826
Albums Rated
3.65
Average Rating
76%
Complete
263 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1970
Favorite Decade
Folk
Favorite Genre
UK
Top Origin
Cheerleader
Rater Style ?
207
5-Star Albums
14
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Dub Housing
Pere Ubu
|
5 | 2.35 | +2.65 |
|
Public Image: First Issue
Public Image Ltd.
|
5 | 2.42 | +2.58 |
|
Suicide
Suicide
|
5 | 2.46 | +2.54 |
|
A Grand Don't Come For Free
The Streets
|
5 | 2.64 | +2.36 |
|
New Boots And Panties
Ian Dury
|
5 | 2.69 | +2.31 |
|
Movies
Holger Czukay
|
5 | 2.71 | +2.29 |
|
Tago Mago
Can
|
5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
|
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Brian Eno
|
5 | 2.79 | +2.21 |
|
Scott 4
Scott Walker
|
5 | 2.81 | +2.19 |
|
White Light
Gene Clark
|
5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Dirt
Alice In Chains
|
1 | 3.46 | -2.46 |
|
Hybrid Theory
Linkin Park
|
1 | 3.39 | -2.39 |
|
Electric
The Cult
|
1 | 3.01 | -2.01 |
|
A Night At The Opera
Queen
|
2 | 3.96 | -1.96 |
|
Want One
Rufus Wainwright
|
1 | 2.91 | -1.91 |
|
Gentlemen
The Afghan Whigs
|
1 | 2.9 | -1.9 |
|
Among The Living
Anthrax
|
1 | 2.86 | -1.86 |
|
Songs From The Big Chair
Tears For Fears
|
2 | 3.75 | -1.75 |
|
Hot Fuss
The Killers
|
2 | 3.73 | -1.73 |
|
Arise
Sepultura
|
1 | 2.73 | -1.73 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| David Bowie | 8 | 4.75 |
| Bob Dylan | 4 | 5 |
| Steely Dan | 4 | 5 |
| Brian Eno | 5 | 4.8 |
| Radiohead | 5 | 4.8 |
| The Rolling Stones | 6 | 4.5 |
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 4.75 |
| Nick Drake | 3 | 5 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 5 |
| Public Enemy | 3 | 5 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 5 |
| Joni Mitchell | 3 | 5 |
| The Who | 5 | 4.4 |
| PJ Harvey | 4 | 4.5 |
| Pink Floyd | 4 | 4.5 |
| The Kinks | 4 | 4.5 |
| Michael Jackson | 3 | 4.67 |
| Beck | 3 | 4.67 |
| Blur | 3 | 4.67 |
| Kraftwerk | 3 | 4.67 |
| Led Zeppelin | 3 | 4.67 |
| Frank Sinatra | 3 | 4.67 |
| Kate Bush | 3 | 4.67 |
| Joy Division | 2 | 5 |
| Fleetwood Mac | 2 | 5 |
| John Lennon | 2 | 5 |
| The Band | 2 | 5 |
| The Clash | 2 | 5 |
| Beatles | 2 | 5 |
| Van Morrison | 2 | 5 |
| ABBA | 2 | 5 |
| AC/DC | 2 | 5 |
| Curtis Mayfield | 2 | 5 |
| The Pogues | 2 | 5 |
| Manic Street Preachers | 2 | 5 |
| Neil Young | 2 | 5 |
| Oasis | 2 | 5 |
| Miles Davis | 4 | 4.25 |
| R.E.M. | 4 | 4.25 |
| Björk | 4 | 4.25 |
| The Beach Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 4.33 |
| Prince | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Smiths | 3 | 4.33 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Slipknot | 2 | 1 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Miles Davis | 2, 5, 5, 5 |
| Elvis Presley | 5, 4, 2 |
5-Star Albums (207)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
PJ Harvey · 12 likes
5/5
Let England Shake
I was a big fan of Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, but I’ve never dived into anything else she’s done, I just know the odd song as they play her a lot on 6 Music and have watched her on the Glastobury coverage, as she seems to play every year.
I guess she can be a bit of an acquired taste, and you could easily accuse her of a kind of studied eccentricity, especially vocally, but I do think she is genuinely a bit odd in a great way, and I totally buy into her earnestness.
Musically I love its modern take on folk and folk rock. You can hear the echoes of those old, old folk songs, evoking an almost supernatural, spectral atmosphere across the whole thing. The horns add a mournful feel, with their obvious military connotations, and everyday, early 20th century tactility.
Thematically and lyrically this is fascinating, and is just fantastically well done, weaving English folklore, mythology, the landscape, nature and history with our common cultural touchstones into an otherworldly, hazy, unsettling examination on England, Englishness and War and all the longing, loss, destruction, despair and sadness that entails. I’d recommend reading the lyrics in full on her website, they genuinely have a powerful and poetic grace to them.
Every song is connected but it feels to me like a lot of the songs seem to work in trios or pairs. The Last Living Rose, The Glorious Land and Words That Maketh Murder feel like a triptych, I love the imagery of The Last Living Rose and the Glorious Land, painting a picture of yearning for a homeland that is simultaneously imagined and real, beautiful and squalid, balancing affection, melancholy, futility and despair. The interpolation of Summertime Blues is great on Words That Maketh Murder, kind of bringing you forward in time while still conjuring the past
Even though All and Everyone feels a little like a continuation of Words that Maketh Murder, it sits naturally with On Battleship Hill to me, with the folky, delicate, shifting, undulating fragility of the latter and the more tumultuous dominant former.
England, In the Dark Places and Bitter Branches seem like another grouping. The melody and vocal on England take a while to settle, but I feel that’s purposeful, the backing vocals sounding almost like a call to prayer and the discordant piano all adding to the discomforting feel. The bleak imagery of In Dark Places and Bitter Branches is really moving, the electronica touches on In Dark Places contrasting well with the more rhythmic and guitar driven Bitter Branches
And then the final 3 song run of Hanging in the Wire, Written on the Forehead and The Colour of the Earth is utterly fantastic, elegiac, haunting, sad, tender, melancholy but also beautiful, death has come and war is in people’s homes and cities and towns.
I wasn’t expecting it to be quite such a magical record really, it’s almost startling in how affecting I found it and how much I like it. She does that great thing of being both specific and universal, alluding to Afghanistan, WW1 and WW2, anchoring you in a time and place, while also giving you the feeling of floating timelessly across the centuries. It really is a stupendous record and this might be my favourite record on the list I’d not previously heard.
💧💧💧💧💧
Playlist submission: Could be all of them, but I’ll go with Hanging in the Wire
Television · 9 likes
5/5
Marquee Moon
Diddle-liddle-liddle-liddle-luh
That hook on Marquee Moon is so memorably catchy.
I haven’t heard this album in ages but I was really into around 2002/03, I think I might still have it on vinyl in the attic somewhere.
Listening now has reminded me how massively influential it has been and what a superb album it is, amalgamating punk, garage, new wave, rock and jazz into a classic guitar album that sounds contemporary and timeless at the same time. The guitars interweave beautifully over the skittish post punk drums and bass, the jagged, edgy vocals have a great punky underground New York attitude but it still has a distinct melodic pop sensibility.
I love the whole album but that first side from See No Evil to Marquee Moon is sublime, the title-track’s 10 minutes fly by and I love the feeling of ending at around 9.17 before the bass and hook come back.
Elevation - Surely Californication was heavily influenced by this. I adore Guiding Light, it’s sparser arrangement with piano has an ascending and dreamlike quality sitting really nicely against the rest of the guitar tracks
Every track is great, the guitar interplay is fantastic, the lyrics are superb. An undoubted classic. 5 tvs, moons or marquees, whichever you prefer.
📺📺📺📺📺
Playlist submission: Marquee Moon
Curtis Mayfield · 8 likes
5/5
There’s No Place Like America Today
I’d not really heard of this album before, but I thought it was excellent; kind of sad and despairing with a haunted melancholy to the music and lyrics, but all tied together with that sweet, rich, warm voice.
Billy Jack feels like the other side of Superfly, the sadness of an extinguished life, while the fantastic When Seasons Change feels like an ode to resilience, with that same sad undertow. So in Love feels like one of the few hopeful moments on the record. Musically I like Jesus alot, with that guitar in the chorus, but its overtly religiosity feels a bit overbearing. Blue Monday People is great, a snapshot of reality and futility. Hard Times tight groove is superb, symbolic of words and themes of hardening your heart in the face of tough times. Love to the People’s hints at upbeatness are cut through by the bleakness of the verses, but amplified by the chorus.
The playing, particularly the bass and drums, is absolutely superb. Not overly showy, but tight and precise, augmenting and embellishing when necessary, and letting the songs breathe. I also love the really slowed down tempos, really intensifying the dispiriting themes and lyrics.
This really got under my skin over repeated listens, it’s trading of immediacy and optimism for a spareness and a mournful tone working a slow kind of hypnosis. It was a 4 at first but after a few listens I can’t really think of a reason to not give it 5 - it’s a sad and sombre 35 mins of brilliantly played, fantastically sung, anguished mid-70s soul.
🪨🕒🪨🕒🪨
Koffi Olomide · 7 likes
4/5
Haut de gamme / Koweït, rive gauche
Bit of a character by the looks of things from his Wikipedia page, and by character I mean he looks like a bit of a wrong’un.
I’m not at all familiar with Soukous music apart from perhaps hearing the name once or twice, so I don’t really have a frame of reference for this, but from reading about it looks like it’s a good representation of it, and he’s one of the most popular African musicians of all time.
It’s a thoroughly enjoyable album though, apart from the odd occasion when some 80s/early 90s production and sounds creep in, like the very dated piano on Desespoir, the start of Elixir and the synths on Porte-monnaie, and an hour is also quite a long runtime for the 9 songs.
Despesoir also carries more than a hint of I Know What I Know in the bass, although that may be a common motif in African music (although I would presume) DRC Congo and South Africa have different musical cultures. And after the danceable upbeatness of the first two tracks I really like the slower pace of Koweit, Rive Gauche, and the slightly more low key Qui Cherche Trouve. Elixir, Porte-monnaie are very good, Dit Jeannot is excellent and Conte de Fees and Obrigado are decent enough.
Even if I don’t think I actually know enough about this type of music to distinguish what is actually good, this coming up is what’s great about doing the list, I’d never have found this on my own - it’s great to find things in styles and genres outside my normal stuff and outside of the UK/US. I’d definitely listen again and will try some more Soukous music too, so for those reasons I’ll tip it into a 4.
🌍🌍🌍🌍
Playlist submission: Koweit, Rive Gauche.
David Gray · 7 likes
3/5
White Ladder
Say hello to Ireland’s best selling album of all time. Say hello to 2001, say hello to Bridget Jones’s Diary, say hello your mum’s CD collection, say hello to Sven Goran Eriksson, say hello to Foot and Mouth, say hello to a 2nd term for Tony, say hello to the coughing major, say hello Al Qaeda, say hello to Popstars, say hello to Phil’s shooter, say hello to David Brent, wave goodbye to Richard Madely and Judy Finnegan, wave goodbye to The Premiership at 7pm, wave goodbye to any credibility if you liked this album, wave goodbye to its time to share or to shaft, wave goodbye to Live and Kicking, wave goodbye to Harry Secombe…wave goodbye to George 🥺
I don’t think this really deserves the amount of opprobrium it gets. It's by no means a great album of course, but it’s a perfectly serviceable folkish pop album with some very early 2000s electronic touches. I remember having it on CD and quite liking it at the time, but the problem is its ubiquity, and it's frankly insane commercial success. And of course there’s nothing like the massive popularity of something so middle of the road to rile up the snob in a 22 year old me.
And looking back at it now, while he is certainly at a superior level, it’s clear that this album opened the door for the James Blunts, Ed Sheerans and Lewis Capaldis of the world. It’s not David Gray’s fault he birthed them of course, but that soggy legacy of sad boy self-absorbed performative sensitivity does remain and does hover over the album today.
At the core of it though, while there are good songs on here, there’s no doubt that in many places it feels rather insipid, partly to do with the production, you can definitely tell that he made it in his flat. While not sounding totally terrible it does have some not particularly charming wonkiness in places and has quite a thin sound, contributing to that rather insipid lack of oomph.
Also songs often have the habit of feeling like they are building up to something, before flatlining somewhat. Babylon is a good example, it's a good song, with a nice hook and nice melody, but it really feels like it needs a climax or crescendo, some sense of resolution or release, but instead it just stays on one level.
Lyrically he’s capable of some nice lines and sentiments, Babylon does have some good imagery, but he’s also guilty of rather prosaic and generic turns of phrase, often in the same song - ‘sail away with me, what will be, will be’ etc. It’s probably telling that the best lyric on the album is the cover of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.
The strongest songs are the bigger singles - Please Forgive Me, This Year’s Love and Babylon are all perfectly well constructed catchy bits of middle of the road folk-ish pop music. My Oh My, White Ladder and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye are decent too, and despite the lack of dynamism I wouldn’t say any of the songs are terrible - the whole thing is just a fine, if slightly snoozy listen. Taking that into account a 3 feels fair.
🪜🪜🪜
Playlist submission: Babylon
4-Star Albums (261)
1-Star Albums (14)
All Ratings
Pearl Jam
3/5
Elton John
4/5
GBYBR
I actually listened to it a few times not that long ago. It is a great album.
First 6 songs are great, particularly side 1 of the original vinyl, Funeral for a Friend, Candle in the Wind and Bennie and the Jets.
Really do Love FFAF and BATJ. Have heard CITW too many too many times but it is great.
Jamaica jerk off is fucking awful.
It does dip in the middle and feels a bit long, but I do like the Ballad of Danny Bailey.
Saturday Night a bit overfamiliar but still great.
The run from Saturday Night to Harmony is very nice, I like Roy Rogers a lot and Harmony is a tune.
Not my no1 Elton album, but it has some of his best songs and is really really good. It is a bit long overall though, and Jamaica Jerk off is wank.
Air
5/5
It’s a fucking great album
Norah Jones
2/5
The Smashing Pumpkins
4/5
Siamese Dream
Listened to it first thing this morning. I know the big ones like Cherub Rock (Guitar Hero banger) and Today, but I don’t think I’ve heard the album before.
I never really got into SP, they kind of passed me by in the 90s - probably too ‘American’ sounding for my tiny teenage brain.
However I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.
I know they are not directly analogous but for an album from the same kind of time period in the grunge/alternative rock milieu as Ten by Pearl Jam, it’s quite clear to me how much better, more interesting and enjoyable Siamese Dream is.
Not a big fan of some of the faster, noisier songs like Geek USA and Silverfuck.
Really liked Hummer, Disarm, Soma, Spaceboy, Sweet Sweet, Luna
Will definitely give it many more listens
The Allman Brothers Band
3/5
At Fillmore East
Am familiar with it and aware it’s supposed to be one of the best live albums ever.
I do like the Allman Brothers and southern rock in general, and they do sound fantastic, but there is A LOT of noodling. Hot Lanta and Whipping post are great.
However apart from Get your Ya Yas Out and Live at Leeds I’m not a big fan of live albums, I’d rather listen to the recorded versions of songs or watch a video of a live performance, and on balance I think I’d rather listen to their first two albums or Eat a Peach
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Perfect
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
MC&TIS
The well known songs (Tonight, Bullet, 1979 etc) and then To Forgive, Cupid de Locke, Galapagos, Porcelina of the Dark Oceans, Thru the Eyes of Ruby, By Starlight, Farewell and Goodnight stood out
Jellybelly, Zero (terrible lyrics), An Ode to No One, Tale of a Scorched Earth - not a fan of those at all
Take me Down sounds a lot like a song from a musical, particularly the rising chorus, which kind of chimes with Dan’s Queen observation, they do have those slightly showtune/musical theatre aspects some of the melodies. We only come out a night has a similar Queen vibe too. That’s not a criticism btw.
Generally, like on SD, not a fan of the harder songs, the slower tempo ones are more interesting melodically and atmospherically, and I think his voices suits those songs better.
Lots of great musical hooks and instrumentation, I didn’t really realise what a great gift for melody he has.
I admire the ambition and genuinely earnest pretension of it, but it is A LOT of music and whether it’s me or the music that falters, his voice does start to grate on mover the course of 2 hrs.
I think I’d be likely to go back to SD more frequently than this but a very enjoyable listen none the less.
⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️
Prob closer to 4 but the length is why I’m prevaricating
The B-52's
5/5
B52s
I had a bit of a B52s period last year or the year before so am pretty familiar with this album.
It’s a banger, great songs, great sound. They get mischaracterised as a novelty band, which is unfair, they are a brilliant band, right in that post punk new wave sweet spot bringing in lots of influences into an angular, spiky, punky, funky, surfy sound. The organ/electric piano element I love. I can understand how Fred Schneider’s singing can be a bit of an acquired taste but like the way fits their whole look, sound and vibe. Their whole aesthetic I love too.
Mmmm, the bass in Dance this Mess Around. That song is a bang to rights, stone cold, gold certified banger
Planet Claire, Dance this Mess Around, Rock Lobster, Lava, Hero Worship are my stand outs.
This is my favourite of their albums. Wild Planet, the next album, is also superb, but thereafter, it’s diminishing returns really, despite some good tracks here and there.
So overall it’s probably just about a 5 for me Clive.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Muddy Waters
4/5
At Newport
It sounds amazing, brilliant voice, excellent band
Can really understand how influential it was, mainly cos it’s just really good.
I Got My Brand on You
Hoochie Coochie Man
Baby, Please Don’t Go - that really fizzes
I Feel So Good
Both the Got My Mojos
Listened to it this morning while making breakfast and coffee, mmm, really cookin’ dem grits, getting dat skillet hot for dem biscuits and gravy, mmmhmmm, gonna cook me some crayfish, nice’n’hot
But I genuinely really enjoyed it - think it will go in my rotation.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thundercat
4/5
Drunk
What I think I like most about it is the singular vision of it all. It brings in so many influences, classic 70s souls, video games, hip hop, films, tv, pop, jazz l, sci fi, anime etc and just sprays them across 22 tracks. The scattergun, skittish, low attention span eclecticism of it really expresses his obsessions and idiosyncrasies, and you feel as though you get a sense of who he is and that this really is the sound in his head - there’s no concession to adhering to a ‘normal’ structure
Show You the Way, what a tune and love that he bought Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins in on it. Brilliant idea.
Captain Stupido, Uh Uh, A Fan’s Mail, Walk on By, Tokyo, Them Changes
Sonically, I love it, obviously the bass playing is superb, and that squelchy sound, and the jerky, off kilter rhythms work so well together.
It’s not a perfect album, and not every song works, but it’s a such an intriguing listen and a fascinating musical vision that it makes up for the dips and lulls.
Almost certainly will get better with more listens, and when you put all the bits together (sound, influences, playing, ideas, themes, tunes and melodies) it’s a 4 for me
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Machito
3/5
Kenya
Not a big jazz fan, don’t like salsa. I guess Buena Vista Social Club is in the same vein, and I did enjoy that when it came out (although it was cool to like it at the time)
Sounds a lot like it should be the soundtrack to the Cuba scenes in Godfather Part II. Which makes sense as this is from 1957/58 and is Cuban. I know it was you, Fredo.
In fact the whole thing does have an early 60s film soundtrack vibe, a bit like Dr No or something.
I’m sure aficionados can tell the subtleties and variations in the rhythms and instrumentation, but I can only really tell the difference between the slightly slower ones and the not slightly slower ones.
However, as an overall listen I did enjoy it. To my uneducated ear it seems to balance the Latin and jazz elements quite nicely, it doesn’t stray into Ron Burgundy style manic improvised jazz parping and trumpeting too much, or into the music you hear coming out of a provincial community centre on the over 60s salsa night.
If I was in the mood for some relatively easy listening jazzy background music I would definite consider putting this on.
It’s obviously not in my wheelhouse, but I’m really glad I listened to it and enjoyed it, and that I am now aware of its existence
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lynyrd Skynyrd
3/5
It’s Pronounced Lynyrd Skynyrd
Exactly what you’d expect. Solid, straight down the line. Some great guitar playing and sounds and nice organ work.
The well known ones are my stand outs - Tuesday’s Gone, Simple Man, Free Bird
Not much more to say
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aerosmith
2/5
Rocks
Don’t think I’ve listened to many Aerosmith albums. I had the early greatest hits and I had Toys in the Attic, as it was the only place to get the full length version of Sweet Emotion, and I love that song. They do have some real gems across their career but have never been interested enough to do a proper listen.
I didn’t mind this - I neither particularly liked it or actively disliked it, a couple of good tracks but a lot of samey-ness. You can hear the influence on bands like G’n’R, but I’d actually rather listen to Appetite for Destruction, which has more excitement and dynamism.
Back in the saddle I’ve always liked.
Last child is good (riff sounds a bit like Hit me with your Rhythm Stick)
Rest of it is fine, nothing stands out, but as I say nothing to actively dislike.
Hard to score overall, somewhere around a 2 or 3, but as I’m probably unlikely to listen to it again and I enjoyed Lynyrd Skynyrd more and have that 3, I’ll go for:
⭐️⭐️
Nick Drake
5/5
Five Leaves Left
Love, love, love.
All three of his albums are in heavy rotation for me and they are all top tier.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Paul McCartney
5/5
McCartney
This is very hard to work out how to score. In the context of all his solo work? In the context of the end of the Beatles? In the context of what he was intending it to be at the time? As a stand alone album? How influential it turned out to be? The fact he did it all himself?
And, as we know, I’m also quite blinkered when it comes to Macca.
The thing is I do love love this album, even though it is a bit inconsistent and loose - but it’s those inconsistencies and that looseness that gives it so much charm and so much appeal. The sum of its parts give it a vibe that carries the whole thing past any imperfections.
Macca being Macca even the inconsistent throwaway tracks like Valentine Day, Hot as Sun/Glasses, Oo You, Kreen Akore have enough melodic inventiveness and musicality to be at the very least interesting and diverting.
Also it has some of his best solo songs
That Would Be Something
Every Night
Junk (one of my absolute favourite melodies of his)
Maybe I’m Amazed (he did play an early idea of this at, I think, the Get Back or Abbey Road sessions - imagine if this had had the full Beatles treatment)
Just those 4 songs would be enough peaks for most people in their whole careers and he just tossed them off on a farm in Scotland while the biggest musical act of all time that he was part of was disintegrating.
That’s why it’s hard to rate it as a stand-alone album, devoid of context and personal bias. I enjoy it thoroughly each time I listen to it, and despite the slightly disjointed nature of it, I think it works brilliantly as a entire listening experience - it’s one of those albums that is best listened to in one sitting.
It’s easily in my top 5 Macca solo albums. Although it has its flaws, it’s really appeals to me and always love and enjoy it when I put it on, so I think I can’t not give it
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Marvin Gaye
5/5
What’s Going On
I remember buying it at Durham and liking it, but not really understanding why everyone thought it was so great. Listening as an older person with hopefully more of an appreciation of different types of music and more of an understanding of the lyrical and thematic scope, I can really understand how good it is. It really is fantastic.
The songs are great, the sequencing, the themes and motifs slipping in and out.
I love the sound, particularly the bass as the lead melodic instrument working with the string arrangements. And Marvin’s voice is just so so good, that mellow, mellifluous tone contrasting with the anger in the lyrics.
When I was 20, it probably would have been 3 or 4 but I’m going to give it 5 now. I do really think it’s up there with the best albums ever recorded.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Pantera
2/5
Vulgar Display of Power
Went in with an open mind and started off quite enjoying it. I’m not a metal aficionado at all but there are some songs in the genre I like. I can sometimes see a world where I get into stuff like this, but then after 3 songs I don’t want to get into it and I want to go home please. This definitely started to drag by the middle and then get quite boring quite quickly after that. I was glad when it was over.
Obviously It’s not for me, although I would assume for the genre it is good. A couple of things stood out. I liked the riff on Mouth for War, I liked Walk, that had a kind of groove and felt like a song. Hollow’s first part seemed like a superior version of a metal ballad with a decent tune, before evolving into more standard riffing.
There is an earnestness to this type of music that gets quite tiring. If you are really into metal I would guess that you can see the subtleties and nuances in the music, but to me the lack of light and shade drives a sense of monotony and stasis that ends up being frustrating and ultimately very dull.
Reluctant to to say 1, its obviously not for me, and I would never listen to it again, but if you are into metal it surely must be a very good album, so I’ll go:
⭐️⭐️
Miles Davis
2/5
Birth of the Cool
I dunno. I’ve tried many many times to listen to and try and understand jazz, but it never sticks. I do like some vocal jazz and piano led stuff, but up tempo with trumpets and sax parping away starts to irritate me pretty quickly.
I can however appreciate its importance in the history of 20th century popular music, and the skill and virtuosity of the players. And while there are the elements of it and some songs I enjoy, I just think that I don’t really like jazz and won’t ever really like jazz, and ultimately I think no one really likes jazz, they just decide liking jazz is their personality, and that by liking jazz they have a far more sophisticated understanding of music, and therefore anyone liking any other type of music is a Luddite peasant.
With this album though, it’s not too much of a bebop up tempo parp fest, although it does wander into that area quite frequently. I couldn’t really tell many of the songs apart, and it all kind of passed me by quite unremarkably. Although I did like Moon Dreams quite a bit, the slower tempo and less frantic melody was very nice amongst the other songs.
I’ll give it a 2, based on 1 for the actual album and the 1 for its influence on 20th century music. I’m glad it exists and I’m glad I listened to it, but it’s not for me
⭐️⭐️
Joy Division
5/5
The Go-Go's
4/5
Beauty and the Beat
I really love this little genre, that early 80s jangly post punk, new wave, power pop sweet spot - people like The Feelies, The Romantics, The Bangles, The Cars etc.
I love the harmonies on this, the melodies aren’t always top notch but the energy and vibe more than makes up for it. I love the up tempo and slightly loose, imperfect playing. That punk, do it yourself simplicity and energy in tandem with the 60s Byrds/Beatles/Who style pop melodies, harmonies and hooks - for me that is a delicious combination.
We Got the Beat is an absolute banger.
Our Lips are Sealed, Lust to Love, Automatic, You Can’t Walk in Your Sleep, Skidmarks on my Heart are my other highlights.
It’s not a perfect album, there are some dips here and there, but at 35 minutes it flies by and is such a fun, energetic, infectious, joyous listen that you soon forget about the lulls.
Not top tier but an absolute solid
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cornershop
4/5
WIWBFTST
I had this album back when it come out, or right after the Fatboy Slim remix of Brimful of Asha came out. Would have been 1st year at Durham.
I remember liking it at the time, but I was probably a bit confused by it. I have returned to it sporadically over the years but have never truly got into it. I really really liked their next album, Handcream for a Generation, I listened to that a lot in 2002/03 when in Japan.
Listing to WIWBFTST this morning, I did enjoy it a lot. I really like how you can hear and feel the various diverse influences. It kind of reminds me of McCartney & McCartney II in it has the same lo fi bedroom noodling aspect to it. Although musically a bit different, it does have a similar electronic vibe in parts as McCartney II (it even has a song called Coming Up)
It also suffers a bit from CD bloat at nearly an hour. On the one hand I really like the sprawling nature of it and it’s mix of different music genres, often on the same song, but it could probably do with a bit of judicious editing to get it down to 40-45 mins. Some of the shorter electronica tracks like Chocolat don’t work as well for me. A bit more focus, without losing its diversity, charm and looseness and it would be a real gem.
Asha, We’re in Your Corner, Funky Days are Back Again, Good Ships, Good to be on the Road Back Home, Norwegian Wood are highlights.
Tough one to rate for me. It’s somewhere right between a 3 and 4, and I think I prefer their next album over this. But as we know I’m a generous rater so I think I’ll round up to 4
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Elliott Smith
3/5
Figure 8
Listening to this I’m not sure why I didn’t get into him when his stuff was coming out - I think at that time I would have really got into it.
However now I find it just kind of passes me by - some nice moments and the odd good song, but in the main a bit forgettable.
Some of the melodies seem a bit forced and there is a rather distracting nasal tone to his voice. It often feels like a song is about to take flight and go somewhere really good, but then kind of never gets anywhere and just levels out, which is a bit frustrating. Felt this particularly on LA, Stupidity Tries and Wouldn’t Mama be Proud.
Enjoyed the White Album/Abbey Roadvibes of Son of Sam and Junk Bond Trader is very good. I liked Colorbars and Better Be Quiet Now too, and Can’t Make a Sound builds to an impressive conclusion.
Kind of falls right in the middle for me. Didn’t dislike it and enjoyed some of the songs, but I didn’t find much to excite me or hold my interest. A pretty average
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Leonard Cohen
4/5
You Want it Darker
Didn’t know much about this album before listening to it, and I couldn’t remember when he died and wasn’t sure whether this was posthumous or not. I do like Leonard Cohen but have never listened to him extensively, only really listened to his first album properly, which I think is very good.
I really liked the sparse band backing, with the simple but prominent bass giving things propulsion and momentum, against the gravelly slow and spoken word singing. I like the fiddle too, gives a country/dusty/19th century Americana feel. Great backing vocals too and some very nice string arrangements, which remind me of some of Lee Hazlewood’s albums. It all feels so well constructed around his voice, persona and the songs themselves.
Knowing now it was his last one before he died I like how it fits neatly into the bracket with the Johnny Cash American Recordings albums and The Wind by Warren Zevon.
Overall I think this is great, I really liked it and it will go in my rotation. I’ve actually already listened to it twice and I’m looking forward to listening to it more.
A very nice
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Christina Aguilera
2/5
The Cars
4/5
The Cars
Im pretty familiar with it, but I think this is a great album. More synthy than the Go Gos and less stylised than the B-52s, they are right in that new wave power pop soft rock sweet spot that I love.
Love the production, the overall sound and the sense of pop songwriting craftsmanship alongside some post punk rough edges and attitude. Nice line in slightly detached cynical lyrics. They remind me of Television but with a kind of wry pop sensibility. Add in a bit of Bowie, a bit of Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets & Roxy Music) some sixties hand claps, some glam guitars, a splash of synths and it’s a tasty and satisfying combo.
Great little run with the first three songs, My Best Friend’s Girl and Just what I Needed are superb.
You’re all I got Tonight and Moving in Stereo are also excellent.
9 tracks 35 minutes - perfect length, doesn’t outstay it’s welcome or dip at all.
It’s a 5 for me
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jethro Tull
3/5
Aqualung
Hey Aqualung!
I’m not much familiar with prog rock, not because I don’t like but because I never know where to start. I think I quite like it, which is probably a consequence of approaching 50.
Anyhow, I really liked this. The first 2 songs are great, particular Aqualung. Liked Mother Goose a lot too.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but I liked the folky/pastoral elements, as well as the heavier riffing. I can see why stuff like this gets parodied, but I kind of think that makes it more enjoyable.
I’m not sure where to rate it. Tempted to give it 4 as I really enjoyed it. But I think I need to give it a few more listens, it’s quite dense and will probably be a real grower. I’ll give it 3 for now and revise when we look back and change all our reviews in a year
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Al Green
5/5
Lets Stay Together
I think I’ve ever only listened to his greatest hits, rather than any of his albums.
The title track is a classic for a reason. You hear it so much that it’s easy to forget how good it is.
I really love the sound of the album - the ‘minimal’ band - drums, bass, piano/organ and guitar only - augmented by female backing vocals, some lovely string arrangements and great horns.
And of course the voice is just so so good - obviously that’s what he’s known for but it really is superb, so versatile.
Overall it’s exactly what you’d expect from a classic early 70s soul record. Melodic ballads and heartache, with some uptempo gospel influenced bangers. A little bit of grit here and there to complement the honey.
Let’s Stay Together, So You’re Leaving, the cover of How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, Judy, all great. It Ain’t No Fun to Me is banger.
It’s great - not necessarily groundbreaking but exactly what an album like this should be. I can see myself listening to this a lot. Already listened to it twice this morning. Makes me want to check out more of his albums from this period.
Somewhere between a 4 and a 5, probably closer to 5, so will round up.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Queens Of The Stone Age
3/5
Queens of the Stone Age
Dear John , Mexicola, Walkin’ on Sidewalks, Spiders and Vinegaroons, I Was a Teenage Had Model I liked a lot. Loved If Only.
I like their more groove based songs over the more just heavy or chugging songs, they have that little bit more of that hypnotic dynamism. If Only and Walkin’ on the Sidewalks over, say, Avon, for example.
I’d say that I’m only a casual fan of QOTSA and I’m not that au fait with desert/stoner rock in general, although the bits I know and hear I do like. Feels like this is a superior example of that genre. You could argue that the songs start to sound a bit samey, however I think there is a kind of ineffable quality to them, maybe that bit of groove, or a feeling they convey that differentiates them and their music.
Although having said that, at 1hr it does feel quite lengthy. I listened to the re-issue which has extra tracks, I think the original 45 minute release is probably a tighter, more cohesive listen.
I’d say a solid three, might go higher with more listens, but probably prefer Rated R over this.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Pulp
4/5
This is Hardcore
This is great, I love Different Class, but this might sneakily be my favourite pulp album. I certainly listen to it more frequently than DC. It has that dark, melancholic atmosphere, that is very evocative of the post Britpop period.
Some great songs and great lyrics, wry, grown up but also funny. It’s not as immediate or as obviously tuneful as DC, the melodies aren’t straightforward, but they really get their hooks into you once you’ve heard them a few times. And all the songs fit so well with the feel and themes of the album.
Overall it’s such and interesting album, maybe it’s quite hard to figure out, but it rewards repeat listens.
Is it a 4 or a 5…I think it it falls just on the side of a 4, but it’s close to a 5 for me.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
Rumours
There’s a reason this has been the best selling vinyl in the UK in the last few years, why it’s sold so many copies over nearly 50 years and why it’s almost universally lauded - it’s fucking excellent.
Aside from the myths and stories around the bands interpersonal relationships at the time it’s just a brilliant set of 11 superbly arranged songs, not a duffer or weak track. It’s beautifully sequenced and balanced, it flows well with the different singers and songwriters lapping or striking against each other.
The songs and songwriting are so good that’s it’s easy to overlook what great musicians they are - the Fleetwood & McVie rhythm section, Christine McVie’s piano, Lindsey Buckingham’s distinctive and fantastic lead guitar and Stevie Nicks superb singing.
The legend of it all, the perspectives of the different songwriters, the songs, the playing all contribute to it being great, but I absolutely LOVE the sound of it. I think that really helps it endure after all these years. Its sound is rich, warm and deep, without being syrupy or veering into inoffensive nothingness. The sound on Dreams is exemplary, it just sounds so so good.
The blues history of McVie and Fleetwood give it a bit of soul, Buckingham’s guitar gives it a bit of edge, with Nicks and Christine McVie giving it deftness and unique character.
It’s one of my absolute favourite albums of all time, a no brainer
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Astrud Gilberto
3/5
Beach Samba
I used to like those Nouvelle Vague albums of samba/bossa nova covers from about 15-20 years ago, but I don’t know a great deal about the main people other than names like Astrud Gilberto and Sergio Mended. I also know I much prefer the bossa nova end of the Latin American jazz spectrum than the salsa end
This is quite jazz flute, but not necessarily in a bad way. It’s enjoyable but very lightweight - it’s been a nice listen this morning while making breakfast. It’s very pleasant and floats along very nicely, but never quite leaves much of an imprint or memory.
Misty Roses and My Foolish Heart are both very nice. Wasn’t a fan of the circus one
I much prefer it to the other jazzy albums we’ve listened to, and really glad to have given it a go. I might not think to put it on, but if came across it somewhere I would definitely give it another listen, and I would also think about delving a bit deeper into this type of music
A nice enjoyable non threatening solid
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
This is my favourite Bruce album, the most emotionally affecting and evocative to my mind. A great set of songs that coalesce around the themes of bleakness, despair, compromise and unfulfilled dreams and ambitions, the immediacy and minimalism of the demos that turned out to be the recordings give them a primacy and directness that serves the feel of the album so well. It captures so effectively in my imagination a feel of the vast empty spaces of the Midwest, with a sense of mysteriousness and creepiness. Love it.
A stone cold, undoubted classic to my mind
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
David Bowie
5/5
Low
Don’t look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it.
This is top 3 Bowie for me, it’s often my favourite but even if not no 1 at any particular time, t’s always up there.
The first side’s songs are all among my favourite Bowie songs, Speed of Life, What in the World, Sound & Vision, Always Crashing in the Same Car, Be my Wife. I love the band and the playing, the arrangements, the instrumentation and I love the sound of the drums and the bass.
I also love side 2. In most people hands a side of ambient music could be truly appalling, but this is is great, moody, atmospheric, occasionally sinister but never dull or ponderous. Knowing a bit about the inspiration for the 2nd side does help, but it really does evoke what I imagine 70s East and West Berlin to be like.
And the two sides complement and work along side each other, the slightly on edge ‘pop’ songs followed by the comedown and sadness of the 2nd side.
It’s a masterpiece, would be a six if I could, but of course it’s a
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Billy Bragg
4/5
Mermaid Avenue
Despite being a fan of Wilco and liking BIlly Bragg I’ve never listened to any of the Mermaid Avenue albums.
Has a nice barroom, loose feel, a bit like the Basement Tapes, which was probably an influence, and also with the Dylan Guthrie connection.
I like the ones with the Woody Guthrie lyrics but a lot of the Jeff Tweedy/Wilco non Guthrie lyric ones are very strong.
A couple of the Billy Bragg ones, Birds and Ships in particular, are great too.
California Stars, Way Over Yonder, Ingrid Bergman, One by One, Eisler on the Go, Another Man’s Done Gone highlights for me.
Sometimes when Billy Bragg is excessively sing/talking like Billy Bragg it gets a bit tiresome, but when he really sings on a couple of these tracks it’s very tender and affecting.
Great playing throughout, not sure what the Wilco line up at the time was, presuming it was the Being There era group, but it’s really lovely.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I expected from this, I thought it might be good, but maybe not as warm and enjoyable. I’ve listened through twice now and I think it just pushes past 3 into
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kendrick Lamar
3/5
good kid, m.A.A.d city
Sherane, love the drum and bass sounds.
Backseat freestyle
Good Kid is superb
On the surface it’s easy to just hear guns’n’bitches, but there’s definitely a lot more to it than that. Has a similar lyrical feel to Illmatic, not glorifying or wallowing in gang and street life. Some good sweating too.
You know what else I like - his very clear diction. He should be applauded for that.
Great sound, particularly like the bass, drums and piano combos, and the variation of drum sound from song to song. Some great little earwormy hooks, not obvious necessarily, but found myself humming them after listening to it.
I’m not that up to speed on a lot of rap music of the last 10 or 15 years but I thought this was very good. It’s quite long but it didn’t drag too much.
It’s between a 3 & 4, and I’m really keen to listen again, so will probably plump for a 3 for now, but scope to go up to a 4
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
5/5
Architecture & Morality
I was quite late in discovering how good OMD and their early albums are. The first 4 or 5 are excellent listens, but this is probably my favourite one.
The Bowie (Low quite obviously), Eno, Kraftwerk influences are clear, as they are for many of the late 70s/early 80s synthpop bands, but OMD take it in a slightly different direction, blending experimental sounds, textures & rhythms with more overtly pop melodies and hooks. They are one of the best of those bands at merging a cool/minimalist technological structure with a human and emotional connection.
There are no obvious bangers like Electricity or Enola Gay, but The New Stone Age, She’s Leaving (this is clearly a big inspiration for LCD Sound Systems last album), Souvenir, both Joan of Arcs are the stand outs for me. I don’t think there’s a weak moment though - it’s a full cohesive album that rewards repeated listens.
Great band, great album
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Michael Jackson
4/5
Thriller
Wanna be Starting Somethin’, Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean (what a three track run), PYT all stone cold, copper bottomed, all time, unbelievable classics. Human Nature is the best of rest but the other songs don’t really meet that same level. I always want to skip Baby Be Mine and The Girl is Mine to get to Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean. The Lady in my Life is pretty forgettable too I think.
Those 5 truly exceptional songs make it hard to rate for me. They surely make it worthy of a 5 star album, but their superiority to the other songs, for me, makes the whole album lose a sense of cohesion and it becomes a bit of a frustrating listen. In comparison Off the Wall doesn’t not reach the highs of Thriller but is more of an overall enjoyable listen. It might be slightly contradictory and confused logic as there are plenty of albums that I love that have are inconsistent but I would give a 5 to, but this I’m not sure about.
Maybe I’m holding it to too high a standard, or overthinking it, but it’s emblematic of his his whole catalogue, songs and moments of the highest quality, far beyond what most people can dream of, but combined with a lot of frustration.
Also the ‘I don’t belieeeve you’ bit on the Girl is Mine is so excruciating, it taints the whole thing. If this was only 6 tracks, WBSS, Thriller, BI, BJ, PYT and HN it would a 5 for sure, but as it is
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
David Bowie
5/5
Heroes
I don’t think I’ve ever really given this a proper chance compared to the Bowie albums I listen to most. It probably suffers from being so closely linked to Low and with Low being one of my all time favourites I tend to just overlook it. I also really got in Lodger a while back so I think I have just skipped over it.
Heroes, like the songs you mentioned in the Thriller reviews, is over familiar but if I listen to it and really concentrate on it I remember what a fucking amazing song it is. The story behind it of the two lovers from East and West Berlin dreaming of a life of freedom together is still genuinely affecting.
The first side definitely has a more frantic and frenetic feel than Low, particularly on Joe the Lion, with a looser less structured feel as well. It’s more like capturing a band performance rather than building songs up bit by bit. Maybe the songs aren’t quite at the same level as side 1 of Low, but they are great nonetheless
The 2nd side is truly superb, each track seemingly able to hold two different moods and feeling’s simultaneously. Sense of Doubt is pleasantly sinister, while Moss Garden is uneasily serene. Neukoln is sad but possibly hopeful. V2 Schneider is excellent. And a great finish with the groove of Secret Life of Arabia.
Listening to the whole thing properly now I don’t think I can give it anything but 5. It’s never been in my top 5 Bowie albums, and still probably wouldn’t be, but it’s not an album to overlook, and although it is structured in the same way as Low, I should try to avoid comparing it too much. Which I have done throughout! Although it might be no 3 for me in the Berlin Trilogy it is just an excellent album in its own right.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Iron Butterfly
3/5
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
I don’t think Ive ever listened to the full 17 minute version of the title track, but I do like the song a lot - especially in that Simpsons episode - but I’ve never listened to anything else by them.
I enjoyed this though, despite it feeling very specifically of it’s time and not that distinct from a lot of other bands around then.
Having said that there are some lovely harmonies, particularly on Flowers and Beads, and the organ playing throughout is very nice.
