâs funny â though not necessarily âha haâ â that sometimes one might realise that itâs better to have never realised anything at all; a jokeâs a joke whether the punchline realises itâs the punchline or not.
Across their self-titled debut, Killing Joke present a whole load of no laughing matter. Chunky, metallic edged riffs (âBloodsportâ). Vocals forced to sound like an anchor being dragged through gravel (âWardanceâ). Repetitive bass lines that drive just as hard as the often militaristic drums (take your pick!). The whole thingâs war-coded, a theme that will repeat across Killing Jokeâs discography.
But then, too, thereâs the opposite. Guitars that find moments of uplifting melody inside the structures they build for themselves (âS.O.36â, âComplicationsâ); vocals (and keys) that wind in and out of the melee sweetly, even gently (as in the chorus of âThe Waitâ); drums that let themselves get carried away (âChangeâ).
Judged solely on its merits, this is a fantastic album. Itâs a focussed collection of justifiably angry post-punk tracks that never lets up. And while the full variety and canny intelligence of the songwriting are fairly obscured by some of the self-restrictive stylistic choices made, it seems no amount of chugging can camouflage the radiant charm of Killing Joke.
Judged in the context of where it came from and what it went on to inspire ⊠a word like âmasterpieceâ might even be apt. From entire musical sub genres to global musical entertainment platforms (Iâm talking about Metallica there; their cover of âThe Waitâ is so bad that it actually sounds like a Metallica song) â Killing Jokeâs impact is as felt today as it would have been in 1985.
With all that said, itâs perhaps worth mentioning that I started listening to Killing Joke only relatively recently â odd, really, since thereâd been ample opportunity for me to dial in to just how brilliant they are for more than 20 years now (disputes about the provenance of âCome As You Areââs opening riff being well-publicised and all). Itâs everything as it should be, perhaps; the time was right for me to develop that nascent enjoyment of goth and industrial tinged post-punk. Iâd finally heard enough to help me put Killing Joke in their rightful context: peerless in so many respects. Itâs a realisation had better late than never. And thank god; itâd be a real shame if the joke was on me.
5
Jul 14 2025
Sea Change
Beck
Dull has its benefits. Comfortable and comforting; the poetry of banality is all gentle rhyming couplets and familiar imagery.
Beck â this Beck anyway, I think he might have been cool in the 90s â is expert at both. Itâs all âLost Causesâ this, âEnd of the Dayâ that and âRound the Bendâ whatever; saying nothing about the congealed mass of quotidian observations that pass for lyrics. (âLove looks away in the harsh light of dayâ is the level here.)
The most interesting song on this record â âLonesome Tearsâ, perhaps the only song with any sort of notable development on the whole record â features a string section approximating the Shepard Tone at its denouement. (Shame you first you need to get through Beck talking about his tears for more than four minutes first, but meh.)
Itâs the perfect analogy really. While, like the Shepard Tone, Sea Change feels like it must be doing something ⊠its true charm is in the realisation that itâs just staying still.
So while I wasnât moved by this record, nor did I resent listening to it. Dull has its place sometimes.
2
Jul 15 2025
Stardust
Willie Nelson
Somewhere between pensive and languid we find this ultra chilled out collection of arrangements of American standards. And itâs somewhere between âBlue Skiesâ and âMoonlightâŠâ that I find myself asking why these songs?
I was charmed to discover that this pretty random looking assemblage was arrived at during jogs on the Californian sand. The image of Willie getting his exercise in while tossing up whether or not to throw âUnchained Melodyâ into the mixer too brings me no small measure of joy.
The outlaw made an album that feels decidedly âdinner with the in lawsâ and thatâs quite alright by me. Iâll have to try it again when a run on the sand is on the cards. 2.5.
3
Jul 16 2025
Grievous Angel
Gram Parsons
Itâs the year of our lord 2025 and the handful of artists who could conceivably scrounge a living wage from music wouldnât have to worry about doing so even if they had to.
Itâs always been a privilege to have the time and space to create. Before it was unit sales it was patronage; even if it was limited to just one, an artist has always needed a public. A scan across the charts today reveals a heavy tilt toward another kind of privilege. You need a public far less than you need a public school education.