Aside from Are You Happy and IAGDV I couldn’t quite discern the proto-metal, hard rock label it seems to get, the majority of the songs are more like typical late sixties psychedelic pop rock. IAGDV is fucking awesome though, both as a song and as signifier of a time and place.
An interesting listen but aside from IAGDV and possibly Are You Happy there’s not much I would return to, but IAGDV being such a stellar track I’ll give it a
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beck
4/5
Guero
Im a bit behind and didn’t get to listen to this in one sitting yesterday. I’m not as familiar with this as the albums either side of it, Sea Change and The Information, and I would also generally default to listening to Odelay or Midnite Vultures when I think about Beck albums.
But I should listen to this more - I really did enjoy it. It’s got the diversity and eclecticism you might expect, with a great sound and some super songs
Probably not right in that top Beck bracket but a definite 4.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brian Eno
4/5
Another Green World
I’m pretty familiar with this album, although for my Eno ambient needs I normally go to Ambient 1, Music for Films, Ambient 4 or Apollo, so know those a bit better. Generally though all his albums up to Apollo, whether ambient or not are all very good listens
This is very good though. In Dark Trees is my standout of the ambient focused tracks, while I’ll Come Running and Sky Saw are my favourites of the more ‘traditional’ songs.
Nice little hit of TV nostalgia with the title track, think it was the Arena title sequence with the bobbing bottle.
He really is very good at creating these ambient soundscapes - they manage to combine a sense of flow and movement with a sense of direction. He’s great at building little off centre melodies and hooks with interesting rhythms and structures that convey a particular emotion or feeling.
The constituent parts aren’t necessarily that crazy but he brings them together in such a great way. Obviously he’s doesn’t have the greatest voice but it adds to the atmosphere and feeling too.
Robert Fripps guitar is great throughout as well. Couple of years before Low and Heroes, you can see how Eno and Bowie took the ambient/instrumental further on those two albums. Sky Saw in particular seems to be a signpost.
It probably sits at a level below Ambient 1 for me. Despite it being very very good it does feel like a bit of a collection of tracks, whereas Ambient 1 feels conceptually very complete, so for that reason I’ll go for a nice ambient 4
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Cure
3/5
Disintegration
I did a bit of a listen to the ‘classic’ cure albums not that long ago, but I do struggle a bit to differentiate their albums. I think they are a great band with some incredible songs, but I’ve never been able to really get into their catalogue. I like them when I listen but then I kind of forget about them. I think they may generally be growers though, this album
included.
Love the drum sound and the overall production. Kind of big and spacey but not too distant, with some great keyboard and guitar textures and layers.
The good songs are very good, the middling songs are by no means bad, but they do sound similar, and can feel a little flat.
Pictures of you - superb
Lovesong - great
Lullaby - superb
Fascination street - great
Untitled - great
Overall I really like the atmosphere and feel of the whole thing, but there are some undoubted dips. It’s quite long at 1hr 10, it could probably have done with a bit of editing down a bit.
It’s somewhere between a 3 and 4, I’ll go 3 for now but I will re listen and probably re-appraise
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sonic Youth
3/5
Dirty
I’ve only ever listened to Goo, as I love Kool Thing, (which I only really ‘discovered’ recently,) but Sonic Youth are one of those bands that passed me by as a teenager. Probably too discordant and difficult for my tiny brain to cope with.
I really enjoyed this though - as an album of noisy art rock with loads of guitars I thought it was great. Loose (in a good way) musically but uptight atmospherically, it also combines a sense of directness with sense obfuscation. I really like those tensions.
First listen I was thinking 3, but the second listen moved it closer to a 4. It’s definitely an album I will listen to more, and makes me want to dip into more of their albums. I’ll go 3 for now
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Massive Attack
5/5
Blue Lines
This album is 33 years old. 33 years before it was released the South Pacific soundtrack was the best selling album of 1958 and Elvis had only been around for 2 years.
I can’t have listened to this in about 15 years, but fuck it’s a great album.
I’ve heard it so many times but I really concentrated on listening to Unfinished Sympathy today. Obviously it’s a classic but it really is an absolutely fantastic bit of music. The melody and strings are genuinely affecting and moving, while the restless percussion and rhythm contrast beautifully with that tenderness.
Safe From Harm, Five Man Army, Lately are also excellent tracks and I absolutely adore Hymn of the Big Wheel.
Sometimes the ‘englishness’ of the rapping vocals can jar a bit and sound a bit Lonely Island - I guess this must have been a bit of an influence for them
I still listen to Mezzanine pretty frequently and that is probably my fav MA album, but this really is superb. Also when I first got it in the mid 90s it sounded so different to anything else I’d ever heard before.
I’m finding it surprisingly hard to rate, it’s between a 4 and 5 for me. Mezzanine would definitely be a 5 and I think this sits a little below that. However it is excellent in it own right, and factoring in its originality and groundbreaking’ness’ I think I have to give it
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Eric Clapton
3/5
461 Ocean Boulevard
I’ve never quite been able to get into with Clapton despite liking Cream, Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominoes. Something about him and his music leaves me cold, not in a boring technically proficient way, or because of his Enoch Powell or Covid stuff, I just find it a bit empty. I read his autobiography from about 15 years ago and he comes across as pretty dull and devoid of personality and I think that is reflected in a lot of his music post Derek. Obviously its not necessary for someone to be a great person to make great music and there are plenty of artists I like who are questionable, but my sense of him is reflected in his music and I find it hard to shake that off.
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting with this - probably a selection of tastefully made but ultimately soulless blues rock that feels a bit pointless. Having said that I did try to go into this with an open mind and I actually did enjoy it for the most part.
Some of the slower ones do have that tasteful banality to them but things like Motherless Children and Willie and the Hand Jive have that rootsy, Delanie & Bonnie, JJ Cale feel. Let it Grow I enjoyed too.
I can see myself listening to this again while working, maybe doing spreadsheets on a Tuesday afternoon. I expect that’s what Eric had in mind when he made it.
A basic bitch
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Adele
2/5
21
Rolling in the deep is a great song. Rumour has it is good too, it’s a decent start. Starts to drag after that.
I don’t think her voice is actually that great. It can be really good on certain songs but she is very pub singer in lots of ways. Her voice lacks shade and warmth and despite being powerful and mostly having a good tone, it’s always sounded a bit ersatz to me, an impression of the big soul singers rather than something more personal. Don’t You Remember is a good example, a pleasant song with some nice country and blues touches, but her vocals really don’t suit it and it’s sounds a bit of mess really (the arrangement is a bit annoying and doesn’t help either)
Set Fire to the Rain is a decent song. I’ll Be Waiting starts well, but it as it builds up it loses itself and becomes an overwrought motown pastiche.
Despite a couple of decent songs, this is pretty dull fare. The more up tempo songs work better than the slow ballads, but I don’t feel either enriched or diminished after listening to it. It probably doesn’t help that so much of it has been x-factored and reality tv montaged to death.
I do believe the sincerity of her feelings, but as a whole experience it feels inauthentic - a sense of making an album of songs and arrangements that sound like the kind of album that someone like Adele would make, rather than finding something ‘true’ (whatever the fuck that means).
I also found this album had the kind of bass playing and bass tone that I hate - supreme session playing that is tasteful and perfectly played but irritatingly dull. That goes for a lot of the playing actually, very skilled but just kind of soulless.
It’s a 2 for me. It’s not terrible but apart from a couple of songs it’s pretty boring.
⭐️⭐️
Jack White
3/5
Blunderbuss
It’s funny looking back at the White Blood Cells and Elephant era. I loved those albums and went back and bought their first two albums which I also enjoyed immensely. They all still hold up. But I lost interest from Get Behind Me Satan onwards and have never felt much inclination to listen to any of Jack Whites solo albums or other projects and I don’t really know why.
Some good songs and some good moments on a lot of songs. I like the fiddle and lap steel country blues touches throughout. Freedom 21, On and On and On and Take Me With You When You Go are the real standouts for me
A good solid listen but aside from those three songs I’m not sure if I’ll think to come back to it and listen through again.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dolly Parton
4/5
Trio
I’ve never heard of this despite liking all 3 of them.
Such lovely vocals and harmonies. Each voice is distinctive yet the three combine beautifully. I think I could listen to those three voices in harmony indefinitely.
Great playing and arrangements. As it was made in 1987 I was half expecting it to sound very 80s with big echoey snares etc. There are some slight elements of that with the piano on Telling Me Lies and I’ve Had Enough (the two weakest songs), but overall I love the sound. It has nice, straightforward and simple country instrumentation with a lovely warm and sympathetic sound. Simple is not a criticism, but the shuffling drums with acoustic instruments augmented by fiddle, dulcimer, mandolin etc is just great - it’s easy to ‘over musician’ this sort of thing but the restrained number of instruments works really well.
This has been a very pleasant surprise. Not sure if this is overlooked just because I’d never heard of it, but it feels like an overlooked gem. Definitely going into rotation.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Electric Light Orchestra
3/5
Out of the Blue
I do like ELO a lot, they have some absolutely superb songs in their catalogue. I’ve given most of their albums a listen over the past few years but I’ve never been able to really latch on to any of them, despite loving a lot of the songs.
This is no exception, there are some cracking tunes on here - Turn to Stone, Night in the City, Starlight, Jungle, Big Wheels, Summer and Lightning, Birmingham Blues, as well as the classics Sweet Talkin’ Woman and Mr Blue Sky - and in fact I don’t think any of the songs are particularly weak, but there is a similarity in tone, sound, structure, arrangement and production that it becomes hard to differentiate a lot of the songs. I am a fan of their signature style and I do like the mix of pop, rock, disco and, of course, the orchestral elements, but over the course of 70 minutes it feels like might be nice to disrupt that formula from time to time. I get there is a consistency and coherence but some variation would be welcome.
I did like it, some of the subtleties became clear on repeated listens, and there are some superb songs, but the whole thing doesn’t quite settle with me for some reason that I cant quite work out.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tom Tom Club
4/5
Tom Tom Club
Wordy Rappinghood and Genius of Love are superb. Both are on a lot of my playlists (as well as the ODB remix of Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, which samples Genius of Love - ‘me and Mariah, go back like babies and pacifiers’)
Talking Heads are one of my top 10 bands and I love Tina Weymouth’s bass playing, but aside from the two big songs I don’t think I’ve ever given this album a proper go. I’ve listened to it before, but not with real intent.
L Elephant, As Above So Below, On On On On are great.
I suspected I would like this as it has many elements right up my street, part of Talking Heads doing angular new wave funk and early rap influenced pop music.
I really really enjoyed it and I think it’s great. I’m very tempted to go 5, but the only thing making me give it a 4 is that it does have a ‘side project’ slightness to it. Whether that’s because I know they are a side project or not I’m not sure.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
I’ve never listened to this before. I actually listened to the one after this, Dig Lazarus Dig a fair bit when it came out, and I like The Boatman’s Call, mainly on the basis of Into My Arms, which I love. I also really got into the soundtracks Nick Cave did with Warren Ellis, mainly The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James. The Wind River soundtrack too. And Red Right Hand of course.
Beyond that I’ve not really delved into anything to much else. I do like, or at the very least find his stuff interesting. Even if it’s not ‘enjoyable’ it has a singularity and sense of idiosyncratic flair I really appreciate.
It wasn’t until after the first listen that I learned that it is two separate albums rather than a standard double album. They do feel like two different records so it kind of makes sense to review them separately.
Abattoir Blues
The overall sound is cool, kind of big and spacey and rocking and loud, but without being too massive or bombastic or distant.
The band do have a real litheness, even on the relatively ‘straight ahead’ rock songs they create a real groove. The bass and drums are great in that regard - not necessarily thorough musical virtuosity but through feel. The piano playing and backing vocals also stood out particularly.
Hiding All Away is great - kind of broken rhythm with a nagging groove. Pretty funny lyrics.
There She Goes, My Beautiful World - they play this a lot on 6 Music, it’s a great tune.
Nature Boy is also excellent.
I liked the sense of drama (and humour) and raucousness, and I like the wryness of his voice and manner, at turns Morrison, Dylan and Jagger-esque. He also has that great knack for really interesting little melodies and hooks.
Lyre of Orpheus
Love love the title song
Breathless - lovely melody, give this to a safe MOR band and in the pre download days I can see it being a massive hit. Someone like the Corrs or Sixpence None the Richer. But the edge he has just tips it into really interesting territory that tension elevates it beyond just a nice melody
I like the numerous mentions of and allusions to birds, and the tension between melancholy and joy, lyrically and melodically on this one.
Both albums are a 4 for me, so a 4 overall. Both close to 5 but I can’t quite work out whether I’d prefer them as two distinct albums or as the double package. I think they work together but I would probably go back to them as two separate albums. Maybe a slight preference for Lyre of Orpheus but they are both great.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brian Eno
5/5
Ambient 1: Music For Airports
I love this album and after giving Another Green World 4 I can’t not give this 5. I listen to it a lot, sometimes when I’m working, sometimes commuting or driving.
The beauty of it for me is that I find it genuinely calming, and it works as background music or something I actively listen to. It’s slow and without distinctive melodies or structures, but it never feels slight or pointless. The more you listen the more you hear and connect and the better it gets.
Of the four tracks 1/1 has the closest thing to a recognisable melody, and I really think it is a beautiful piece of music. The piano is obviously very Satie influenced, but for such a simple arrangement of just synthesiser and pianos it does an incredible job of evoking a mood and a feeling, while musically holding your attention.
I like how 1/2 pulls together the piano elements from 1/1 and the vocal elements of 2/1 to create a kind of denouement or crescendo to the first two tracks before 2/2 is a kind of end credits piece, taking what’s come before and transposing the previous ideas and themes into synthesised horns.
I really do adore this album, it gets better each time I listen and it genuinely has a physical and emotional effect on me
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Green Day
3/5
American Idiot
I don’t mind Green Day at all and I remember enjoying this when it came out, and they were good at Reading when we saw them that same year.
I think as a concept album it does hang together well and feels like a coherent piece of work. It’s also very linked to and evocative of it’s time, 9/11, Iraq, Columbine etc. Even if it doesn’t always work for me I get a real sense that they made the album they wanted to make and I think that’s a good thing.
Musically it’s a good blend of the pop punk sound they are very good at with some slightly more sounds and instrumentation outside their normal boundaries, pushing into classic rock territory. I definitely hear A LOT of The Who in it. Aside from that additional instrumentation I did also like the ‘big’ sound of massed electric and acoustic guitars.
As well as The Who there’s a lot that sounds like a lot of other songs, Bowie and Johnny Cash noticeably.
I also appreciate the ambition of the song cycles and mini suites. Obviously that’s not an innovation in itself but I think it’s pretty cool that a band known for 3 minute pop punk songs decided to push into something a bit more interesting.
Overall I found the whole thing enjoyable and although it probably won’t go on rotation or get many revisits, I like the idea of it. I appreciate they set out to do something different, and, I think, managed do that on their own terms.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nina Simone
3/5
Wild What is the Wind
Not listened to many of her albums, never know where to start. Obviously for a lot of US singers and bands of the 50s and 60s their albums were a chance for record companies to release whatever they could and make a quick buck, rather than a chance to make an artistic statement. I gather Nina falls into this boat too.
Pretty sure anything I could say about her has been said a thousand times before a thousand times more eloquently. Her voice and piano playing are so expressive that they elevate some of the more pedestrian jazz blues songs on here, but the good songs she can take it to a completely different place. Four Women, which I’ve never heard before, is absolutely superb. I love that descending piano and bass motif.
Veers into easy listening in places, not necessarily a bad thing, but she’s so incredible it feels a bit of a waste. More of the upbeat RnB of I Love Your Lovin’ Ways and jazzy folk of Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair would make for a great album. I get her background is more in the Jazz tradition but I think she’s at her best when she goes a bit beyond that.
What More Can I say is good too, didn’t like it much on first listen but it stood out more the second and third time. Lilac Wine (or Lilaaac Wine) is nice too.
Tricky one to rate. I’m not a fan of some of the songs, not that they are bad they just don’t speak to me, but it’s Nina Simone so even if the songs are horrendous it has a pretty high base level. And Four Women is just incredible. Ultimately it doesn’t feel like an album, more a collection of songs, so for that reason I’ll stick with a high end 3
⭐️⭐️⭐️
John Lennon
5/5
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Unsurprisingly I’m very familiar with this album, and it is my favourite of his solo albums. As a snapshot of his state of mind in 1970 it is an incredibly honest and direct document. This is fully John Lennon, the person and the musician, in the 2nd half of 1970. He may have been different before or after but in keeping with his idea that the only true art is about the artist this is a real artistic statement.
It has some of his best solo songs and is his best collection of songs on one album. Mother, Hold On, I Found Out, Isolation, Well Well Well, Look at Me and of course God, which I absolutely love. Ringo’s drumming on that song in particular is just incredible - all those different fills between all the I Don’t Believes.
I listened to the Ultimate Mix and it sounds great. POB always sounded better than Imagine but now it really sounds great.
It’s not always an easy listen, but it’s always a great listen. Just using 3 different song archetypes, piano led ‘ballads’, riff based rockers and acoustic folk style songs, he creates a mood, feeing and an emotional response. Pretty incredible really.
If McCartney is a 5 this undoubtedly a 5 too. These first two solo albums are both incredibly revealing of each’s character and response to the world around them, and they make superb complementary listening.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
David Holmes
3/5
Let’s Get Killed
I really liked his album after this, Bow Down to the Exit Sign when it came out at the end of uni. I listen d to it again a while ago and it still holds up.
Despite liking that album I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Let’s Get Killed. I think Ben may have had the CD back in Durham though.
My Mate Paul - could this BE more 90s sounding
Let’s get Killed is good
Gritty Shaker I’ve heard before and like
Don’t Die Just Yet - standout by far
I think I would have liked it a lot in 1997, and at that time it would have been right at the vanguard of this type of thing, but listening to it now it feels a bit dated, in a way that Endtroducing doesn’t. There’s a lot of lounge/jazz organ to some of it that was popular at the time but doesn’t sound that great now. Im not massively keen on the drum sound either.
When it is a bit more ‘dramatic’ like on Let’s Get Killed it works much better.
Don’t Die Just yet is excellent, the real standout. Gritty Shaker, Lets Get Killed and Radio 7 were also good I thought.
It’s not as good as Bow Down to the Exit sign which has a bit more to it and a bit more sonic variation. I think there are also other better albums in this style so I’m not sure I’ll go back to this much, although Don’t Die Just Yet is going on my ‘Best Songs I didn’t Know About From 1001 Albums I Must Hear Before I Die’ playlist.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Frank Ocean
3/5
Channel ORANGE
I remember there being a lot of buzz when this came out and we played it a lot for about a month at work. I listened a few times and then completely forgot about it until now. I still can’t really remember anything about it so it feels like listening for the first time
Wasn’t really into the first half much on the first listen, it definitely picked up in the second half with Pyramids, Lost and Monks. Pyramids is superb, a nice synth bass riff underpinning things before it wanders off, in a good way, into a minimalist spacey jazzy RnB thing.
Much of it did pass me by, with the minimalist production and melodies, but the moments when when I really listened to it I got quite a bit out of it.
I liked it more on the 2nd listen, I wish Fertilizer had been a proper song. Super Rich Kids was was noticeably good, as was Crack Rock. And the very George Martin strings on Bad Religion stood out.
Overall I liked it, as a slightly left of centre RnB album. It got better with each listen and I can hear how influential it was in that genre too. However some of it still felt a little forgettable and it is long. I enjoyed the production, composition and sound - quite full and rich while being simultaneously pared back and muted.
Maybe it’s an album of some good songs with some great moments within songs rather than a great album - although with more listens I think it might improve.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
DJ Shadow
5/5
Endtroducing…
It’s a five before I even listen to it. I still listen to it regularly and I haven’t forgotten how good it is.
On my first listen today I really tried to listen objectively and try and remove the knowledge/nostalgia. That was hard but it’s clear it’s a fantastic album on its own terms. It sounds fresh and exciting.
Then listening again and thinking about it as being nearly 30 years old, it is of it’s time but doesn’t sound dated or or specifically of 1996, it just reconfirms how good it still sounds. It’s also then fun thinking about the memories of listening to it a lot at uni and when I first moved to Japan. Great times.
It’s hard to pick out individual tracks as the whole thing is l one suite of music with the repeating lines and motifs, but I’ve always loved Best Foot Forward, The Number Song, Organ Donor and Midnight in a Perfect World.
Not sure I can say anything we already don’t know or think about it how good it is or how it was built but as an hourlong sonic landscape it’s just so good.
It’s 5 for its innovativeness.
It’s a 5 for its quality as an album in this genre.
It’s a 5 for it’s quality as an album in its own right
It’s s 5 for the memories.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ps, Maureen has five sisters, they all got ass
Jorge Ben Jor
4/5
África Brasil
Never heard of this or him. Wasn’t sure what I was expecting but I thought it might be some Afro-Brazilian jazz thing.
I purposefully didn’t read anything about it before listening, so with some trepidation/fear/excitement/anticipation I put it on, and was very happily surprised to hear the first track is a kind of funky Afrobeat groove. I love the layers of percussion propelling the rhythm, augmented by the bass and guitar riff. No idea what he’s saying but I do like the sound of Brazilian Portuguese with all the shhs and jsss.
Hermes Trismegisto Escreveu has an even more funk powered groove but with a more overtly samba/bossa nova vocal melody.
This is good!
Taj Mahal - Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?!?! I sort remember hearing about this, that Rod nicked that melody from here, and also the string line from another song, but claimed you were allowed to do that, or something. Can definitely hear elements of Barry Manilow and Copacabana in A História de Jorge too.
Really liked Camisa 10 da Gávea, I guess that’s about the Brazil no 10 shirt?
The one after, Cavaleiro Do Cavalo Imaculado is a superb groove. I was listening on my headphones while doing some housework and it made me dance around. I wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Carnival in Rio. I was already wearing the headdress and thong which helped though. Super.
I don’t want to know what he’s actually singing, I just like the sound and trying to guess what it’s all about.
What’s with the Cuckoo Clock sound on some of the tracks?
I throughly enjoyed this! Without this 1001 album thing I doubt I would ever have heard of it let alone have listened to it, so I’m very glad I did.
It was even better on the 2nd listen. The groves are excellent, and the Brazilian element takes it in a slightly different direction that is pretty novel to me.
By the 3rd listen it lands comfortably in the 4 zone. It’s got great tunes, grooves and rhythm and it’s incredibly fun and joyful.
A foot tappin’
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Os Mutantes
3/5
The Strokes
5/5
Is This It
So good when it first came out. In fact I think I might have bought it in Melbourne when I came to visit you Paul. July 2001, so the timing checks out. Think I also bought the Purple Hills single by D12 at the same time.
Is this still good or is there too much nostalgia?
I love that the first track played with the idea of hype and disappointment. Obviously the hype was huge, so to open with a detached sounding song that never quite builds and then just sort of finishes is great. Super bassline hanging the whole thing together.
Banger after banger. No matter how derivative the songs might be or how self consciously cool they wanted to be the songs are excellent. For their particular style and template it really is fantastic.
No weak tracks. 35 mins. Superb.
Love the overall sound, particularly that dry drum sound and the rhythm guitars. Although Last Night is basically American Girl the rhythm guitar is Lennon-esque, not quite the triplets of All My Loving but a nice version of it.
It so heavily reminds me of early 2000s and absolutely loving it but I don’t think it sounds dated, it’s still great, unlike a lot of bands albums they followed in their slipstream.
Musically and aesthetically they had the same effect on rock music as Nirvana did a decade before, you can see clear a line before and after of how indie rock bands looked and sounded.
My only slight reservation is that sometimes I think it’s too studied a synthesis of cool influences and is it really them, is there an artifice that I can’t quite see through? But then I think I’m overthinking it and every time I listen to it I love it. So it has to be a 5, can’t be anything else.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Bridge Over Troubled Water
BOTW - have heard so many times and so familiar. Even though sometimes the recording can feel a little OTT, really listening to it, what a magical song. Uplifting, comforting and full of beautiful moments, ‘Sail on, silver girl…’ in particular.
Always loved El Condor Pasa, particularly the intro.
Keep the Customer Satisfied I also love. Good example of Paul Simon’s wry sardonic storytelling.
It took a while for me to see that So Long, Frank Lloyd Wight was a good song. It’s a lovely little melody with a skipping rhythm and I like the little fiddle string low in the mix
The Boxer - what a song. Sounds brilliant every time I hear it. Might be my favourite S&G song.
Baby Driver, similar to Customer. I do like these quirky upbeat songs he does , a bit like Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard from Paul Simon’s ‘first’ solo album. Kind of upbeat folky Motown with unusual rhyme patterns
I LOVE The Only Living Boy in New York. Just love it, the bass, the feel, everything.
Why Don’t You Write Me. I feel like this is the only down note on the album. Feels like an arrangement looking for a song and the whole thing doesn’t quite convince.
I’m never quite sure why Bye Bye Love is on here too. It’s a good version of a great song, but it’s always stuck out as a bit odd. Not necessarily bad but seems out of place.
Song For the Asking. I really enjoy the low key nature of this, a nice contrast to the ‘big’ opening of the title song. Lovely track.
I do love this album, I go back and forth between this and Bookends as my favourite S&G album, but they are both great. For such a great act it’s always surprising how it feels like they only really have two ‘proper’ albums. They have written some of the greatest songs though and I suppose that’s why any greatest hits of theirs is so good.
Even though it’s not quite perfect and does feel uneven towards the end with Why Don’t You Write Me and Bye Bye Love , before the lovely Song for the Asking I think this has to be a 5, it’s got two of the greatest songs ever and some of their best non ‘big’ songs.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Grateful Dead
2/5
Live/Dead
Wasn’t looking forward to this.
The first song is 25 minutes. Fucking hell
If I was a kid in the late 60s SF, off my tits on acid and smoking weed all day I think I would have loved this and the Grateful Dead. Hard 55 years afterward to appreciate this.
Some decent grooves amongst all the noodling, and some nice guitar sounds. The vocals don’t sound great though.
The lyrics, earnest mystical stoner nonsense, but with a certain amount of vaguely charming guilessness.
The first listen through I didn’t mind it at all, it soundtracked doing work pleasantly enough. It started to become a bit tiresome by the 2nd listen and then I stopped halfway through the 3rd listen as the whole thing was becoming tedious. Life is too short to spend another 1hr 15 minutes listening to it. Not that’s it’s actually that bad actually it just all feels a bit futile.
I had it on loop to listen a few times and couldn’t tell what was the last track and the first track. It’s all one long noodle with some bad words.
I didn’t mind St Stephen, but struggled to pick much else out. The song Feedback. Why?
If you like the grafetful dead then I’m sure you’d love it. If not then it just passes you by.
Never listened to the Grateful Dead properly, not sure this will tempt me to, although I probably should try American Beauty one day. Don’t think I’ll start listening to their other 166 released live albums.
Some grooves here and there, some good bits, some unlistenable, but overall quite a tedious endeavour
⭐️⭐️
Talvin Singh
4/5
OK
I have a recollection of you having this at Durham, Paul? I’m aware of him but can’t recall ever giving him a listen.
I thought this was great.
Eno-esque in places, particularly My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but obviously filtered through his own cultural upbringing.
Obvious Indian classical influences, but quite a lot of traditional Japanese influences too. Subsequently found out some of it was recorded in Okinawa, so that makes sense.
Some of the hip hop and dance/drum n bass beats do sound quite 90s, but they are so well woven amongst the other sounds it works really well
Traveller is great, has a bit of everything that’s to follow, love the strings.
OK is great too
And I loved Light.
I’m glad this came up, I’m looking forward to listening to it some more
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Johnny Cash
4/5
At San Quentin
The History of Rock Music in 500 songs has a good episode about Cash and Walk the Line, and the genesis of the Tennessee Three, basically how they weren’t really musicians but found a way of backing him that suited him but was quite unusual in its simplicity and didn’t sound like much else at the time, particularly Luther Perkins guitar lines and Marshall Grant’s extremely minimal double bass (basically he could only play every other note at the beginning as he didn’t know where the notes were on the bass and he couldn’t move his fingers quick enough). Obviously this is Carl Perkins here, which is cool, you can hear him embellishing a little on There’ll be Peace in the Valley.
I like Johnny Cash a lot, but I’ve always been a greatest hits and American Recordings man - I suppose the problem is that there isn’t necessarily a definitive early studio Cash album or set of albums, he released so many and many were just tracks put together from various recording sessions. I’m not generally a fan of live albums so I’ve kind of overlooked this and Folsom Prison, but they really are such a part of his legend that I should actually listen to them.
It is great. All the elements of Johnny Cash are there, the fantastic, resonant baritone voice, simultaneously hard and empathetic, but always full of feeling, the myth making outlaw persona and the overall charisma and presence.
It’s amazing what he can conjure out of such seemingly sparse and simple musical backing.
The Wreck of the old 97 really fizzes.
I Walk the Line is obviously superb, in whichever form. I love how each verse is in a slightly different key giving a sense of unsteadiness before resolving in the last verse.
San Quentin is great, particularly the reaction from the crowd. Carl Perkins also sounds excellent on this.
I think this is the definitive live version of A Boy Named Sue? It’s definitely the one you hear the most. Reading about it, it was a surprise in the set and was improvised by the band. Nice.
I listened to the original version, but the legacy version is meant to be very good and possibly even better.
I’d like to listen to At Folsom to compare but I thought this was great, up there with Live at Leeds and Get Your Ya Yas as the only live albums I like. A foot tappin’ rock solid 4. Keen to listen to it more
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The La's
3/5
The La’s
I wasn’t able to listen to this as much as I normally would yesterday , although I did listen to it last week.
On first listen last week I was a bit underwhelmed and I struggled to pick anything discernible out. I think I might have been expecting an album full of very melodic jangly 60s guitar pop like There She Goes, or something as polished and immediate as The Stone Roses.
The 2nd time around yesterday I listened to it sporadically throughout the day I enjoyed it more. And There She Goes is actually a bit of an outlier, not necessarily in quality but in structure and sound.
It’s definitely not the proto Britpop album it’s gets described as, it’s much less wedded to a classic 60s guitar group template, it’s a bit more sinewy and moves outside those boundaries. Liberty Ship has a kind of musical slipperiness, maybe a bit Talking Heads-ish, with a folky, she shanty-ish melody. In fact there feels like a lot of sea shanty influences on this.
There She Goes is an excellent song though. Like a lot of the overfamiliar of songs on these albums on the list, when you concentrate on them you really appreciate them.
Son of a Gun, Timeless Melody, Liberty Ship I.O.U really stood out on that second listen. Feelin’ and Way Out I didn’t much like though.
I’m not convinced by the overall sound. I know it was recorded over a lot of sessions but there is a bit of flatness on some songs and there’s a particular sound on some of the rhythm guitar that I’m not keen on. There She Goes is also a bit of an outlier in this regard as it does sound very different to the rest of the album.
Bit of a tough one to rate, I haven’t listened to it as much as have the other albums we’ve done but I did like it, and there are definitely some very good songs on here, although a couple I want keen on and the production/sound was a bit of a letdown. I’ll go 3 for now, but will definitely listen more, it’s almost certainly a grower.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Iron Maiden
3/5
Iron Maiden
Obviously not my type of music but I don’t mind Iron Maiden. Actually I just like Run to the Hills, that’s a great song.
Didn’t know that Bruce Dickinson wasn’t an original member.
Musically it was kind of what I thought, although with more groove and variance than I expected. Definitely more melodic than I thought it would be.
All the elements are there though, aggression, speed, double bass drumming, loudness, bad lyrics and a lurid album cover
You can see the influences of the early metal bands like Black Sabbath and the classic rock bands like Led Zep, as well as the theatricality of Queen. Feels like the heavy elements of classic rock stripped out, refined and concentrated down a heavy metal path, rather than bands who take heavy metal and refine that into even more heavy metal and lose any sense of tune melody or enjoyment, eg Pantera. It feels like they want to write songs and make them heavy metal, rather than just wanting to write noise.
I like the harmonies on Phantom of the Opera and there are some nice backing vocals here and there too. Phantom probably my stand out track.
Strange World is just a straight ahead power ballad.
Although I might rarely chose to, I’d quite easily listen to this again. Heavy metal is not really my genre but if I was forced to listen one heavy metal album then I’d be happy with this.
I’ll go 3, it’s not as good as some albums I’ve given 3 to, but for a heavy metal album 3 feels like the right score.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
Everybody Knows this is Nowhere
I tend to forget about this album, despite Down by the River being one of my fav Neil songs. I can’t actually remember the last time I listened to this, but must be at least 10 years.
Cinnamon Girl - it’s great. The handclaps, the sense of innocence. For some reason the intro always surprises me, I always think it’s at a quicker tempo than it is. Love the little guitar breakdown in the coda
EKTIN
Always a fav and always loved the harmonies and bouncy rhythm
Round and Round
I tend to overlook this one but it’s a very sweet low key melody.
Down by the River
I love this song. I love Buddy Miles version almost as much but this is just so so good.
The Losing End
I like the loping country feel, but it’s not one of my favourites
Running Dry
The fiddle is very nice against the slightly sinister traditional folk feel. Again I tend to forget about this song, but it’s great.
Cowgirl in the Sand
Banger
I knew Down by the River was written quickly when he had a fever but I didn’t realise until today that he wrote Cinnamon Girl and Cowgirl in the Sand on the same day when he was delirious with fever too.
How does one approach rating this? Alongside the McCartney, Bowie and Lennon albums this is the one of the ‘big’ artists with extensive catalogues, and when you know their other albums so well it’s hard to divorce it from the context of, in this case, what comes after.
I think I have to rate in terms of my appreciation of the albums of his I love, so therefore it’s a 4. It’s great, and people have built entire careers on songs not nearly as good as CG, EKTIN, CITS and DBTR, but it’s just that level below my top tier Neil albums.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lou Reed
4/5
Transformer
I remember buying this at Uni and quite liking it, although I haven’t listened in a long time. I must have known at the time that Bowie and Ronson produced it but that felt like news to me today.
And listening to it their fingerprints are all over it. The guitar on Vicious (and throughout), the strings on Perfect Day, the bass and drums on Hangin’ Around, the tuba on Make Up. LOVE Bowie on backing vocals on the coda of Satellite of Love. Also didn’t realise Klaus Voormann played bass on some of the tracks .
Perfect Day and Walk on the Wild Side are more examples of those overfamiliar songs that really are superb when you properly listen to them. Iv’e always loved Vicious and Satellite of Love is a stone cold classic.
Listening through today, aside from the biggies, Andy’s Chest, Hangin’ Around, Wagon Wheel (GREAT guitar on this) and I’m so Free stood out. I wasn’t as keen on Make Up, New York Telephone Conversation and Goodnight Ladies - a bit underwhelming and feel more like exercises in production and arrangement rather than actual songs.
I do like Lou Reed and his style of songwriting and really like his vocals, but I’m not sure there are quite enough good songs on here, and without Ronson I think it would be more of a struggle to get through those weaker tracks.
I don’t know his solo work that well, but I do love the Velvet Underground and listening to this it feels like he does need some interesting collaborators to help elevate some of his more mundane moments or pick up some song writing slack.
One of those funny ones to rate - the highs are exceptional and although the lows aren’t terrible or too numerous they are a bit deflating, so it’s between a 3 and a 4.
Just because of Vicious, Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side, Satellite of Love and Wagon Wheel I’ll say 4.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Killers
2/5
Hot Fuss
I’ve never really liked the Killers, so I’ve never listened to this album before. Not that I necessarily think they are bad, there’s just something I can’t quite put my finger on that I don’t really like.
I tried to put that aside and listen with an open mind. Clearly they can write some very catchy pop songs, they definitely have a knack for hooks and choruses. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me are great examples of this. And I have always actually liked All These Things That I’ve Done. I also like the little bass hook on Jenny was a Friend of Mine. There’s some nice bass playing throughout too.
Outside of those big catchy songs though I did find it a bit dull, with a fair amount of filler. There’s a lack of dynamism and excitement and it often falls back into generic guitar pop, with some bad lyrics and not great vocals.
I’m also not a fan of the sound and production which doesn’t help. Apart from the bass tone and its place in the mix it feels very very flat.
I was hoping I’d get more out of it and it would grow on me on the 2nd and 3rd listens, but I kind of felt the same as the first listen, although I think I appreciated some of the keyboards/synths more the 2nd time around.
Maybe it’s me and just don’t get it but I don’t think this is all that good. A couple of catchy big tunes and not a great deal else. I feel like perhaps there’s an artifice and insincerity to it that turns me off. It’s not an affected cool that you might tar The Strokes with, perhaps it’s a smugness or a kind of indie showbiz-ness.
Perhaps 2 is a bit harsh considering I gave Iron Maiden 3, but I feel this is more hollow even if it’s more listenable on the surface.
⭐⭐️
The Police
3/5
Synchronicity
Spiritus Mundi
It took me a long time to appreciate The Police fully, I think I was put off by Sting’s 90s solo stuff, all that banal adult orientated jazz and soul inflected wank. But they are a great band and alongside the big songs there are some absolute bangers in their catalogue. However this is my least favourite of their albums.
Synchronicity is a great start though, building on their reggae rock sound with some interesting synths.
Walking in your Footsteps kind of signposts where Sting was heading, I really like the first minute or so and then it teeters right on the edge of good and bad, and I’m not sure which side it falls on, I think bad by the end. I like the sequencer experimentation but for some reason I don’t think it works that well with Sting at the controls.
O My God has a nice bass line and drums but is a bit underwhelming.
Mother is not good. Not good at all. Really terrible. Woeful, and I mean woeful.
Miss Gradenko is not great either.
Synchronicity II is ok, a bit Police by numbers but at least the guitar gives it a bit of urgency.
Every Breath you Take. Undoubtedly a great song, overfamiliar and its kind of been swallowed up in I’ll be Missing You, but just listening in isolation now it is a superbly constructed pop song, that guitar riff, the single repeating piano note and little piano figure and vocals after the first chorus is so good. This very noticeably jumps out as superior to the rest of the songs on the album.
I do like King of Pain I feel like the balance of pop vs jazzy noodling is ok on this one. Wrapped Around Your Finger is ok.
Tea in the Sahara I really really dislike and Murder by Numbers is one of those pointless forgettable songs.
I really like their debut album and Zenyatta Mondatta, but this one veers too close to being an AOR MOR Sting solo album - it doesn’t have the dynamism and excitement of their earlier records. With Summers and Copeland pushed back it loses a lot of what made them great I think.
Ultimately it’s somewhere around 2-3, but there are some very good moments that I do like so I’ll go 3, although I’d listen to all their other albums ahead of this
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aretha Franklin
5/5
Lady Soul
I’m pretty familiar with this although haven’t played it in a while. It’s right in that ’67 to ’72 sweet spot for Aretha albums after she moved to Atlantic, from I’ve Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You up to Amazing Grace. Some great songs and some superb covers in there (including her fantastic version of The Weight).
Chain of Fools is rightly a classic. Money Won’t Change You carries on the fantastic start before the slowed down People Get Ready changes the tempo nicely. Great bass driving Niki Hoeky and a great vocal (although obviously every song has a great vocal) brings the tempo back up again before You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman. Again one of those overfamiliar ones but this is just another level of brilliance.
Sweet Sweet Baby kicks off Side 2 nicely and brings more of that gritty guitar and uptempo, brilliantly propulsive soul sound. The superbly bluesy Good to Me as I am to You (with Clapton), followed by the energetic Come Back Baby is a great one-two. Groovin’ takes things down a notch with a relatively restrained vocal and arrangement before the emotional punch of Ain’t No Way ends things on a big dramatic note.
The playing on this is exceptional, as you would expect from the Muscle Shoals band and the various guests, but the rhythm section of Spooner Oldham and Tommy Cogbilll in particular stand out - tight, melodic, propulsive, sympathetic to the songs, just fantastic.
28 minutes, not a duff track or duff moment.
Combining this choice of songs, that playing, Jerry Wexler’s production and smart arranging (and great track sequencing) with Aretha’s voice and presence is always going to be a winner and this is superb. I don’t think it can be anything but 5, as an example of late 60’s southern soul it’s hard to surpass it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Don McLean
3/5
American Pie
American pie is brillant, it really is. Not just the lyrical allusions but a brilliant chorus, joyful exuberant playing and a tender melancholic feels to the words. The line about dancing in the gym is always very evocative to me
Till tomorrow. Parts of this feel a lot like a Nick Drake song, particulate the verses and chorus. The middle eight not so much
I do love Vincent, even if the lyrics on occasion are a bit on the nose. Lovely meldoy
Not keen on crossroads, feels a little bit anodyne and inert. Everybody Loves Me, Baby is a bit unconvincing, not sure it quite works
The Grave is very good, although the S&G production doesn’t quite fully land.
It’s a good album, Vincent, American Pie and The Grave the obvious standouts, with some lovely melodies, but beyond that a lot of the songs do feel like variations of the same musical idea and the lyrics can be a bit lumpen and heavy handed. Production/sound wise it also feels pretty dated and a bit thin.
Somewhere between a 3 and a 4, I’ll go 3, one all time classic song, a couple of great tunes and some nice but ultimately middling songs.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Slade
3/5
Slayed?
I do like Slade’s greatest hits but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an actual album of theirs.
How d’ You Ride. Exactly what you might expect from the opening song to a Slade album.
The Whole Worlds Going Crazee. At their best these stomping 50s style glam rockers with big choruses seem so effortless and fun, but this one is a bit of a struggle
Look at Last Nite is great though, love the bluesy groove and the sinewy bass and it’s a nice change of tempo. The fade out is a bit abrupt though. I Won’t let it ‘Appen is nice too, again a welcome rhythmic variation with great bass.
The cover of Move Over is fine with its satisfyingly crunchy guitars.
Gudbuy T’Jane - classic Slade. I like to think Dan sings this with his guitar to Jane every time she leaves the house. Love the dynamic between the guitar and bass on the riff, very satisfying.
Gudbuy Gudbuy. Have to admire the consistency in their spellings. Has it’s moments but a bit meat and two veg.
Mama Weer All Crazee Now - more classic Slade, along with Cum on Feel the Noize this is probably the apogee of their sound. Love it.
I Don’t Mind. I don’t mind it.
I feel like every band in the 70s covered Let the Good Times Roll, and aside from the energetic performance I’m not sure what this brings.