That said, I suppose I should have a problem with Gram Parsons â third generation zesty trust fund kid. Whether itâs because of a statute of limitations on such matters, the incredible tragedy that stalked Gram (third generation wealth carries a certain creed of curse), or the sheer quality of the songs, I donât know ⊠but I canât muster the energy to dislike Parsons. Not on principle nor in fact.
I first listened to this record after enjoying Malkmusâ âTraditional Techniquesâ a few years ago and following up on its influences. Then as now, I marvelled at the steady confidence and cleverness of âReturn of the Grievous Angelâ, a song that teases and pulls its punches in all the right places, waiting until seconds before the bell to land its haymakers. I let myself be swayed by his arrangement of âLove Hurtsâ; bopped along to âOoh Las Vegasâ and âI canât danceâ (a Tabby favourite).
It might be full of wonderfully crafted, beautifully performed (Emmylou Harris is a phenomenal talent of course, and ideal foil to Parsons) archetypal country rock but âGrevious Angelâ doesnât feel like a complete album somehow; it feels short another song or two.
Working through it track by track, you soon come to realise that that canât be true; this recordâs short of nothing else but a follow-up.
Itâs a bittersweet feeling â and one that matches the sentimental tone of what youâre hearing perfectly. Enough so that you might fall a little bit more in love with Gram Parsons again. In principle and in fact.
4
Jul 17 2025
Talking Book
Stevie Wonder
Itâs a side quest opened up by âLady Grinning Soulâ â can we, by the close of this challenge, identify ten albums that finish with a piano-driven track that Fleur loves? Weâve found our number three (two was âParadeâ by Magazine) in the shape of âI believeâŠâ, (a song I think we might have played at our wedding as guests filtered into the reception). Stay tuned!
A lovely album to listen to while pottering around the kitchen before sitting down for dinner with the family. Thereâs something for everyone in Stevie Wonder, and while this someone didnât really find anything to latch onto personally ⊠whatever. A moodâs a mood and Stevie creates a good one.
3
Jul 18 2025
Here, My Dear
Marvin Gaye
Itâs got the feel of a fable about it, a divorce story with a strong moral message: make art of your turmoil, be generous with it and let that become your peace, or something.
Whatever the precise circumstances of this albumâs conception (Iâm sure thereâs more to it than Iâm grasping; âHere, My Dearâ feels just a touch sarcastic as titles go, while the appearance and reprise of âWhen Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You?â is pretty direct as comms goes) but I know that no divorce Iâve ever stood near sounded nearly this good.
If itâs true that Gaye entered the studio to âget the job doneâ then âHere, My Dearâ is a laughably good album. The songs are, no matter the precise emotional coordinates of their provenance, the work of a profoundly wonderful songwriting force; and who knows, in not trying to send any singles to the top of the chart, maybe Marvin found a way back in to refocusing on the full album as a worthy format in itself. Certainly, this record purrs along.
âTime to Get it Togetherâ and âA Funky Space Reincarnationâ (an afrofuturist absurdity featuring the cosmically optimistic lyrics âlight years ahead, you and me gon be getting down on a space bedâ) are stand out slabs of solid funky soul.
If theyâre being phoned in, then theyâre being phoned in by one of the best there ever was. âHere, My Dearâ should be required reading ahead of any mediation.
3
Jul 21 2025
Nilsson Schmilsson
Harry Nilsson
Thereâs no two ways about it: âNilsson Schmilssonâ is a silly name for an album.
Itâs an effect heightened by the albumâs cover art, a photo of the unassuming and bedressinggowned silly saussillson himself standing, seemingly, in his kitchen.
And thatâs plausibly where we find Harry on track one, rousing to the world reluctantly in âGotta Get Upâ â a song that doesnât want to grow up. (The song, fittingly for its narration of glory days gone by, that Natasha Leoneâs character in âRussian Dollâ is fated to hear forever more at the start of her Groundhog Day.)
Thereâs something of a juvenile undercurrent to this record â whether intentionally (as in the limes in the coconut) or because of factors outside of Nilssonâs ultimate control (âWithout Youâ might have once carried more of an emotional gut punch, but by now has accompanied too many parodies to do much more than, somehow, summon the face of Adam Sandler for me).