Overall I guess it depends on whether you like Noddy’s voice and whether you like their musical template. I like both so I enjoyed this a lot. There’s is a bit more musical subtlety than might be expected, Don Powell is a very good drummer and Jim Lea is a very good all round musician - I particularly like his bass after the choruses in Gudbuy T’Jane for example. And they do move slightly out of the stomping lane from time to time, which is very welcome. It’s a very fun listen, it has no pretensions or ambitions beyond what it is, but has enough musical interest to it bear related listens. It lands somewhere between 3 and 4, but I’ll go for a very enjoyable three
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ps My Life is Natural, the first bonus track and b-side of Coz I Love You is the Led Zep/Pinball Wizzard mash up we didn’t know we needed. I think Rush might also have taken some of the melody for Tom Sawyer
Wilco
5/5
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
(In a Brummie accent)
It’s going to be a 5, it’s one of my favourite albums. I have great memories of living in Japan when it came out and listening to it a lot at that time. I still return to it often and it still holds up, it doesn’t sound at all dated.
It wears its influences pretty clearly, but all filtered very deftly through the Wilco musical sieve. There’s less overt rock and country to it than previous albums, as they lean more into some pure pop melodies as well as more layered atmospheric soundscapes, using keyboards as textures rather than melodic drivers. They also got a new drummer around this time and he makes a big difference - there’s just a sense of more rhythmic interest and variation to it.
The shimmering keyboards, broken rhythm pattern and the discordant coda of I am Trying to Break your Heart lead brilliantly into the more conventional strum of Kamera, but still maintaining a sense of unease. Radio Cure and War on War follow a similar pattern.
The trio of Jesus, Etc, Ashes of American Flags and Heavy Metal Drummer are really the centrepiece of the album. The tenderness of Jesus, Etc, followed by the slightly uneasy of Ashes of American Flags and then the joyfulness of Heavy Metal Drummer encapsulates the whole album.
I really like the Neil Young/Crazy Horse guitar contrasting with the Motown style horns on I’m the Man who Loves You. Pot Kettle Black comes back to the feel of Kamera and War on War before Poor Places and Reservations end things on a suitably downbeat and sonically discordant note. I particularly like the layers and textures on Reservations, not so much a tune as a feeling.
I do love how the songs alternate between the slower, textured and rhythmically fractured songs and the more melodic up beat strummers, that combination is in keeping with the slightly dissonant, fragile and melancholic tone of the whole album.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Missy Elliott
4/5
Justin Timberlake
2/5
Justified
Don’t really need to listen too many times to come to a conclusion on this.
Señorita - I like the organ and drums and the chorus is fine but ultimately all a bit forgettable. Justin’s intro is cringe.
Like I Love You - Great pop song, Neptunes to the fore here.
(Oh No) What You Got - Percussion is good, rest is a bit dull.
Take it From Here - Very poor. Musically, lyrically and melodically insipid.
Cry Me a River - Great, great pop song.
Rock Your Body - another good pop song, a nice disco pastiche.
Nothin’ Else - a Bad-era Jacko rip off and not a particularly good one. Could definitely hear Paint it Black in the outro too.
Last Night - just about elevates itself above the rest of the non singles.
Still on my Brain - just feels a bit pointless.
(And She Said) Take me Now - better, has a bit of drive and dynamism to it. (whisper it but Timbaland produced this one)
Right for Me - the melody is ordinary although I like the little flute. Justin talking sexy isn’t that convincing to me.
Let’s Take a Ride - Forgettable.
Never Again - Ditto. Really dislike the classical guitar.
Like I Love You, Rock Your Body, Cry me a River are great pop songs and stand out a mile, the rest is all a bit characterless, and there is no justification in it being over an hour long. I don’t think Justin’s voice is that great or particularly interesting and if you took the Neptunes/Timbaland production and sonic nouse away there really wouldn’t be much left. Thinking of it as a pop album if 3 or 4 tracks were trimmed off it it might make a solid 3, but there is a lot of insipid R&B in between the singles and the odd ok album track, so it’s a
⭐⭐️
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Freak Out!
Suzie? Cream Cheese?
I’ve always avoided Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. I’ve given Captain Beefheart a go and, if I’m in the right mood, I’ve kind of enjoyed the bits I’ve listened to. However it’s not always what I actually want to listen to so I have just put the Mothers in the same bucket and left well alone.
It wasn’t entirely what I expected on the first listen. I thought there would be constant shifts in tempo, sounds and arrangement within each song, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavily rooted in garage blues rock. I kind of got into the swing of it by the 2nd half, I started to enjoy the grooves and was happy to expect any old shit to happen at any time.
Second time around I liked it a bit more, I suppose I dropped all my expectations and a bit of familiarity with the twists and turns helped.
I genuinely started to enjoy this and maybe even started to ‘get’ it after the 3rd listen. Whether you do or not I guess would depend on your expectations and appetite or tolerance for the deliberately surrealistic and avant garden elements tacked onto the slightly generic mid 60s blues rock foundations. It definitely got better and a lot more interesting with repeated listens, so much so that some of the more ‘straight’ rock songs became less appealing and the more experimental art rock aspects of it were what I wanted to hear more of.
I do think you have to listen to it in the spirit in which it was made and intended. It’s deliberately non conformist and unconventional, which I ended up really liking for some reason. It’s great that someone imagined this and then made it and built a career out of it, there’s a lot to be said for people with a singular vision that are able to realise that vision. Clearly it’s not for everyone and if you want to hear actual songs then this isn’t the place to go, but it’s given me a real interest in listening to more Zappa. I don’t think I totally get it but I’m into it - I’m glad this came up in the list, I may never have listened to it otherwise. Tempted to go 4 but will go for a high 3
⭐⭐⭐️
Foo Fighters
3/5
Foo Fighters
Like everyone I love Dave Grohl, and while I do like FF, they always seem to be a band with some great songs and then a lot of middling stuff. I’ve had greatest hits and I’ve seen them live a couple of times but I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to this album.
This is a Call, really catchy, always liked this song.
I’ll Stick Around - like the verses a lot on this, the chorus I’m not as keen on. Great drumming.
Big Me, very sweet little tune, like this one.
Alone + Easy Target - enjoyed this a bit more the second and third time, pretty catchy chorus.
Good Grief, Floaty, Weenie Beenie, Oh, George - These are all a bit samey, a bit fillery and forgettable for me.
For All the Cows - I like this one a lot. A little bit of litheness and groove
X-Static - Enjoyed the tom-tom on this but apart from that not particularly memorable.
Wattershed - Fine thrashy tune, if a bit forgettable
Exhausted - I like this one, the lyrics and music complement the mood and feel. The little guitar melody underneath the heavily distorted rhythm guitar in the verses is very nice.
It’s of course not fair to compare it to Nirvana, but aside from the loud guitars and some of the drumming I can’t actually see that much commonality.
I love that he did the whole thing himself, evidently not to McCartney-esque levels of virtuosity or songwriting skill, but it is very cool. However there’s no disguising that essentially these are demos and that many of the songs are very 90s-ish rock by numbers, and without his drumming things would feel very pedestrian pretty quickly. It’s not terrible by any means, there are a handful of very good tunes but I don’t think there’s enough to pique enough long term interest to come back to and listen through again.
I like Grohl a lot and appreciate he played everything himself and he did it at a very difficult time after Kurt died, but ultimately it lacks a bit of variety and excitement, especially in the last half where it does get pretty samey. I appreciate it wasn’t supposed to be a grand artistic statement and it sounds like it was very important mentally for him to do it but it does end up feeling quite middling.
⭐⭐⭐️
Germs
2/5
Yes
3/5
The Yes Album
Silly Human Race
Never listened to Yes apart from Roundabout (and Owner of a Lonely Heart). Feel like I might get into prog, but I have tried some of the Genesis albums and I didn’t get on with them much.
I found this enjoyable and pretty fun though, even if I think I’m supposed to take it a bit more seriously.
Yours is no Disgrace - exactly what I would imagine a prog song would be, daft lyrics, musical cul de sacs, unendingness.
The Clap, surprised by the folkiness of this, quite a pretty little tune.
Starship trooper. See Yours is No Disgrace.
I’ve Seen All Good People - really liked a few of the parts of this, and didn’t mind the others
A Venture - not keen on this, I really didn’t like the barroom piano. More organ please
Perpetual Change. See Yours is No Disgrace and I’ve Seen All Good People.
So overall I enjoyed it, i liked a lot of the playing, some good guitar parts and a lot of great bass and organ. I think I’d listen again and I might even try more Yes.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Metallica
2/5
Master of Puppets
Aside from Enter Sandman and Master of Puppets (the song) I’ve never really understood Metallica. Obviously they are in a genre I don’t particularly care for, so I’m not who they make music for, but of all the heavy metal/thrash metal I have ever heard they’ve always seemed the most boring. And Lars Ulrich always seems like a massive dildo.
There’s not a great deal here to change my opinion. I do really enjoy the pomposity and unintended daftness of the title song, and there are moments where some of the guitars are good in a stupid way, but the relentless pounding of it all gets pretty tiresome. Two listens through really is enough. The lyrics are also really very bad. Thematically I get it but it’s such bad teenage drivel.
I find rating these types of album really tricky and I’m pretty inconsistent with my scores as a result. On the one hand I don’t like the idea of dismissing a type of music just because I’m not into it - there are plenty of people who hate the types of music I’m into - so I try and look for the positives or merits within it’s genre and music in general. And on the other I then do wonder what that appeal and merits actually are, if you didn’t get into this music when you were 14. I get it’s a significant landmark in heavy metal and that its very popular so whether I like it or not isn’t really the point, but despite listening in good faith it’s a pretty tiring listen, particularly the 2nd time around.
So within the albums we’ve had in this style, I preferred it to Pantera, but probably found Iron Maiden more fun. So it’s somewhere between a 2 and a 3 - I’ll plump for a 2
⭐⭐️
David Crosby
4/5
If I Could Only Remember my Name
Don’t think I’ve ever listened to anything by David Crosby outside of the Byrds, CS&N and CSN&Y. Which I guess is the majority of his stuff.
I loved this though, from the opening track onwards. Dreamy, languorous, slow, loose, melodic, atmospheric, warm, moving, just great. I put it on repeat and must have been through it about 5 times already.
I can’t really think of any duff moments apart from possibly the last track, but Music is Love, Laughing and What are their Names stood out everytime.
After having to work hard to find the positives in some of the recent albums it was nice to listen to something immediately enjoyable. With more time I think this could get up to 5, but for now I’ll go 4.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
3/5
Black Holes & Revelations
Had to listen with an open mind as I’ve never really liked anything of their’s that I’ve heard and I struggle to escape the feeling that their music is very much a 14 year old boy’s idea of what is cool. You know what’s really cool? Going to school and listening to your teachers.
Take a Bow - Liked the build up, a bit of Baba O’Riley and quite a lot of Queen.
Starlight - This one really grew on me, kind of had a kids Sci-Fi Tv show vibe to it.
Supermassive Black Hole - I like the falsetto and it’s a good pop song, but I think this tips just a bit too much into musical theatre
Map of the Problematique - great title, Depeche mode vibes. Pretty fun.
Soldier’s Poem had a bit too much Queen for my taste. Invincible, Assassin & Exo-Politics I wasn’t that into, melodically, lyrically or musically. The Sky-yyy backing vocal bugged me for ages until it clicked it was from Sweet Child O’Mine.
City of Delusion - I really liked the silly OTT fun of this one, particularly the ‘eastern’ style strings
Hoodoo - quite liked the Spanish guitar intro but it didn’t seem to go anywhere that interesting.
Knights of Cydonia - this is a great, daft pop rock song. Very enjoyable.
Great drumming and drum sound. I get the singing is deliberately histrionic and there is obviously more than a touch of Thom Yorke in the vocals, but without the emotional resonance or subtlety.
Overall I liked the silliness of it all, a kind of a knowing over the topness, even if it did get a bit too stage musical at points and I did struggle with some of the songs. When it all comes together like on Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole and Knights of Cydonia it’s enjoyable, but if it misses the mark it sometimes verges on being a bit of an overwrought mulch.
A couple of songs I really liked and lots of enjoyable pomposity. I didn’t dislike it at all but I’m not sure I’ll actually listen again or look into more Muse. So, hmm, I’ll go 3 for vibes.
⭐⭐⭐️
Now back to If I Could Only Remember My Name
Spiritualized
4/5
Ladies & Gentlemen we are floating in Space
I remember Souter having this at uni and I remember borrowing and trying to like it. The only track I liked was Come Together and the rest I wasn’t sure about.
I haven’t revisited in the intervening 25 years and I was actually quite looking forward to giving it a go today, now that I’m a bit older with, hopefully, a broader musical appreciation.
I really did enjoy it a lot. The opening track’s interpolation of I Can’t Help Falling in Love I really liked, and Come Together was still as good as I remembered it, a great droning, crescendoing track.
There’s a certain blues-iness and country-ness to some of it, maybe because of the harmonica that appears regularly, as well as some of the string arrangements.
I Think I’m In Love is great, love the feel and particularly the horn arrangement and the slide guitar(?) motif. And I loved Stay With Me and Cool Waves. A lot of the horn arrangements are great, very McCartney/George Martin-esque. Cop Shoot Cop is long, but doesn’t actually feel like 17 minutes. Loved the strings on Broken Heart.
In a way it’s not about picking out each song, as they are all a kind of groove and mood layered with, noise, sounds and instrumentation, rather than distinct melodic exercises. Obviously he doesn’t have a conventionally good voice, but it does suit the whole atmosphere as the music ebbs and drifts and the different layers and instruments move in and move out.
It improved with each listen as elements of different tracks started to emerge. It is long at 1hr 10, mainly I suppose as the last song is 17 minutes, and I think there was a dip around Home of the Brave and the Individual before it picked back up again. Maybe it could have been a bit shorter but actually it felt like a long suite of songs with similar moods, textures and movements that all worked together.
Looking forward to listening to it more and uncovering little moments I’ve missed up to now.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Dusty Springfield
2/5
A Girl Called Dusty
I didn’t think this was particularly good. Obviously Dusty has a superb voice and I guess it must have been pretty unusual for a British female singer to sing in such a clearly soul influenced way in 1964.
Clearly this was first step away from the Springfields to the more R’n’B style of later albums. And despite her voice never being less than great she feels a bit tentative and unsure throughout, and it lacks the control and subtlety and maturity of the Dusty in Memphis stuff a few years later.
There are some good song choices on here, Mama Said, You Don’t Own Me, Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa, Anyone Who Had a Heart, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and Within’ & Hopin’ and some really not very good song choices at all, like Do Re Mi, My Colouring Book, Mockingbird and Nothing. Despite doing a good job on those good songs none of them approach anything like a definitive version, of which you feel she should be capable.
However the big problem with all of it is the band, the arrangements and the production & sound all being uniformly bad. It sounds awful, thin and dull with that particularly distracting tom-tom sound. You realise how lucky the Beatles were to have George Martin and the engineers at Abbey Raod, and how good their early records sound compared to stuff like this (as well as the early Stones, Kinks etc records, which have some great songs but don’t sound anywhere as near as good as say A Hard Day’s Night or Beatles for Sale).
I couldn’t find out much about the band but it’s the worst kind of early 60s BBC Light Jazz Lounge Pops band sound and playing, and it really doesn’t serve her or the songs well in any way. The saccharine string arrangements and insipid parping horns really are poor.
I’m not that familiar with Definitely Dusty or Dusty in Memphis, apart from the well known songs, but I had a brief listen to a couple of tracks and it’s night and day in terms of playing, sound and also maturity in Dusty’s approach.
Feel bad giving it 2 bearing in mind Dusty’s voice, but this is not a great record and she can’t rescue it from it’s musical mediocrity.
⭐⭐️
Rush
3/5
Moving Pictures
Things I know about Rush:
- They’re Canadian
- The song Tom Sawyer as it features so much in I Love You man
- People cream themselves about Neil Peart’s drumming
Things I know after listening to Moving Pictures
- they’re Canadian
- Tom Sawyer is an enjoyably fun prog rock pop song
- Neil Peart clearly is a very good drummer, but he is very very busy
I did like lots of bits if this but not sure I’m totally convinced by a whole album if it. Some of the guitar lines and synth parts were good. Limelight and Tom Sawyer are very good songs and stand out, while overall the rest does get up it’s own musical virtuosity bumhole a bit too much and his voice is quite annoying, which also makes the vocal melodies a bit tough to hang on to.
It’s kind of fun though if you don’t take it too seriously. I think that’s why I don’t mind a lot of these prog records - I find the musicians seriousness quite amusing and subsequently I enjoy the music more. However I’m not sure that’s a basis for actually liking it.
Not sure where to rate, I think I enjoyed more than Yes, but not sure if I would investigate much further. Maybe as I didn’t listen to it as much as I would have liked I’ll plump for a 3?
⭐️⭐️⭐️
William Orbit
3/5
Strange Cargo III
I liked this, although I think there are possibly better versions of this type of album. The echoey drums and synth squelches and noises do sound very 90s. And you can see what he bought to the Ray of Light album, although less so of what he bought to 13.
I liked the first track, had a nice sense of propulsion and I liked the piano holding the hook. Didn’t realise it was Beth Orton, didn’t sound like her. It made me want to listen to Trailer Park and Central Reservation again, as those are fantastic.
Listening to it, I did wonder if he’s a better producer and arranger for other peoples songs rather than his own? Nothing stood out massively and there was a similarity in sounds and noises across each track.
I can imagine putting this in to work to, but not really listening to it it properly. Not bad, but also not in the top tier of layered electronic instrumental music. Might try some of his other albums but more likely to forget to.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jefferson Airplane
2/5
Surrealistic Pillow
Hmmm.
Somebody to Love and White Rabbit are, rightfully, enduringly great 60s songs. Maybe a bit overfamiliar but undoubtedly great.
The rest I’m not so sure about. I liked Today and I liked a lot of the folky elements and I like Grace Slick’s lead and harmony vocals a lot, however the rest of the songs were very forgettable in a kind of generic mid late 60s style way. Perhaps it’s the lyrics and perhaps it’s the production but nothing really grabbed my attention or seemed that interesting.
I wanted to like it more on the basis of the two big songs, and I do like a lot of that mi late 70s San Francisco music, but the more I hear these types of albums the more I realise a good compilation of all these bands is the best thing to listen to
⭐️⭐️
The Band
5/5
Music from Big Pink
One of my favourite albums, although I think I may slightly prefer The Band as a slightly tighter album.
I remember being a bit underwhelmed when I first heard it but it gradually got its hooks into me and I now I love it.
There’s a lot of density and weight to the music with a simultaneous feeling of lightness and airiness, I think due to how great each part of the band is. Levon and Danko are a great rhythm section while I always love Hudson and Manuel’s piano and organ, with the organ work a particular standout on this record, and Robertson’s superb subtle and sympathetic guitar playing. And then vocally they are such a great blend, there’s something about Levon and Richard Manuel’s voices together I love, complemented nicely by Rick Danko’s slightly jittery voice.
It’s hard to pick the stand outs but aside from The Weight I love In A Station, Caledonia Mission, Long Black Veil and Chest Fever.
It is and always was going to be a 5
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️
The Cramps
4/5
Songs the Lord Taught Us
The Cramps, a band I’m aware of as being very influential and much loved, but I’m not sure I could name one of their songs. I must have heard at least one of them but not that I can recall. Pretty interested to hear this though.
I thought it might be a bit thrashy in a Germs kind of way, but actually it’s a great garage rock n roll rockabilly Carl Perkins surf punk thing. I really liked its immediacy, where the enthusiasm and attitude are more important than the musical proficiency.
The Alex Chilton production is great - exactly what the songs and band need. I really love the buzzy tone of the lead guitars and the whole echoey sound, all with the drums bashing away at the back.
The cover of Fever is excellent, the riff picked out in the guitar with loads of echo and the sharp lead parts.
You can hear how influential it was on that 2000s kind of garage revival. I bet the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hives, Raveonettes, Black Keys, White Stripes, Kills etc would all name it as an influence. I can also hear a bit of Nick Cave, particularly on Fever.
Maybe not the best from a pure musical/technical point of view, but that’s not really the point. I thought this was great - rough, loose, direct, dynamic. Just what you want from this kind of album from this kind of band.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Supergrass
5/5
I Should Coco
It’s interesting looking back at Britpop bands and albums from a 25-30 year distance. While I still like bands like Cast, who were solidly in the middle of the pack, there are a few bands who were part of it all but were in hindsight a bit different and more interesting than the rest of those bands. Supergrass are definitely one of them. That may in part be because we know where their career went after this, as they escaped the clutches of the Britpop bucket and went into various different directions.
But listening to this I think you can clearly hear they had something that set them apart, whether that be a more diverse set of influences outside of the run of the mill 60s sounds people were trying to emulate, a heightened melodic sensibility or a slightly different perspective on lyrical subject matter.
The playing is also a real point of difference: Exuberant, energetic, playful, fun and with a swing and suppleness that is in contrast to a lot of their contempories. The keyboard and piano also are excellent, again setting them slightly apart. Aside from the pure exiting pop of Alright, Caught by the Fuzz and Strange Ones, songs like Time and Sofa of My Lethargy show a maturity way beyond their years.
And overall, the songs are consistently great, I can’t really think of any duffers apart from possibly We’re not Supposed to, and even that whizzes past in such a flurry it doesn’t really matter.
I think it has to be a 5. It may not be a Sgt Pepper a Rumours or a K but it’s a fantastically thrilling album of rocky punky poppy music. Maybe it’s nostalgia and familiarity but for this type of album I don’t think you can get much better.
It's mad that they were 18 when they recorded this.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️
The Clash
5/5
The Clash
I haven’t listened to this for a long time. I had it on CD, but I think I had the US version with the different track listing. Some of those additions were great, like White Man in Hammersmith Palais and I Fought the Law, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like an album the way he original UK version does.
The first 6 songs are fantastic, Janie Jones, I’m So Bored with the USA, White Riot and What’s My Name in particular.
Deny isn’t great, there’s not much interesting happening musically or lyrically. It picks back up with Career Opportunities, dipping again with Cheat and Protex Blue before Police & Thieves, 48 Hours and Garageland end things back on a high.
It’s similar to I Should Coco in its exciting dynamic exuberance, everything going past at a breakneck speed. And similar to Supergrass they had an audible set of influences that pushed them beyond the majority of their peers, those rockabilly and reggae elements in particular.
Having a songwriting duo as talented as Strummer and Jones and having an arranger and musician as interesting as Jones was also a big point of difference as well. Although Simonon’s bass playing was relatively rudimentary on this he really drives the songs forward, and you can hear echoes of what his playing would evolve into when Topper Headon joined.
Listening to this really reminded me why I loved the Clash and has sent me down a Clash wormhole for the first time in ages.
It is a great album, and a great punk album, even if many of the songs aren’t actually what you might think of as punk from 45 years remove. There probably aren’t many of the first round of punk albums that can match this, along with Never Mind the Bollocks.
Perhaps musically and song-wise it’s closer to a 4 but culturally and historically it’s certainly a 5, so it pretty much is dead on between a 4 and a 5. London Calling will definitely be a 5, so should this be a 4, or should I just round up because The Clash are great - Should I 4 or Should I 5? Sod it, a snotty two fingered 5
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
2/5
Tarkus
I liked the pomposity of the Tarkus suite, even if musically I wasn’t as keen on it. The organ jumping around constantly is a bit irritating after a while. I did like the last part, Aquatrakus for its children’s tv show silliness, more so as it clearly was all meant in earnest.
The thing that keeps repeating with a lot of these prog rock concepts is that the stories and concepts really aren’t good at all, often incredibly naive and simplistic but dressed up with some pseudo fantastical nonsense to try and impart a sense of artistic heft. In this case an armadillo/tank called Tarkus.
Jeremy Bender is quite fun in a baroque pop kind of way. Bitches Crystal is a good title but quite a boring song. Too much church organ vibes. I like the harpsichord like piano on The Only Way, but not so much the melody or lyrics. Are You Ready Eddie is a bit of an unconvincing rock n roll song marred even more by the silly piano flourishes.
Strangely I found although most of the songs on the 2nd side are around 3 minutes they felt longer than the Tarkus Suite.
I think how I feel about a lot of these prog albums depends on my mood on the day, sometimes they’re fun and silly and then sometimes they’re a drag. This fell into the latter camp for me, despite liking some parts and the ridiculousness of the Tarkus suite.
The organ/keys/piano also got on my tits by side two. Way too much like improvised parping jazz trumpet for my taste. I get the skill but when demonstrating the skill seems to be the entire point it gets dull pretty quickly.
I definitely preferred Yes and Jethro Tull. I’ll stick to I believe in Father Christmas.
⭐️⭐️
The Thrills
2/5
So Much for the City
First thing that struck me was his singing accent, the weirdly exaggerated rotic sounds. Actually quite off putting.
Santa Cruz is a pretty nice bit of west coast countrified pop with nice harmonies. Big Sur is a superior version of the same thing. One Horse Town is very good, a nice melody with some great little hooks and moments. The highlight for me. I liked Say it ain’t So too.
However the 3 or so good songs, and the harmonies and country touches can’t quite cover up that this is a bit boring. Plenty of MOR is great, well written and well structured pop music and some MOR is dull, where you feel the only ambition was to write something inoffensive and nice. This definitely feels too much in the latter camp to me. Songs like Big Sur and One Horse Town are clearly superior, but the rest never quite lifts off or gets out of the ‘nice’ zone, mainly as the melodies aren’t that strong, and I get a sense of them cosplaying being west coast country pop band, which is probably why the playing lacks a bit of swing and dynamism for me.
It’s somewhere between a 2 and 3 but the more I listened the more shallow and ersatz this started to feel. Perhaps it’s the earnestness in recreating a type of music so faithfully that it becomes a bit insipid. I don’t have any issue with anyone from anywhere playing any type of music from anywhere, but there just seems something a bit unreal about a lot of this, almost like it’s AI. All the elements have been inputted but the output is slightly off in an undefinable way.
⭐️⭐️
John Lennon
5/5
Imagine
Imagine is again one of those overfamiliar songs, but I haven’t reached acceptance with it just yet in the way I have with some others. As a teenager I loved it but I’m just not sure I like it all that much. Nothing to do with the lyric which I think is good, and all the criticism and accusations of hypocrisy miss the point I feel, but something about the melody and piano I’m not sure about.
I’ve always enjoyed Crippled Inside’s honky tonk tick tack country style, even though it probably leans a bit too far into pastiche at times and diffuses the directness of the lyrics a bit.
Jealous Guy really is great, always been a favourite. Arrangement wise its similar to Imagine but works as a kind of antidote.
It’s so Hard - I’ve never quite been sure about the sax on this, kind of feels a bit out of place, even though I do like the bluesy groove and that string part is excellent. Definitely a grower of a song over time.
I Don’t Want to be a Soldier - Love George’s slide on this. Great groove and nice bass sound on the descending bits between verses, but George’s guitar really elevates this. Can hear quite a bit of the Stones version of Sister Morphine, which was recorded before this but not released until this was being recorded. It must have been an influence in some way.
Gimme Some Truth - superb, superb superb, great song. Again George’s slide is fantastic. Probably the song that suffers most from Spector’s ‘muddy’ production.
Oh My Love - a very nice song and another grower over time.
How Do You Sleep - I really do love this, up there with Lennon’s best solo songs. The groove, riff and the historical interest of the lyrics.
How? - Never noticed until today the echoes and similarities to The Long and Winding Road. In general I think this one has always passed me by a bit, but I really really liked it listening to it today. Superb vocal and some great little melodic hooks and moments.
Oh Yoko! - another one of my fav Lennon songs. Immediately infectious and joyous but with a slightly melancholy undertow. There’s an simultaneous directness and indirectness, closeness distance to it that I love, like he’s singing to her but she’s not there, as though he can’t find her.
This is a great album with some great songs, but it just sits that one rung below POB for me, somewhere between a 4 and a 5. It’s maybe more of a 4 than a 5 in reality, but as there is limited amounts of Lennon music and some the tracks on here are among his very best its very tricky, but the fact that it’s Lennon means a casting vote to take it to 5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Franz Ferdinand
3/5
Franz Ferdinand
‘Michael you're dancing like a beautiful dance whore’
I was interested to listen to this again after not having listened to it since the heady days of 04-06. I did listen to it a lot back then but aside from the big singles I can’t remember much of it.
I do like the template of chugging rhythm guitar and driving bass with catchy riffs, but it isn’t always successful, ranging from great (Take Me Out) to very good (Matinee, Darts of Pleasure, Michael) to the most of the rest, which is fine but ultimately a bit repetitive and somewhat forgettable.
There are some little additions of texture, the piano/organ on Auf Achse and the melodica on 40’. I wish there was a little more of that throughout, just to add a little more interest and colour.
Jacqueline - establishes the template, but on repeat listens one of the weaker tracks.
Tell Her Tonight - Again one of the weaker tracks, I didn’t like this one much actually
Take Me Out - This still stands up as a great great indie rock pop song and does tower above the rest of the album.
The Dark of the Matinee - This has stood up well too, a good indie pop song.
Aug Achse - I like the piano/organ here, it adds a slightly different texture which is nice, although I’m not as keen on the song in general
Cheating on you - this is pretty forgettable and another of the weaker tracks.
This Fire - Strays a bit close to Take Me Out for me
Darts of Pleasure - Another strong track, despite the overly affected German at the end.
Michael - I’ve always liked this one, it’s barely controlled frenzy works well with the lyric and in comparison to some of the studied weaker songs on the rest of the album.
Come on Home & 40’ - some nice moments but they both passed me by, I struggled to distinguish them despite listening to the album 3 times in a row.
Overall it’s fine indie pop music, there’s no stinkers, but aside from one great song and a few other good ones it does feel a bit samey and limited.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
‘If you need em I got crazy prophylactics’
Strangely I’ve not listened to this album. I love The Low End Theory and I listen to Midnight Marauders and Beats, Rhymes and Life pretty frequently, so it’s odd I haven’t given this a go, especially as it has three of their best know songs, Can I Kick It, I Left My Wallet in El Segundo and Bonita Applebaum.
Those three songs remain excellent. Can I Kick It is ubiquitous but is a great song with a great sample. Push it Along, Luck of Lucien, Youthful Expression and Mr Muhammed also stood out.
This is a very good record though, all the elements that make ATCQ great: excellent use of sampling, great hooks, loose jazzy beats that sound almost live, Q-Tip’s delivery and an overall laid back atmosphere. It sounds great too, with a nice depth to it sonically.
Overall a very very enjoyable 4, might get up to a 5 with more listens.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
Tigermilk
I like the song The Boy with the Arab Strap but have never given B&S a proper go, I’ve always thought of them as having too much of a studied winsomeness and tweeness.
However I’m wrong to think that - this is great! His voice does take a bit of getting used to but once you get beyond that this really opens up. There’s A LOT of Nick Drake in here, not just vocally but melodically, and some of the arrangements are very Bryter Later. That’s not a bad thing.
There is also a bit more bite than I expected, both in the wryness of the lyrics and also some of the music, like the bass and guitar on You’re Just a Baby and the guitar outro on I Could be Dreaming.
He has a real gift for melody and hooks as well, some lovely folky 60ish tunes and some very catchy instrumental moments. My Wandering Days are Over is a great example of this, a lovely vocal melody and very pretty trumpet and string arrangements. The State I’m In also, a lovely piano line, synth part and those little guitar moments. And the guitar xylophone and piano on I Don’t Love Anyone.
Electronic Renaissance is a bit of a misstep, it’s not wholly convincing although you might argue it kind of works in a wonky homemade way. I also wasn’t as keen on She’s Losing It either, I think that just tipped over into slightly too twee.
Overall though I thoroughly enjoyed this, it’s influences (Nick Drake, Donovan in particular) are clear but it’s all so well constructed, and with the sardonic lyrics it elevates its substantially from mere pastiche. Definitely going to listen to more of their stuff.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Tears For Fears
2/5
Songs From the Big Chair
Simple Minds, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Tears for Fears. They have always been pretty interchangeable. Rightly or wrongly thye live in the same big echoey 80s drum pop rock bucket in my mind - I sometimes have to stop and think which band sang Don’t You Forget About Me, Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Alive & Kicking and Seeds of Love.
Shout and Everybody Wants to Rule the World are rightly ubiquitous, they are both well crafted ‘big’ sounding 80s classics. EWTRTW in particular is great and still sounds good.
The Working Hour also sounds big and 80s but not in a good way. That AO jazzy sax does not sound good and melodically it feels very strained. Mother’s Talk I wasn’t keen on either, the slightly frantic and slightly jazzy synth in combination with the brass and guitar isn’t a particularly pleasant sound.
I Believe feels like a second rate Style Council knock off. I can imagine Sade rejecting this for being too insipid and dull.
Broken perks things up a bit, a bit of drive to it and no overt jazziness, segueing nicely in Head over Heels, which is another bit of classic 80s pop rock. Listen is ok, some of the backing vocals, synth and guitar elements as it builds are quite nice but there’s more of that dull jazziness to it, giving a slight sense of inertia.
Generally I’m a fan of a lot of these types of 80s bands, songs and sounds but aside from Shout, EWTRTW and Head over Heels I didn’t find this very enjoyable at all. There’s too much insipid jazz to it and I struggled with a lot of the melodies too. Maybe Don’t You Forget About Me is actually their best song.
⭐️⭐️
Country Joe & The Fish
3/5
Electric Music for the Mind and Body
I hunger for your porpoise mouth
The only things I know of CJ&TF is their Woodstock Film appearance and that they were quite a big deal in the SF / Jefferson Airplane / psychedelic scene.
I think because of the name I was expecting more of a basis country rock sound like the Flying Burrito Brothers, but with some far out 60s flourishes.
Flying High is kind of forgettable blues rock, with a very odd and abrupt fade out.
No So Sweet Martha Lorraine with the organ and time signature changes feels more like a psychedelic 60s song, I liked it, the bass was good and it had a bit of groove to it.
Death Sound Blues. As per title. Quite like the rattlesnake death rattle tambourine and percussion, but not that exciting.
Happiness Is a Porpoise Mouth - very psychedelic 60s compilation, not unenjoyable (LITOTES). It would go on a 60s psych playlist.
I liked Section 43, very Doorsy organ, great bass in the opening section, good raga/Indian guitar. Another one for the psych playlist.
Superbird
Sad and Lonely Times is good, a lovely little slice of west coast country rock.
Love slightly generic sounding, but then I guess this probably was the progenitor of this type of 60s music, so can I truly be generic.
Bass Strings. Quite liked this one
The Masked Marauder. Despite repeat listens I can’t recall this song at all
Grace. Fine
Overall it’s fine for what it is, enjoyable enough, decent etc etc, but I find it hard to summon any particular opinions either way. I neither liked or disliked it ultimately. Maybe I preferred it to Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and I. Ron Butterfly but it’s really a 2.5. I’ll go 3 as I quite like the band name
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The National
3/5
High Violet
Listen one: I wasn’t in to this much. It’s the same song 11 times. Piano, nice drumming, lots of tom toms. Takes itself quite seriously. Not keen on the singer.
Listen two: I enjoyed it a bit more, I started to notice a few moments that I really liked, although it still felt a bit monotonous.
Listen three: I enjoyed it a bit more. A couple of songs stood out, Conversation 16 and England in particular. I liked the consistent atmosphere across the album.
It’s obviously a record that needs a few listens and is a grower. However I can’t quite shake that feeling of self importance and that they have one way of doing a song. There are lots of lovely little moments throughout but for me that doesn’t quite make up for the repetitiveness in tempo, structure and arrangement. Even the drumming, which stood out on the first listen, started to feel a bit hollow, as if being used to disguise the slightly pedestrian nature of the songs.
So I guess it comes down to how much you like The National song archetype. I can appreciate the craft and skill and there are some great touches throughout, and I definitely liked it the more I listened, but I don’t think I’m quite convinced by it or them and I’m not sure if I will actually dedicate the time for it ti grow on me.
2 feels a bit low for as it’s clearly not a terrible record so I’ll go 3:
⭐⭐⭐️
Blur
5/5
Parklife
I don’t listen to this album as much as Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Magic Whip. Although I should because it is a fantastic album.
Girls and Boys is a banger of an opener and because of its ubiquity and familiarity it’s easy to forget what genuinely fantastic bit of pop music it is. The same goes for Parklife.
Never really noticed before but strings at the end of Tracy Jacks are very White Album. Great song.
I kind of forget about End of a Century but what a song, full of great guitar moments. I love the horns, the waltzer organ and it’s a great chorus too.
I’ve never been that keen on Bank Holiday, I like the lyric but not the song, although I was actually quite enjoying it today.
Badhead really is very lovely, a sweet melody and some lovely shimmering guitar and organ. Another great horn arrangement.
I do like the Wurlitzer seaside organ in The Debt Collector and Lot 105 and that it keeps popping up on the album, like a cultural touchstone among the various everyday tales of Britain that form the bulk of the themes of the album.
To the End, yet another lovely tune. For all the Girls and Boys and Bank Holidays there are 3 absolutely beautiful ‘ballads’ on Parklife; Badhead, To the End and This is a Low. This is a Low might actually be their best song, certainly in the top 5 for me Clive.
London Loves - structurally quite straightforward but its insistent bass and guitar are fantastic, a really great song. I’ve not always been keen on Trouble in the Message Centre but again listening today I really enjoyed it.
Clover over Dover - I love this song, the guitar and piano/harpsichord combination is superb and I love the harmonies. A very melancholic lyric too. Magic America and Jubilee are a great one-two before the brilliant conclusiveness of This is a Low
Obviously Blur predate Britpop but It’s interesting how prominent the bass is compared to a lot of the bands and the production style around at the time of Parklife - lots of noise and treble but very little melody or distinction in the bottom end.
Knowing how eclectic and diverse their albums and solo projects were from Blur onwards it’s easy to overlook how unlike Britpop this album is. A bit like Supergrass in that there are more influences than just 60s classic rock. There’s obviously a lot of Kinks and a lot of Beatles (particularly the use of horns and strings) but there’s disco, punk, new wave and a lot of pop.
Listening today I wonder if this might be their most concise and consistent album? Thematically the songs all sit together despite the stylistic variety and it’s an incredibly satisfying listen, brilliantly sequenced and I don’t think there is a weak song, even if Bank Holiday and Trouble in the Message Centre may not be as strong as some of the other tracks.
I liked this back in the 90s but 30 years on I appreciate it even more, it really is a great, great album. Easy, can’t be anything but
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jamiroquai
2/5
Emergency on Planet Earth
I’ve never listened to a Jamiroquai album. Back in the 90s I really hated them, even though I’d never really listened to their music. I think my 15 year old mind found it difficult to cope with anything that wasn’t white men with guitars playing rock music.
Nowadays I do like Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Virtual Insanity, Deeper Underground and Canned Heat whenever I hear them, but I have never felt compelled to try an album.
If you are going to give them a try I suppose you would start with the first album. But then you’d listen to it and think that’s a mistake.
If you take each musical element in isolation they are all good; skilled bass playing, great drumming and drum patterns, excellent string and horn arrangements. Keys and guitars also good. The didgeridoo is a bit of an affectation but it’s fine. The arrangements are also very nicely layered. But then when you put them together it so much of it becomes the worst kind of Brand New Heavies style acid jazz - boring, tuneless, insipid, dull, tedious, uninspiring. The only one that manages to escape into being a kind of fun danceable tune is Whatever it is, I Just Can’t Stop. And then the lyrics are godawful immature self important nonsense. Cringe, as the kids would say.
Clearly they have a lot of love for the music that inspired them, but in trying to recreate those sounds and instrumentation it comes across as a boring, ersatz, empty, hollow facsimile of 70s soul and jazz.
I think I might prefer the next couple of albums as they seem to lose some of the acid jazz styles and lean more into soul and disco. But I’m unlikely to actually bother.
And I shan’t be listening to this again.
⭐⭐️
Parliament
4/5
Mothership Connection
I’m fairly familiar with Mothership Connection although I don’t listen to it that often.
I love the concept of this album, and the whole Parliament/Funkadelic ethos/philosophy/universe.
P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up). Great opener, like the spoken word, introduces the brilliant but loopy concept. Love the Rachmaninov style piano in the outro. Mothership Connection (Star Child) carries it on with another banger.
Unfunky UFO, Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication and Handcuffs aren’t perhaps as strong as those first two songs but they are still very good, Unfunky UFO in particular is white overbite dancing good. Shades of Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll in the piano in Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication.
And then Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker). Absolute all time classic banger. Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples is a great title and a nice farty way to round things out, even if the song isn’t as strong as the title.
There’s just the right blend of funk, disco, soul and jazz, the jazzy bits don’t intrude on the songs. The playing is superb. Bootsy Collins bass is so good, a great tone and simultaneously melodic and percussive, and is great in tandem with the drums. Brilliant horns too.
Trying not to compare it to yesterday’s album as it’s just a quirk of the randomness but it’s night and day. This is fun, funny and excellent, yesterday was dull and wanky.
So all in all this is a great listen, three absolute classics with the remainder very good if not quite as great as those three
It’s somewhere between 4 and 5, I’ll go 4.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Crowded House
3/5
Woodface
‘There goes God in his sexy pants and his sausage dog’
I’ve always slightly dismissed Crowded House as a bit 90s salesman in a Mondeo driving up and down the M1 tapping his fingers on the wheel to their latest album. However I have read a lot about them as pop classicists heavily influenced by the Beatles, and I do like the craftsmanship and tune of Weather with You, so I was quite looking forward to giving this a go and hoping for a nice jangly, pop-rock album of nice tunes and playing.
First thing that stood out was that this sounded very 90s, very dated production wise. Lots of space, but without sounding very big. I think it sounds a bit cold, there’s not much warmth or intimacy to my ears. It’s got a very 90s adult rock bass sound, a bit 5 sting session player that I really dislike.
I really didn’t like Chocolate Cake, the opening chords annoyed me for some reason although I thought the lyric was very good, very dry.
It’s Only Natural, I like the riff and the verses, the chorus grates on me a bit - feels like a Sunday car journey with your parents. Fall at Your Feet is not bad either, but does have some of the same Sunday energy as It’s Only Natural.
Weather with You - great song, it really does stand out, particularly after the slightly dull Tall Trees. Nice harmonies, great chorus and I like the riff.
Whispers and Moans, I really don’t like the wah wah or the horns. Four Seasons in One Day is a nice song, I do like it but it does suffer from the sound of the album.
There Goes God, Fame Is (the heavier rocking sound is pretty unconvincing) all the way to How Will You Go are pretty unremarkable, making the 2nd half of the album a bit nothingy.
I do love the harmonies and the brothers’ vocal blend, they sound so good together in a way that only siblings do, a bit like the Everly Brothers. Despite that that though I’m not keen on the lead vocal sound.
When they use slightly different instrumentation (eg strings on All I Ask or accordion on As Sure as I am) it tends to feel slightly hollow, maybe it’s the production but it sounds a bit half hearted and at arms length, not adding any layers or texture.