Elsewhere we have big McCartney energy (âDownâ, âJump Into the Fireâ), pleasant pedestrian folksy pop rock (âThe Moonbeam Songâ, âDriving Alongâ) and a couple more references to the morning. Plenty here to showcase Nilssonâs incredible voice and talent for arrangement; but nothing to blow me away.
Can you have the Nilsson without the Schmillson? Iâm not sure. Thereâs a profound knowingness to this album, thatâs for sure â Iâm just not sure thereâs much in it for me.
2
Jul 22 2025
Electric Ladyland
Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix was a singular, enthralling talent. Unquestionably the greatest ever electric guitar player, his gift for crafting iconic hooks out of snappy catchphrases, twisting licks into memorable choruses and constantly innovating across generic lines puts him among the 20th centuryâs greatest songwriters.
âElectric Ladylandâ is embarrassingly good. Itâs the record Iâd hope â a billion good years from now â the aliens find at the top of the stack. Having dug through however many miles of anonymous human-made detritus, theyâd see it glinting there â yeah, just over there, poking out the inner tray of an old Audi station wagonâs in-car media centre. Theyâd revive the engine, give the interior a quick dusting out (that musty smell immanent to the cars of working men who occasionally cart around ripe bags full of football boots and shin pads would linger) and feed that glinting disc into the CD player.
What would follow would be a radical confrontation of any previously held opinion on whatâs sonically plausible; an expansion of their musical vocabulary that would entirely recalibrate their expectations. A whole new alien world suddenly under them, ahead of them. Incredible.
And in that moment, theyâd have a lot in common with the eleven year old boy whoâd sat in that passenger seat a good billion years before them. Thatâs how good Hendrix is.
5
Jul 23 2025
Selling England By The Pound
Genesis
Halfway through this record and Iâm googling âthe history of ideasâ. Itâs a tangent, but Iâm sure Peter, Phil and the rest would allow it; tangents being essentially the point of what would retroactively come to be known as âprogâ and all. Anyway, I digress.
Iâm looking up whether Genesis â from that Greek âgeneaâ, generation â were themselves a great influence on Queen, or particularly influenced themselves by Yes. No. King Crimson seems to be the root of this particular genealogy, but only just. And Queen were around a little later but not by much.
The consensus would be that âprogressiveâ approaches to rock just seemed to happen. Which makes sense when you consider a) that âprogâ is a tag applied 20 years later â there was no âsceneâ to speak of, I suppose â and b) the almost causal relationship between emerging, relatively accessible musical gadgetry and bands like Genesis, Queen, Yes etc.
In fact, we might here want to pause briefly to allow for a sort of materialist-technodeterminist reading of musical history. (Thus the googling of âhistory of ideasâ.) Is all music history the history of artâs relationship to its material paradigm? And in asking so, must we make space for a Heideggerian analysisâ zuhandenheit, and all that?
Sorry, back on track. From Future of the Left to Tenacious D, the influence of Genesis is so much broader than Iâd have suspected prior to listening to this record. Itâs a sort of intertextual melange; at once Iâm wondering if Jack Black could have ever existed without Peter Gabriel only to then find myself exploring whether Genesisâ shared melodic sensibility with The Smiths is coincidental or not. (The closing passage of âThe Cinema Showâ and supermarket-positive reprise of âKnightsâŠâ has something of âSome girls (are bigger than others)â about it â a melancholy arpeggio juxtaposed with po-faced vocal performance. Marker of influence, or coincidence based on volume of ideas presented? Iâm not sure.)
This album is full of thoughts, and full of questions â a superb example of a particularly British, especially camp creativity. A feast of genre pushing sonic experimentation that seemingly never takes itself any more seriously than a Punch and Judy show would (which is to say, both extremely seriously and not at all).
In short, itâs the sort of music that takes you off on a tangent. I probably couldâve just left it at that, come to think â but whereâs the fun in that?
3
Jul 25 2025
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
So the 00s âmeet me in the toiletâ lot were part of the extended Tom Petty cinematic universe this whole time, hey; who knew? (Tom Petty knew, as it goes. He had the grace to take The Strokeâs âmusical quotationâ in the flattering way it was undoubtedly intended, maybe he knew Julianâs dad.)
Thereâs a fair bit Beatley about the opening track of this record; the buoyancy of âRockinâ Around (With You)â would slot neatly into the first side of âHelp!â (or any record by Vampire Weekend or Razorlight for that matter).