It’s not quite as good as I was hoping, although there are some good tunes on it, a lot of it passed me by. By looking to be tasteful and pop classical it ends up being a bit too inoffensive and hotel lobby. I keep going on about it but I don’t think the sound and production help, and I did find a lot of it pretty bland and forgettable, particularly the 2nd half. The only saving graces are the vocal harmonies, they are uniformly excellent, and some of the lyrics, which are very wry and sardonic.
2 feels too low as it’s not terrible, so a solid middle of the road 3, mainly for the 2 or 3 good songs, the harmonies and some of the lyrics.
⭐⭐⭐️
Beatles
5/5
Rubber Soul
Hard to know what to write that we haven’t spoken about or has been written a million times by a million people. So, I’ve been trying to remember when I bought this album and memories of first hearing it.
My parents had the 1987 CD release of Revolver which I pinched off them some time in 94/95. They also had the red and blue albums on vinyl, which I recorded onto cassettes for my walkman and my midi hifi system. Then the Anthology TV show at the end of 1995 sent my Beatle fandom into overdrive and I started to collect their albums. I had the Anthology 1 album when it came out, and I think had that before I had any other albums. I also had a little CD sized book going through all their albums song by song, so I had read about all their songs many many times before hearing them.
I do remember getting Rubber Soul and talking about the song The Word with someone in my French A-Level class. I think it was summer, which would put it around May in 1996 or 1997, most likely from Virgin Records or HMV in Southampton (don't look for them, they're not there anymore). The red album had 6 songs from RS plus We Can Work it Out and Day Tripper and I think I might also have had Anthology 2 before RS, so I think it probably was May 97. I have very strong memories of buying The White Album and Sgt Pepper in HMV in Oxford Street in the summer of 96 in the middle of A-levels, (and reading the booklets and looking at the CDs on the train home, just desperate to be able to hear the songs I’d read about), and I think I would have bought those before Rubber Soul.
25+ years of accrued listening makes it hard to recall listening to it the first time, but I remember loving Think for Yourself and The Word when I got it, I think a lot to do with the bass, and in general the clear advances in sound, production, songs and lyrics from the pre Help era. I also thought about the line George says in Anthology about Rubber Soul and Revolver being part 1 and part 2 of the same album as not ringing true for me, (and although something like If I Needed Someone I could see on Revolver) but they are both very different. I think I remember liking I’m Looking Through You and You Won’t See Me as well. It still feels like a summer album, from buying it in the summer. I loved the cover too, I think 65/66 might be their best look, grown out Beatle cuts and cool jackets and sunglasses. I love the photos from the RS and Revolver recording sessions.
Like all their albums this has bought me so much joy over the years, and one of the beauties of Beatles albums is that you get into different songs and albums at different times. I was listening to RS a lot in February this year as I had a mini obsession with If I Needed Someone, I just kept wanting to hear it.
It’s also tricky to pick out individual songs as I love them all, but there are moments across the whole album that I love and still surprise and delight me, despite how famous, obvious or well know they are. The bass and piano on Drive My Car, the sitar and guitar doubled on Norwegian Wood, the skittish hi hat and fills on You Won’t See Me, vocal harmonies on Nowhere Man, the fuzz bass on Think For Yourself, the bass on The Word, the Gallic touches on Michelle, the jauntiness of What Goes On, the mysteriousness of Girl, the breakdown after ‘You’re not the same!’ on I’m Looking Through you (Ringo plays the Hammond on this!), Ringo’s grandfather clock drumming on In My Life, the upbeat plaintiveness of Wait, the whole of If I Needed Someone. I even like Run for Your Life despite it clearly being the weakest track and feeling like a bit of a throwback to BFS or Help
George’s guitar work is great, as usual serving the songs perfectly with little ostentatiousness, but Ringo’s drumming and Paul’s bass are really the stars (after the quality of the songs of course). There’s a bit of debate, but I’m pretty sure his is when Paul started using the Rickenbacker in the studio and probably when they recorded it directly into the mixing desk. It must be the Ric, as the bass is so much clearer in the mix and it sounds very different than previous albums. I think he’s also talked about the Ric and direct injection allowing him to write more melodic bass lines now that they could be heard and that would track with some absolutely superb lines and playing on here. As with all their albums its also brilliantly sequenced, I don't think the track order could be bettered.
The brilliance of George Martin (and Norman Smith) is also clear on here, if anyone needed any more proof. I know we have had numerous remasters of Beatles records but just listen to nearly any other album by any of their contemporaries in 1965. Kinda Kinks, The Kink Kontroversy, Rolling Stones No. 2, Out of Our Heads, My Generation - all great albums but the difference in production quality and sound is remarkable. I'd be interested if Giles Martin does Rubber Soul as the demix and remix this year. Obviously there were new mixes of the songs on the red album (plus If I Needed Someone) last year so it would make sense to do the rest of the songs too. Plus there must be some good extra stuff in the vault from the sessions.
Of course it’s a 5. Probably still behind Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road and the White Album for me but even their 5th best (or 6th or 7th etc) album is better than the best album by nearly any other band or artist.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️
The Jesus And Mary Chain
4/5
Psychocandy
I am a fan of this album, but I can see why it might be a bit marmite, they have a template and they work some variation around the edges, occasionally speeding things up, but there’s no doubting the songs are cut from similar cloth.
But I like that cloth a lot. Phil Spector/girl group/bubblegum pop drum foundation, Velvet Underground tempos and drone, Stooges guitar, a slowed down punk noise and sensibility, lots of feedback, some Beach Boys melodies and then some 50s echoey fraternal harmonies. Mix those threads up in a garment gumbo and, to my ears, you have a tasty outfit.
What I also like is that this is one of those albums where you can simultaneously hear both the influences and who they influenced.
Just Like Heaven, have always loved it, a great tune, their best version of their song, but there are other highlights, The Hardest Walk, Cut Dead, Taste of Cindy, Never Understand, Inside Me, My Little Underground, Somethings Wrong, It’s Do Hard. Actually that’s nearly every song. Some Candy Talking is probably their second best song, really very good.
So it comes down to whether you like their template or not. As you can tell I think it’s great, so it’s an easy 4 for me. I’m tempted to go 5, but Rubber Soul’s excellence is casting a bit of a shadow today.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Alanis Morissette
3/5
Jagged Little Pill
_I’m consumed by the chill of solitary_
At nearly 30 years remove I have developed a bit of a soft spot for You Oughta Know, Hand in my Pocket and Head over Feet. Ironic I’m still not sure about but I was interested to give this a listen to see if there were some more catchy pop rock tunes.
There are two issues though here: her singing and the cheesy production. The overall sound, arrangements, and the guitar in particular, are very bland. I do like a bit of soft rock but this isn’t good, in that it thinks it hard edged but is actually very hammy.
I really believe her sincerity in sharing her emotional tumult, but the humdrum and inoffensive music really pulls the rug from underneath her.
She does have a good voice and it can be very sweet, and I don’t even mind some of her trademark vocal affectations but she over sings fucking everything. Forgiven is the worst of both these worlds, turgid music and 5 minutes of incessant wailing. It’s genuinely hard to listen to. There is some restraint in Mary Jane and as a result the pleasing little melody gets some room to breathe and it’s quite a nice tune.
YOK, HIMP and HOF clearly stand out with All I Really Want too in the same fun pop rock vein and Mary Jane as welcome pared back tune. You Learn and Ironic the best of the rest, which is all pretty ordinary filler drowned in overwrought wailing.
It’s between a 2 and 3, I’ll go 3 for the 3 or 4 songs I do like and also that I appreciate her emotional soul bearing and she seems a good egg all round.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Amy Winehouse
5/5
Back to Black
Rehab and Back to Black are absolute bangers, modern classics.
You Know I’m No Good, Love is a Losing game and Tears Dry on their Own are also superb tracks. Great lyrics, great songs.
Tears Dry on their Own & Love is a Losing Game are also great.
Me & Mr Jones and Just Friends aren’t as strong for me, the melodies never quite lift off and they do stand out as a little weaker than the rest of the songs on the album.
Wake Up Alone is a real grower, it has all those 50s elements, the doo wop chord sequence, guitar accents and backing vocals.
Some Unholy War. Love the guitar triplets (?), the drum sound and bass driving the song. Very good.
He Can Only Hold Her. Also brilliant, love the horn arrangements and intertwined backing vocals.
Addicted. Brilliant 50s sound, again the brass and backing vocals are superb. Would think this is Ronson, but it’s Remi. Excellent.
It holds together as one thing very well considering it’s half produced by Ronson and half by Salaam Remi. Ronson really is very skilled at recreating certain sounds and eras. It doesn’t always work, occasionally falling into pastiche, but on here he is great. He manages to evoke songs and time periods without nicking wholesale, often landing in that satisfying uncanny valley of familiar and new.
It’s hard to avoid comparisons with Jagged Little Pill as it only came up yesterday (and it is a bit reductive to do so, and I don’t want to be dismissive of Alanis as an angry woman), but Amy’s confessional and honest lyrics are so good, very funny but very real and authentic, with loads of everyday details and observations that really pull you in. There’s anger and sadness but humour and resignation. They are colourful and vivid whereas Alanis’ are a bit flat and one note. Again I don’t want to diminish Alanis’ honesty and directness but Amy is in a different class.
The production, the voice, the 50s/60s aesthetic, the right amount of jazziness, pop, doo wop and early rock ’n’ roll, five truly great songs with only a couple of weaker moments and a short but very sweet 35 mins make this a superb listen. Think I did 5 listens on the bounce the morning and a couple more this afternoon.
It’s probably exactly a 4.5 but surely I must round up to 5, so I will. It’s a modern classic.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Soundgarden
3/5
Superunkown
Don’t know a great deal about Soundgarden, other than the singer is Chris Cornell and that Black Hole Sun is a great song.
First thing I noticed that this came across as a much better version of Pearl Jam, the guitar playing is a bit looser and funkier behind the heavy distortion.
Then I noticed that it is very samey. Black Hole Sun stands out and rightly endures, Spoonman is also very good. I also liked Half as a change of instrumentation and I also liked Like Suicide and My Wave.
Aside from that I found it hard to distinguish the songs or remember what was what. I think they are good at what they do, and there are some very good guitar moments, but I couldn’t really get into it. Maybe if I was 15 or 16 when this came out in 93 I might have got into it, but it doesn’t quite do it for me in 2024. It’s also very long at 70 minutes, which didn’t help.
I’m finding it hard to muster much for this review, as ultimately I feel pretty neutral about it. Not in a negative way but I’m struggling to find any particular feelings or opinions either way. It’s fine, I neither like nor dislike it, it’s neither my thing nor not my thing. Allowing for that I can see it’s a very good example of this type of album and Black Hole Sun is a banger so I’ll go for a straight down the middle 3.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Radiohead
5/5
OK Computer
Sweet sweet memories. Fountains Hall. Mmmm.
Despite Radiohead being one of my favourite bands I don’t revisit this all that often. I absolutely love their albums from Kid A onwards, and if I fancy a bit of Radiohead I tend to gravitate to A Moon Shaped Pool, Kid A, In Rainbows or King of Limbs. Those then often lead me on to The Eraser and the Atoms for Peace album. And then there’s The Smile, I love both their albums.
That’s not to denigrate this album at all, as it is, of course, absolutely superb, without a weak track or moment. It’s undoubtedly a classic, and listening today makes me think I really should listen to it more often.
When it came out, it felt like a real leap forward from The Bends (which is also obviously a huge step forward from Pablo Honey), taking that also brilliant album and building out into more experimental and atmospheric sounds and songwriting.
Looking at it now in the wider context of their discography, it also signposted where they were going to go next, with a sense that they had exhausted their interest in the guitar being what the band and songs were based around. Things like Exit Music (For a Film) and Climbing up the Walls, although they have relatively standard instruementation, they have a rhythmic and atmospheric quality that wouldn’t be out of place on Kid A or Amnesiac. Fitter Happier also and The Tourist.
There’s not much point going through song by song, as they are all without exception great, but my highlights are Airbag with its brilliant awkward riff, Let Down with it’s lovely poppy melody, Paranoid Android because its just fucking great. Electioneering and No Surprises also. In fact give me any of these songs. Love em all.
It’s as easy a 5 as Rubber Soul.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
3/5
The Message
‘Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
Til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell’
Obviously The Message is a classic, not just in early hip hop but in music generally, but I wasn’t expecting much else from this. Not in a bad way, I just assumed that this would be interesting from a historical perspective but would be a mixed bag musically, aside from The Message. Perhaps a lot of filler and turn tabling but not much else.
She’s Fresh is really good though. Not much rapping but musically a great bit of early hip hop party music, quite an 80s RnB sound but with a good beat. It’s Nasty (Genius of Love) is also an excellent bit of early rap. Great use of Tom Tom Club before ODB and Mariah. This is a strong start and much better than I was expecting.
Scorpio is fun too but not as strong as the first two tracks. Quite Afrika Bambaataa in its electro space sounding vocoder. The drum machine sounds I like. It’s a Shame (Mt Airy Groove). I suppose they can’t call it anything else. Nice use of the sample though and some good scratching. I like it.
Dreamin’ - what the fuck is this?! Not expecting this at all. You Are, more what the fuck? What’s happening? This is odd. Not because these two songs are bad, they are fine enough examples of early 80s soul and RnB, although they are perilously close to Sexual Chocolate territory (and if I heard Lonely Island sing them I wouldn’t be surprised), but it seems so strange that they would write and perform such conventionally structured songs. It doesn’t feel like an experiment in versatility and diversity more like we need two more tracks. And the spoken word bit about meeting Stevie is unintentionally very amusing. Maybe they are meant to be joke songs. Not sure. Just feels very strange
The Message, aside from the lines above I always like the bit where he says ‘broke my sacroiliac’. Brilliant song, rightly a classic and a landmark song.
I listened to the original UK release with The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel as the last track, rather than with the extra tracks, which is probably a good thing. TAOGFOTWOS is still a great track and brilliant but of musical history.
I think it’s probably around 3 in terms of the music itself and that it doesn’t really feel like a ‘proper’ album. But as a historically significant musical landmark and as something so influential it’s a surely a 5. I don’t think I can give it a 5 though, and even a 4 feels a touch high. I could argue to myself that The Message and TAOGFOTWOS are worthwhile enough to push it to 4, but 3 feels about right.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fatboy Slim
3/5
You’ve Come a Long Way Baby
Oh the warm, warm piss of nostalgia on my face. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the album in its entirety but the singles are so seared into my memory. I can feel the red vinyl covers and the stickiness of the tables, I can smell the disinfectant and beer and I can see the tiny tv up in the corner of the Grey bar when I hear The Rockerfeller Skank. I can see us all standing around, waiting for the pool table and thinking about pizza.
The big singles, Rockefeller Skank, Gangster Tripping, Right Here, Right Now still sound great, brilliant bits of pop music. Kind of Moby and DJ Shadow-esque in the samples they use, with Gangster Tripping even sampling DJ Shadow of course, but with a very pop party music attitude. The fact they still get used in TV, films and adverts 26 years later shows how strong they remain and how little they have dated. And then Praise You is just a genuinely brilliant song, irrespective of genre, and it rightly endures as a pop classic.
Fucking in Heaven is fine but not as strong, the guitar part/sample/interpolation really does date it and it doesn’t really have a strong enough hook for me.
Build it Up, Tear it Down and Kalifornia are fun and stronger musically and have good hooks, but Soul Surfing and You’re Not from Brighton are similar to Fucking in Heaven, fun enough but not at the heights of the other songs. Love Island is a good dance track and Acid 8000 is a fun in a squelchy way. It feels like there are 3 tiers to the album: Great - RHRN, TRS, GT, Praise You; Good but not as good - BIUTID, Kalifornia, Love Island, Acid 800 and fine but a bit fillery - FIH, SS, YNFB.
Obviously the whole genre is based around repetition and groove, but I suppose Fatboy Slims take on it is to put that together with sampling and making it very accessible and poppy, and it works really well for the most part, but some hooks are better than others and you can’t help thinking the album format isn’t the best for this - you kind of want to hear them at a party, in a bar, club, pub at a festival. All places I frequent on the reg these days.
It also suffers from a bit of bloat, each track is long and the whole album at just over an hour feels lengthy. Some judicious editing of tracks or just losing a couple of tracks altogether to get to 45-50 mins would be good.
As an album I’m not sure it really works but then again that’s not the point. But it does have some truly great tracks and within the genre each song has it’s merits, you’d be happy to hear any of them on a night out. It’s one of those albums I’m glad to have a listen to, but ultimately it’s a ‘pick your best songs for a playlist and then probably never listen to again album’.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Temptations
4/5
Clound Nine
I do like The Temptations psychedelic soul period, after David Ruffin left. Like everyone I love their earlier ‘classic’ stuff but I was interested to hear this in full as I only know Clould Nine and Run Away Child, Running Wild.
I love the excellent Cloud Nine, a brilliant bit of psychedelic pop soul. Running Away Child, Running Wild is also great, in that similar vein as Cloud Nine, Papa was a Rollin’ Stone, Psychedelic Shack, Ball of Confusion. Quite a simple electric piano riff, great bass and drums and nice guitar accents. Along with Sly and the Family Stone this really laid the groundwork for Funk and the Parliament-Funkadelic albums in the 70s. I think George Clinton worked at Motown so I’m pretty sure would have been around the Temptations and would likely have played on some of their songs.
I’m Not as keen on their version of I Heard it Through the Grapevine, obviously Marvin’s is the definitive version but I don’t think the riff on piano works, and they style in which they’ve done it makes it sound quite lounge.
The second side is almost like a completely different album. I was expecting more 9 minutes psych soul jams, but it’s 7 tracks in the traditional style of the Temptations and Motown. Even if they may not be top tier Motown tracks they are still all superior examples of the type of throwaway pop music Motown seemed to casually toss off at the time. Excellent playing, (particularly bass and particularly bass on I Need Your Lovin’), great vocal group harmonies, sympathetic production make an extremely enjoyable listening experience, especially on my final listen through this rainy Sunday morning. The last 4 tracks from I Need Your Lovin’ to Gonna Keep Trying till I Win your Love I particularly enjoyed. Again even though they aren’t top tier Motown they give you those little dopamine hits of joy in a way not much else can.
Overall it’s kind of tricky to rate as it seems like two psychedelic soul freak outs, a weird demo seeming version of I Heard I Through The Grapevine and then half a record of classic Temptation style tracks. The first side is clearly very influential and Cloud Nine is a truly great track, and then the second side is very enjoyable vocal soul. Three feels a bit low, it’s not quite a 4, but I’ll go 4 for Cloud Nine, the playing and the vocals.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Beach Boys
4/5
The Beach Boys Today!
I’ve never really delved into the Beach Boys albums pre Pet Sounds, I kind of assumed due to the quantity of them and the duplicated songs on some of them that they would be musically all over the shop - much better to listen to a best of. This album confounded that idea though.
Do You Wanna Dance, I’ve always loved this, it is a brilliantly joyful pop song. It wasn’t till I was reading after that I learned this was a cover. I love the hook at the start of each line being replicated in the chorus though, and the ‘hit’ of music and vocals and harmonies at the chorus is just a fantastic moment. I listened to the original out of curiosity and the BBs version really does lift what is quite a flat song.
Good to my Baby feels a little early Beach Boys by numbers in comparison, as does Be Good to My Little Sister, although the drop in ‘why don’t you love her…’ part elevates it, a really lovely little melodic and harmonic moment.
When I Grow Up to be a Man is really interesting, lyrically and thematically not standard fare for early 65 and you can see how this might have influenced (and been influenced by) John to write even more personally - In My Life followed not long after this.
Help me Rhonda is a greatest hits staple that you can easily overlook, but it’s great, the modulating sound level into the chorus is great, and as you’d expect, brilliant harmonies.
Dance, Dance, Dance is a bit of I Get Around clone, albeit a fun listen, and does feel a bit like the filler I was expecting.
Please Let Me Wonder, however, feels very very different, with a tenderness and maturity standing in stark contrast to Dance, Dance, Dance. This clearly feels like a turning point, noticeably more interesting melodically and musically. The bass is great throughout and all the different instrumental hooks. Superb.
I’m So Young sounds great too, but again I didn’t realise this was a cover until after. It is a nice tune and arrangement but isn’t massively different from the original and is a little bit filler-y.
Kiss me, Baby, really beautiful and tender, similar to Please Let Me Wonder. I love the ‘up and downess’ of it, little peaks and troughs and a gorgeous sounding chorus. Lovely.
She Knows Me Too Well, another beautiful and wistful song, but with a kind of fragile tension to it, a little bit of uncertainty thematically and musically. The jealousy theme also must have resonated with Lennon.
In The Back of My Mind, what a song. Again this must have been hugely influential, with a lovely vocal. It’s really sad and has a loneliness to it, and melodically/harmonically it’s really interesting, a similar skill that the Beatles have in creating a musical feeling that matches or contests the lyrics.
I really do like a lot of their albums post Pet Sounds, there are some absolute gems and a lot of brilliant stuff on Smiley Smile, Holland, Friends, 20/20, Wild Honey etc, but I’ve tended to struggle with Pet Sounds itself, finding it hard to get into, but I wonder if this might help, in the way that Help feeds into Rubber Soul and Rubber Soul into Revolver. I was really surprised how good this was versus my expectations, and that feeling of a change happening as you listen to the 2nd side, a branching out and a maturity.
In terms of a score I think it’s a 4, just due to the unevenness and ‘throwbacknees’ of the 1st side, although the contrast between the surf pop and the introspection is pretty cool. It doesn’t feel as complete in the way Rubber Soul does - and I think we are comparing the Beach Boys to the Beatles here, holding them to a slightly higher standard than other groups of the time - so a 4 it is.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
David Bowie
5/5
Hunky Dory
For a long time this was possibly my favourite Bowie album, although it has been superseded by others, and as a result I haven’t listened to this for quite a while.
Of course it still is truly excellent. Despite on the surface being one of his most ‘conventional’ albums it really is full of odd little corners and strange/absorbing/literary/facist*/cryptic lyrics, all the while being carried by a cinematic musical momentum, whether folk, orchestral, music hall or guitar led rock. There are some fantastic strings and horns and brilliant arrangements and instrumentation. Also I only just made the connection that the producer, Ken Scott, is the same Ken Scott who was engineer for quite a few Beatles sessions.
*not really, he just mentions Himmler and homo superior a bit.
I won’t necessarily go through song by song, as I genuinely like every one on here, but there are moments throughout that I love. The guitar in the intro of Eight Line Poem for example, or the Dr Who beeps on Andy Warhol and the acoustic guitar line intro. I like the music hall influences too, similar to Macca in that regard. And I’ve always loved the opening stanza of Oh! You Pretty Things. Also I took me a while to appreciate Quicksand, but it really is a superb song. I’ve also never noticed it before but the way he sings ‘still the days seem the same’ at 1.44 in Changes is very very Dylan.
Life on Mars stood out today - not because I’m not aware of what an incredible song it is - but sometimes you hear something you’ve heard a thousand times in a slightly different way. Maybe it’s mood, what you are doing or how receptive your brain is but it just seems different and feels fresh. I suppose that’s the thing that separates the truly great artists (your Bowies, your Youngs, your Tamsin Archers, your Beatles, your Dylans) from the good, that the songs endure and evolve as time passes, you find moments or angles you never noticed before and it feels like a new song.
It’s of course an easy 5. Not just a transformational album in his career but one of the greatest albums ever recorded. If he only ever released this album he would still be regarded as one of the greatest ever.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Manu Chao
2/5
Clandestino
I feel like I’ve been trapped on a canal boat with an 55 year old weirdo who hasn’t finished doing it up or hasn’t cleaned it in ages. It smells of BO and stale weed. All the cups and mugs are really tea stained. There is a bed but there are no sheets on it. However there is a duvet cover on the very thin duvet and a pillow case on the single pillow. The furniture is made from bits of fucked wood. I want to leave but he’s trapped me an intense conversation about being a common law freeman.
⭐️⭐️
2Pac
4/5
Me Against the World
'I was raised in the city, shitty
Ever since I was an itty bitty kitty
Drinkin' liquor out my momma's titty'
I’ve not really listened to 2pac much, aside from California Love, which I probably like more for the Dre production. I never really liked his delivery and the sense of aggression I perceived him to have (although I have to acknowledge that might be unconscious bias against the stereotypical angry black man on my part). However I’ve seen a few docs and read a bit about Hip Hop and him and it always seems like there’s much more to him than the perception of a a violent gangsta rapper. His background and life story are pretty interesting, a lot conflictions and contradictions, so I was interested to listen to this.
I suppose there are two or three things to listen out for with a lot of hip hop albums, the production and the rapping style and lyrics.
Production-wise, I’m not so keen on some of the drum sounds, but I do like the west coast tempo and the construction of the beats themselves. And in general I do like the g-funk sound, with that whistley keyboard (?) sound in the background, as on Lord Knows, and the 70s soul guitar and string sounds. Some of the backing vocals and vocal hooks I really don’t like though, particularly the male vocals on Young N-z and the female vocals on Can U Get Away. There are also some great samples, eg Walk on By on If I Die 2Nite and Stevie on So Many Tears.
Lyrically while on the surface there’s a fair bit of N words, drugs and violence, for me isn’t necessarily a simple glorification of those things - similar to Nas it feels more like reportage of what he’s actually seen and done. And Songs like Dear Mama and Can U Get Away are quite unusual set against the pervasive misogyny of a lot of the other rap around at the time. And overall there just seems to be a resignation, sadness and bleakness about it all. Even Intro, which could be seen as braggadocio about being shot and checking out of hospital feels more like an attempt to acknowledge some kind of trauma to me and it’s striking how often he undercuts and questions the violence, the assumptions and hopelessness of what he experienced, particularlly on Death Around the Corner and Outlaw. That’s not to say there’s no stereotypical guns’n’hoes stuff on here but it’s less frequent than the more considered and thoughtful stuff.
I also started to appreciate his delivery more after this, he does have a unique style but some of his rhymes and wordplay are great. There is also something faintly Dylanesque with his cadence, the way he delivers Me Against the World and some of Dear Mama for eg.
Reading a bit more about his career he seemed to embrace a more overtly gangsta stance and style after this album, becoming almost a caricature of the West Coast Thug Life rapper. I guess that might overshadow this album or paint it in the same light, but I don’t think that would be fair, as it seems to me there is a lot of depth lyrically and thematically to this.
I’m by no means a hip hop aficionado, and obviously his experience is so far removed from my own experiences but I really liked this album and found it really interesting. Even if some of the production elements I wasn’t as keen on I enjoyed the sound overall, and the lyrics and delivery are worth repeat listens - there is a lot of density to it and getting beyond my initial perceptions of him being a gangsta rapper and aggression I got a lot out of it. I’m definitely going to give the albums before this a listen and may give All Eyez on Me a listen too, for a bit more context.
It’s probably between around a 3.5 but I’ll round up to 4 as I was surprised how much I got from this and I’m sure I’ll be revisiting it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Richard Hawley
3/5
Coles Corner
I like Richard Hawley, and I really love the track Time Is from Further, but I’m not that familiar with a lot of his oeuvre, including this one, although I am aware of it.
Coles Corner is not a promising start at all, pretty anaemic and very Bridget Jones soundtrack. Just Like the Rain and Hotel Room are better but only marginally, (although I did warm a bit more to Just Like the Rain on the 2nd and 3rd listen)
Darlin wait for me is really rather lovely though, more what I was expecting. The Ocean is very nice too, the circular strings arrangement is very evocative.
Born Under a Bad Sign I wasn’t as keen on, again drifting a bit close to the line of inspipidity
I Sleep Alone is great, and again more in line with what I was expecting. Love his voice on it. Tonight I also liked a lot, lyrically and musically, particularly the lead guitar sound and the string motif. I also really like the Sun Studios slapback echo production style and Johnny Cash-ness on (Wading Through) The Waters of my Time.
Who’s Going to Shoe your Pretty Feet and Last Orders passed me by a little bit, they felt like interesting musical ideas that don’t quite reach fruition.
I get the impression that he’s finding his style with this, working out how to combine his influences (Morrisey, Johnny Cash, Rockabilly, Country, Crooners) into something more unique and representative of him. I also definitely prefer his voice on his recent albums where it’s a bit rougher round the edges, a bit careworn with a more lived in feel to it.
Overall it’s a bit of a mixed bag for me. There are some really lovely songs, and maybe it suffers from high expectations, but there’s a bit of a pervasive sense of Radio 2 to much of the rest of it, a sense that if this was a Chris Rea or Mark Knopfler album it would likely be dismissed as bland and middle of the road. However those good songs and interesting moments do elevate it, and even if I wasn’t already aware of him I would be intrigued to delve into his catalogue and find out more about him.
I’ll go 3, that maybe low but I think I’m holding him to high standards.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
(Ps I think Paul might mention his train journey at dusk playlist in his review)
Talking Heads
4/5
Fear of Music
I love Talking Heads and I love this album, although it’s probably in the 2nd tier of their stuff for me. It’s probably the hardest to get into melodically but I love the rhythms on it and its overall atmosphere and sound. Eno’s fingerprints are all over it, adding texture and texture electronic gurgles and noises. Love the cover too.
I Zimbra is one of my favourite songs on the album, with that Tina Weymouths bass, the shuffling beat and the African style guitar. Mind has its moments, including the guitar at the back end but it never quite feels like it quite comes together.
I really like Paper, great guitar and bass and I love whatever David Byrne is barking on about. Kind of nice synthesis of Television and the disco-ish dance beat they play with. Cities is great too, quite a simple piano riff but I love the words.
Life During Wartime is probably the strongest song on the album and is a great example of their combination of angularity, jerky rhythms and catchiness. Excellent.
Despite the ominous bass and overall tone of Memories Can’t Wait it’s not one of my highlights.
Air is great though, kind of funny lyric about breathing being bad but I love some of the little melodic runs before they veer off into odd directions.
Heaven is superb too, the most conventional song on the album, with a noticeable air of sadness and melancholy.
The ‘nuts and berries’ bit of Animals is great, but I’m not a fan of the rest of the song. Electric Guitar is fine, similar to Air in its unexpected melodic moments but not necessarily the strongest.
And the. Drugs is fantastic, up there with Life During Wartime as a stand out track. Simple and insistent, atmospheric and oddly melodic, it really gets under your skin.
For a lot of contemporaneous bands and a lot of bands in general this would be a 5, but for Talking Heads I’ll go a 4. That feels a bit low considering other albums I’ve given 5 to, but I think I’m judging them to a higher standard (a bit like Richard Hawley actually). There are some great tracks and in terms of ambition it is a step forward from More Songs About Buildings and Food, but it doesn’t feel as coherent and as rounded as Remain in Light, or my favourite, Speaking in Tongues.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Elbow
3/5
The Seldom Seen Kid
I’ve always struggled a bit with Elbow. I bought their first album when it came out as there was a lot of hype, but I couldn’t get on with it despite trying, ultimately finding them a bit dull.
I did however like Grounds for Divorce when it came out and it still sounds great, a lovely bit of slightly off kilter pop/rock. One Day Like This has been absolutely BBC’d to death, and despite it being a well crafted and catchy bit of music, I’m just not ready to embrace it yet.
Starling is nice, with some nice little touches and I liked Mirrorball a lot. I loved the horns on Weather to Fly, the brass band feel kind of reminds me of When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease any Roy Harper. The Fix is also great, the carnival organ and our old friend Richard Hawley lends a very pleasing gravity to it. A very nice song. A lot of the rest of it however passed me by a bit, kind of merging in to one slightly pedestrian one-tempo slog.
There is undoubtedly a lot of sincerity, craft and skill to it, but much of that craft does feel too deliberate and too confected on occasion - too much perspiration rather than inspiration. though, , but I can’t quite shake a feeling of ambivalence. There are lovely moments sprinkled throughout, and Guy Garvey writes some very good lyrics, but overall it does get a bit plodding. I know it’s not necessarily what they are aiming at but I did wish there was a bit more energy or excitement to it
I definitely didn’t dislike it, there is a lot to admire, and they know how to do what they do really well, but in the end it doesn’t quite resonate with me beyond the 4 or 5 songs above. As I’m unlikely to listen again it could be a 2, but that does feel a bit low for the craft on here so I’ll go 3.
⭐⭐⭐️
Nick Drake
5/5
Bryter Later
It’s pleasing that by the end of this we have will have had all three of Nick Drake’s albums in chronological order. Bryter Later is sometimes my favourite of the three but they all swap around depending on the day. And obviously they are all 5 star albums.
I won’t go through track by track, each one is a little gem of beauty, but my highlights are always Hazey Jane II, One of These Things First, Fly and Northern Sky, which is probably my best ND song.
I enjoyed reading a bit about the album today and how he wanted to evoke Pet Sounds with the instrumentation. I can kind of see that, although obviously it sounds very different but I can see the common threads. Also I never realised that John Cale and Fairport Convention played on it. I must have read that on the CD liner notes but I don’t remember that at all.
I do really like the arrangements and overall sounds of this, particularly in contrast to the pared back Pink Moon and the kind of in-between FLL. Although they does walk a fine line between pretty and MOR, the strings and horns I think are great, and the playing is also very good. It would be quite easy for that also to slip into slight schmaltzy-ness, but it doesn’t, keeping things relatively simple and straight. Along with the strings and horns, the playing really enhances the gentle, bucolic atmosphere. It really is a very lovely listen.
So, obviously a 5 for me Greengrass
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Violent Femmes
4/5
Violent Femmes
Blister in the Sun is another Durham memory trigger, watching Gross Pointe Blank on VHS and listening to the soundtrack. Clearly the standout track on here, a great song. Is it about wanking? I never felt like it was to me.
They have a distinctive sound with the acoustic bass being almost the lead melodic instrument and the no frills drumming. It does give each song a very similar sound and feel, but after a few listens I realised I really liked that sound and their style. A kind of wonky slightly off kilter jittery indie pinkish pop that I found very endearing. I think they must get a lot of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers comparisons as there are a lot of commonalities; unexpected slightly caustic lyrics: a punk sensibility but on acoustic instruments and an overall very singular style. And I presume they were very influential, especially on the 80s and 90s US lo-fi stuff.
Kiss Off I liked, echoes of Solitary Man in the intro and Please Do Not Go too, even if on first listen it sounds like it might be a rewrite of Blister in the Sun.
Add it Up has more than a hint of One by One by Foo Fighters. I like its energy and its build towards the end. Confessions is a nice change of pace until the last minute or so, I do like the chaotic ending.
Prove My Love is probably the 2nd best song behind Blister in the Sun, as another great bit of catchy indie pop. Really enjoyable. Promise is a bit Prove My Love part 2 without being as good although I do like the musical hook.
To the Kill I liked a lot on repeated listens, has a kind of insistent groove to the music and like the melody of the chorus. Gone Daddy Gone is a bit of a re-has of Add it Up, although I liked the xylophone as a slight differentiator.
Good Feeling I really liked, I really enjoyed the wonky sweetness of it and the fiddle is a nice addition.
Overall I really enjoyed this. On first listen it felt quite samey but I really got into it on repeat listens and a few songs really stood out, Add it Up, Confessions, Prove My Love, To the Kill and Good Feeling, along with Blister in the Sun. In terms of a rating I’m stuck between a 3 and a 4, but I think I’ll tip over into 4, mainly as I enjoyed it for it’s offbeat energy and distinctiveness, and that I’m certain it will be a grower as I’m definitely going to revisit it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kraftwerk
4/5
Autobahn
I do love this album although in totality it’s not quite on the same consistent level as Trans Europe Express or The Man Machine for me. But then the title track is one of the best things ever recorded.
Side 1 - 22 minutes of brilliance. It doesn’t feel long despite only a few variations on its structure and melody. It’s hypnotic and propulsive rhythm evokes the movement of the car, while the synths create a feeling of space, vista and excitement. Actual car journeys can be boring, but this feels like a car journey without the boredom. It is a truly remarkable bit of music, fantastic, massively influential and ultimately incredibly satisfying.
Side 2 has its moments but doesn’t reach the heights of Autobahn, although Kometenmelodie 2 is a great track in its own right, I guess a soundtrack to a comet flying through space before accelerating and burning out.
Mitternacht always sounds a bit like Save the Life of a Child to me, with the synth sounds and chords, also combined with a bit of Higher than the Sun by Primal Scream.
I love the flute and pain on Morgenspaziergang, and although it does give me the feeling of a spring woodland in the morning, it does feel like a nice idea in search of a fuller composition, perhaps similar to Mitternacht in that regard
They are incredible though in how what they do evokes feelings and touches the senses, considering they are 4 slightly odd men building electronic music with an almost stereotypical degree of German practicality and logic.
Finding it quite hard to score, the second side, despite moments of brillance is inconsistent, particularly compared to side 1, which I think pushes it down to 4. But then Autobahn is so good it could be a 5 all on its own. I think I’ll go 4, just in comparison to TEE and TMM and also, like some other top tier artists I’m holding them to a higher standard.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Taylor Swift
4/5
Evermore
I’m pleased this came up as I have no idea where to start with Taylor Swift. I know some of the bigger singles but she seems to release an album every few weeks and I get a bit confused by it all. Indeed I’d never actually heard of this album but understand it was released not long after Folklore, which I had actually heard of, but never listened to.
Willow, this is very nice. Love the percussion and pared back instrumentation. Champagne Problems a bit of the opposite of a grower, as it started to grate a bit after a couple of listens.
I really liked Gold Rush, love that pulse under the chorus and the slightly dreamy feel. I wasn’t as keen ’Tis the Damn Season. Although the electric guitar figure is nice the use of Damn in the title I find a little irritating. Tolerate It is a fine bit of slow tempo pop music, and I liked the percussion on it.
No Body, No Crime, I really liked this one on repeated listens. I like Haim anyway but I enjoyed the revenge fantasy lyrics and - enjoyed the Nebraska style harmonica. Happiness is a grower too, really nicely constructed with a spooky mistiness to it.
Dorothea I found a bit forgettable, it has a bit of a 90s soft rock feel to it. Coney Island, however, I really liked. Her and the guy from The National’s voices work really nicely together.
I liked the guitar on Ivy, although at times it veers quite close to Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants. Cowboy like Me is another fine bit of country indie pop if a tiny bit forgettable. Long Story Short was nice change of tempo, although it feels like it never quite takes off in the way it should.
Marjorie really passed me by and Closure I wasn’t keen on, the vocal intonation on ‘do-in better’ is annoying.
Evermore is great though, love the piano riff and the duet. Excellent closing track with a great feel.
I’m not sure if you are supposed to listen to Folklore first to understand the context of this and also I don’t know enough about her whole catalogue to judge how this sits alongside her other stuff but I thought this was a great collection of country-ish indie pop. She seems to have that great knack of making things seem effortless, and I like her approach to vocals. I guess she can belt things out if she wants but sings with a tasteful restraint and poise. Sure there is a fair bit of earnestness and sometimes she does walk the line of winsomeness but I think she just about keeps out of trouble in the main.
Overall I really liked it, but it is a little bit long at an hour. I get that there is a consistent musical and stylistic intent behind this, which I think has been realised, but an hour is a lot, it definitely dips in places. It would benefit massively to lose say Champagne Problems, ’Tis the Damn Season, Dorothea, Marjorie and Closure and bring it down to 45 mins.
Vacillating between 3 and 4. It’s a very well made and tasteful album with some very very good songs, and I would definitely put this on again. It also makes we want to give the albums either side of this a go, so I’ll just tip over to a 4.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
The Clash
5/5
London Calling
Haven’t listened to this for a while, so it’s nice to revisit it and re-confirm how great it is.
Kind of picks up the template of the White Album in its eclecticism and exploration of musical styles. There’s nothing on here that really harks back to their previous more obviously punk records, apart from perhaps Clampdown and Death or Glory, but even those depart move into slightly different territories, eg the middle eight in Clampdown.
My highlights are Rudie Can’t Fail, Spanish Bombs, Lost in the Supermarket, Clampdown, Guns of Brixton, Lover’s Rock, I’m Not Down and Train in Vain, but I genuinely like every song, there’s none I would think about skipping.
Each song could stand on its own, but they work even better together as a collection. Despite the variety of styles there’s a consistent energy that runs throughout, again similar to the White Album. The eclecticism and willingness to try and do what they want rather than what is expected of them ties it all together.
Mick Jones guitar playing is excellent throughout. He was always interested in more than just 3 chord punk thrashing and his runs and textures on this are excellent, Lover’s Rock is a great example of this, a bit rock, a bit disco, a bit funk and a bit jazz. Topper Headon is great as always and I love Paul Simonon’s bass tone.
Listening has reminded me of why I like the Clash so much. Their first album is great, but they took a turn out of punk from London Calling onwards, into doing whatever they wanted, being open to what was going on around them with reggae, disco and hip hop, and looking back to the influences on the 60s bands they loved to create a kind of mishmash of all sorts. The albums after LC wouldn’t be as coherent but they still made some incredible music on Sandinista and Combat Rock (even Cut the Crap has one truly excellent song in This is England).
But this is the best they did and is rightfully up there with the best albums of all time
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
And as Paul is obsessed with length and requested I address it in my review, I shall: It isn’t too long.
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
Stand!
I’m a big fan of Sly and the Family Stone, although I think they are one of those bands that, because they were so influential and ground breaking, the slightly inconsistent nature of their 3 classic albums gets a bit glossed over.
After Booker T & the MGs one of the first multiracial bands, as well as being multi gender, and they were pretty much the first to take soul into a psychedelic direction, bringing in rock influences and laying the template for funk.
Stand! Is a great opener, despite the midget lyric. I like the build with each chorus, and the breakdown at the end.
Don’t Call Me is a bit dated, but makes sense in the context of them being a racially integrated band in the mid- late 60s.
I Want To Take You Higher rightfully endures as classic, essentially laying the template for funk. Great groove, bass and guitar.
Somebody’s Watching you is one of the weaker track, only really held together by Larry Grahams bass. Sing a Simple Song gets things back on track, the organ and horn interplay is great, very tight.
Everyday People, another classic. Love the ‘We’ve got to live together’ delivery. The message might be a bit simplistic but in the context of the times and the band themselves it’s does have some weight to it still.
Sex Machine is a funny one, I love Cynthia’s drumming and the groove is excellent, but it doesn’t really go anywhere over the course of a long 13 minutes.
You Can Make it If you Try feels a bit of a throwback to their previous album and, although a good song, it feels a bit lightweight in comparison to some of the other songs on here.
A a couple of decent tracks, a couple of weaker ones and then 3 stone cold classics in Stand!, IWTTYH and Everyday People lands this as a solid 4, especially in the context of the ethos of band themselves, the time it was made and the influences it would have in the years after.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
Live at the Star-Club Hamburg
Generally not a fan of live albums so wasn’t looking forward to this. There’s two versions on Tidal, a German release and what I presume is the UK/US release, but it only has 8 songs and different track listing from what’s on Wikipedia, but at 22 minutes I thought at least it would be over quickly.
It’s nice to have my expectations and assumptions turned on their head though, I thought this was great. The energy is fucking nuts.
Despite Jerry-Lee being an objectively terrible human being his piano playing is superb on this, and you can genuinely feel his stage presence and showmanship in the audio.
The band, particularly the drummer, are great too. Pretty much straight ahead rockabilly/rocknroll playing but they absolutely stomp. Just read it’s the drummer from The Animals. As a side note, I’ve been listening to that History of RocknRoll in 500 songs podcast and, due to musician union rules in the 60s backing bands weren’t allowed to go to the US from the UK and vice versa and take other musicians jobs. So if a singer like Jerry Lee Lewis or Gene Vincent or Muddy Waters went on tour to the UK they had to use UK musicians as a backing band, which is how I guess Barry Jenkins ended up on here.
Anyhow, the classics are all present and correct, delivered with manic intensity, but I really love the version of Money. Great choice of song, although Money was released very early in their history, Motown hadn’t quite become the musical force and phenomenon by early 64, so it’s an interesting choice. Maybe a nod to the Beatles cover, or a nod to blues, country and RocknRoll branching out into what would become soul. Or like Lennon he just liked the literal message.
Love the version of Your Cheating Heart too, a lot of tenderness in his vocal and a nice drop in tempo before the finish. Whole Lotta Shakin’ absolutely slaps/bangs/fucks, as the kids would say.
Kind of tempted to go 5. As a snapshot of primal RocknRoll it’s absolutely amazing, but it is a live album, so maybe it doesn’t count as a a proper ‘album’, whatever that means. So I’ll go 4, but if everyone else goes 5 I’ll change it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Cure
3/5
Seventeen Seconds
To the trees!
Firstly and foremostly, A Forest. What a song. Clearly the best Cure song and an absolute copper bottomed classic.
On first listen I wasn’t keen, every song selling an attempt to rehash A Forest, but never actually getting there.
However I liked it more on the second go around and even more on the third. Yes there is a slightly templated feel but I started to like it; Motorik drums, straight ahead bass, slight guitar delay and a simplistic but insistent instrumental hook. It’s definitely a grower, once you attune yourself to the nature of the grooves.
Secrets, I think Mike Skinner must have nicked this for Empty Cans from A Grand Don’t Come for Free.
In Your House, M, At Night and Seventeen started to stand out to me on those repeated listens.
It’s definitely not a 2, A Forest is so good it can’t be. It’s not a 4, so that makes it a solid 3 I think, one of those ones that will reveal itself with more listens. I can see me putting this one while working, the tempos, slightly repetitive template and the horizontal melodies would suit it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Specials
5/5
The Specials
Another one I listened to a lot at uni but have only intermittently put on over the intervening years, although through cultural osmosis it feels like I hear A Message to You Rudy and Too Much Too Young pretty frequently.
It’s been fun listening to it today though, reminding myself why I used to listen to it so much and also thinking I might appreciate it even more than I did then - it’s great!
And through better headphones it sounds much better now than it did 25 years ago. It always sounded quite thin on CD to me, but now the drums and bass seem much fatter and fuller and I feel I can hear more instrumentation. That might be my mind playing tricks - I remember the jewel case and booklet felt quite cheap lightweight and and I don’t know about you but if the packaging on a CD felt quite lightweight and cheap I often thought the music sounded thin too.
The ska rhythms and bass playing with the more prominent lead guitar, the punk tempo and attitude with the lyrical social commentary is a winning combo. And 45 years after it was released the energy and enthusiasm is remarkable, you can still feel the sincerity and intent.
Beside the deceptively skilled playing each song is brilliantly arranged, whether its an original or an ‘inspired by’ cover. I assume Elvis Costello had a hand in that alongside Jerry Dammers, but there’s a fair bit of instrumental texture and tone that isn’t always that obvious.
I think each song stands on it’s own, but aside from AMTYR and TMTY I’ve always loved Nite Club (particularly the horn arrangement), Concrete Jungle, Monkey Man (superb keyboards), Blank Expression and You’re Wondering Now. And today Doesn’t Make it Alright, Too Hot and Blank Expression stood out
After the first listen this morning I thought 4, but on repeat listens it’s definitely a 5 for me. Aside from the quality of songs and playing it’s just a brilliant, exciting listen - danceable but also lyrically interesting, of it’s time but also timeless. I think it’s one of those albums that everyone says is a classic so you either just assume it is or find it underwhelming, but listening to it, it’s clear its a genuinely brilliant bit of musical synthesis and overall a superb album.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Flying Burrito Brothers
4/5
The Gilded Palace of Sin
I bought the Gram Parsons Anthology when it came out (in 2001, fucking hell), which was an overview of his career from The International Submarine Band up to his death. I really liked it and had always liked Sweetheart of the Rodeo, but for some reason I never tried any of the Flying Burrito Brothers. I guess that’s due to being in the pre streaming age when I was listening to that Anthology so had limited music purchasing resources.
Anyhow, Christine’s Tune is great, a great example of Gram and Chris Hillman’s ideas for synthesising country and rock. Leaning more heavily on the country aspect but with a great, psychedelic rock guitar break.
Sin City is a great track too, the subject matter is very country and I’m not sure how tongue in cheek it is, but it’s a great lilting and pared back country tune.
The two soul covers of Do Right Woman and Dark End of the Street work well next to each other. Dark End of the Street in particular is fantastic, love the tack piano interplay with the bass and the harmonies are excellent.
My Uncle is a fun little country toe tapper, the pedal steel and mandolin work well together. Wheels has some interesting moments, I love the slightly hippy rock intro, the fuzzy guitar and the piano.
Juanita - have always loved this one, the intro is great, very evocative and lovely tune. The Stones loved Gram and you can see that here.
Hot Burrito 1 is another solid song, I love the instrumentation with the strummed guitar way back in the mix. Hot Burrito 2 I’ve always liked a lot too, a great propulsiveness to it and fantastic guitar and vocals. I love the warmth of the pedal steel on Do You Know How It Feels, and the piano through the verses.I’m not as keen on Hippie Boy, despite liking the Gospel outro, it doesn’t quite work for me.
Chris Hillman and Gram sing harmonies together brilliantly, but the pedal steel is probably the star of the show, kind of echoey, reverby, spacey and psychedelic, while being recognisably grounded in country.
I guess your appetite for this will depend on how you feel about country in general. As a kind of country fan who doesn’t actually know that much I think this is a great, I like the approach, the songs themselves, the harmonies and most of all the pedal steel. It may be simplistic to compare them but I think it is probably a notch below Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which is probably the apogee for 60s country rock so for that reason I’ll go 4
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Pere Ubu
3/5
The Modern Dance
I was quite intrigued to hear this, as I know lots of people cite Pere Ubu as an influence and as an important punk art rock type band.
Non-Alignment Pact and The Modern Dance I really liked. I was expecting a more thrashy punky thing but I liked the more wiry garagey post punk sounds and structure. Obviously his voice is not that conventional, but they both sound like very good post-punk style pop songs. The bass on Non-Alignment Pact is great in particular and the organ sounding synth on The Modern Dance is very nice as well.
Laughing I started to like after 3rd listen, even if it might be one of the weaker songs. The rhythm section and guitar is pretty cool, and I ended up quite enjoying the wailing and sax leading up to an actual song breaking out. Street Waves is similar to the first two tracks, a more conventional post punk style song - I like the riff and angularity of it. Good bass again.
Chinese Radiation didn’t really do it for me, I think the rhythm track is good but it Peters out towards the end.
Life Stinks I liked - the bass and guitar are nice together. Really reminded me of something but I couldn’t quite place it, maybe the Slits? By the third time round I started to enjoy his ‘singing’ style, I guess it could go either way but I liked it.
Over My Head is another great track, the sparseness is great and I liked the sound effects. Sentimental Journey I actually found quite amusing, even if I’m not sure that was the intention. I liked Humor Me as well, sounds a bit like a stylophone?
Overall not quite what I was expecting and although it may bit of a mixed bag in terms of number of good songs, but in lots of ways a more interesting experience than I thought it might be and it’s left me feeling pretty intrigued by them. It may not be the easiest listen at first, but I genuinely got into his singing style and there were 3 or 4 of tracks I really liked. And the bass was pretty much uniformly excellent. I like their singularity and I’m definitely curious about listening to this album again and some of their other stuff - I can definitely see how they would have influenced a lot of bands I like, like Joy Division, Wire, Talking Heads, Devo, etc.
I did think about giving it a 4 but I think it lands solidly as an upper 3 with potential - it definitely grew on me throughout the day.
⭐⭐⭐️
The Louvin Brothers
3/5
Tragic Songs of Life
I do like country and due to that podcast I do appreciate The Louvin Brothers place in the development of country music and therefore rock music. Their harmonies are excellent, the sounds of their voices intertwining together in a way that only siblings voices can.
But there is no disguising that each song is broadly identical in terms of tempo, arrangement, instrumentation and melodic style. I suppose that’s typical of the country music of this era and a lot of country music in general but a lot of the tracks do merge into one, with only Kentucky, In the Pines, Knoxville Girl and Mary of the Wild Moor standing out.
I think I liked it most on the first listen, it diminished a little on the 3rd and 4th go round. It’s by no means an unpleasant listen though, it just does lack a bit of variation, even within the structure and harmonics of 50s country. I’m glad it came up though, the vocal harmonies are great and I like it as a document of it’s time and as one of the touchstones for the development of the later music that I love. However I’m probably unlikely to re-visit, I think I got all II can from today’s listens. Pure musical interest wise a 2, but cultural and historical value wise it just pushes up to 3, and I don’t think it’s fair to just dismiss it against what it helped sow the seeds for.
⭐⭐⭐️
Moby
4/5
Play
Don't need to spend too long on this, I have a lot of familiarity with it and 3 listens today is more than enough.
There’s absolutely no doubting the excellence of 8 of the 18 songs: Honey, Find my Baby, Porcelain, Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad, South Side, Bodyrock, Natural Blues and Run On. All brilliant, and despite their ubiquity remain excellent bits of music.
Obviously we all know about the field recording samples on some of those songs, but their combination with the electronic foundations and occasional live instrumentation is a great idea and is superbly executed. The samples have space to breath and are supported sympathetically and very cleverly by his arrangements. Tthey still sound fresh, exciting and moving a quarter of a century after release, no matter how many times you hear them.
But there’s also no doubting that the rest of the tracks are a bit of a mixed bag, ranging from very good to pretty run of the mill 90s electronica. Rushing, If Things Were Perfect, Everloving and the cinematic My Weakness are the pick of these remaining tracks. Well crafted, evocative and very human sounding ambient and downbeat electro. The Sky is Broken could be excellent if not for the excessively wet and sticky sound of his saliva in the spoken word part.
The other issue though, is the length. At 63 minutes it’s too long, and the excellence of those songs that tower above the rest contributes to it feeling so long. Despite some very good tracks after Run On it does feel like that should be the natural end point of the record. Indeed editing this down to 12 tracks (and re-arranging as you see fit); Honey, Find my Baby, Porcelain, Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad, Southside, Rushing, Run On, If Things Were Perfect, Everloving & My Weakness would bring it to around 45 minutes and would undoubtedly make it a 5 star album. Of course it’s still a great album but the mixed bag of tracks outside the ‘big’ songs and the resulting length means it can’t be a 5, so its a 4, albeit a high one, for me.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Gang Starr
4/5
Step in the Arena
Your rap’s crazy whack
I’m Familiar with a couple of the tracks on here, Check the Technique, which I’d guess is their most famous song, and Who’s Gonna Take the Weight, but haven’t ever listened to one of their albums.
I thought this was great! I like his down tempo delivery style, but musically this really shines. Excellent samples (Up On Cripple Creek!), a lot piano led with a great jazzy-soul vibe to it, particularly with the double bass. And each track is really well constructed and arranged with great sounding beats.
Lyrically, despite the default of bragging about his rap abilities, there is some nice variety, from the ‘romantic’ Lovesick to the social observation of Just to Get a Rep.
It’s probably 4 or 5 tracks too long, but this is a great early 90s bit of East Coast Hip Hop, kind of straddling the older school 80s and the 90s West Coast gangster styles. This will definitely go into rotation.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kings of Leon
3/5
Aha Shake Heartbreak
I liked KOLs first album a lot and I liked The Bucket, when it came out and I’m pretty sure I had this album too (although listening to it now I can’t remember any of it), but I think I lost interest around that time.
All the elements are there for something I should like - southern rock style guitars, garagey drums, but apart from the run of King of the Rodeo, Taper Jean Girl and Pistol of Fire, andThe Bucket its generally a bit nondescript. It’s not objectively bad it’s just not as good as you feel it should be and kind of passes by without anything to make you sit up and notice. Whether it’s the strength of the songs or a general lack of energy I’m not sure.
I do like Ethan John’s production in general and I like the sound of the album, the guitars have a nice tone and I really like the drum sound and its place in the mix.
So overall a handful of good songs and a nice sound, but in the main pretty forgettable but fine. I think that makes a 3, a 2 feels a bit low.
⭐⭐⭐️
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Fulfillingness' First Finale
I’m not that au fait with this album compared to Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. I’m not sure why, I guess along with Music of My Mind this gets a bit overlooked in his classic run.
Smile Please is a lovely opener, it feels a bit more downbeat and melancholy than Innervisions or SITKOL but I like the pulsing keyboards and unhurried vibe. Heaven is 10 Zillion Years Lights Years Away also has a similar melancholy feel, despite its gospel style upbeat chorus. You’ll both know way better than me but it feels like a lot of descending into minor chords in the verses? Anyway, great track.
Too Shy to Say steps perilously close to those later career vaguely dull Stevie ballads. It just about manages to stay the right side of that, but it’s not one of my highlights. Sneaky Pete Kleinow from the Flying Burrito Bros the other day is on it though.
Boogie on Reggae Woman is a great bit of R’n’B/Funk/Pop, love the keyboards, piano and the appearance of the harmonica in the outro. Creepin’ is a superior version of Too Shy to Say, the female voices work really well.
Despite being more than a little Superstition-adjacent You Haven’t Done Nothin’ is a bit of a banger. Didn’t realise the Jackson 5 were on it. It Ain’t No Use has its moments, but it never quite seems to go anywhere for me.
They Won’t Go When I Go is an interesting one. The piano feels both slightly Debussy and slightly Rachmaninov-esque and I like the clarinet a lot. Real grower as I only really noticed it on the third listen. Bird of Beauty I like a lot, echoes of Sunshine of My Life and I love the burbling keyboards and backing vocals on the chorus
Please Don’t Go is one of those seemingly effortless Stevie soul/r’n’b/pop songs, laid back but always moving forward, melodic and musically interesting. Great track.
Overall I can see how it gets a bit overlooked as it clearly isn’t quite at the same focused level as the ‘big’ albums before and after. It’s still a great listen though, the slight downbeat feeling working well with the warmth of the sound - it sounds closer to Talking Book than the others in that sense. And it has some superb songs on it. It would be a highlight of anyone else’s career, but judged against those other classics I think it probably has to be a 4, albeit a high one.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
2/5
Spy vs Spy
Firstly, I love that this exists. Although I may not want to listen to experimental deconstructed thrash jazz it’s important to me that people make this kind of stuff.
Secondly, I love that I don’t have to listen to it.
In actuality, despite being a difficult it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. It just sounds like a lot of free form and to be honest most normal jazz: lots of parping and daft drumming. As I listened on Youtube I have no idea of the individual tracks, and honestly it doesn’t matter as I don’t think discerning each track is the point. And one listen through is surely enough too.
I’ve only given one star once and that was to Christina Aguilera. Despite that album being on the surface more listenable I still think it’s worse than this. At least this has intent, a sense of artistic purpose and doesn’t care if anyone likes it. That Christina album is so cynically conceived, produced and executed and so entirely limited in its worldview that it’s objectively awful. This may be significantly more on the unlistenable side of things but I believe it has artistic merit, and although it’s not for for me and I’ll never listen to it again I have a respect for it. Music can be many things for many people but context, intentions and ambitions matter beyond the response to the music itself, so I can’t just dismiss this as a one. Peversely tempted to go 3, but on my personal scale that would indicate that I might listen again, so it’s a 2.
⭐️⭐️
I also really like the album artwork.
3/5
The World is a Ghetto
I only know the well known War Songs; Low Rider and Why Can’t We Be Friends. And the only thing I know about the band themselves was that Eric Burdon was in them for a bit.
The Cisco Kid is a great, great soul/funk/latin groove with just enough jazziness to be interesting without being distracting or taking it too close to easy listening lounge jazz.
Where Was You At carries on the strong start, dialling up the funk and soul a bit more, very nice track.
City, Country, City, as well as being silly long, does slide way too far into that MOR lounge sound, with the added bonus of 70s sitcom theme tune sounding influences. The last minute or so is ok, but this isn’t a great song, the blandness is a bit all encompassing.
Four Cornered Room brings it back though, a kind of bluesy soul groove. I love the ominous feeling of the intro building to that psychedelic rock guitar ahead of the vocals. The big cymbal crash comes a bit out of nowhere though. Unlike City, Country, City this doesn’t feel long, despite being 8 and a 1/2 minutes long. Great track, probably the stand out.
The World is a Ghetto is very good, although it occasionally leans a little bit close to that lounge jazz sound, but the bass and guitar keep things on track for the most part. It also does feel its length, but still a good song.
Beetles in the Bog is a fun funk/soul/jazz tune with some added steel drums, I like the phasing and panning in the intro and the keyboards. I guess the title is a reference to the Beatles with the British vernacular of bog?
Overall I liked this, reminded me of Donny Hathaway, and not just the use of the word ghetto. This type of album can fall into that bland easy listening lounge sound, but apart from City, Country, City and some bits of the title track it manages to keep on the more interesting soul/funk/rock/psychedelic/blues side of things and is a rewarding listen. It also sounds very good, a really rich and full sound without being cloying.
Tricky to rate. At the moment it sits right between 3 and 4, but I think it will benefit from more listens and will go on my rotation. I’d be happy giving it 3 or 4 but as it’s a grey rainy day I’ll stick with 3.
⭐⭐⭐
Elis Regina
2/5
Vento de Maio
Despite the furore, tumult and uproar about the nature of this being a compilation I listened to it as is - it’s on the list, it’s getting listened to and getting ticked off.
She has a nice voice. The music is fine, but quite cheesy on occasion. Not keen on the bass.
I liked So Deus E Quem Sabe, but I didn’t notice anything else, it all just went by quite forgettably.
It’s not unlistenably bad, but it’s so middle of the road and lightweight it’s almost as if it doesn’t really exist. Without her voice it might disappear entirely. I really can’t think of anything else to say.
Still better than Christina Aguilera
⭐️⭐️
Supertramp
3/5
Crime of the Century
This doesn’t have The Logical Song on it. That’s the only Supertramp song I know. It’s a good song.
Wasn’t sure what to expect with this. I was slightly concerned as it was tagged as prog - I thought we might have some more Yes type music on our hands. I suppose it’s Yes adjacent, but to me it is more listenable with a more obvious pop edge.
School has some nice textures to it, including the piano in the 2nd half but it doesn’t grab me much overall. I liked Bloody Well Right though, the keyboards in particular and the overall rocky poppiness of it. Hide in Your Shell is also not a bad track, but I’m not keen on the sax. Once Asylum kicks in and gets going it’s much better than its start suggests it might be, there’s a slight bluesy edge to the vocal which I like and a little bit of a grower of a melody.
Dreamer I have actually heard before - I didn’t know that was Supertramp. A very nice catchy bit of early 70s pop. Rudy is similar to Asylum in how it starts off unpromisingly, but develops into a decent song. I like the squelchy synths and then the wah wah and strings at the back end. Really sounds a lot like Sting singing in that bit. If Everyone Was Listening starts off a lot like a Queen song, which for me is not a good thing, and then the oboe/clarinet I’m not keen on. Not my fav song. A bit poor in fact.
Crime of the Century feels quite Pink Floyd, without quit reaching the required levels of studied grandiosity, but I liked its shifting musicality, around the repeating piano.
Overall there is a fair bit of progyness, and sometimes it just edges too far that way, but in the main it’s paired with relatively straight ahead, enjoyable enough 70s rock/pop, with some additional blues and soul elements. It’s not blown me away, but there are some interesting little corners to it. In the right mood I’d listen again, and I think I will check out the Breakfast in America album. Middle of the road 3
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Johnny Cash
4/5
At Folsom Prison
It’s hard to not compare to At San Quentin, so I’ll just go ahead and do that.
Like ASQ I thoroughly enjoyed this, the voice, both raucous and tender, the playing, the charisma. But this feels sadder and more melancholic, while ASQ has more of an edge. I suppose that’s probably a product of the song choices, more ballad and slower tempo songs and most of them dealing with being in prison or committing crimes. There is some humour to lighten things though, I suppose that’s why they did Dirty Old Egg Suckin’ Dog and Flushed from the Bathroom of your Heart, although the crowd cheers a bit too enthusiastically when he sings he wants to kill the dog!
I loved the version of Long Black Veil, and I love June’s slightly manic vocals on Jackson, but I found pleasure in every song.
I gave ASQ 4, so as this is a companion piece, albeit through a sadder lens, I’ll do the same again
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Band
5/5
The Band
I love Music From Big Pink, but this is their best album. All the good things about MFBP are distilled, refined and matured into the 12 songs on here.
The two central pillars of the album The Night thy Drove Old Dixie Down and King Harvest (Has Surely Come) are superb, monumental and expansive, but also intimate and empathetic.
Around those two songs there is not a weak track, whether more uptempo, like the country stomping of Rag Mama Rag, the soulful and rhythm section driven Up on Cripple Creek, the more rocking Jemima Surrender and Look Out Cleveland or the more tender and melancholic When You Awake, Whispering Pines or Rockin’ Chair, or the more plaintive Jawbone or The Unfaithful Servant.
The playing and arranging is also a step above MFBP, Levon and Rick Danko’s drumming and bass playing are absolutely superb, by turns propulsive, melodic, ‘funky’ or delicate. Garth Hudson also really shines, his musical virtuosity deployed beautifully, adding texture and tone, elevating everything. Richard Manuel’s piano, harmony vocals and occasional lead vocals are also superb. Robbie’s guitar playing is relatively subdued but very Harrison-esque in the sense of serving each song rather than each song being a vehicle for his technical proficiency, which started to happen later in their career. His songwriting though is his main contribution, never reaching this consistency again.
Easy peasy 5 for me.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cat Stevens
5/5
Tea for the Tillerman
‘The Red legged chicken stands ready to strike’
One of those ‘Oh yeah he’s great’ artists that I don’t listen to as much as I should. And I really should because this is an excellent album.
I love the little piano answering melody thing on Where Do the Children Play. A little bit of that bit and anger with the ‘tell us when to die’ line. Hard Headed Woman is a cousin of Peace Train, but is a great song, love the melody and the strings as it’s builds a slight sense of desperation.
Wide World, absolute classic, and rightly so. Miles From Nowhere is easy to overlook, but is a great track, the piano and acoustic guitars and the gospel touches are lovely.
But I Might Die Tonight. Love the feel of this one, as I do with Longer Boats, with its great harmonies. Into White may be not as good as the other songs, but is still great. On the Road to Find Out I love, a lot of conviction to the vocals and lyrics.
Father and Son, it really is a very lovely song, its slight saccharine undertones have been exaggerated to death by subsequent cover versions but the original is such a beautiful and melancholic delight, shifting between viewpoints and oscillating between tenderness, regret, love and frustration. One thing I’ve always wondered, when he sings ‘You’re still young, that’s your fault’, does he mean he’s to blame for being young, or that it’s it’s just a feature of being young.
It really is a great album. Musically and melodically superb, he really has a gift for melodies and hooks. And despite his hippy vibes and reputation there is a lot more to it thematically and emotionally than that, touching on happiness, sadness, despair, fatherhood, wonder and regret. Add it all together and it’s a fantastically satisfying 35 minutes.
Another easy 5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Stan Getz
2/5
Getz/Gilberto
Short review today.
The Girl from Ipanema, it’s such a great song that most versions are good, and I do like the arrangement of this one, a pleasant listen.
After that though it veers from pleasant but forgettable to plain forgettable. Nothing truly bad, but nothing truly good. I actually drifted off to sleep the 2nd time around.
I’ll go 2
⭐️⭐️
Sabu
3/5
Palo Congo
Banging on those bongos like a chimpanzee
El Cumbanchero is the closest thing to having a recognisable melody and structure and I quite like it. Billumba-Palo Congo and Rhapsodia del Maravilloso are probably my favourite of the other tracks, the former one of a few tracks that seem to eschew latin sounds for something more African in it’s percussion and chanting, and I liked the guitar on the latter.
If you are into this type of thing I presume this is a great album. Cuban Rumba isn’t exactly my thing though, but I think I can appreciate the skill in the polyrhythmic percussion and the general rhythmic focus. Once you tune into that aspect it does become more of an interesting listen. I found myself liking it more and more on the 2nd and 3rd listens. I wouldn’t say I loved it but I found it a lot more interesting and enjoyable than I thought I would. Between a 2 and a 3, I’ll just tip it over to 3.
⭐⭐⭐
Gorillaz
4/5
Gorillaz
I fucking loved this when it came out, I listened to it loads, but I haven’t re-visited it in years, in fact I kind of forgot it exists.
I really enjoyed listening to it today though, and there was a lot of residual muscle memory to it. At the time it seemed a bit of a left turn, but 23 years later its eclecticism and slightly wonky nature now seems quite normal, both for Damon/Blur’s timeline and music in general.
Clint Eastwood and 19-2000 still stand up as great bits of electronic pop/hip hop, but quite alot of the other tracks stood out to me; Re-Hash as a very Blur-esque bit of catchy pop, Tommorow Comes Today’s spaciness, New Genius’ keening circularity, Sound Check’s dubby vibes sound great, Double Bass could have been on Think Tank, a really great groove. Rock the House is great, love the horn sample. Really like the guitar line on Starshine. Always loved Slow Country, great bass sound and a nice melody.
It’s definitely has a sense of a collections of atmospheric bits of music, rather than a coherent album, but I do love the different moods and sounds. It’s also much more dub influenced than I remember, which I think I appreciate more now than I did 20+ years ago.
A nice fat solid 4, a great album and I need to remember to listen to it more often
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Coldplay
3/5
A Rush of Blood to the Head
I remember liking this when it came out. I liked their first album a lot too, but at the time this felt like a much more confident and ‘big’ sounding record than Parachutes, still with some indieness to it, but adding some expansiveness, a kind of U2 arena type ambition. I didn’t have much interest in X and Y, in fact I only heard the singles, and whether that was because they weren’t cool anymore or I didn’t like the music I’m not sure. Possibly a bit of both. After that I only know a few singles and the general sense of them writing dull and uninspiring vaguely electro arena pop.
So it’s interesting listening to this again, hopefully with an open mind, having not listened to it in at least 20 years, trying to separate it from what followed.
You can see the roots of what they became here though, lyrically and thematically at least - a lot of what we would now recognise as empty instagram inspirational quotes, vague but also not open to personal interpretation, meaningless but not universal, a series of homilies that on the surface sound pleasing but are ultimately hollow.
Musically however it holds up better. In My Place, God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, The Scientist and Clocks are very good bits of arena pop rock, catchy and direct and very well constructed. GPASUYF and Clocks in particular I still like.
Beyond that there are some decent tracks in that same vein, in keeping with the overall aim of the album, Politik, Daylight, A Whisper, Amsterdam. The remaining tracks don’t work as well, where the banality overexposes the thematic and emotional emptiness, Green Eyes, Warning Sign, A Rush of Blood to the Head.
Even if the songs are patchy, there is no doubt about their skill in creating catchy hooks and melodies and building expansive, arena filling songs out of quite simple but effective instrumentation - very similar to U2 in that regard. There is a palpable feeling that they achieved what they set out to do, and in that sense it is a satisfying listen, even if ultimately the quality is inconsistent and the purposeful vapidity at the heart of it is revealed too frequently for comfort.
It’s almost definitely a 2.5, a straight down the middle rating, but I’ll round up to three, on the basis of achieving what they set out to do and for the quality of GPASUYF and Clocks
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Meat Loaf
4/5
Bat out of Hell
I’ve never listened to this, I’ve not even heard the full 9 minute version of the title track, but I find Jim Steinman really interesting and have a real soft spot for his songs, so I was really keen to give this a listen.
Bat out of Hell, I’ve never really noticed the Springsteen-ness of this song before, both musically and thematically - teenage boredom and excitement and urge to go somewhere more exciting and bigger. Great track no matter how many times you hear it.
You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth - have always loved this song. Corker, even with the saliva-ry spoken word intro.
Heaven Can Wait is a bit of a lull, probably the weakest track.
All Revved Up is great, love the steady beat all the way through, and the musical sense of pent up frustration.
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad ain’t bad at all, it threatens to turn into Bat out of Hell in parts but has a satisfying melody and a good lyric.
Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a belter, over the top of course, but a great story song, banging in the car listening to the baseball, tell me you love me, erm maybe tomorrow? Great title too.
For Crying Out Loud is a suitably cinematic ending, plaintive and melancholy, erupting into a histrionic middle section before, falling back down.
It is very theatrical but it manages keep the right side of the line, it could easily descend into anodyne Rock Musical territory, or end up like Queen, but there’s a charm to it that that pulls it through and separates it from all that. It’s also thematically really good, it’s very evocative of teenage romantic ideas and fantasy, love, lust, boredom, escape etc. I can’t work out whether there’s a knowingness to all the bombast and over the topness, or a genuine earnest innocence to it, or maybe it’s the combination of the earnestness and tenderness of the words with the bombast of the music that makes it a winner. Either way I don’t think it actually matters, it’s such a fun and entertaining listen.
Easy 4 stars, even toying with 5. Will definitely listen again.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
LTJ Bukem
3/5
Logical Progression
I listened on YouTube, which is always annoying, and I listened to both volumes as one long track each, so I have no idea of individual tracks. I also listened sporadically through the day and only once through - 2 hours for one listen on a beautiful day is more than enough.
I don’t know enough about DnB to understand the rules and forms, so I don’t know if this is good or not. My presumption is that it is good, but it could have just been the first track on repeat for 2 hours and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
So I didn’t actually mind it, it’s definitely not unpleasant, and despite the higher tempo of the drums it never felt uncomfortably energetic or chaotic, like a lot of house music can.
If this was on Tidal I can see myself putting it on if I needed to focus for a couple of hours and get some work done, the hypnotic and regular tempos and rhythms would really suit that.
I’ll go 3. I think a 2 for me means I won’t listen again, whereas with a 3 I may listen again, and this falls in that camp.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
5/5
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Another easy 5. I don’t listen as much as I should, it’s so good. Aside from the songs I love the atmosphere of the whole thing, it’s so immersive.
No need to go track by track but I fucking love 5 years. One of my all time favourite Bowie songs, pulsing and spiralling upwards, fantastic drum pattern and sound, swirling strings, brilliant vocal, just an amazing song. What an opener, matched by closing with the similarly dramatic and superb Rock ’n’Roll Suicide. Everything inbetween I love too, not only are there no weak tracks, there is not one weak moment or second. Everything is just right for each song.
Ronson’s guitar is incredible, as Paul mentioned, the tone is soo good, I particularly love it on Moonage Daydream. The whole sound of the records is great as well, especially the drum sound.
I meant to only listen through twice, but I’ve just let it go on repeat all day. Probably on listen 7 now.
5 forever
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Traffic
3/5
Traffic
I’m pretty familiar with John Barleycorn Must Die, but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to any other Traffic albums.
There’s a clear difference between the Dave Mason tracks and the Steve Winwood/Jim Capaldi tracks. The Mason tracks are more immediate and straightforward, while Winwood’s are a bit more dense and complicated, and you can hear the roots of the more pastoral JBMD sound on some of these. On balance I think I prefer the Mason’s tracks although Winwood’s tracks get better and more interesting with more listens.
You Can All Join In is a great shuffling country-ish blues rock song. Quite Canned Heat/Allman Brothers, but one of those effortless sounding 60s/70s rock songs, but with a folk accent - I can imagine listening to it driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, or cruising along the Towcester bypass. Don’t be Sad is in a similar vein, although lacks some of the infectiousness of You Can All Join In. Feelin’ Alright is another strong track, I’m sure I’ve heard it before, it’s got a nice groove. Vagabond Virgin I’m not as keen on. Some slightly suspect lyrics and leans a bit too much into a kind of psychedelic prog vibe. Cryin’ to be Heard is better, despite some slightly errant horn parps. Good drumming.
Pearly Queen was a bit of a grower. Definitely reminds me of Yes, but a touch more enjoyable. Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring despite some nice guitar and some nice moments was a bit unmemorable. I really like Roman’ Thru the Gloamin’ with 40,000 Headmen though, a great late 60s rock/folk track with a pleasant jazziness. The stand out of the Winwood tracks and the most akin to JBMD. No Time to Live is a bit too jazzy for my taste, despite a nice vocal. Means to an End is a bit more enjoyable, it has a bit of a spark to it even if it’s pretty standard late 60s rock fare.
A bit of a mixed bag overall, some very enjoyable tracks but some pretty average ones too. The musicianship throughout is very good though, the drumming is particularly excellent. I can see what they were attempting, a kind of English psychedelic jazz folk-rock, and when it works it’s good, but it does fall wide of the mark on occasion.
A 3 feels fair
⭐⭐⭐
Drive Like Jehu
2/5
Yankee Crime
Never heard of Drive Like Jehu. It reminds me of when I tried to like At the Drive In, and pretended for a bit that I did.
Struggling to find much to say. It is what is and is fine for this type of music. Some nice guitar parts, some good moments and grooves. I liked Sinews. Can kind of hear a bit of surf music in there, and some good rhythmic moments, but it is ultimately quite formulaic 90s slightly moany very American sounding alternative/punk.
Only listened once, I couldn’t really see what I’d get out of further listens. It’s not terrible but it’s not particularly interesting or different enough to feel like making more of an effort with it 🤷
⭐️⭐️
Napalm Death
2/5
Scum
It's just fast and shouty. I was expecting something so aggressive and abrasive that it would be shocking. But it's just fast drumming and unintelligible shouting, and it just feels silly. If you are sad and/or angry then I can see the appeal in making and listening to this type of thing, and good on them for doing it and hopefully it is cathartic.
Clearly it's not made for me, and I dislike just dismissing stuff that isn't my thing, but I'm struggling to work out the point of this - at least with other metal we've had I can work out the intent and it doesn't sound as daft as this does. Maybe its that with Iron Maiden or Metallica, even though I'm not into it or them, I can see their contribution to the lineage of metal, building on what came before, but this feels like a logical end point, a musical cul de sac of 30 second songs, super fast with no melody and incomprehensible shouting.
I still loath to give it 1 though, it doesn't annoy me in the way Xtina does
⭐⭐
Sex Pistols
4/5
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
I’ve always been a fan of this album, but it’s been quite interesting concentrating on listening to it today.
On the one hand you can’t deny the energy and rawness and thrill of it. It must have felt so fresh and exciting in comparison to something like Yes or ELP. Obviously we weren’t around for it the punk idea of just getting up there and doing something simple and immediate and expressive must also have been incredible and so inspiring. They weren’t of course the only punk band but as a focal point they encapsulate it brilliantly, arsehole energy and attitude, distinctive look and a handful of genuinely great songs. Listening nearly 50 years later they may have lost some of the novelty and excitement but their influence on music and culmrture is undeniable, even if Lydon is a bit of a dickhead and they aren’t exactly a likeable bunch.
Songwise though it is a bit patchy. There are some absolutely fantastic and culturally significant songs; God Save the Queen, Anarchy in the UK, Pretty Vacant, as well as other great tracks like Holidays in the Sun, Problems, §, lots of superb little runs and fills as well as great rhythm playing. In the absence of conventional vocal melodies he carries a lot of the melodic weight. The songs are also quite conventionally structured, apart from the slightly swimmy rhythm to Submission they are pretty straighforward rock/pop songs, elevated by the guitar playing and the attitude and delivery. I do also love Lydon’s vocals and singing style, not that far removed from Dylan and Iggy Pop, its a great advert for singing in your own individual way and that idea was very clearly influential on lots of subsequent singers and bands that I like.
Lyrically (despite New York) it’s also a bit smarter than it first appears, and although not every bit of social commentary lands there are some great expressions of frustration and highlights of societal hypocrisy to make it interesting.
They aren’t as interesting as The Clash, either musically or philosophically (or musi-philosophically), and this isn’t as strong as The Clash’s first album, sitting a notch below that. But It’s still a fun listen, despite it’s patchiness, and obviously has a musical significance that is hard to ignore
⭐⭐⭐⭐️
Happy Mondays
4/5
Bummed
Happy Mondays definitely feel like a vibes band, a superb best of/greatest hits band rather than an albums band, so I’ve never really dived into their catalog, apart from listening to Thrills, Pills and Bellyaches a few times. I do love a lot of their songs though.
Mad Cyril, Wrote for Luck and Lazyitis I’m pretty familiar with from the best of. Mad Cyril is very good, but Wrote for Luck I love, great groove, excellent song. Lazyitis is great as well, I guess they had to credit Lennon and McCartneyfor the nick.
I’d never really made the connection before but I hear a lot of Talking Heads in this, which makes sense, both coming at a kind of white funk from a punk/new wave/diy angle. Country Song in particular feels very inspired by TH, I presume by The Big Country from More Songs about Buildings and Food. Just read Country Song was originally titled Some Cunt from Preston, as rhyming slang for Country and Western. Superb.
The sound/production really grew on me with repeated listens. It sounds a bit smudged and spacey on first listen but I realised it really compliments the songs and the overall of vibe of wooziness and blurring of funk, punk, pop and house music.
I do love his lyrics, they are very funny. Non sequiturs and dry observations mixed with a sense of humour is a great combo.
It may be a bit patchy in places and feels like it might fall apart any second, but It’s such a fun listen, it’s got such a winning energy and that precariousness actually works in it’s favour, a bit like Exile era Stones. 4 may be high but its such an enjoyable listen it feels churlish to be parsimonious. Great stuff.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Hole
2/5
Celebrity Skin
They love the title track on 6 Music, it seems to be on multiple times a week. I’m actually a little partial to it, it’s quite a pleasing bit of late 90s alt rock pop. Didn’t realise Billy Corgan co-wrote it. Awful I enjoyed too, I liked the bubblegum surf vibe to it.
After that it descends into a soup of formulaic alt rock I was expecting, with not much musical or melodic variance or interest, making it quite hard to discern the difference between any of the songs. The only one that I noticed on the first listen was Heaven Tonight, it’s synth lines giving it a bit of personality and uniqueness.
Second run through I liked it a little more, noticing some quite nice harmonies and backing vocals, particularly Malibu, but overall I still struggled to find much interest in it, it’s fine for what it is and what it’s trying to do but ultimately it all a bit meh.
Not terrible, just not something that interests me much
⭐⭐
Kraftwerk
5/5
Die Mensch-Maschine
I love this album, a bit more pop perhaps than Trans Europe Express, but more focused than Autobahn, but still meticulously constructed. The technical skill is amazing really when you consider the technologies they were woking with. On some tracks they are a pop band and then on others they sound more like modern classical composers
The Robots is a great bit of catchy synth pop. Almost feels like they were parodying their own image.
Spacelab is a favourite of mine, I love the cadence of synth melody against the pulsing percussion and rhythms.
Metropolis - 1950s Berlin, a private eye is watching a man through the rain, the shop signs dimly illuminating the side of his face. Cigarette smoke rises warily from the discarded cigarette on the ground. The man starts to walk toward Potsdamer Platz and the private eye slips out of the comforting doorway and follows the man into the solitude of the night.
The Model is a just a great pop song, excellent catchy vocal and synth melodies, the synth warm and soft against the matter of factness of the lyric.
Neon Lights is just a beautiful bit of music, one of their best songs. I love the contrast of the repeating and catchy hook with the ominousness of the ‘vocals’ and atmosphere.
Each song stands on its own, but as an album of 6 pieces of music this is great. I often think Kraftwerk are more like modernist classical composers than songwriters, in how they manage to evoke moods and atmospheres across multiple tracks. I love the theme of man and technology driving Robots, Spacelab and The Man Machine and the fascination with the man made environment in Metropolis and Neon Lights. And looking at a woman with The Model.
It’s a five for me, a step up from Autobahn and on a par with Trans Europe Express.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Mars Volta
3/5
Deloused in the Comatorium
I had this on repeat this morning and genuinely couldn’t distinguish anything, it just went round and round sounding the same, I had no idea what track was what or if the album had started again. Nothing was memorable in any way.
I liked it a bit more listening this afternoon after a break from it, but I still couldn’t really pick out any songs, apart from Cicatriz ESP, which I enjoyed, particularly the last 4 minutes or so. Some of the guitar and organ on Roulette Dares I also liked, as well as the drums and organs on Drunkship of Lanterns. Overall it felt like there are a lot of good moments but not so many great songs.
Obviously there is a huge amount of skill and technique on this, some excellent guitar and drumming, but I don’t find the overall result that interesting. I admire the bombast, the over the topness and all the ideas crammed into it, but it feels like it needs more space and subtlety to let it breathe a bit amongst all the chaos. I also don’t find his voice that great, which I think undercuts all the dramatic tension they are trying to build.
I also get the concept behind it and it is quite touching, but too often the song titles and lyrics more often fall over that fine line between clever and stupid, the earnestness of it renders it all a bit too daft too frequently.
A 2 is too low for the technical skill and overall ambition, so a 3 feels about right. I’m glad I gave it a good go, but it’s unlikely I’ll revisit it.
⭐⭐⭐
Songhoy Blues
4/5
Music in Exile
I don’t know much African music outside the big names Like Ali Farka Toure and Fela Kuti, but the bits of African guitar music I hear I always like, and this is no exception. From what I read it sounds like Ali Farka Toure was a big influence, which I can hear, and would make sense as they are both Malian.
I had this on repeat all morning and I really enjoyed it. There’s no doubt there is a similarity across all the songs, but I find the combination of African guitar grooves with western blues/rock touches most pleasurable to my ears.
I liked all of it but there were a few standouts:
Soubour, a great bluesy opener, I loved the guitars working with each other and I always love some handclaps.
Irganda, the Nile Rodgers/funk/angular rhythm guitars sound great.
Seiko Oumarou, taking things down a notch, love the repeating guitar figure and the little runs here and there.