Itâs a short lived dalliance with the Fab Four though, as from âBreakdownâ on this is very much Tom and his Heartbreakersâ show â short sharp shocks of tuneful pop that feel like a great American songbook all of their own.
Ever since reading Dan Charnasâ history of sampling-cum-hagiography of Dilla â âDilla Timeâ â Iâve enjoyed telling anyone whoâll listen that it was Tom Petty playing on some of the earliest drum samples. Turns out Iâd remembered that story only half correctly: the playing of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers is featured on some of the earliest drum machines, but only the sound of their clapping made it into the final sound packs (and, therefore, appears on innumerable records â many of which youâd expect to find here on the 1001 listâŠ).
Iâm grateful of the reminded; appropriately enough, itâs a warm applause from me.
3
Jul 28 2025
After The Gold Rush
Neil Young
The adage, attributed to Victor Hugo, deems that thereâs nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. A whole history of music could be written â has been written, really â from the perspective of the myriad ideas within âSouthern Manâ whose time eventually came.
Weâre talking about a song that, on release, inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd to jump to the defensive and write âSweet Home Alabamaâ; a song whose distorted vocal effects, social conscience and distorted bluesy rock dynamics put it among the earliest examples of proto-grunge; a song with a guitar solo that devolves steadily into weirdo experimentation and drilling single stabs, precisely the sort of thing youâd imagine Thurston, Lee et al stayed up all night studying in their own sonic youths.
And just as the story of âSouthern Manâ might just be the that of rock music (post-Elvis at least) in the 20th century, we can lean on âOnly Love Can Break Your Heartâ as a potted history of the 60s/70s countercultureâs romantic schisms.
A person could drive themselves half mad looking for the subtext and portents in Neil Youngâs music, so suffice it to say that as âcentral figuresâ go ⊠Neilâs a centripetal force all of his own. âAfter The Gold Rushâ is a superb record, full of ideas that weâll likely be unpacking for longer still.
(The opening guitar on âWhen you dance I can really loveâ sounds so much like a bit of music used on Friends, yet I see no evidence of others having noticed yet. Make of that what you will.)
4
Jul 29 2025
Blue
Joni Mitchell
I bet this is really good. The lyrics drive hard, full of neat similes and wry, confessional honesty; the voice is crystalline, fragile, powerful; the production is a marvel â everything so rich and immediate, the guitars almost diaphanous somehow. And then thereâs compositions like âRiverâ â about as actually haunting as any song has ever been (an uncanny spectre; like staring at yourself in the mirror in the dark for too long). Itâs all obviously brilliant.
And yet, like a modern large family CAR-A-HA trying to park in a carport built for vehicles in the 1970s I just hrm hrm hrm canât get into it.
It might be that this clicks for me eventually, I wouldnât totally rule it out. But for the now Iâll have to settle for it having grown on me a little bit across the week.
Like, I suppose, a fledgling mushroom under a-WOOO leaking sink.
2
Jul 30 2025
LP1
FKA twigs
And weâre back. In the back of a car, retoxâd, going to McDâs out by the marina; in bed until 11am gingerly warming up to face the first vape of the day; absolutely hating the way the grubbiness of the tube clings, invades. (Airplanes do something similar; as above, so below.)
We are in the 2010s and everything is either on Brainfeeder or inspired by artists that are. LP1 is the latter; although twigs has managed to do something many of predecessors couldnât and written some actual pop songs. Odd sort of tone paintings that move in often unpredictable, mercurial sorts of ways, but still.
I didnât listen to LP1 at the time, but that doesnât stop this feeling like a sort of nostalgia ouija board. âTwo Weeksâ and its iconic chorus convenes a sĂ©ance of once-familiar phantoms: the Lapalux of âWithout Youâ, the SBTRKT of âWildfiresâ, the Disclosure of âLatchâ etc.
Thereâs stuff here I overlooked at the time â âPendulumâ works itself into the sort of agonising crescendo that would have totally pulverised me in my early-20s; âVideo Girlâ slaps â but I canât shake the feeling thereâs something weirdly, maybe uncannily, dated about much of this record. Itâs just so 2014.
And in so far as I was too, that suddenly feels like a long time ago. Time to put the ouija board away, at least for now.
3