Al Tchere Bele, I love the more polyrhythmic feel and some more funk style guitar
Petit Metier, the acoustic guitars are a nice point of difference on this one.
Desert Melodie, great mood and atmosphere on this one
Mali, a lovely, slightly haunting melody and a nicely subdued end to the album.
I enjoyed it so much I think I ended up listening to it about 5 times. I also tried their next album Résistance, which also sounded great on first listen and might be better than this.
I suppose it’s easy to fall into a slightly patronising trap with African music, a kind of ‘they’re a happy people’ type stereotype, but even though I don’t understand the lyrics there is definitely a sense of fun and excitement to it, especially when you read about the background of them leaving their hometown to escape civil conflict.
Along with Jorge Ben this has been the best of the non Western, non English language albums we’ve had, and I definitely enjoyed as a break from some of the rock/metal albums we’ve had recently, so an easy 4 for me, I will definitely put it on rotation and am looking forward to listening to Résistance more and trying Optimisme.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
Dutch Rock
I know Buffalo Gals and Double Dutch but not much else on here. I always felt this was probably similar to Tom Tom Club and some of the Big Audio Dynamite albums from a year or so later.
It’s a bit of a curate’s egg, there’s lots to like, some great songs, lots of fun and experimentation and sense that it was ahead of it’s time, with early hip hop, pop, Afrobeat and a bit of Latin all mashed up. But it is definitely patchy and not everything fully works. The cultural appropriation thing is quite interesting too, I don’t really have a problem with people magpie-ing music and influences from wherever they hear them, but when they don’t give credit to people who play on the album and essentially co-write some of it, it feels a bit dodgy. Linked to that I also wonder what, apart from some rapping, what Malcom McLaren actually contributed musically. I get that he is more of a conceptual person, but it feels like Art of Noise plus various African and American musicians actually did this and he is just putting his name to it. Which is not uncommon for him, and I'm probably inclined to feel that is also dodgy.
There are quite a few standout tracks. Obatala really grew on me on repeat listens, a lovely little track. Buffalo Gals is a great bit of early 80s hip hop through a weird Englishman’s lens. Great hook.
I’ve always loved Double Dutch, a great bit of rapping with Afrobeat vibes. I don’t know what the words are in the hook but I like to sing ‘Airport, Airport M&S’, particularly if I’m buying some bottled water at an airport M&S. I liked the electro-soundtrack vibe of Legba.
Soweto is just fantastic, a great groove, really infectious.
Jive My Baby and Song for Chango I liked, even if they aren’t that strong. World Famous is fine, but feels dated. I wasn’t keen on Merengue and Punk it Up seemed to be an inferior version of Soweto. Duck for the Oyster is a bit annoying.
You can tell it’s from the early 80s because of the drum machine sound, but apart from World Famous it doesn’t sound to dated. I suppose that’s due to the genius of Trevor Horn. Very identifiably 80s but still sounds good.
Overall it’s definitely an enjoyable listen with some great highs, (Obatala, Buffalo Gals, Double Dutch, Soweto) but I don’t think it all quite adds up to a fully satisfying album. Sometimes these ramshackle eclectic albums are great, the sense of fun and experimentation is its own kind of unifying force, but sometimes, like this, it can feel a bit too scattergun and doesn’t hang together. There’s a decent amount of playslistable tracks but I think I’m more likely to turn to Tom Tom Club or Bing Audio Dynamite’s first 2 albums if I want a bit of 80s joyful eclecticism.
⭐⭐⭐
PS, love the Keith Haring cover
The Isley Brothers
4/5
3+3
Vaguely familiar with this album, mainly for the covers of Listen to the Music and Summer Breeze. For a period I was really into Givin’ it Back and Brother, Brother, Brother, the two albums before this. I particularly loved (and still love) the cover of Love the One You’re With on Givin’ it Back
That Lady is obviously pretty well known, but this version just about manages to stay the right side of cheesy, especially part 2, with the additional funkiness.
The cover of Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight is a real grower. Again it verges on cheesiness but Ronald’s lead vocal is superb and keeps it on the right track.
If You Were There is fine, if a bit 70s soul by numbers. You Walk Your Way is great though, I love the melody, harmonies and piano giving it a breezy summeriness. Lovely.
I really like their interpretation of Listen to the Music. I love the original but I really like how they put their own spin on it, keeping the acoustic guitar but adding the slipperiness of the clavinet. They have written some absolute classics but I think they are one of the best bands for covers, they always a manage to do something interesting and put their own interpretation on things in a cool way (see all of Givin’ it Back).
What it Comes Down to is ok, although similarly as rote as If You Were There.
Sunshine is fantastic, I don’t know the original at all but I love the funk/soul-ness of it, great drums, clavinet and organ combo. Summer Breeze is a great song and this is a great version, their harmonies and the guitar really adding texture and the piano giving a real drive to it. Always a classic summer playlist song. Great stuff.
The Highways of My Life is a surprisingly low key end to the album, although it is a real grower, I really started to like it on repeat listens. Lovely piano.
Despite a little bit of patchiness this is a great listen. I could listen to Ronald’s lead vocals and the brother’s harmonies all day. A very nice, solid, enjoyable 4
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tom Waits
3/5
Bone Machine
I quite like Tom Waits, but he’s not really someone I ever think to listen to. I’ve listened to Swordfish Trombones and Rain Dogs but not much else.
His voice is definitely marmite, but I like it, it’s surprisingly tuneful and emotive once you get used to it, even if it can still sound silly from time to time, ie the opening verse of I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.
I enjoyed this, the spartan arrangements are very effective with his voice, and the little instrumental textures work really well, the muted horns on the first two tracks, the guitar on Such a Scream, Jesus Gonna Be Here Going Out West, the lap steel on A Little Rain, the Piano on Whistle Down the Wind. The double bass also does a lot of great work, tying everything together. Musically and atmospherically it has a similar feel to Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind, a pared back but roomy sound.
Lyrically I like it, lots of earnest biblical allusions and death and decay and honest work, but with a slight knowing wink, or at least I think a knowing wink. It reminds me a lot of Nick Cave on that front, but maybe not as humorous.
Kept expecting Way Down in the Hole to turn up, but it seems that’s on an earlier album, but musically it wouldn’t sound out of place here.
The percussion is the sort of thing I normally hate, that kind of tool shed Stomp type stuff I absolutely hate, but it works really well here. Maybe it’s the skill or the fluidity of it, or that it suits his voice, but it’s great.
Highlights for me are Earth Died Screaming, Who Are You, A Little Rain, Going out West, Murder in the Red Barn, Black Wings, Whistle Down the Wind and That Feel.
It’s probably a few too many tracks and about 10 minutes too long, as it does start to drag and feel quite samey. I liked it though, somewhere between a 3 and a 4. I’ll be Percy-monious and go 3, but I’m definitely going to listen again and try some other albums from this period.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coldplay
3/5
Parachutes
Listened to this a fair amount when it came out.
I’m finding that this is actually quite tricky to think about and to rate. Is it good on its own merits, or is it good because it’s better than what they became, is it actually quite boring but because what they became is so boring it stands out? It’s probably a mix; some good stuff, better than what follows but also a fair bit of dull stuff.
I much much prefer his vocals on this to AROBTTH, they sound good, more rough edges but more weight and heft. There’s some great bass playing throughout as well. The guitar playing is interesting, it sounded quite different to the fag end of Britpop’s overdriven style, more textural and subtle, and there are some lovely moments but it feels very U2 in places. I can see why it gets compared to Bends era Radiohead, but Johnny Greenwood is in a different league.
Undoubtedly there are some excellent songs, Shiver, Spies, Yellow, Everything’ Not Lost, but the rest of it, while not offensively bad (apart from Sparks, which is the worst kind of Radio 2 sub Bridget Jones soundtrack beige pap), is pretty uninspiring middle of the road indie pop. I’ll go 3, if it came on I’d not turn it off, but I’m unlikely to seek it out deliberately.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Little Richard
4/5
Here’s Little Richard
Little Richard is probably my favourite of the early rock’n’roll and R&B cohort. Even 67 years later and having heard them 100s of times there is still a visceral thrill to Tutti Frutti, Ready Teddy, Slippin’ and Slidin’, Long Tall Sally and Rip it Up - the voice and the pounding piano are still absolutely fantastic. More than his contemporaries there is a sense of imminent chaotic irreverence in his music. Jerry Lee may be a better pianist, but the combination of LRs voice and piano is uniquely fantastic.
This sounds, production wise, very good, again compared to his contemporaries. Despite the innovative nature of the Sun recordings they can sound slightly antiquated, where is this still has a bit of punch to it.
Outside of the songs above it is a little mixed though. True, Fine Mama, Can’t Believe You Wanna Leave, and Miss Ann have more than a hint of Fats Domino, which makes sense with the Cosimo Matassa connection and what a big influence Fats Domino was one everyone - Great vocals but not at the same level as some of the other tracks. Baby is good, I’m not really familiar with it but I enjoyed the not so subtle wink to his true sexuality on it. Oh Why is fine, although, again, not quite at the level of the other songs.
Jenny, Jenny is fantastic though. For some reason I’m not that familiar with it, despite it apparently being one of his bigger songs. Superb r’n’b/rock’n’roll - feels like Macca might have liked this one. She’s Got It is a great closer too.
Obviously this is American, but If you were a teenager living in a grey Britain in 1957, still recovering from the economic strain of WW2, imagine what this must have sounded like. No wonder everything that followed in rock and pop happened, when people like Little Richard, Elvis and Jerry Lee were pumping out stuff like this.
I suppose the tricky thing in rating this is, is this an album, or a collection of singles plus some other tracks? It looks like it was recorded in relatively coherent sessions over a year, so it’s probably more of a consistent collection than some of his contemporaries, but there’s no doubt it just doesn’t sound like an album in the modern sense we understand. But then you also need to factor in the influence and musical importance of it all. I’d say it’s in the 3 range as an ‘album’, but it’s a 5 for its influence, importance and for its top tier early rock’n’roll classics. I’ll split the difference and go 4.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Herbie Hancock
4/5
Head Hunters
Jazz fusion. Eugh, two words to make you shiver.
However this is actually good, in a way that Jamiroquai and Brand New Heavies can only dream of. None of the 90s ironic kitchness, or lounge-lite vapidity, or infuriating blandness.
Chameleon - ‘squelchy’. I love the drum sound, very Talking Book Stevie. Banging.
Watermelon Man has a definite film soundtrack feel, a bit Curtis Mayfield. Love the synth refrain in the middle. The horns aren’t too jazzy either, which is nice.
Sly, I wasn’t as keen on this, a bit too frenetic, although I did like the groove.
Vein Melter, I liked this a lot the 2nd and 3rd time round. Again quite a film soundtrack feel, but a very nice chilled low key atmosphere.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would - the jazziness exists in the approach to the synths, organ and musical flourishes, rather than in the whole form. The rhythms, drums, bass and guitars are much more funk/soul influenced, with great grooves. If you take it as a 40 minute piece of music rather than 4 very long tracks then it works really well. Will definitely listen again. A solid and enjoyable 4.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Todd Rundgren
5/5
Something/Anything?
I’m aware of Todd Rundgren as a singer, songwriter and producer and I’m aware of this album, but I’ve never listened to it.
This how you fucking do power pop yacht rock though. Catchy, groovy, infectious, accessible, playful, middle of the road in the best way possible.
I love that the sides are all themed. Side 1 is great ‘ear catching melodies’ indeed, and in particular the first 3 songs are pop perfection, from the soft rock I Saw the Light, to the melancholic It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference to the soul pop of Wolfman Jack. Love Sweeter Memories too.
Breathless on Side 2 is really interesting, a kind of proto-electronic percussion. Saving Grace is very nice on this side too, and I Went to the Mirror is fantastic, a kind of 3am vibe mashed up with some heavier guitar, presaging the next side.
Black Maria is a great bit of psychedelic pop rock, I really like the slightly distant sounding vocals. Couldn’t I Tell You is just great, a superb bit of power pop, it sounds like the Cars or some of those 80s bands, love it.
Dust in the Wind is superb, and I like the fact that Side 4 is band performances, it definitely has a different feel to the other sides, although with the same soft rock feel. Hello it’s Me is great for that 70s feel. I like the blue eyed soul of Some Folks is Even Whiter Than Me and the easy feel of You Left Me Sore (even though I presume it’s about an STD). Slut is probably the only misstep on the album, with its slightly problematic lyrics.
Some tracks are definitely lightweight compared to others, but I think in a good way, not filler but little amuse bouche between the weightier songs.
He’s kind of like a cross between Macca and Harry Nilsson, with a nice amount of the latter’s offbeat wryness. There’s also lots of Macca-esque melodies and the same sense of musical facility, that he just naturally tosses out great melodies and songs with ease.
I loved this, even though its 90 minutes it never felt like a slog, there’s a deftness and lightness to it that helps it skip along and its really well sequenced. It sounds great too, that pre digital 70s warmth, depth and clarity. Feel like I’m going to listen to this a lot. Not always keen on giving 5 to albums I have heard for the first time, but this is a super bit of 70s pop.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ms. Dynamite
2/5
A Little Deeper
Me and Dave once saw Ms Dynamite outside Streatham Megabowl.
First off Dy-Na-Mi-Tee is great, a super bit of r’n’/soul pop. Catchy hook, and a very nice bit of bass and guitar.
I do like the sound of the percussion, the snare has a nice r’n’b dryness to it. And there is some quite unusual for the genre instrumentation, the accordion on It Takes More for example, and there is also, again slightly unusually, a lot of guitar throughout.
Lyrically there are some good lines and moments, she certainly has a bit of edge to her, with some socially conscious lyrics, more than other British r’n’b singers at the time, but there are still a few too many standard cliches and platitudes, it feels like intentional smoothing out of any roughness and it definitely loses something because of that. Maybe if she was around now the musical landscape and attitude to this type of music would suit her better.
Beyond that there’s not many songs that are particularly memorable, especially in the back half. The 2nd bit of the last track, Get Up Stand Up is verging on really good, almost Erykah Badu/Lauryn Hill territory, but it makes you wish there was more like it with some slightly better rapping. A lot of the rest is pretty formulaic r’n’b melodies and singing/oohing etc with a fair few dollops of cheese, eg the Santana-lite icky guitar on Put Him Out. Her voice also has a slight nasal quality that becomes more evident the more you hear it.
Despite Dy-Na-Mi-Tee and some interesting and slightly unusual moments and instrumentation, it is an inconsistent listen - there just aren’t enough decent songs to sustain much interest over the course of an hour. I liked it more on the 2nd listen, but was a bit bored on the 3rd listen. I’m very unlikely to listen to it again which would put it around a 2, but because of Dy-Na-Mi-Tee and that among all the standard stuff there is that element of stepping outside the normal parameters of this sort of album, which might tip it over to 3. Very much stuck between those scores, but I think I’ll settle on 2.
⭐⭐
David Bowie
4/5
The Next Day
I haven’t listened to this since it came out. I remember being quite into it, and it was quite a big deal, but I haven’t really thought about it since then.
It’s interesting to listen now, removed from that period. Is it actually good, or did we think it was good because it came out of nowhere with no expectations, and Bowie was at the age and stage of career and life where he was held in high esteem, regardless of the quality of the album?
The answer to that question comes about 30 seconds into the first track, this is genuinely good. I love the slightly off-kilter feel of The Next Day, definitely echoes of Beauty & The Beast. Great, great opener.
Dirty Boys is cool too, again a kind of throwback, but I like the horn/drum/guitar combo. The Stars are Out Tonight I’m not a huge fan of, although it definitely picks up in the 2nd half with the strings and synths, but it does have more than a whiff of basic old man doing tasteful mid tempo guitar rock, as does Love is Lost a little, although the lyrics on that one are great.
I really liked the downbeatness of Where Are We Now when it came out. First time re-listening now I wasn’t that keen, but 2nd and 3rd time reminded me what a great track it is.
I like the lyrical perspective of Valentine’s Day, and the riff is good, but as a song it’s not my favourite. If You Can See Me is great, love the slightly frantic rhythms and the bass is great. Excellent track. I’d Rather Be High I like a lot, the guitar riff is great, catchy but slightly creepy too. Boss of Me has its moments, but apart from the horn it is a little forgettable.
Love the weird little synth thing on Dancing Out in Space, really elevates the song. How Does the Grass Grow, lots of Wonderful Life by Black, but great guitar in the 2nd half. (You Will) Set the World on Fire is a bit of an oddity, the riff is decent but it sounds out of place production wise and for Bowie also, and the song seems pretty formulaic overall.
You Feel So Lonely You Could Die is great, a nice change of pace away from some of the riff heavy songs that precede it. And then Heat really is excellent, really evoking some of that creepy spookiness from around Station to Station and Low. Great, great closer.
Lyrically it is excellent throughout, despite looking back at the past, he manages to look into new corners and offer different perspectives, rather than just re-hashing things or just making fan service style easter egg references. Very clever how he manages to tread that line.
I have a slight issue with some of the production, particularly the drum sound. I’m not sure how to describe it, it’s that very modern ‘big’ sound, right in the middle of the mix. Kind of echoey, but not in an 80s way, I guess it might be a consequence of the extreme dynamic range compression on everything nowadays. The 2010 onwards Macca albums also have this sound, as does that Stones album from last year. That drum sound and the overall sound generally feel particularly jarring on this record - with it referencing so much from his past the modern sound just doesn’t compare favourably with his older stuff, either as a counterpoint, contrast or as an evocation.
It also feels like it could do with 2 or 3 fewer songs, it does feel wooly as you get towards the end and a sense that it’s slightly stretching things out.
Overall it is a very good album, and an excellent one in the canon of aging white rockstars making records about their mortality. It’s much better than you should reasonably expect from him at that age and stage of life and health. Even if sometimes the music is a bit staid and it is a bit long, lyrically and thematically it’s so sharp and interesting that’s it never feels like it’s not a worthwhile listen.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
4/5
Rattlesnakes
I think I got Lloyd Cole wrong, I’d assumed he was kind of safely bluesy middle of the road bland, a right on the nose Jools Holland act. But, on this at least, he is more of jangly, folky, country-ish pop artist, adjacent to some the postcard records stuff.
There may not be a great deal of edge to it, but it has a very tasteful sensibility overall, and a winning earnest naivety and sweetness. Lots of literary, cultural and musical references that don’t always land, but they don’t feel affected, the sentiments seem genuine and heartfelt.
He doesn’t always have the strongest voice, although I quite like his occasional falsetto, but he does do slightly different voices on some of the song, sounding a bit like Morrissey in a few.
I really enjoyed this, it’s a very pleasant listen, maybe it doesn’t scale any crazy heights, but it’s never boring, the songs are all good and I like the sound, that early 80s big but intimate production. It’s probably on the cusp of 3 and 4, but I’ll go 4 as I’ll definitely listen again.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aphex Twin
3/5
Selected Ambient Works 85-92
When I saw Aphex Twin come up I immediately thought of Dan’s wisdom tooth and how Windowlicker era Apex Twin would probably be the worst thing you could listen to with toothache.
I was interested to hear this, I’m aware of bits and pieces of Aphex Twin but have never dived in.
I wasn’t necessarily expecting some relatively straightforward ambient techno though, but I liked it. Some of the housey synths sound quite dated, which would make sense as its its 30-40 years old, but overall I liked the tempos and percussion and some of the more textural layered synths behind the bass and the odd hook.
No one particular track stood out, apart perhaps from Ageispolis which had more than a hint of You’ll Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties, I just enjoyed it as one long piece of instrumental electronica. Obviously it wasn’t made as an album, but as music to work to or paint the shed to I found it very pleasant and relaxing. It doesn’t move me in the way some of Brian Enos albums do, but I found it a pleasant discovery that I will come back to, particularly for music to play while working or focusing.
Solidly midway between 3 and 4, I’ll land on a 3 - it’s something I’ll listen to for specific situations rather than for pure pleasure.
⭐⭐⭐
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Led Zeppelin III
It wasn’t until I got a bit older that I started to appreciate Led Zeppelin, and over the last year or so I have really got into them, particularly Jan and Feb this year when I listened to them A LOT. Their first four albums are truly excellent.
LZIII is an interesting one though, a kind of a transition between first 2 more straight ahead rock albums and LZIV’s more mystical, hobbity and instrumentally diverse sound. Ramble On’s acoustic folkiness from LZII seems to be a stepping off point for a lot of what’s on here: Friends, and then the 2nd side, with Gallow’s Pole, Tangerine, That’s the Way, Bron-y-Aur Stomp and Hats Off to Roy Harper.
Outside of those, Immigrant Song is an absolute classic, and Celebration Day is just fantastic, the bass in particular is awesome, but I love the slide too. I’m a bit ambivalent on Since I’ve Been Loving You, on the one hand I like the general atmosphere and some of the guitar is great, but it does stray into plodding mindless blues rock a little too much for me. The drumming in Out on the Tiles is superb, which makes sense with the writing credits, it may not be a top tier LZ rocker, but it’s real grower for me.
I do love the slightly loose feel compared to I and II, even if there isn’t as much immediacy as those two albums, but in Immigrant Song, Celebration Day and Gallow’s Pole it has 3 of their best songs as well as some great songs like Bron-y-Aur Stomp. I like that they did try and move away from the sound they had established, even if the synthesis of heavy rock and mystical fairies and folk music is probably better realised on IV.
As good as it is it is probably a notch below I, II & IV, so in reality a very high 4, but definitely verging on 5. As they are such a great and influential band I’ll judge them to a higher standard and go 4
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Elvis Costello
3/5
Brutal Youth
‘Cool, must be getting toward the end of the album’, _looks down_, ‘Fucking hell, track six!?’.
There are some decent songs, some great ideas, some very good lyrics and I like the production and playing, particularly the bass throughout, but I can’t shake a slight nagging sense of pointlessness.
While it’s by no means bad or unlistenable, it’s just feels very undynamic, if that’s a word. It’s not that it’s bland or half hearted, my ears definitely pricked up at certain parts, and I found my self tapping along from time to time, but each song tended to just come and go, and by the end of it I didn’t really feel anything, neither enriched or diminished.
I do actually like Elvis Costello - This Year’s Model, Armed Forces and Get Happy are great great records - but I do have this same reaction to a lot of his other stuff, maybe it’s how he constructs his melodies, or the tempos he works at but I find myself not minding it, but kind of zoning out into nothing.
I won’t go through song by song, as it seems a bit pointless, but things I did pick up on and like were Nick Lowe’s bass on the songs he played on, the exuberance of Pony St, Kinder Murder is good, the do do dos on Clown Strike, the intro to Sulky Girl, the organ on My Science Fiction Twin and the Neil Young-esque guitar on All the Rage.
With all that in mind it’s kind of hard to rate, it’s a perfectly fine album with good things about it. I’d not be averse to listening to it again, but I really can’t see me ever remembering it exists after today. 2 is too low(e), so I’ll reflect my ambivalence and go 3.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Scott Walker
3/5
Scott 2
I have never listened to these Scott Walker albums, despite knowing how much of an influence and touch point they are for bands and singers I like.
I suppose liking this depends mainly on your capacity for musical cabaret slightly off beat baroque pop sung by a creepy uncle. There’s a fair bit of baroque pop I do like and while there is quite a lot to enjoy here, particularly the sense of oddness to it, musically it does get a bit much, and by the third listen I had to stop as it started getting on my tits. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was partially intended and would please Scott.
I won’t bother with the track by track, but a couple of things stood out. I’m pretty familiar with Jackie and I do like it, it probably is the best of his Jacques Brel songs, and is musically the best exemplar of the over the top instrumentation and oddness. The Bosnian strings on Best of Both Worlds are very nice. I love the song Black Sheep Boy, Bobby Darin’s versions might be my favourite, but this is a good version too. Plastic Palace People is nice, the shimmering strings suits the slightly off kilter imagery. The Girls and the Dogs is pretty woeful and unpleasant. The Bridge is very good, the pick of the 2nd side.
I did want to give it one more listen, but I couldn’t face it again today. I don’t think it’s bad and I would listen again, but I’d like to wait and while and not listen 3 times in a row again.
⭐⭐⭐
Primal Scream
4/5
Vanishing Point
I fucking loved this when it came out. I remember buying it in Woolworths (don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore) in Totton on my lunch break from my part time job, in that sweet sweet summer between A-Levels and Uni. I likely bought a slice of Pizza from Baker’s Oven on the way back to work too.
It seems quite intertwined with Fat of the Land in my memory - just looked it up, Fat of the Land was released the week before this. What a time to be 17 years old.
I haven’t listened to it in a while but it still holds up for the most part. Burning Wheel is great, starting with that swirling melange of sounds before a psychedelic groove emerges with the bass, guitar and organ, before it the turns into a shuffling dance/rock tune. Get Duffy definitely feels like a piece of 60s/70s soundtrack music in a good way, which makes sense with Vanishing Point the film being a key influence on the album.
I bought the Kowalski single when it came out, and it still sounds great, Mani’s rumbling bass is superb at creating a sense of unease and paranoia, as does the fact that it is more a series of incantations and samples rather than a set of lyrics.
At the time I loved Star, and although I still like the essence of the words, the lyrics do sound clunky now. Musically it’s still great though, particularly the melodica hook and the horns.
I love the little guitar parts in If They Move Kill Em, again it feels quite soundtrack, with a load of sounds and textures jammed into it, but it works as it has a strong sense of momentum. There’s enough interesting stuff happening musically with Out of the Void to keep it going, and the groove/rhythm is good, but it feels a long, even if it’s only 4 minutes. Far too many 90s doorbell chimes in Stuka, but again I like the slippery, dubby spacey groove built around the bass.
I don’t think Medication or Motörhead work that well. The former harks back to the Stonesey stuff on Give Out But Don’t Give Up but it feels very leaden footed, there isn’t that sense of looseness and groove that the song needs and that is preset on the rest of the album. Motörhead probably just isn’t that great a song outside of the Motörhead bubble, but works slightly better than Medication, fitting the druggy/comedown vibe a bit better.
Trainspotting brings things back to the woozy soundtrack feel, this time with 90s telephone chimes, but it is way too long and the electric piano is a bit too 90s lounge pastiche, although the guitar right at the end is nice. It’s probably the weakest of the instrumental grooves.
Long Life is great, despite the dodgy vocal. It definitely has a Kraftwerk vibe to the synths and I like the swirling, echoey feel. A suitably spacey end to the album.
It’s definitely a very loose record, with all it’s instrumentals and the lack of concise and well defined songs, but I think that’s to it’s benefit, as it seems to be going for cinematically inspired feel, groove and sonic textures in varying styles, out of which songs and tunes emerge, rather than a coherent set of songs with one particular influence, like the previous album.
It also definitely sags towards the end, from Medication to Trainspotting, before picking back up with Long Life. It may not be a perfect album, but I do like it a lot, I admire the idea behind it and the overall woozy, loose, trippy sound. Way better than a 3, but not a 5, cogito ergo sum its a 4.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Aftergeography
This is a little sweet spot of the Stones, along with Between the Buttons, that I’m very fond of, but I don’t listen to it as much as I should.
As much as I like Paint it Black I listened to the UK version of the album, which I think should be the definitive edition.
Although Out of our Heads is a good listen, this is clearly a step up, undoubtedly inspired by The Beatles, Beach Boys, Who, Kinks etc. Although you can still hear echoes of their blues and r&b sound in things like Doncha Bother Me and Flight 505, you can also also hear where they would end up a few years later with songs like Goin’ Home. High and Dry even points to the coming influence of country on their music.
But Mother’s Little Helper, Lady Jane, Under My Thumb, Out of Time, I Am Waiting, Take it or Leave it and Think are great examples of them landing between those two eras. Excellently catchy mid 60s pop songs with interesting things happening musically and instrumentally that keep them fresh no matter how many times you hear them. It’s Not Easy and What to Do aren’t qute at those standards and are pretty forgettable
The lyrics though. I’ve not really considered the lyrics of this period over the years, but listening today, there is a lot that is problematic to say the least. It’s tricky judging them against today’s standards, and it’s not necessarily fair, but I’d hazard that even for the time they were a bit misogynistic and borderline rapey. I don’t think it necessarily lessens my enjoyment of the album, but it’s definitely something I’m more aware of now than I have been previously. Although that probably is a great example of cakeism on my part. When they are not specifically singing about stupid and feckless women it’s much more interesting, there’s definitely a nihilistic and anti-sentimental tone, a bit at odds with the burgeoning peace and love scene, but probably necessary to move on from the prevailing I Love You, Let’s Hold Hands sensibility of 50s and early 60s pop songs.
Charlie’s drumming is always excellent, but it is particularly great on this. I love the soft toms on I Am Waiting and the fills in Out of Time. And Bill Wyman’s bass is excellent, not necessarily at Macca’s melodic level or John Entwhistle’s propulsive brashnees, but it has an excellent tone and place in the production, and enough little hooks and licks to give the songs some great texture.
It really is a great snapshot of them between eras, clearly inspired to compete with the Beatles and their contemporaries, and while they don’t quite have the melodic and thematic inventiveness of the Beatles, the variations in sounds and instrumentation is great. It's easy to overlook this and Between the Buttons, and although It doesn’t quite hit the peaks in the same way as their upcoming classic 4-5 albums, lyrics notwithstanding, it’s a great album and a great listen overall. Not quite at a 5, so an easy solid 4.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Motörhead
2/5
No Sleep ‘till Hammersmith
I’m partial to a bit of Motorhead, especially compared to their peers. I say that, it’s more like I’m partial to a bit of Ace of Spades and not much else.
This version of Ace of Spades is very good, the whole thing crashes forward in a blur of bass drums and Lemmy. After that it is just live recordings of fast tempo heavy metal. It’s not terrible at all, I suppose Lemmy’s stuff prior to Motorhead means he can conjure up some decent hooks and melodies, even if it does feel like pretty much every song is a less successful attempt at writing Ace of Spades again. Iron Horse, Overkill and (We Are) The Roadcrew stand out as being more memorable than the rest.
As a live recording it’s decent, some tracks are definitely better recorded than others, but you do get a sense of their energy and on-stage tightness. If you are really into Motorhead I expect seeing them at this time would have been excellent, although I don’t think I’d be that keen to attend one of their gigs.
I know this is an early review, but it doesn’t take multiple listens to come to a conclusion. Ultimately it’s fine, it is exactly what it is, I wouldn’t expect to hear anything that interesting or different. While it's not terrible, I’m unlikely to listen again - what exactly would I get out of doing that? 2 does feel low, but 3 would indicate I might have a further listen so I’ll stick with 2.
Playlist submission: Ace of Spades
⭐⭐
Sugar
3/5
Copper Blue
Never heard of this band or album, didn’t know it was Bob Mould until I looked it up.
I’m not overly disposed to the early 90s alt rock/grunge bands and sound, but I did enjoy this more than most albums in the genre. I do like Husker Du, and although the subject matter is more straightforward than HD, it does retain some of the same punkish 60s surf pop influences, but with more accessible melodies.
There’s something off about the bass on A Good Idea, I think it is supposed to sound deliberately amateur, but it honestly sounds like me failing over and over to learn a basic bassline. Changes is a good bit of grunge power pop.
Feel like I’ve heard Helpless before, I like it. Hoover Dam is very nice, the acoustic guitars and synth add a nice texture and are a nice contrast to the guitar heavy tracks. If I Can’t Change Your Mind is another nice slice of melodic grunge. I like Man on the Moon too.
The rest I can take or leave, it's all fine but pretty forgettable and formulaic heavy guitar alt rock.
It’s certainly a decent enough album, I wouldn’t be averse to listening again, and might choose to at some point if I got reminded of it, but I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to hear it again. Think that lands it right in the middle of the pack.
⭐⭐⭐
Playlist submission: Hoover Dam
David Bowie
5/5
Station to Station
Really smashing through the Bowie, of the 9 on the list we only have 3 left after this one.
And another cracker, definitely top tier Bowie for me (feel like I’ve said that for all his albums so far). I do often like albums that straddle two eras or styles and this certainly has elements of Young Americans while also foreshadowing the Berlin trilogy. The title track really encapsulates this, the brooding teutonic sounding intro and build, with the more funk and soul ‘It’s too late’ part. Great guitar.
Golden Years is just fantastic, great riff and I love the handclaps. Superb vocal on Word on a Wing, and love the build from the understated opening to the full strained and yearning body of the song.
TVC15 has always been a favourite, a great bit of off kilter soul and rock. Love the piano and guitar in the outro.
Stay is truly excellent, fantastic guitar and another one that straddles the Young Americans and Berlin periods. Another excellent vocal on Wild is the Wind, delicate and translucent but very moving. The guitar is very nice too.
There is a coolness (as in cold) to this, a definite uncomfortable and uneasy undertone to it all, despite some more immediate moments like Golden Years, TVC15 and the piano intro to Word on a Wing, but that sense of detachment gives it a sense of density, hidden corners and a pleasantly unsettling personality. It has to be this length, anymore than 38 minutes and it might feel too oppressive. Only 6 songs, but each of them has room to breathe and none of them feel long, despite their lengths.
The sound of the album is excellent throughout too. I guess it’s hard to know who played what between Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar but the guitar on this album really is fantastic, skipping between styles and tones and sound, adding so much to the songs whether as the foundation like on Golden Years or as texture as on TVC15.
Endlessly intriguing and complex, one of those albums where it often feels like you are hearing it for the first time even if you’ve already only just listened to it, it can only be a 5
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Playlist submission: Station to Station. Hard to choose, love GY, TVC15 and Stay, but for it’s unique air of sinister momentum I’ll go with STS
The Stranglers
3/5
Rattus Norvegicus
Stuart Pearce’s favourite band. He’s seen them over 1000 times.
The Stranglers best of is always a fun listen, but I’ve never given any of their albums a go so I’m quite interested in this.
They never seemed like a typical punk band, although the attitude and vocals are pretty sneering and punkish, the keyboards/organ and the prominent, melodic bass always made them sound more like a standard rock band, albeit with a bit of a rough edge. They definitely have a sense of musicianship and musical ambition beyond many their peers, and you can definitely hear a lot of 60s influences, particularly The Who.
Sometimes is a good example, it really doesn’t have that year zero punk ethos - the bass, organ and guitar breaks are much more pre-punk ‘classic’ rock. It’s a great opener though.
Goodbye Toulouse is a little more punky in attitude and tempo, but the circular organ and the guitar fills give it a more accomplished flavour. London Lady continues that pattern but with diminishing returns. Princess of the Streets is a bit creepy but a nice change of pace, developing into a decent hypnotic groove. Hanging Around picks the energy back up, with a decent memorable melody.
Peaches is a great bit of pop rock oddness. It could be easily dismissed as a bit of a novelty record, but it’s much better than that. (Get a) Grip (On Yourself) is good too, the synths and sax is great, giving a different texture. Ugly is pretty forgettable. I like the Down in the Sewer medley, a nice sense of musical ambition, even if it doesn’t work fully.
The lyrics do need a mention, they have undoubtedly not aged well and are problematic in parts, particularly Sometimes. And they do seem quite obsessed with sexism, streets, sewers and rats. Peaches you can probably just about give the benefit of the doubt to, in that it parodies a certain type of character and at least Goodby Toulouse uses a slightly unconventional inspiration.
Overall it’s a decent, fun listen, both as a counterpoint to their punk peers and in its own right, even if it is undoubtedly a bit patchy. Sometimes (despite the lyrics), Hanging Around, Peaches and (Get a) Grip (On Yourself) are very good songs, standing well above the rest. I also do like the composition of the band - when it works well the bass and organ/keys are a great combo, giving them a distinctiveness and point of difference. I’ll go 3, it doesn’t set the world alight, but I’d listen again.
⭐⭐⭐
Playlist submission: Peaches. (Get a) Grip (On Yourself) runs it close but I’ll go with the obvious
Can
5/5
Tago Mago
Ich Nichten Lichten - 73 minutes of German avant garde rock!
The first half of it, from Paperhouse to Halleluhwah is just fantastic. Skittery, odd, creepy with great rhythms and little hooks and melodies. It’s recognisable, but also slightly opaque, there’s grooves and lyrics, but the overall effect is slightly other worldly. It feels like what jazz thinks it, but is actually what jazz wishes it could be.
Paperhouse and Oh Yeah are great, but I love Mushroom and Halleluwah. Mushroom is possibly the most conventional song, even though it’s still a bit odd, but the 18 minutes of Halleluwah is just amazing, a little bit of funk, but spacey at the same time. You could dance to it, but you could also freak out to it. Just read that Primal Scream sampled the drums for Kowalski. Makes sense.
The 2nd side is definitely a different listen, although and without wanting to appear obtuse, I do really like it - although obviously it’s not everyones cup of tea and it took me a long time to come round to it. I do like how Aumgn slowly coalesces from chaotic noise into chaotic rhythm by the end of its 17 minutes. Although on the one hand it’s kind of tuneless, there’s something about it I find quite addictive, I really don’t know what that is or why I like it so much. Peking O’s introduction feels like its leading towards something like the songs on the first side, before it turns into a soup of schizo percussion and shouting. I’m less keen on this than Aumgn, although I do still like it. Again I don’t know why. Bring me Coffee or Tea is a suitably subversive end, going back to the style of the first side.
I do love this album, maybe Ege Bamyasi or Future Days are a better overall listen but I love how distinctive this is. I always get the feeling the avant garde stuff on side 2 comes from a genuine place of experimentation, rather than pretension or deliberate wackiness, while the stuff on side 1 is what happens when they try and write ‘normal’ songs, their innate slightly off balance and skewed sensibilities means it comes out slightly strangely, but in a brilliant way.
The recording and composition of it is interesting, recorded on 2 track in a castle, made by cutting up their jams into ‘songs’. You can hear the joins in lots of places, but that only adds to the charm in my opinion.
It’s not the greatest album ever, but the more I listen the more rewarding it is. I find myself enjoying it immensely each time I put it on, maybe because it's so off centre, and at turns creepy, slippery, funky, funny and weird. But I don’t actually know why it appeals to me so much. I love an effortless McCartney melody, or a extremely well recorded and structured Steely Dan song, or a skillfully written and arranged pop song as much as the next man, and this is not that, but I love that some weird Germans and a Japanese guy made this, and that it still endures 50 years later. 5 it is.
🥫🥫🥫🥫🥫
Playlist: Halleluhwah
The Notorious B.I.G.
2/5
Ready to Die
I do like Biggie’s flow, but I only really know Juicy, Hypnotise, Mo Money. Interested to hear this, especially in comparison to the Tupac album we had back in May.
I really like a lot of the sound and production on this, and the samples are pretty great throughout, a lot of string laden 70s soul, giving the whole thing a warm, lush sound. Good considering it seems to have had about 300 different producers.
Intro really resonated with me, it really reminded me of my own journey from birth to adulthood.
His rhymes and wordplay are good, and I like the timbre and style of his voice, but the actual words and lyrics on most of it I don’t like. I thought Tupac talked about these same topics and themes more as reportage, laying out the world and situations he found himself in, with a strong element of despair. While they did border on nihilism, I much preferred them to the lyrics on this. It’s not that he is necessarily glorifying violence or gangs, but there is a fair amount of self aggrandizing, eg on Warning. The bragging about his sexual prowess is also quite painful, the words on One More Chance for example are embarrassingly cringe and hard to listen to. The blow job noises at the end of Respect are also awful. That air of misogyny, while pretty pervasive elsewhere in the genre and other music at the time, is also pretty hard to listen to.
Juicy is still a great track though.
Musically and sonically I really like a lot of the album, but lyrically I really don’t like it. I know the world he grew up in and raps about is so far removed from my own experience that I don’t fee I’ml in a position to really judge it, but it feels like there are lot of other people out there who do talk about this stuff in a more interesting and, from my perspective, a much better way.
⭐⭐
Playlist submission: Juicy
Nick Drake
5/5
Pink Moon
So good.
As with the previous Nick Drake albums, each of them on any day can be my favourite. Listening today, this is my favourite, but if I listened to Five Leaves Left tomorrow that would probably be my favourite.
The sparseness of the music fits so well with the sparseness of the lyrics, the fragments of observations, feelings and moods that the words evoke as they gently drift in and out. He doesn’t fully vocalise a lot of the words, so you get a real sense of an internal monologue of jumbled thoughts passing across the tumbling and spiralling guitar. Although there is an undeniable bleakness and sadness, there are also moments of joy and hope.
I won’t go through each song, but I like them all and I like the flow, moving in and out of focus, some more rhythmic, some more atmospheric, all tying into the overall feeling of the album
28 minutes of melancholy acoustic perfection.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Playlist submission: Stick a pin in any tack, but today I really liked Road.
The Replacements
4/5
Let it Be
Kind of familiar with this, one of those albums that get talked about a lot. I remember downloading it dodgily in pre streaming times, but it must have been a poor quality or highly compressed version as it didn’t sound as good as the version I’m listening to now. I didn’t really give it many listens but I did like Unsatisfied, which I’ve got on a few playlists to this day
I Will Dare, love this, very power pop, Byrds and Tom Petty ish with a punk new wave edge to it. Makes sense that Peter Buck plays on it. Favourite Thing is similar, with great guitar interplay.
We’re Coming Out, beers a bit close to a slightly tuneless punk thrash, although i love the piano breakdown at the end and the solo is good.
The lead and rhythm guitars on Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out are great, a cool post punk power pop combo, but the song just kind of fizzles out, even though I like sense of humour to it.
I can hear a lot of people must have been influenced by Androgynous, it does sound a bit like Mercury Rev and other 90s US and UK indie bands. Amazingly progressive and sympathetic lyrics for the time too. Bit of a gem.
Black Diamond. Bit of an oddity, don’t know the Kiss original at all, but seems a strange choice of band to cover. It’s fine but not as interesting as the other tracks.
Unsatisfied is excellent, a great bit of songwriting, it immediately sounds right, well constructed, but with enough roughness around the edges and a pleasing lack of polish. Stand out track.
Seen Your Video is another great slice of power pop, love that, idiosyncratically, it’s wordless until the end.
Gary’s Got a Boner. I’ve got a boner.
Sixteen Blue is really great, a few little county touches with a great sense of longing and yearning. Excellent solo.
Answering Machine is also great, love that’s it’s just guitars and nothing else until the little bit of percussion at the end.
I like their sound, the two ‘lead’ guitars, and his unconventionally affecting voice, and the unpolished looseness and occasional dissonance of their playing. Can hear a lot of Libertines in that.
It is possibly a bit patchy overall, but this is a great little album, it’s punk new wave power pop classic rock synthesis is great, it’s rough edges and it’s sense of often imminent musical collapse gives it such charm - you can see and hear why it’s been so influential and why it gets talked about so much. A definite minor classic, easily in the high 4s.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Playlist submission: Unsatisfied
Shivkumar Sharma
5/5
Call of the Valley
Couldn’t find the correct version on Tidal, so had to listen on YouTube, which is normally annoying, but for this it wasn’t, as it felt like one suite of music, so knowing individual tracks doesn’t really matter. (There is a version on Tidal, which seems to be a remake by his son
I also refrained from looking up anything about it until I’d listened to it. Obviously I knew it would be Indian, but I didn’t know whether it would be classical Indian or something more akin to the fusion of Indian and rock music on that first Ananda Shankar album.
After a minute or two it’s in the former. I know very little about Indian classical music, apart from the odd bit I’ve read about due to George and other 60s musicians who listened to it and were influenced by it. I also know that it has a different scale and also some very specific rules on instruments and improvisation, but when it comes to how that manifests itself and how it actually works I’m pretty clueless.
But I really really enjoyed this as soon as I started listening. I presume from the title it has a pastoral theme, and I definitely got that sense from it. I suppose that may be to do with the flute-like instrument, but I got the same pastoral or nature inspired impression that I get from Vaughan Williams or Sibelius in western classical music.
Now reading about it after, the flute-like instrument is actually a flute! And that plus the guitar throughout is probably why it appeals to my western ears, as it’s not full-on Indian classical but classical music made accessible for international audiences.
That doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of it all however, I just found the whole thing incredibly pleasing and relaxing, and even more so once I read more about it and the themes and inspiration. I loved the intricacies of the melodies and instrumentation and the peaceful and serene atmosphere it evokes. It really is a very beautiful 40 odd minutes of music.While I wouldn’t say I’m about to embark on a lifelong spiritual journey into Indian classical, I am interested to find out about and listen to a bit more.
Kind of hard to judge against the rest of the albums on this list, as it's probably more comparable to classical rather than pop, rock, jazz, soul or hip hop etc. I really really liked it though and as it kind of stands apart from the rest of the albums I’ll give it a 5.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Playlist submission: The 4th one, Rag Des (although if the albums on streaming we can’t put it on the playlist I guess)
Funkadelic
4/5
One Nation Under a Groove
The world is a toll free toilet
Our mouths neurological assholes
And psychologically speaking
We're in a state of mental diarrhea
Talking shit a mile a minute
💩💩💩💩
Playlist submission: Cholly (Funk Getting Ready To Roll!)
Rage Against The Machine
3/5
Rage Against the Machine
Wake up sheeple! Corporations, yeah? The system, yeah?
Although I kind of agree with the overall sentiment, lyrically this is pretty artless - it’s hardly groundbreaking to criticise capitalism and express dislike of inequality, but if you are, swearing with vague platitudes about systems and not doing ‘they’ say just sounds a bit crap. It’s not necessarily that they are naive, and I don’t doubt their sincerity and conviction at all, but the words are neither direct and powerful, nor opaque and poetic, so it fails to reach the intellectual articulation that he’s clearly striving for, and consequently it sounds a bit laughable - it has that sense of a teenager with superficial profundity telling you something very obvious that you already know.
Musically however this is excellent, or more accurately ‘guitarily’ this is excellent. I know people always say Tom Morello is a great guitarist, but listening to this I completely understand. Although it may not be in my preferred genre, it’s so so good: heavy, groovy, riffy, simultaneously subtle and direct, it expresses the anger and themes of the album much better than the words do. I could quite happily listen to an instrumental-only version of this.
Song wise, Killing in the Name is of course excellent and probably the standout. Take the Power Back is, I presume(?), unintentionally Seinfeld. Musically Settle for Nothing is great, superb guitar. Bullet in the Head is good and Know Your Enemy is excellent, possibly running Killing in the Name of close. Wake Up is very Kashmir, and then the remaining tracks are more of the same. Excellent guitar, bad lyrics.
Of all the angry rock records, this has to be up there, I would say principally for the guitar - in fact I would prefer an instrumental-only version of this album. It’s tricky to rate, purely on guitar its a 4, but the whole is lesser, so I’ll go with 3.
🐑🐑🐑
Playlist submission: Killing in the Name
Harry Nilsson
4/5
Nilsson Schmilsson
I fairly familiar with this album, I do listen to it from time to time, although haven’t in a while.
I didn't realise until I listened to a Nothing is Real podcast episode last year that there was quite a bit of intertwining between Nilsson and the Beatles, not just the lost weekend stuff with John, but they all liked him and his music. He’s done a few Beatles covers, You Can’t Do That and She’s Leaving Home on Pandemonium Shadow Show are good. Even without knowing that and listening to this album you can tell he’s clearly very influenced by them.
Gotta Get Up is great, really sets the tone for the album, kind of classic singer songwriting with a slightly off beat sensibility, interesting instrumentation and a lot of humour. He does seem to have that slight Macca-esque ability to appear to be able to toss off some effortless sounding melodies.
Driving along has that same effortless feeling, although it just seems to end, feels like it could have built further. Early in the Morning is also great. I’m not familiar with the orginal but the electric keys only backing is excellent.
The Moonbeam Song is very pretty, the Beach Boys style harmonies are great, they really elevate it.
Massive solo Lennon and solo McCartney vibes on Down. The piano feels very Spector era Lennon, but the horns echoing the descent as he sings down are very McCartney/Martin.
Coconut is fun but of oddness. I guess now you wouldn’t be able to sing in that accent, something something woke, but it’s great.
While Let the Good Times Roll is fun enough, I’m not sure it adds a great deal to the album.
Without You. Easy to forget what an excellent song this is when it’s been x factored/pub singered to death. I do love this version, the strings are excellent, just enough Bernard Herman edge to them to avoid it being too saccharine.
Jump into the Fire is excellent, the stand out track. I’ve liked since I first heard it in Goodfellas. The bass is excellent, especially in the breakdowns. Great song.
I’ll Never Leave You is a great downbeat end and a nice contrast to Jump into the Fire. Love the strings, horns and banjo as it builds and then levels out. Very pretty.
He really does have a great voice, Moonbeam Song, Down and I’ll Never Leave You really show that. And the Beatles/solo Beatles echoes make a lot of sense as alot of the musicians on here also played on Lennon and Harrison’s stuff.
Overall it is a great listen, although it’s definitely a bit woolly in places. It’s probably lacking a couple more really high quality songs to put it in the top tier. Nevertheless it lands very easily in the 4s, its slightly shabby and quirky laid back charm is a winner for me.
🥥🥥🥥🥥
Playlist submission: Jump into the Fire
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
Buena Vista Social Club
The Guardian told me I should buy this back in 1997, so I did, likely thinking it would make me appear cool and eclectic. I did enjoy it, but it didn’t have much longevity in my barely formed 18 year old brain, so I don’t think I listened to it between 1998 and now.
Of all the music outside of the Western Europe/North America bubble, I do find myself drawn more to North and Northwest African desert blues and Indian stuff like Call of the Valley the other day, rather than things like this in the central american/caribbean/latin american genres. Maybe it’s the spanish guitars or the jazz adjacency but it never quite fires my imagination.
However I did enjoy it today, maybe out of nostalgia and maybe because it was a nice sunny day, but also because it is genuinely good. The various lead vocals and lead vocalists are superb, I love that they are a bit older and have that great lived in, slightly frayed around the edges feel. And the harmonies are excellent throughout. The playing is also great, giving the whole thing such a languid, sunny feel, although often there is a detectable air of melancholy. I obviously don’t know what they are singing about, it could be about lost love and family or worker co-operatives and production quotas, but it doesn’t matter, it sounds great.
However, unless you are really into this type of music, an hour is a lot. There’s no doubt it does start to feel quite samey after about ½ an hour, and although it doesn’t really drag, it’s one of those where you could accidentally restart the album at any point and you wouldn’t necessarily notice.
Highlights for me are the first 3 tracks, particularly the first one Chan Chan. Ry Cooder’s slide on this is great, subtly adding to the track and giving it a very pleasant hint of bluesiness. I also really liked El Carretero and Orgullecida. The rest, while very nice and atmospheric, didn’t particularly register.
Overall I’d say it’s right in the 3s. Very listenable and enjoyable, and I would listen again, but doesn’t quite resonate enough with me over the course of an hour to push it into the 4s, despite the obvious quality of musicianship
🇨🇺🇨🇺🇨🇺
Playlist submission: Between Chan Chan and Orgullecida, I’ll go Chan Chan
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
To Pimp a Butterfly
I saw this was on the list when Paul recommended it after Good Kid, so I wanted to wait until it came up before I listened to it.
The list of guest stars and also musicians and producers is nuts - I counted 60 on the Wiki page - but it’s also nuts how much it all hangs together when you take all that into account.
Wesley’s Theory is great, squelchy bass and funk vibes, despite neither Thundercat or Gorge Clinton actually playing bass on it. King Kunta is excellent, superb samples and interpolations and great, driving bass and percussion. Sounds like an instant classic to me.
Institutionalized is also very good, really like the drum sound and drum pattern, and Snoop’s rap is great, his voice sounds really different, older and worn. These Walls is very Thundercat, I love that warm synth sound and again the drum sound is excellent, as are the little guitar lines.
Alright I remember from Glastonbury the other year, and I’ve definitely heard it in other places. Momma is great and Hood Politics too, love the ‘bending’ synth sound.
How Much a Dollar Cost feels like a succinct distillation of the themes he raps about, kind of despairing but not hopeless. Ronald Isley sounds fantastic on it. The Blacker the Berry is also excellent, has a similar feel to King Kunta, but brilliantly atmospheric and creepy.
You Ain’t Gotta Lie has a similar feel to some of The Roots. I is excellent, great sample and interpolation. Great delivery and awesome drums/percussion.
Mortal Man, what a closer. As a privileged person from the UK it’s hard to understand his experience, but this is very powerful.
It’s definitely one of those albus where it all just sounds right. The feel of the whole album is great, again a bit nuts considering the disparate cast of people, players and producers. It feels like a very modern soul record, with funk and jazz all being big elements without being overbearing or distracting and all layered brilliantly with the instrumentation, and a great drum and percussion sound throughout. Lyrically and thematically it’s great too, carrying on from the previous album, but with a broader more widescreen feeling.
I can easily see this becoming a favourite, up there with Illmatic, but I need to listen more and let it percolate further. It’s very dense, musically, lyrically and thematically, and it is long, but I’m looking forward to getting to know it more. It’s maybe a 4 right now, but I know with time it will be a 5, so I may as well give it the 5 now.
🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋
Faust
4/5
Faust
12 minute drone? Yes please!
I’m fairly familiar with this, following on from getting into Kraftwerk, Neu! and Can. I do think it’s great, kind of occupying the ground between Neu! And Can. The mislabelled tracks can get a but confusing.
Krautrock is great, long but interesting, great when the drums come in. The Sad Skinhead sounds very ahead of its time, almost post punk/new wave, whilst also simultaneously being very much of its time. Jennifer is a great, the pulsing bass is superb and it’s a great slow burn leading to the noise outro.
Just a Second is great, very ‘krautrock’ with it’s motorik rhythms and guitar, before moving into a slightly creepy 2nd half. Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau has a lot of elements I love, but I’m not so keen on the vocal hook, I much prefer the instrumental passages. Great bass and guitar in the second half though. Läuft...Heisst Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft, I love the acoustic guitar and handclaps, but, like most of their other songs you expect it to turn into a kind of experimental noise jam, but it doesn’t, it plays out very sweetly.
Run, very Radiohead. I know Faust were an influence from Kid A onwards, and they obviously have Faust Arp on in Rainbows. It’s a Bit of a Pain is a very lovely way to finish, almost Bryter Later style guitar, before the noises come in and out, and before it reaches its denoument.
I do like this album a lot. It’s a bit patchy in places but I am a bit of a sucker for this type of stuff, it’s obviously very UK and US rock’n’roll influenced, but put through a teutonic hippy lens, which makes it really interesting and very enjoyable. Loads of ideas, lots of atmosphere, bit rough around the edges, it’s my perfect idea of a 4
👺👺👺👺
Playlist submission: Krautrock
The Cult
1/5
Electric
The musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.
This album feels like a joke, as if Spinal Tap never happened. Surely this is not real, released in earnest by a real band? And if it is a real album, how has it been remembered? It’s so poor in every aspect - intention, ambition, music, lyrics - that it feels entirely pointless. I’m not averse to this sort of music at all, but why would you listen to this when you could just listen to Guns’n’Roses or AC/DC, who do this a million times better, with a million times more charm?
She Sells Sanctuary is undoubtedly an absolute classic, and I was hoping there would be similar on here but, without knowing anything else of their catalogue, that seems like a massive fluke.
It’s not worth going song by song, just think of any utterly generic hard rock riff from the middle of 1987, add some echoey drum fills and some pub singer shouting yeah-ah in three slightly different ways, and mix it up in the most basic of configurations and you have any track on this album.
I’m reluctant to give out 1s, but I will this time. This is utter wank.
🧤
Playlist submission: I’ll go for my least favourite, a choice between Bad Fun or the cover of Born to be Wild. I’ll go Born to be Wild as it’s one of the most laughable covers I’ve ever heard
Bob Dylan
5/5
Blood on the Tracks
This is definitely up there in my favourite Dylan albums, it may even be my favourite as it’s probably the one I’ve listened to more than any other. There really isn’t a weak track, each one is fantastic in its own right, and as a collection they work superbly.
Tangled up in Blue is one of his best songs for me, and a great opening track, setting up the atmosphere of the album. I love the shifting tenses, going back and forth in time.
Simple Twist of Fate. Another all time Dylan song, such a lovely melody and evocative lyric.
You’re a Big Girl Now, is such a bleakly moving gem, the almost spanish sounding guitar and feel amplify the melancholy sadness of the words. I love how the Hammond rises and falls evoking breathing throughout Idiot Wind, and the lyrics are, of course, caustically great.
After the bleakness and bitterness of the previous 3 songs, You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’s jauntiness and vaguely upbeat feel is a pleasant contrast, as is the bluesiness of Meet Me in the Morning. While it might feel a little slight, the playing, and drumming in particular, is excellent and its a nice palate cleanser to start the 2nd side.
It took me a while to appreciate Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, but now I think it’s great, its complicated picaresque plot tale is brilliantly told, fully utilising the 9 minutes without feeling long, the wild west setting and music marrying it all together.
If You See Her, Say Hello always puts me in mind of Girl from the North Country, with its similar idea of asking someone to wish his ex lover well. A beautiful wistful lyric, perfectly complemented by the fantastic music. More top tier Dylan.
I love how the first verse of Shelter from the Storm, setting up the whole song brilliantly. Love the melodic bass against the almost spiralling rhythmic guitar. Buckets of Rain has always been a favourite, again the acoustic and bass together are excellent, and it’s slightly amused but sincere observational lyric is great
The playing is uniformly excellent, the acoustic guitars and electric bass working in great harmony, particularly on some of the sparser tracks. And lyrically, while still hidden by allegory and riddle, it might be his most obviously personal, even if he still denies that it is. At turns sad and peaceful, profound and flippant, clear-eyed and opaque, every song has little corners and moments that are clearly about something specific, whilst also leaving room for interpretation and, in many cases, shifting meaning. I guess that’s the thing though, while he might say You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go is about literature, and while that interpretation clearly works, you can’t help but wonder what else he means. Maybe he is ultimately very literal and we all obsess over meanings that aren’t there, but maybe he just likes obfuscating everything. I guess that unknown gives it its emotional power 50 years later.
It’s a classic for a reason, it endures and no matter how many times you listen you can still hear something new, or you hear it in a slightly different way, like all the best music. An easy peasy 5.
🩸🛤️🩸🛤️🩸🛤️🩸🛤️🩸🛤️
Playlist submission: Tangled up in Blue
The Associates
3/5
Sulk
I’m vaguely aware of the name The Associates, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of their music, and I don’t really know what genre they are. I didn’t want to read about them or this before my first listen, but looking at the cover and the year, I guess some kind of synth pop type band?
Arrogance Gave Him Up, quite a bouncy synth pop instrumental, I like it.
No, quite a gloomy sound, a bit more new wave/new romantic, the pulsing drums and highly pitched synth is very 70s Bowie. Not the most convincing vocal melody. Bap De La Bap. I like the squeaky sounds, but does sound a little like a pastiche of a synth pop singer, like the Mighty Boosh might do. Good drum pattern though.
Gloomy Sunday - another very very Bowie vocal and Station to Station era feel. I really like the rippling synth line. Nude Spoons, great title. Drums, bass and one of the synths sounds quite like I’m So Excited.
Skipping - The vocal in parts sounds like when I try to do the lowest note I can in the bathroom mirror by dropping my chin into my chest and trying to look like a frog (or George Lucas). It’s Better This Way, sounds a little bit Jesus and Mary Chain, but without the echoey drums being quite as satisfying. Again the vocal melody isn’t my favourite.
Party Fears Two has nice bounciness, I like the synth line and the bass is good, and the piano in the back half is excellent. Club Country I really liked, the bass, synth, guitar and noises are great, and it’s probably the strongest vocal and strongest melody on the album and it’s best track - a potentially overlooked 80s classic.
nothinginsomethingparticular is similar to Arrogance Gave Him Up, a jaunty bit of instrumental synth pop, at slight odds with the slightly gloomy songs in between.
It feels like they are more of slightly new wave 70s inspired synth focused rather than synth pop band on the basis of these songs. Now I’m reading about them it makes sense they are Scottish, although I don’t know why that is, and that they would think of themselves as post punk, which also makes sense, but they are clearly in thrall to Bowie and a fair bit of pre-punk music. It looks like they were pretty influential too, although I guess that might be more for their attitude and style rather than the songs themselves.
I’m not entirely sure what I think. There’s a lot I like, there are some decent songs, some excellent synths and some very good guitar and bass, and musically overall it does a very good job of creating its own murky, vaguely histrionic atmosphere. The drum sound though, I’m not that keen on, there’s an almost midi quality to it, it feels thin and flat. And vocally while it does feel a bit tuneless in places, which is fine, the voices don’t have much weight or distinctiveness, and the very Bowie derivative aspect of them I do find a bit off putting, especially combined with their melodies.
It’s not a bad record at all, there’s some great synth lines and bass playing and some really interesting ideas and the overall slightly off kilter DIY aspect to it is fun, and while it’s intriguing enough to make me want to find out a bit more about them and see what else they’ve done, I may also, in time, forget I listened to this. I think a 3 is a fair score, some re-listening potential, but not necessarily an exciting discovery
🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: Club Country
My Bloody Valentine
3/5
Isn’t Anything
I’ve listened to Loveless a few times, but don’t think I’ve listened to this before.
It has the elements you would expect, vaguely motorik drum patterns, lots of layers of noise and guitar and wonky vocals with barely discernible words. It’s also, as you would expect, one of those albums that makes sense the more you listen to it. Although the sounds and songs are broadly similar it's only after repeat listens that songs and nuances start to emerge, even if it never quite catches fire fully for me.
Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside), I like the drums and bass and the slightly disconcerting inhalation/exhalation noise. Vocals aren’t necessarily his strong point, and there are some wonky edits, but I do like it, a bit of a wonky grower. Lose my Breath has a quite lovely dreamy feel, very atmospheric and a great track. Cupid Come
Cupid Come is fine if a bit forgettable while (When You Wake) You’re Still in a Dream is good bit of noisy rock, the best of the uptempo more aggressive tracks.
No More Sorry, the shimmeryness punctuated with the guitar back in the mix and the vocal, is very atmospheric and intriguing. Almost feels like it might turn into The Next Episode by Dre. All I Need I like for its layered atmosphere, and sense of melancholy hopelessness, it's a good one.
Feed My Kiss and Sueisfine are quite Jesus and Mary Chain, with Sueisfine being a decent droning slightly bubblegum pop track and Feed My Kiss being a fun bit of thashy noise.
Several Girls Galore, although I like the vocal and the buzzsaw guitar, the whole thing doesn’t quite come together like some other songs on here.
You Never Should, I like this one, has a nice lo-fi pop vibe, almost feels like Ash, but with a guide vocal track. I quite like Nothing Much to Lose, it has a Teenage Fanclub vibe and the backing vocals are nice.
I Can See it (But I Can’t Feel it) is nice, again one of the more atmospheric and dreamy feeling ones, but also not a great vocal.
I think the more dreamy, slower tempo, more atmospheric songs like No More Sorry, Lose My Breath and All I Need work better than the faster noisier ones like Feed My Kiss and Sueisfine. As a full album does get better with more listens, and while I like a few of the songs and a lot of the atmospheres and noises, and in the right mood I’d listen again, it doesn’t quite fully grab me in the way Loveless does, which puts this solidly in the 3s
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Playlist submission: Lose My Breath
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
That’s the Way of the World
Firstly, EWF as a band are tight as fuck
Secondly, they are excellent musicians
Thirdly, some of their songs are superb
Fourthly, some of their songs are cheesy as all balls
Shining Star is one of the superb songs, a fantastic bit of disco soul pop - groovy, propulsive, excellent musicianship, great melody. Can’t help a bit of white man’s overbite with this.
That’s the Way of the World’s horn part is lovely, and the song is great 70s soul ballad with some lovely floating harmonies and backing vocals, and continues the great start to the album. However, as a side note, the ‘Yeaows’ are pure Lonely Island.
Happy Feelin’ a song Jamiroquai wish they could write. The bass is a bit mental, as there doesn't seem to be a single moment without a bass note, but it’s not irritating like Jamiroquai, and the song is another strong disco soul groove.
All About Love, here comes the cheese, nice and soft, like a melting brie being slowly caressed into your ear canal. The instrumental breakdown with the cinematic horns is great, but the rest of the song isn’t great. Although I do love the weird bit tacked on the end, with the excellent keyboard bass, it sounds like a bit of experimental pop like something of McCartney, if Macca was a 12 piece disco soul band.
Yearnin’ Learnin’, some more ‘Yeaows’, and a fun but ultimately a bit of a forgettable track, and the production sounds oddly ‘spread out’ and less intimate and interesting than the rest of the tracks.
Reasons, ready for a nice bit of melted mozzarella, nice and stringy, slowly dripped all hot onto your face? Unfortunately this does feel very dated, the vocal on is ludicrous, no wonder this sort of thing gets parodied so much, it’s such a silly very unsexy slow jam.
Africano is pretty good, I like the jazz flute intro before it becomes a decent bit of disco funk.
See the Light, this is on the cheesy cusp, but despite never going full cheddar, it is a bit soul by numbers and is kind of forgettable.
The musicianship on every track is superb, and there are excellent moments - keyboard parts, bass, horns etc, everywhere - and while some of the songs are excellent, the cheese and some of the more forgettable tracks diminish the whole somewhat. It is fun though and those first two tracks are bangers, but it’s not quite enough to push it into the 4s, so I’ll stick it in the high 3s.
🌎💨🔥
Playlist submission: Shining Star
Big Brother & The Holding Company
3/5
Cheap Thrills
I’ve never listened to this despite Piece of my Heart being so well know. I didn’t know it was made to sound like a live album until reading a bit about it.
It’s kind of an interesting one, rightly lauded for Janis’ voice, which is of course fantastic throughout, so distinctive, rough and smooth, just brilliant really. Despite much of it being relatively generic blues rock, there is a level of excitement and urgency to the guitar, which combined with the voice just about sets it apart from the other blues/acid/psychedelic rock we’ve had from this period. But I suppose we need to remember that at the time this would have been quite striking, and would not be affected by the fatigue that we suffer from a lot of stuff at the shittier end of the west coast blues rock scene.
It is a bit of a shame that they went for a fake live production style, it definitely gives an unnecessarily dated feel. It would absolutely have benefitted from a bit of ‘normal’ production to give the music, and the drums and bass, in particular a bit of clarity and a better place in the mix, while keeping the rough edges. The ‘live’ sound of some of the lead guitar too, particularly on Summertime, that kind of fuzzed up needle in the red sound, is a bit grating, and again it would benefit from a normal non fake live sound perhaps.
Combination of the Two is good, but Summertime, Piece of my Heart and Ball and Chain stand out. It outstays it’s welcome a little, but Turtle Blues’s 30s kind of barroom piano blues is a nice break from the heavier blues rock, but the remaining songs aren’t really that notable or memorable outside of her voice.
It’s certainly a decent example of west coast blues rock, clearly due to Janis’s voice as well as the overall sense of musical exuberance, but it is absolutely let down by the dated production style and the patchiness of the quality of the songs, as evinced by the best songs being the covers. Its not its fault that it feels dated of course, and although it does work as a much more listenable historical snapshot than say Iron Butterfly or the Grateful Dead, it probably doesn’t have a great deal of re-listenability - one of those ones to file under ‘Glad I listened, not terrible, may or may not re-visit’. That puts it firmly in the 3s.
🤏☮️❤️
Playlist submission: While the version of Summertime is great, I think it has to be Piece of my Heart.
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
You’re Living All Over Me
Wasn’t particularly looking forward to this, although I quite like Sebadoh, and I know how influential Dinosaur Jnr are, I wasn’t really in the mood for some American alt rock grunge type stuff.
But I did like the first track quite a bit, although the initial yelps did make me think we were in for something painful, but I liked the kind of slackery vibe and easy melody. Kracked is more of the same, a kind of laid back melodic feel with some good guitar noises.
I like the opening riff on Sludgefest and the subsequent riffing throughout too. The Lung is good as well, I like the time signature change and some of the guitar at the end is very nice.
Raisans is pretty generic alt tock, but again some of the guitar is very nice.
Tarpit, again, decent song, nice guitars. In fact that pretty much sums up the rest of the songs, apart from Poledo’s more fragmented and unsettling structure.
Although there is a bit of sameness to the songs and he’s not always the strongest vocalist, I like this. It’s much better than I was expecting, with a pleasing home made lofi quality to it too. While it is still in that American alt rock/grunge/noise rock style, I much preferred it to things like Sonic Youth, Soundgarden etc, it’s a bit more interesting with better tunes and generally a better vibe. And it’s good that it comes and goes in about 35 minutes, not outstaying its welcome. It’s not the greatest album I’ve heard, but also far from the worst - for this type of album it’s good. A very solid 3.
🦖🦖🦖
Playlist submission: Sludgefest
Blur
5/5
Blur
This was the album that really got me into Blur. I’d liked their big singles previously and had the Great Escape but hadn’t really really liked them until this album.
I loved the Beetlebum single, it came out right in the middle of A-Level mocks right as I passed my driving test. Strong memories of it being on cassette mix tapes that I played as I drove on my own for the first time.
It really is a superb album, it felt really different at the time and still sounds excellent. Lots of of oddness and strange atmospheres, with some great catchy pop hooks and, obviously, loads of fantastic guitars, whether big, loud and crunchy, or more subtle, complex and loving.
When it came out I loved Beetlebum, On Your Own and MOR, and they are still fantastic, with On Your Own being one of my top 5 Blur songs. Listening over the years since it was released a lot of the songs I’d is t immediately love on release are now some of my favourites - Country Sad Ballad Man, Theme From Retro, Death of a Party, Strange News From Another Star, Essex Dogs.
Look Inside America is interesting, not sure whether it was a holdover from around the time of Park Life and The Great Escape or a deliberate evocation of those albums. It bears quite a strong resemblance to End of Century so I guess it probably is a deliberate contrast between their old style of music with their newer more ‘Ameriphillic’ outlook. Also, never really noticed but some of the guitar breaks towards the end are very Harrison. Alongside their stated influences like Pavement etc, there is clearly a lot of Bowie and later Beatles across a lot of the album.
Strangely I find myself almost wanting to skip Song 2 nowadays, having loved it so much when it came out. Maybe it’s its ubiquity and its overuse in media to lazily indicate excitement, but it feels flat to me now - I don’t hate it, but it’s not that interesting anymore. Knowing it’s genesis as a kind of semi joke, that’s why it probably feels a bit too knowing and contrived..
The only other, very very minor criticism is that it’s quite long, possibly a victim of CD bloat. I’m not sure what you could actually take off the album, but for such a lyrically and musically dense album an hour is perhaps a lot to process.
But that can’t take away from what a great album this is. Possibly my favourite one of theirs, it’s an easy 5
🪲🍑🪲🍑🪲🍑🪲🍑🪲🍑🪲
Playlist submission: On Your Own
Santana
4/5
Abraxas
Never listened to a Santana album, my main knowledge of him is Black Magic Woman, his hair, old men in indoor markets in Santana T-Shirts and Smooth ft Rob Thomas.
Singing Winds, Crying Beasts, is very of its time in terms of title and psychedelic bongo atmosphere. I like it. Black Magic Woman is good. I know this is very famous and well loved but I do prefer the Fleetwood Mac original, although the mysterious bongos do add a nice texture.
Oye Como Va, the main motif is so so familiar, I don’t know if I know the Tito Puente original, or some other cover, or whether it’s just a very relied upon Latin musical phrase that appears in lots of places. It feels like it was on Buena Vista Social Club but there’s no track with that name and I can’t be bothered to try and find it.
For a jazz latin blues rock song Incident at Neshabur is actually very good, a real grower, becoming more expressive and more interesting with each listen. Probably my stand out.
Se a Cabo could also be a terrible latin jazz rock shitshow, but there is a winning joyousness to it that keeps it fun and at least diverting, even if it’s not the strongest track.
Of the two more straight ahead blues rock songs, Mother’s Daughter and Hope You’re Feeling Better, Mother’s Daughter works best, quite fleet of foot and dynamic, the insistent bass, both in the intro and the main song giving it a great sense of movement, while Hope You’re Feeling Better feels a bit leaden in comparison.
Samba Pa Ti is another grower, although there is a fair amount of noodling, it actually feels very expressive and interesting, rather than self indulgent. El Nicoya, the only bongo jam, is fine, not least as it’s only a minute and a half.
He does have a lovely fluidity to his playing, and he is also good at the more heavy rock moments, although more so on Mother’s Daughter than on Hope You’re Feeling Better. I know it’s not directly analogous but it's interesting comparing this to Cheap Thrills and the other Psychedelic Blues Rock from 67/68. It’s only 2 years later but technological advances in the studio and recording makes this sound a million times better than those albums, it’s got that depth and warmth. The skill and musical dexterity of the musicians, as well as there being more elements than simple blues rock, helps too of course, but as recorded sound, Abraxas is very good.
Overall I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. Latin Jazz Blues Rock is really not a genre I would actively seek out, and I was expecting interminable jamming and soloing with some jazzy latin steel drums, horns and bongo jams. And while those things do colour the album it is much better than those elements would indicate, and I enjoyed it more and more with each listen. I can now see why it has endured, why it’s so influential and why Carlos Santana is so well regarded as a guitarist. I’m not sure if I want to listen to any other Santana albums, my presumption is that they become a cheesy guitar wank fest, but of course I might be wrong. Anyway, the first listen was just about in the 3s, but with more listens I’ve actually surprised myself into a 4.
🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽
Playlist submission: Incident at Neshabur
Van Morrison
5/5
Astral Weeks
I went through a big Van Morrsion phase about 15 years ago and I absolutely love this album. It’s astonishing that something this delicate, moving and beautiful could be made by someone who’s such a cunt. Sometimes it's hard to separate the art and artist, and this is extra tricky with his extra cuntiness over the last few years, but Van Morrison has always been a cunt, so I’m well enough practised to ignore much of that. Even though, of course, I’m inconsistent enough to not be so forgiving of other objectionable people’s music.
Anyhow, that aside, I love the flows and movement of this album, the songs, instrumentation, melodies and atmospheres, sometimes skipping around like butterflies, sometimes babbling like a stream, sometimes flitting like a breeze. The stream of consciousness words give the whole thing a dreamy feel, where some things make sense and feel concrete and real and others feel abstract and out of reach. The first side from Astral Weeks to Cypress Avenue is almost perfect in that regard, each of the four songs having a commonality of sound and style, but working as a brilliant cycle of songs, hazy and ephemeral yet simultaneously tactile and dynamic. Cypress Avenue is the cornerstone of these, but I do also love Sweet Thing’s bucolic feel.
The Way Young Lovers Do is possibly the least strong track, and feels a little out of sync with the rest of the album, although I get why it starts the 2nd side, as a bit of an end point to side 1 and before heading back into the ethereal and impressionistic soundscapes of the absolutely fantastic Madame George. What a song, like the first side’s tracks, the double bass giving it a sense of being rooted in something real, the circular guitars give it a sense of rhythm and movement, the strings freely skipping around give it an untethered sense, while the dream-like imagery of the lyrics tie the whole thing together.
It’s kind of hard to follow that but Ballerina, while maintaining a similar atmosphere, has a tangibility and density to it, with a great, soulful vocal. Slim Slow Slider’s jazzy sax, double bass, percussion and mentions of Ladbroke Grove, locate it more in a big city at night, in contrast to the more vaguely pastoral and less lonely settings of the other songs, ends the album brilliantly, as a kind of step into reality after the mystic dreaminess of the rest of the album.
It’s been great rediscovering how much I love this album today, after not hearing it for a good few years. It’s an easy 5, right up there with my favourite albums.
🚐🚐🚐🚐🚐
Playlist submission: I’d like the whole first side really, but I’ll go for Madame George.
Alice In Chains
1/5
Dirt
I only know the name Alice in Chains, I don’t think I know any of their songs, and I do get all those alt rock, grunge and grunge adjacent bands, who are not Nirvana, from the early 90s mixed up.
And, I think, with good reason, as this really is American early 90s heavy alt rock so generic it feels pointless. I always try to be generous with music that’s not my thing, trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who would like it, and sometimes there’s good drums or guitars and production, or moments of excitement, or a diverting melody, or some off kilter little bits, but with this there is nothing interesting at all. The songs are boring, the lyrics are boring, the music is boring, the production is boring. Maybe if you are a 14 year old boy fetishising heroin addiction this is good, but why not go to a local fort of Victorian Folly instead?
I’m struggling to find any redeeming qualities. I thought the second listen might improve it, but it really didn’t. It’s not completely actively and offensively bad, in the way that The Cult album was, but it's characterlessness, earnestness, ponderousness and sense of self importance means it's actively and offensively boring, which in some ways is worse. Maybe The Cult broke the 1 star seal but this can’t be anything other than a tedious and wretched 1.
💉
Playlist submission. I don’t really care, so I’ll just choose Them Bones, purely as it’s the first track so I don't have to think about it further
Marilyn Manson
1/5
Antichrist Superstar
Mum! It’s not a phase, this is who I am now!
Musically this is not my thing at all, although it is better sounding than Dirt yesterday, the elements of glam and theatrical rock make it more interesting and more listenable. There’s enough little guitar runs and moments to be interesting enough to alleviate some of the preponderance of industrial and metal noise.
Thematically, despite not being particularly original and more than a little parent’s basement, it’s not awful. The idea of ‘a populist demagogue who is driven solely by resentment, misanthropy, and despair, using his newfound position to destroy the world’, again is hardly novel, but is fairly apt at the moment, especially in the context of him deliberately provoking the hypocrisy of the Christian right with his lyrics and imagery.
Those lyrics though, while occasionally arresting, are quite ludicrous to the point of cliche: shit, blood, pussy, nightmares, alienation, anger ad infinitum. While I can definitely understand its appeal to unhappy, perhaps socially awkward, angry teens, I had too much of a privileged, happy UK childhood for them to ever resonate with me, and they definitely don’t resonate with me as a 44 year old man either.
However, for all the Christian baiting, the odd bit of good guitar playing and the occasional moment of clarity when it all comes together, this really doesn’t feel that shocking, it actually feels quite tame. And it does also fall a bit flat when it turns out that he’s probably quite rapey.
It didn’t make me despair in the way Alice in Chains did yesterday, and even though I would never choose to listen to it, it actually is comparatively listenable, or at least some of it is comparatively listenable anyway. I don’t buy into his artistic vision, but there’s no doubt he followed through and made an album consistent with that vision, which is something I suppose - although if that vision includes being a sexy predator it may not actually be something at all.
It’s also unnecessarily and stupidly long at 77 mins. Perhaps if this was a 35 minute short, sharp, shock I can possibly see how this might approach something near decent for the genre, but the reality is that it is nearly 1 hour 20 mins, and despite it having some merit thematically and occasionally musically it isn’t actually good. It’s probably a 2, but with the noncery factored in it's a 1.
✝️
Playlist submission: Beautiful People
Solomon Burke
3/5
Rock’n’Soul
Easily one of the greatest soul voices, emotionally powerful with such lovely timbre, excellent control and superb range, from mellow and tender to rough and gritty.
However this album suffers from the way albums were regarded in the early to mid sixties as a vehicle for singles plus any other stuff lying around. Consequently this is a bit all over the shop and doesn’t really feel like an album, although I can understand why it’s on the list, from a historical perspective and to acknowledge his skill as a singer. I’m not really that au fait with his full discography but it doesn’t feel like there is a definitive Solomon Burke album or period, in the way Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin had, but I know he did some great covers in the late 60s, and that Don’t Give Up On Me album from a few years back is well worth a listen if you don’t already know it.
Not all of it, but much of the album does feel very rooted in its early 60s time period with songs dating back to 1961. You can hear the legacy of big band R’n’B in the arrangements and overall sound, particularly the slightly flat drum sound, the guitar and the saxophone heavy horns. Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye) is a good example of this, his voice is obviously great, but it really lacks punch.
As a fan of Dirty Dancing I’ve always loved Cry to Me though, and it is a great song - it definitely stands out. For 1962 the piano motif feels ahead of its time, really giving the whole song a sense of dramatic tension.
Won’t You Give Him One More Chance has slight Hawaiian vibes to me, and feels like a song from an Elvis movie or something. Great vocal of course but the song is pretty flimsy.
If You Need Me’s bluesiness is a better vehicle for his voice, but it suffers from the production, overall sound and slightly anaemic sounding band.
I like country vibes of Hard, Ain’t it Hard, which make sense as it's a Woody Guthrie song, and his vocal really is very lovely, but the backing vocals feel overly intrusive and the acoustic guitar in the left channel seems way too loud and high in the mix.
Can’t Nobody Love You is good, another superb vocal, particularly when he lets loose from around 1.40 onwards. But again the production vaguely lets it down, although the horns are nicely restrained.
He goes enjoyably full crooner on Just Out of my Reach (Of my Two Empty Arms), showing how versatile he is, and what a supercharged Dean Martin might sound like.
You’re Good For Me follows a similar pattern, great great vocal but a largely uninspiring production and arrangement, although the guitar is pretty nice.
The wonkiness of the recording of You Can’t Love Em All does jump out and the song itself is another of those slightly Elvis movie sounding songs, with mariachi horns this time.
Someone to Love Me is great though, the guitar is very good and backing vocals, for the most part, are very sympathetic to his voice and sit nicely within the arrangement. The soulful in a bar at 3am sound is great, one of the few times on the album where the song and recording come up to meet the quality of his voice. Beautiful Brown Eyes continues that feel, although perhaps slightly less successfully than Someone to Love Me, the slightly flatulent sax being a bit distracting.
I like He’ll Have To Go, the strings giving it a sense of harmonic range not that evident on the rest of the album, although the farty sax continues to make some more unwelcome contributions.
I suppose it’s not really fair to judge this as a soul album against the classic soul sound of the mid 60s onwards, as that hadn’t been invented yet, and it’s tricky to judge it as an album in general, as these are all disparate recordings from a period of 3 or so years, never meant to be an album. Despite that you can’t help but yearn for a bit of the joyous playing of the Funk Brothers at Motown or the gritty southern soul sound of Booker T et al at Stax and for it to be a more considered collection of songs. I had a cursory listen to the two late 60s albums that are on Tidal and they do have more of that classic soul sound, which really suits his voice, but I think his popularity had waned a bit by then and it looks like he decided to go back to Gospel and God.
Ultimately his voice is superb, and I don’t really mind what he sings as he sounds great, but musically this is way below someone of his quality - not because it’s poor, it’s just a reflection of the time it was recorded. I think a 3 is fair, musically and as an album it’s not re-listenable enough to be a 4, but he’s too good a singer for it to be a 2.
🪨🪨🪨
Playlist submission: Cry to Me
Serge Gainsbourg
4/5
Histoire de Melody Nelson
I have listened to this before, it’s one of those cult albums that is always on lists as being hugely influential, which is very clear as this seems the stepping off point for Portishead in particular.
I love the bass, drums and guitar, particularly the bass though - what a great tone, with great melodicism and it’s perfectly placed in the mix, anchoring as well as moving the songs forward. The string arrangements are excellent too, cinematic and widescreen, but also slightly unsettling, kind of familiar but unsettling at the same time.
Thematically it's kind of interesting to try and pick apart, and it’s kind of hard to discern whether it's pederastic fantasy, or a Lolita-esque treatise on obsession. He certainly had a tendency for relationships with women much younger than him, and this album could quite easily be seen as a pervy endorsement of relationships with teenage children, but equally seen as narrative fantasy, with any paedophillic readings telling you more about the listener than him. I guess it probably falls somewhere between the two, and the openness to interpretation is deliberate and what makes it such a fascinating piece of art.
Musically I do love this, as I say the bass is excellent, the production is superb and as a 30 minute narrative sing cycle it is excellent. The marriage of funk with cinematic strings with atonal tendencies, and the occasional French folk element gives it a propulsive yet slightly off kilter atmosphere, which feeds into the whole narrative theme of it.
I’ll go 4, I can’t quite work out whether the ick is central to it’s quality or detracts from it slightly.
🧅🧅🧅🧅
Playlist submission: Melody
Eminem
3/5
The Slim Shady LP
I’m sure I’ve listened to some of his albums before but I can’t remember any of them, I just like quite a few of his big songs. So, I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of him particularly, but I do like his delivery and his ability, along with Dre mainly, to create some great pop/hip hop bangers. I also like his combination of over the top cartoonishness and genuine frustrations from his upbringings. The lyrical violence and misogyny is definitely tongue in cheek, and while there is a knowingness there, I think you can also see where it might be grounded in some genuinely held beliefs.
My Name Is, still sounds great, it felt really unusual at the time and while it does feel quite late 90s it’s still a great bit of pop music. Guilty Conscience fairs less well I think, although its still pretty good - again at the time I really liked it, but the stop start nature of it now feels a bit frustrating.
Although the lyrics are quite revealing Brain Damage does feel like some very run of the mill 90s hip hop, fine but a bit forgettable.
I really dislike skits on hip hop albums. They’re so common and I’ve never understood why, they’re never funny or interesting and take you out of any sense of flow.
If I Had is a bit try hard, and I really dislike the backing vocals. Bonnie and Clyde is a bit of an oddity and although it’s mixture of sappiness and anger is quite weird I do like that the hinted-at vulnerability it’s unusual for the genre. I forgot about Role Model, I quite like it although it feels a bit nothingy now.
My Fault is ok, but by this point the album is starting to drag, a lot of the beats are very similar and the lyrical themes are starting to get a bit repetitive. The bass on Cum on Everybody is good and gives a bit of melodic variation to the music. I quite like the melodica on Just Don’t Give a Fuck, and this is definitely the high point of the 2nd half, but you also do get the feeling he does give quite a big fuck. I’m Shady is also decent and better than Bad Meets Evil and Still Don’t Give a Fuck (you do!) but its definitely feeling like a bit of slog to get to the end at this point.
I suppose overall this representative of Eminem’s whole career: A couple great pop singles and hooks, and some amusing wordplay, but also a lot of generic album filler and while the cartoonishness works in small doses, there is a pervasive sense of 13 year old edgelord-ism that becomes tiring in bigger doses. And again like a lot of the albums from the CD heyday of the 90s and 2000s it's way too long with a lot of filler to stretch it out to an hour. I’ll go 3, a 2 is too low for his skill as a rapper but there’s no way it's a 4.
👱♂️👱♂️👱♂️
Playlist submission: My Name Is
Jimmy Smith
3/5
Back at the Chicken Shack
This is probably my favourite of the jazz albums we’ve had so far. With the focus split between organ, sax and guitar and the clear crossover with soul it’s actually very pleasantly listenable.
Back at the Chicken Shack sounds a lot like Green Onions, so I presume this was a big influence on Booker T. However this was recorded in 1960, but wasn’t released until 1963, and Green Onions came out in 1962, so who knows. To my untrained ear they are both 12 bar blues (please correct me!), and feature the hammond so I can see there is a lot in common purely from a sonic point of view, but I presume it may be a consequence of this album being a bridge between jazz and soul and also Booker T being into jazz also. Nevertheless nice song.
When I Grow Too Old to Dream is a very nice melody and is played with quite a nice soft feel. I should dislike the sax, but I actually like it, it doesn’t get too far away from the melody and the organ works very nicely in the back of the mix, kind of anchoring it to the band.
The sax blarps and dominates a little too much Minor Chant, making it a little too close to the stereotypical jazz sound I’m not keen on, although the keyboard is nice.
Messy Bessie I really like, although again the sax is prominent it again feels much more melodic and less obtrusive than Minor Chant, and is only one part of the soloing, rather than the dominant part. The guitar is great, some little bluesy touches and a nice counterpoint to the organ and sax
Overall I liked this, I found it a very nice listen, which isn’t always the case with this sort of album. I’m almost tempted to go 4, and although I will come back to this, I’m not sure how frequently, which I think would put it as a high 3.
🐓🐓🐓
Playlist submission: Back at the Chicken Shack
Lightning Bolt
2/5
Wonderful Rainbow
I often make the mistake of looking up bands and albums I’ve never heard of before listening to them, and I miss out on the fun of a surprise, fresh listen.
In this case I don’t think knowing about this album before would have made much difference to my enjoyment. It is pretty close to unlistenable. Not unlistenable due to a complete lack of ambition or due to a vacuous, empty poverty of intent like The Cult album or the Christina Aguilera album, but due to deliberately challenging obtuseness.
Similar to the Spy vs Spy album, I get that the difficulty is kind of the point, so on that level I do think it achieves artistic merit. But on a pure listening level it doesn’t have much merit at all. And as a collection of interesting ideas or themes, which might bridge the gap between the artistic intent and the listenability it also falls a bit short. It is ultimately quite boring, and any moments that might vaguely lead somewhere, like the riff of 2 Towers, the middle section of On Fire or the stabbing melody of Crown of Storms, tend to get squashed at the altar of musical obstinacy and noise.
Sometimes things like this get better with more listens, when subtleties and variations that aren’t immediately apparent start to emerge, and while I found it marginally better on the second listen, and a little more on the third listen, I think I could listen a further 100 times and it would feel broadly the same on listen 100 as it does on listen 1.
In summary, although I find it pretty unlistenable, I do also tend to appreciate the idea of people ploughing a furrow making this kind of music, intending for it to be hard and challenging, regardless of whether anyone will actually like it - and in fact in this case probably actively wanting people not to like it. So when you put that all together, it’s a 2, another of those ‘I’m glad I’ve been exposed to it, I like that it exists, but I don’t want to listen to anymore of it’ albums.
🌈🌈
Playlist submission: Possibly Crown of Storms, but I’ll go Wonderful Rainbow as it is relatively subdued and only 90 seconds long.
Sister Sledge
5/5
We Are Family
‘Just let me staple the vicar’
The sort of album I would have been a bit sniffy about in my younger days, but now it's the sort of album I really appreciate.
Of course Nile Rogers and Bernard Fowler are a fantastic songwriting and production team. The whole record sounds great, but Nile’s guitar sound and Bernard’s bass sound in particular are so good - the bright, clean and rhythmic against the deep, warm and melodic is such a great, contrasting combination. Bernard Fowler would absolutely be in my top ten favourite bassists
As well as that the Nile Rogers - Bernard Fowler - Tony Thompson playing axis is absolutely superb, and the sororal voices are excellent too, harmonising and blending as only siblings can.
I guess He’s the Greatest Dancer, after being sampled by Will Smith, and We Are Family might be seen as slightly jokey, novelty disco records, but they are so much more than that, they are fantastic bits of pop song writing, full of hooks, big choruses and killer grooves, and ultimately they are just joyous bits of pop music.
Lost in Music and Thinking of You are also superb of course, Thinking of You’s hypnotic groove is so satisfying and addictive, the swirling strings against the repeating chug of the guitar while being driven forward by the bass. That may well broadly be the Chic template, but it doesn’t matter when it's done as superbly as this.
I’m less familiar with the other album tracks, but I really liked Somebody to Love and Easier to Love as lower tempo, lower key songs to contrast and counterpoint the 4 big bangers. Somebody to Love is a actually great 70s soul ballad, with less of the obvious Chic elements and with great vocals and harmonies.
You’re a Friend to Me is really great, a real grower, getting better with every listen. Again a slower tempo track, but with the weight and dynamism of the uptempo songs. The bass is fantastic, particularly that repeating climb. One More Time perhaps feels a bit too Chic by numbers, not quite reaching the heights of the big songs, although the piano pattern is very good and I really like the slightly un-Nile Rogers-like guitar solo.
I’m right on the cusp of 4 and 5. It really is a fantastic 40 minutes of disco pop satisfaction, but I’m not sure it's quite in the top bracket of albums. The 4 big songs are absolute bangers and they are well supported by the other songs, but it is probably a bit two tiered. A 5 would also give it a chance at a podium place, as in the final reckoning I think it would be worthy of a bronze (assuming you both don’t hate it). Hmm, tricky.
It’s a beautiful sunny day, the album makes me happy with its joyfulness and I’m visualising Dan in his tiny pants by a Croatian pool, so I’ll let all that get the better of me and go 5.
🛷🛷🛷🛷🛷
Playlist submission: Toss up between Thinking of You and We Are Family, I’ll go We Are Family for its pure joyous disco pop infectiousness.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Led Zeppelin
Although this is probably their most straight ahead blues rock album, the skill, sense of power and conviction takes it way past what any of their peers were doing. A lot of the blues rock tropes are here in the riffs and re-working of old blues songs, but Page’s guitar, Bonham’s swing and power and Jones’s overall musicality are far superior to many of their contemporaries, and Page’s skill as an arranger and producer elevate what could be a generic plodding blues rock album into something far more interesting and exciting, with changes in texture and tempo giving it much more sophistication and texture and nuance than might be expected. I know we’ve talked about Plant’s voice before, and it did take me a while to appreciate it, but there is much more skill, subtlety and range with real sympathy for the songs than I really understood until quite recently. They just wouldn’t work as a band without him.
As a bit of catchy blues rock Good Times Bad Times is great, the energy and force of the whole album is very apparent when the guitar solo kicks in. Babe I’m Gonna Leave you is also superb, the almost spanish style rhythms giving it a fantastic sense of drama/melodrama. What an opening 1-2.
You Shook Me has a good groove to it, although it does tread the line of pedestrian blues rock. The organ and drums do give it some shade and texture to stop it being too lumpen though.
For a long time I never really got Dazed and Confused, but over the years I have started to appreciate it more and more to the point of now thinking it is great. The slightly unsettling dream-like feeling and psychedelic elements alongside the rockier sections is actually brilliantly atmospheric and exciting. I can now see how its popularity as a quintessential Led Zep song has come about.
Your Time is Gonna Come and Black Mountain Side are nice examples of the folk influence that would become more prevalent on LZIII and LZIV. The organ and acoustic and steel string on the former and the tabla, Indian style drone and the Bert Jansch ‘inspired’ acoustic on the latter giving lovely contrasting texture to the heavy riffing either side of them, particularly the frenetic but absolutely banging Communication Breakdown.
I’m a little more ambivalent about I Can’t Quit You Baby. Similar to You Shook Me, it veers pretty close to generic heavy footed blues rock, particularly in the guitar tone, although the drumming is excellent as always. How Many More Times might be fairly straightforward riffing, but it is done excellently, it has a fleetness amongst the heavy rocking that gives it dynamism and interest, and it’s a great moment when the riff comes back in at the end.
I don’t think it is quite at the level of LZII and LZIV, but it is a notch or two above LZIII. I gave that album 4 stars, so I think I need to give this 5 (even though I’m also likely to give II and IV 5). It may not have the musical variety of LZIII, but as a debut record of intent and conviction it really is a fantastic, coherent listen - it really does feel like a proper album.
🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈
Playlist submission: Could be a few, Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and Dazed and Confused are up there but I’ve been really into it today, so I’ll choose Your Time is Gonna Come
B.B. King
4/5
Live at the Regal
I wasn’t hopeful when the first track started, the jazzy and jauntily inane horns give it a 70s chat show feel.
However the run of Sweet Little Angel, It’s My Own Fault and How Blue Can You Get the is truly superb. I’ve never really listened to much B.B. King so I didn’t really realise he had such an incredible singing voice, especially when you compare it to his very vaguely Kermit-esque speaking voice.
I’m not as keen on Please Love Me and You Upset Me Baby. I don’t find that particular kind of uptempo jazz rhythm particularly satisfying, it feels a bit lightweight and doesn’t have the feel of the slower, blusier tracks, like the excellent Worry, Worry.
Woke Up This Mornin’s freneticism works slightly better than Please Love Me and You Upset Me Baby, but it still has a bit too much of that TV jazz flavour. You Done Lost Your Good Thing is good, if not quite at the same level of the other slower tracks. I really liked the slight Caribbean feel on Help the Poor, it’s a great contrast to the rest of the tracks, with a very nice rhythmic slipperiness.
Obviously his guitar playing is great, and his tone really is very lovely - smooth and warm like warmed up and smooth with no crunchy bits peanut butter, and when the songs are good they are truly excellent. He’s also clearly a great entertainer, and is brilliant with the crowd. However there are a few songs that don’t quite work for me, particularly on the second side, losing that sense of drama that the slower less jazz inflected songs create.
It’s still a very good live album though and shows off his voice and playing superbly. It’s probably somewhere between a 3 and 4, it probably doesn’t have a huge amount of replayability, but that 3 song run on the first side really is superb, it is a fun listen and a kid of landmark blues album. It really is 3.5, but I’ll tip it over to 4 for the guitar playing and voice.
🤴🤴🤴🤴
Playlist submission: It’s My Own Fault
John Prine
5/5
John Prine
Despite the obvious influence of Dylan on some of his vocal inflections and vocal melodies
His voice is slightly unusual, but after a couple of songs I forgot all that and just found myself enjoying this immensely. I didn’t expect it to be as country, thinking it would be more folky/folk rock, but for me that was great, setting it slightly apart from other early 70s singer songwriters in the same field with its more overt country sound.
I really like the slightly unusual song structures like on Illegal Smile. Clearly there is an obvious debt to Dylan in the opening stanza, it moves back and forth from folk to country and back again with some quirk little stop start moments.
The little run from Hello in There to Paradise is great, again overtly country but with some little variations in style and instrumentation, like the electric sitar on Sam Stone, again giving it a slightly unusual feeling. With country you can often predict how the next line will sound, and while Paradise is relatively conventional in that regard, it still has that feel that it's going one way, but then it takes a detour or little left turn, maybe arriving back where you thought it would, but not necessarily in the obvious way.
Pretty Good obviously evokes Dylan, but there’s someone else it reminds me of that I can’t put my finger on. Anyway the electric guitar is another great little musical moment, particularly in tandem with the electric piano
Your Flag Decal is great, and also still apt today when you see those MAGAts driving around in shitty pickups with hundreds of Trump Flags and stickers.
Angel from Montgomery I absolutely loved, I don’t think I’ve heard it before but it had that feeling of instant familiarity that you occasionally get with great songs.
Quiet Man and Donald and Lydia is another great one two, the slight Hendrix style guitars in Quiet Man are great and I like the slightly existential ruminations of Donald and Lydia.
I love the bass on Six O’Clock News, and with the organ it gives a slightly unusual contrast to the country elements. Flashback blues is excellent, again it feels like a conventional country song, but the slightly hurried vocal metre gives it a slightly off kilter feeling.
Lyrically this works in a similar vein to the music - some of it is extremely affecting and moving, grounded in autobiography and his experience, but also humorous and occasionally surreal, going off on some fantastical tangents and diversions.
On first listen this was an easy 4, but it got better with each subsequent listen, with those little moments and diversions coming to the fore. I think it's going to be one of those albums that will keep getting better and better, so it's a 5 for me Clive
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Playlist submission: Angel from Montgomery
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Want Two
I’ve tried so much with Rufus Wainwright but unfortunately it just never sticks. I bought Want One when it came out and I listened to it a good amount, but I don’t think I ever really got it or actually liked it that much.
Purely from a production and musical perspective there is a lot of great stuff on here, with loads of great people involved like Van Dyke Parks, the Garrigles and Levon Helm. I love Agnus Dei’s sepulchral spookiness and there are some lovely instrumental moments and touches, like the lap steel on Peaches, the strings on This Love Affair and the percussion and bass on Waiting for a Dream.
However, no matter how many times I try I just can’t get on with his voice, his vocal tone and most of all his melodies, which I just always find to be pretty flat, forced and, to my ears, rather uninspiring. I completely understand that he’s going for a theatrical, baroque style, and although he definitely nails that, it just doesn’t land with me, and subsequently, over the course of an hour I find myself tuning out, with the musical flourishes and overall ambition not making up for my inability to connect to the melodies. I was hoping against hope that a fresh listen this morning would help me see it differently, but unfortunately it's the same, with very little grabbing my attention, apart from Crumb by Crumb, which with the addition of female voices, does stand out, giving it some harmonic interest and variation.
It’s clearly not a bad album, but after trying with Rufus many times I just realise he’s just not for me. In terms of actual listening enjoyment it's probably a 2, but it feels unfair giving it that, as obviously the issue is me, not him, and there is a lot of intelligence and craft to it which I am reluctant to ignore. So with all that in mind, and although I don’t think I’ll ever come back to it, I’ll nudge it up to 3
🎭🎭🎭
Playlist submission: Agnus Dei
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Electric Landlady
Big Durham vibes. I listened to this a lot back then, and probably over listened to it, as I haven’t felt the urge to revisit it that frequently since then. Which is a shame as it is an absolutely fantastic record.
Dense, meandering, abrupt, spooky, exciting, throwaway, melodic, weird, this has everything, all tied together not only by the guitar, but also by Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, and Jimi’s fantastic, laconic, laid back voice.
It is definitely unfocused though and you can’t help but think what an amazing record a 12 track single album would be, but I think in the end, rather like the White Album, it’s length and weird corners are what give it its charm, and as an immersive psychedelic rock experience I don’t think it can be bettered. In anyone else’s hands this could be unlistenable, but Jimi manages to tread that line and keep you engaged. Also in modern terms 73 minutes isn't actually that far off many far inferior single albums.
The sounds on…And the Gods Made Love have always given me a slight sense of vestibular hyperacusis, but I love how it leads into the laid back charm of Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland). Crosstown traffic is a classic and then I love the astral hippy woo woo bollocks lyrics on Voodoo Chile, as well as, of course, the song itself. Imagine being off your tits in 1968 and putting this psychedelic space blues on the turntable.
Little Miss Strange, Long Hot Summer Night and Come On is a great little trio, Long Hot Summer Night’s loping groove is great. Gypsy Eyes has that effortless sounding rhythm and lead playing and great bass playing. And then Burning of the Midnight Lamp is so good, one of my favourite Hendrix songs, absolutely superb with the harpsichord and the choral backing.
The jazzy organ and piano on Rainy Day Dream Away gives it a nice feel, a bit of a break from the guitar pyrotechnics and a bit of a breather before 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be), which is also one of my favourite Hendrix songs, an amazing spaced out 60s psychedelic jam. I love the sound effects, backward guitar, shifting times signatures, jazzy bits, flutes and the bass and drums. Great vocal too. It may be 13 minutes long but it is a monumental banger.
House Burning Down sounds like it could be on their first album, really great bass and drums. All Along the Watchtower and Voodoo Child get played so much it's easy to tune them out, but they really are superb and rightfully endure. I’ve always loved how the drum pattern matches the opening riff on Voodoo Child and All Along the Watchtower is, obviously superb, really amplifying the old time spookiness of the original.
It’s an easy 5, it may be long and slightly unfocused but I love it’s swampy, soupy, hippy vibes and I happily listened through 5 times today, frequently picking up things I’d missed amongst its density.
🧜♂️🧜♂️🧜♂️🧜♂️🧜♂️
Playlist submission; Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and All Along the Watchtower are the obvious ones, I really love Burning of the Midnight Lamp, but I’ll go 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).
Solange
4/5
A Seat at the Table
Although Solange’s voice doesn’t have the power and range of Beyonce’s it does have a lovely, delicate slightly ethereal tone to it, which I really like. She also doesn’t have Beyonce’s predilection for a bit of bombast, and combined with the slightly downbeat off kilter, spacey jazz tinged r’n’b soul pop music on this it gives her the air of the detached, odder, quirkier but cooler sibling
I really like the feel of this Rise, the bass is great along with the simple laid back melody. The bass on Weary is also great and that little piano is lovely. Cranes in the Sky is truly excellent. I love the percussion and bass but how the musical touches like the synth that sounds like a shamisen contribute to the overall feeling of sadness of the lyrics. Great floaty vocal too.
Mad has that slightly over-recorded percussion and bass sound that keeps appearing, which I really like, and another great vocal too. Don't You Wait is a lovely bit of r’n’b pop, I like the guitar and slightly over-saturated synth drum pad.
This does feel like it has a kinship with the Kendrick Lamar albums we’ve had, which makes sense with Sampha appearing on Don’t Touch My Hair, another fantastic track. The horns and synths are great and the whole thing has a sense of drowsy frustration. Where Do We Go and FUBU have a similar percussive feel and I like the broken atmosphere of Where Do We Go and some of the synths on FUBU are great, with another great vocal. Borderline’s piano line evokes a kind of wistfulness, but is abruptly accompanied by the slightly discordant percussion. Maybe not the strongest melody but a great track.
Junie is a lovely bit of squiggly hybrid r’n’b funk, momentarily taking us away from the detached sense of despair that populates the rest of the album. Don’t Wish Me Well returns to the off kilter patterns of Cranes in the Sky and Don’t Touch My Hair, again the pervading sense of sadness is embodied by the percussion and synths. Scales is a suitably low key closer and in keeping with the whole feel of the album.
This is also, for the genre, slightly unusual in that the interludes are actually worthwhile, tying together the connecting thread of race and blackness that runs through a lot of the songs.
.
This really does feel like a coherent album, each track shares a common feel despite the massive list of producers and contributors, but the overall sense of sadness, despair and frustration is so well conveyed musically. The lack of ornamentation and clean but soulful production and the thoughtfulness of the instrumentation supports that feeling, giving it some room to breathe and allowing subtleties and nuances and the edge underneath it all to come through.
It has enough melody and musicality to be interesting but is also rhythmically fantastic (I love the percussion throughout) and a great overall sound. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did on the first listen and I enjoyed it more and more throughout the day. A great modern soul record with a slightly unusual edge to it, it's an easy 4 seats at the table for me. Definitely one I’ll come back to.
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Playlist submission: Cranes in the Sky
3/5
Kick Out the Jams
I had this on CD, I think I bought it at one of those CD fairs in Dunelm House. One of those hipster albums that people love because of its proto punk energy and late 60s righteous hippy politicism.
There’s no doubt it captures that raw punkish energy and excitement and the earnestness of their sloganeering, and there is a palpable thrill to it, however when it comes down to it the songs aren’t particularly great and the playing is what you might generously call ‘loose’. The relatively poor sound quality also works both for it and against it: you get the sense of excitement and chaos but its muddiness and in the red distortion can make it a hard listen.
There is some great riffing in parts and when it roughly all comes together it is good, like on Kick Out the Jams and Come Together. But the rest of it is a bit of a slog musically, only kept alive by the energy, but, really, that can only take you so far.
It's cool as a document of the times and of the excitement rock music can generate and as a forerunner of punk, but aside from the title track, which is great, and Come Together it doesn’t ultimately have a great deal of re-listenability.
4 for rawness, energy and excitement
4 for musical historical context
3 for sound quality
2 for quality of playing
2 for song quality
Average that out and you get 3, which seems about right
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Playlist submission: Kick out the Jams
PJ Harvey
5/5
Let England Shake
I was a big fan of Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, but I’ve never dived into anything else she’s done, I just know the odd song as they play her a lot on 6 Music and have watched her on the Glastobury coverage, as she seems to play every year.
I guess she can be a bit of an acquired taste, and you could easily accuse her of a kind of studied eccentricity, especially vocally, but I do think she is genuinely a bit odd in a great way, and I totally buy into her earnestness.
Musically I love its modern take on folk and folk rock. You can hear the echoes of those old, old folk songs, evoking an almost supernatural, spectral atmosphere across the whole thing. The horns add a mournful feel, with their obvious military connotations, and everyday, early 20th century tactility.
Thematically and lyrically this is fascinating, and is just fantastically well done, weaving English folklore, mythology, the landscape, nature and history with our common cultural touchstones into an otherworldly, hazy, unsettling examination on England, Englishness and War and all the longing, loss, destruction, despair and sadness that entails. I’d recommend reading the lyrics in full on her website, they genuinely have a powerful and poetic grace to them.
Every song is connected but it feels to me like a lot of the songs seem to work in trios or pairs. The Last Living Rose, The Glorious Land and Words That Maketh Murder feel like a triptych, I love the imagery of The Last Living Rose and the Glorious Land, painting a picture of yearning for a homeland that is simultaneously imagined and real, beautiful and squalid, balancing affection, melancholy, futility and despair. The interpolation of Summertime Blues is great on Words That Maketh Murder, kind of bringing you forward in time while still conjuring the past
Even though All and Everyone feels a little like a continuation of Words that Maketh Murder, it sits naturally with On Battleship Hill to me, with the folky, delicate, shifting, undulating fragility of the latter and the more tumultuous dominant former.
England, In the Dark Places and Bitter Branches seem like another grouping. The melody and vocal on England take a while to settle, but I feel that’s purposeful, the backing vocals sounding almost like a call to prayer and the discordant piano all adding to the discomforting feel. The bleak imagery of In Dark Places and Bitter Branches is really moving, the electronica touches on In Dark Places contrasting well with the more rhythmic and guitar driven Bitter Branches
And then the final 3 song run of Hanging in the Wire, Written on the Forehead and The Colour of the Earth is utterly fantastic, elegiac, haunting, sad, tender, melancholy but also beautiful, death has come and war is in people’s homes and cities and towns.
I wasn’t expecting it to be quite such a magical record really, it’s almost startling in how affecting I found it and how much I like it. She does that great thing of being both specific and universal, alluding to Afghanistan, WW1 and WW2, anchoring you in a time and place, while also giving you the feeling of floating timelessly across the centuries. It really is a stupendous record and this might be my favourite record on the list I’d not previously heard.
💧💧💧💧💧
Playlist submission: Could be all of them, but I’ll go with Hanging in the Wire
Bon Jovi
2/5
Slippery When Wet
I’ve always been very partial to Wanted Dead or Alive and the pop power of Livin’ on a Prayer is undeniable, as is that of You Give Love a Bad Name, although probably to a lesser extent.
I was hoping that the rest of it would be a bit of cheesy fun, but it's basically either some kind of attempt at a Spingsteen knock off (Wild in the Streets), or it sounds like something from the closing credits of a forgotten 80s movie (I’d Die For You), or is the theme song for a cartoon that was created purely as a vehicle to sell a new toy range, like your Bravestars, your M.A.S.K.s etc. Raise Your Hands is the best example of this, so much so that I tried to think of the cartoon it would be from. I decided its called McCall Two Hands, about a space vigilante called Colt McCall who has two bionic hands that can detach and act independently, shooting grenades, guns and ropes and helping capture the baddies, who are led by his nemesis Caxton Duplantis, who is secretly also the Mayor of the planet Srixion 7, where this is set. Replace the chorus of Raise Your Hands with McCall Two Hands and it all comes together.
I think the thing I’ve always felt with Bon Jovi is the sense that they seem take themselves very seriously and have a rather self important regard for the profundity of their music when in reality they are writing perfectly fine but pretty standard pop music - strip out the guitars, posturing and self regard and add some semblance of fun or joy, and a lot of these songs are really very similar to something that Max Martin might write for Britney or the Back Street Boys in the late 90s. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, a lot of those 90s era pop songs are absolute bangers, but they generally aren’t pretending to be anything they're not, whereas it feel like these songs are designed to be as popular as can be, but with the transparent veneer of rock n roll rebellion and cool.
Lyrically is where the disconnect between what they think they’re doing and the reality is really apparent. I can imagine JBJ sitting on an amp case in the studio, pensively writing his lyrics on a notepad, before declaring ‘I’ve got it!’ “Let it rock, let it go, you can't stop a fire burning out of control”, ‘Yes Jon! That sounds dangerous and rebellious and exciting! Let’s get to work!’. Exactly the kind of lyrics 14 year olds would love, but are ultimately a load of old and tired cliched, vapid piffle. Fire also does seem to be his only metaphor, appearing with some regularity.
Also hopefully you can tell me what the technique is for that little squiggle guitar bit that Richie Sambora does ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
Wanted Dead or Alive, Livin’ on a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name aside, there isn’t really much of interest here, ultimately I think the self importance overrides any enjoyment or sense of fun you might get from the 80s-ness.
A shame, but it’s between a 2 and 3, probably closer to 2, those 3 good songs aside I can’t imagine coming back to it, unless I finish off my script for McCall Two Hands of course
💦💦
Playlist submission: Wanted Dead or Alive
Turbonegro
2/5
Apocalypse Dudes
Never heard of Turbonegro or this album.
The opening track starts out quite Oasis-like, with the acoustic and some Noel-esque lead, before going a bit Baba O’Riley before then turning into some kind of garage metal? The first two bits are fine, the last a bit boring, whatever you might call the style.
And that's where it stays, a kind of hard rock garage punk type thing. Which is fine if you like that kind of thing but it’s pretty dul really, the occasional decent bit of riffing apart. I don’t really like his vocals either, a bit like the Hives singer but without the charm. I guess the lyrics are supposed to be deliberately provocative with tongue in cheek, but they just sound a bit lame and try hard.
I guess it’s fine for what it is and trying to do, but to me it doesn’t even really work as a dumb fast rock album, it just feels kind of pointless. It’s not particularly exciting, it doesn't do anything particularly interesting, it just kind of exists as loud guitars and solos, a bit of shouting, some silly lyrics and not much else. The lack of harmonic, musical or instrumental variety starts to drag after about 4 songs and makes it a slog to get through.
It’s not the worst album, but there seems to me to be a lot better examples of this kind of thing, so there’s no reason to ever come back to this.
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Playlist submission: The Age of Pamparius, as it’s the only one with anything vaguely different about it.
Joe Ely
3/5
Honky Tonk Masquerade
I kind of know who Joe Ely is, as he features in the Joe Strummer doc The Future is Unwritten and seeds to have been pally with the Clash. Which kind of makes sense as the Clash clearly loved Rockabilly and country. He also seems to be an interesting guy.
So I was interested to hear this. I like alot of Country but I’m not that familiar with the differences within the genre. From the title I presume this is Honky Tonk, which I think I like. And philosophically it feels to me it sits in that gap between the more confessional singer songwriter early 70s country and the more bombastic line dancing 80s country.
Some great slide tones, quite jarring, but in a great way, especially on Boxcars. They kind of counterpoint the country format, like an evolution of some of the stuff on the Burrito Brothers albums. There’s also some slightly unusual instrumentation like the accordion on West Texas Waltz and the synth on Fingernails.
I enjoyed this a lot. It’s not the best album we have come across but it’s a fun listen within enough moments musically and lyrically to separate it from other country. A very solid 3 with good re-listenability.
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Playlist submission: Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown
Lorde
3/5
Melodrama
Oh lordy
Musically I actually liked this a lot, lots of ominous bass, big echoey spacey production, some great synths, overall a pleasing electro pop sound. Melodically I quite like it too, there’s some good hooks and some well constructed tracks, with a lot of very obvious Kate Bush influence.
But vocally it’s irritating as fuck. That annoying, affected, bullshit, excessively and falsely american sounding cursive singing style, where no-one can sing Rs properly, even though they can when they speak normally. She’s from New Zealand. Lyrically some of it is a bit cringe too - like a 19 year old’s instagram posts set to music. But then I don’t think she wrote it with me in mind.
Despite the vocals and lyrics, I did like quite a few of the songs. Green Light is a bit of a banger, The Louvre is pretty good, Hard Feelings/Loveless is good and Supercut and Perfect Places are decent enough bits of pop. The rest is forgettable really.
Soundwise I do like this, it has some great musical and instrumental moments and some good songs, but that vocal style really does grate on me, so it straddles 2 and 3, I’ll tip over to 3 so millennials will like me.
🥝🥝🥝
Playlist submission: Greenlight
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Talking Book
5 star banger.
Never noticed the sobbing sounds around 1.47 of You are the Sunshine of my Life when he sings ‘lonely’. Great opening track, love the laid back melody, rightfully a classic. Always loved Maybe Your Baby, the tension that the intro and verse build before the relatively subdued chorus is fantastic.
I love the Theremin sounding synth on You and I, and the song itself is great, one of his best ballads I think. And I love the whole atmosphere of Tuesday Heartbreak. I don’t know what I’m talking about but it feels like he’s singing slightly behind the beat, giving it an lovely unhurried swing. Love You’ve Got it Bad Girl, not sure why it but it always sounded like California to me.
Superstition. Can’t really say anything that’s not been said, but I’d recommend the One Song podcast in this song, the stems from the drums are amazing.
Big Brother is another sunny sounding song to me even though it’s quite a bleak lyric, but I love the melody and harpsichord style synth.
Blame it on the Sun is probably my least favourite song on the album, but it’s still a very good 70s Stevie ballad.
Lookin For Another Pure Love on the other hand is great, one I didn’t appreciate when I first heard the album but now I love.
And then I Believe, which is just an utterly joyous and fantastic love song, one of my absolute favourite Stevie songs.
Obviously it can’t be anything but a 5, even if a couple of songs don’t quite reach the heights of the others as a whole album it’s one of the greatest ever.
📖📖📖📖📖
Playlist submission: I Believe (When I Fall In Love it Will Be Forever)
The Blue Nile
5/5
Walking Across the Rooftops
Didn’t quite know what to expect, one of those bands that you hear about, and sound a bit boring when you are in your 20s, but are actually very good, and maybe can only be appreciated when you are older.
Love the big bass coming out of nowhere on A Walk Across the Rooftops, with the pizzicato strings. Very nice. Tinseltown in the Rain - big Bowie vibes, but almost latter day Bowie, I can really imagine this on The Next Day. Feels like it might burst into Running up that Hill in some parts, but great stuff
Very Baba O’Riley synth loop on From Rags to Riches, giving it a kind of bouncy feel, but contrasting with the mournful vocal and melody and percussion coming from another room.
Stay is probably the most immediate song and a supper bit of slightly reserved synth pop. Easter Parade is fantastically unassuming track, very delicately sad and tender, but lovely nonetheless
Heatwave is such an arresting track, sneakily melodic and melancholic, fantastic, as Automobile Noise. Echoes Duchess by the Stranglers but a great, hopeful but downbeat closing track.
The genesis of the album is quite Interesting with Linn, and it makes sense for the way it sounds. Big and reverby, digitally drive sound with spare and austere arrangements, but with a real warmth and tenderness. It’s a fascinating album, one that I’m sure will percolate more and more over time, but it’s easily a 5.
🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵
Playlist: From Rags to Riches
Ian Dury
5/5
New Boots and Panties!!
‘Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks’
I’ve always loved Sweet Gene Vincent, and, even though it’s not on the OG album, Sex and Drugs is obviously superb too.
I’m a big fan of his voice, that great combination of roughness around the edges and warm tenderness. I find its vulnerability very affecting.
Lyrically he is great, again another great combination, this one of sardonic and sincere, funny and moving.
Musically it’s a lot more interesting than the pub rock he is often associated with. There’s great bass playing everywhere, with a lot of funk and disco elements, and I really love the drum and percussion sound. On top of that there are notable rockabilly, punk, jazz and music hall influences.
In other hands Billericay Dickie or Plaistow Patricia could easy descend into end of the pier novelty, but his skill as a lyricist and vocalist makes them great character sketches, poking fun, but also empathetic.
A great album, I thought it might be good but I really enjoyed it. An easy 4 on first listen, but the more listens I give it the better it gets, so it just about tips over into 5.
🩲🩲🩲🩲🩲
Playlist submission: Sweet Gene Vincent
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Dusty in Memphis
The difference between this and the other Dusty album we had is immediately very stark: the song choice, the playing, the sound, all are instantly better on Just a Little Lovin’, more sympathetic to her voice, poppy and accessible but also. That continues with So Much Love, even if these two songs are quite as strong as some of the songs later on.
Son of a Preacher Man. Despite being very overfamiliar it is, of course, truly excellent. Atmospheric, mysterious with brilliant playing and a fantastic vocal.
I Don’t Want to Hear it Anymore, has, as usual a great vocal, and a very nice 60s pop feel with a nice build.
Don’t Forget About Me and Breakfast in Bed are both superb. Never heard either of them before, but both are excellent. I love the guitar and the stomping chorus on Don’t Forget About Me in particular.
Just One Smile felt a little cloying to me, the arrangement perhaps a little big band. The Windmills of Your Mind is a fantastic song, but I’m not as keen on this version. The vocal is super, but I’m not keen on the arrangement with the Spanish guitar, it feels a bit lounge. The strings towards the end are good, but I’m not sure they quite rescue it.
In the Land of Make Believe is great, it has a very pleasing delicacy and although there is quite a lot happening musically it’s placed back in the mix to give it some sense of restraint.
No Easy Way Down falls a little close to easy listening, but is just about rescued by the vocal (of course) and the playing, the organ is particularly noceI Can’t Make it Alone has a lovely build and crescendo, it’s good, even if not quite as strong as some of the others
When it’s good this is great, and although it's far superior than the other album we had, there are some songs that don’t quite work for me, sailing a little close to easy listening or lounge, which stops it from getting into the 5s. A 4 feels about right, reflecting the quality of singing and playing.
🗑️🗑️🗑️🗑️
Playlist submission: Preacher Man is the obvious one, but for a change I’ll go Don’t Forget About Me
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
Japan
4/5
Quiet Life
‘It’s certainly crowded, I’d love to go’
I was hoping Life in Tokyo would be on here, but alas it’s not. So we’ll just have to do with a very enjoyable collection of Bowie and Roxy Music influenced Synth Pop.
This has that great late 70s early 80s atmosphere, a bit of Kraftwerk and Berlin style detached neon coolness with the above mentioned Bowie and Roxy Music stylings.
Duran Duran must have heard Quiet Life. It’s a great track, a super bit of new wave early synth pop. Fall In Love with me is very good too, not quite as immediate as Quiet Life but still a great bit of new wave pop. Despair is fantastic, with its modernist gothic atmosphere, and portentous piano and choir. I can see how this might rub people up the wrong way but I loved it.
In Vogue has a lovely string outro, sounds like one of the Bond orchestral motifs, although this and Halloween are slightly less strong than the others, but I admire the consistency of sound and style.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is a great cover, I do love the VU original, but I like the moodiness of this a lot, it suits the slightly odd child-like melody of the chorus. Alien is good, it has a creepy vibe to it, with the upbeat and poppy horns and then I love the piano figure in The Other Side of Life, a suitably atmospheric and slightly overwrought finale.
This is something I never thought I’d say, but there’s a lot of great fretless bass on here.
Overall I thought this was great - I wasn’t sure what to expect but I like the synth, Bowie, Roxy, New Wave mash up, lots of ominous sounds and slightly strangled vocals, and seemingly very smartly constructed arrangements. Was actually tempted to go 5, but I don’t quite think it’s in the top bracket, so I’ll settle on a solid and very enjoyable 4.
🍣🍣🍣🍣🍣
Playlist submission: Quiet Life
The War On Drugs
4/5
Lost in the Dream
I’m very aware of The War on Drugs, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually heard any of their songs, although they are the sort of band they play on 6 Music.
I was expecting something similar to The National, perhaps a bit plodding and indie-serious, but I found it more rewarding than that National album we had. While it does share some of the same earnestness, it’s more interesting, musically, melodically and atmospherically. While the subject matter isn’t the happiest, there are a lot of upbeat melodies and a relatively joyous vocal delivery.
There’s no doubt many of the songs share a similarity to each other, rhythmically many of them are almost identical, just at different tempos, but on repeat listens I started to notice some nice details in the instruments, and some great little pop hooks, like the piano figure and slide on Under the Pressure. Red Eyes really sounds like something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Again Suffering sounds very familiar, but is a very pleasant tune.
An Ocean in Between the Waves in the second half sounds quite like The Chain to me, but again, is a lovely nice song. I really like the 80s percussion and bass sounds on Disappearing, again a nice track.
Eyes to the Wind, another very nice track, sounds quite Jackson Browne to me. Big Springsteen vibes on Burning, particularly the yelps, which are very reminiscent of State Trooper
Although all 10 songs are worthy of inclusion, some judicious editing of their lengths would probably be welcome. Although I get the atmospheres and drone like grooves they are building, there are a lot of extended echoey and reverby outros (I don’t think Under the Pressure needs to be 8 minutes for example) so the whole record feels a little long at an hour. Lost in the Dream is also another very tasteful and nicely done track, the harmonica back in the mix is really lovely. And In Reverse is another very nice song, with a well crafted atmosphere and some very nice little musical moments and hooks.
Looking back, it seems as though every track reminds me of someone else, but I don’t think that's a negative, sometimes it just works to borrow some good bits from some great artists and mix them all up.
I liked this. I don’t think it’s quite in the Wilco or My Morning Jacket bracket for atmospheric songscapes and textures or variety and inventiveness, with many of the songs on here tending towards being nice, tasteful and pleasantly catchy, rather than emotionally or musically dramatic and affecting. But that niceness has its place, and in this case it’s very well done, with more than enough musical subtlety, nuance and skill to stop it being anywhere near bland, and I’d definitely listen again, perhaps when autumn comes. It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4, but I’ll go 4 as it’s a very nice album.
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Playlist submissions: All would be fine, but I did like Burning and An Ocean Between the Waves in particular. I’ll go Burning.
Beach House
3/5
Teen Dream
Another ‘dream’ album.
I’ve never heard of Beach House or this album, so had no clue what to expect, from the name I thought it might be some kind of Junior Senior style fun party music but it’s not a million miles away from The War on Drugs, but also a more restrained and melodic My Bloody Valentine with a bit of the XX. It also reminds me very strongly of something else, but I can’t work out what. Something like Turin Breaks, but not Turin Breaks.
Anyway I’m not entirely sure that this works for me. I liked the first two tracks, particularly Silver Soul with that lovely slide guitar, and while none of the rest of the tracks are bad, I started to find the slightly aloof, studied 2010s indie-ness of it rather cold and unmoving. While I could appreciate a lot of it, the construction of the tracks, with some very nice sounding guitar and bass, and the overall shimmery vibe they were going for, I don’t think the songs are actually that strong. It’s not a direct comparison, but for an album from a similar time in a slightly similar-ish genre, The War on Drugs album is far better at fusing musical texture with songs and melodies, and as a result it’s a better album, one that you want to come back to.
Overall, not bad but not really for me, there is a decent amount to admire, but not much to make me want to come back to it. 3.
😴😴😴
Playlist submission: Silver Soul
Van Morrison
5/5
Moondance
I’ve never been a massive fan of the title track, I do appreciate it, but I’m not as keen as I am on the rest of the album, which includes a couple of my favourite VM tunes - Crazy Love, Caravan, Into the Mystic, Everyone and Glad Tidings.
It’s easy to see it as suffering in comparison to Astral Weeks, but even though it is the follow up it’s a very different proposition, and of course a fantastic album in its own right. Whereas AW is more impressionistic, ethereal and abstract, MD is more concrete and conventional, although you can still hear the threads of AW in some of the jazziness and the horns and in the philosophical delicateness of tracks like Into the Mystic.
And it Stoned Me is kind of emblematic of the departure from AW; a little bit of jazz but mainly a kind of soulful r’n’b folk rock with more traditional structures. Love the rolling piano.
Like I say I’m not a huge fan of Moondance, although I can see why its popularity has endured, but Crazy Love is an absolutely superb song, again kind of wonder how such a knobhead could write so tenderly.
Caravan is great, The Last Waltz version is possibly even better than this, but it pairs brilliantly with Into the Mystic. I’ve already mentioned it twice, I know, but it’s absolutely superb - mesmeric and strange, but with palpable warmth and sense of magic. I never tire of hearing it.
Come Running works really well with These Dreams of You, great bits of soulful folk pop. Come Running in particular is very catchy. Lovely bit of slightly bluesy business on Brand New Day and some super backing vocals.
Everyone, another super track has that lovely harpsichord and a great upbeat melody. Great use in the Royal Tenenbaums. And I love Glad Tidings, the bass really drives it forward and the horn arrangement and answering motif to the ‘la la la la’ is great. Also used really well in The Sopranos, particularly the ‘bring you glad tidings from New York City line’.
Because I love Astral Weeks I sometimes forget what a fantastic album this is, it’s been great listening to it today. Can’t be anything but a 5.
🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
Playlist submission: Into the Mystic
Le Tigre
4/5
Le Tigre
I’m pretty familiar with this. I absolutely love Deceptacon, like Hot Topic a lot and think Kathleen Hanna is very cool.
It’s definitely a bit ramshackle and eclectic and feels quite homemade, but that gives it a lot of character and charm - I really like its blend of 90s take on punkish attitude, post punk danceability, programmed drums, alternative hip hop and 60s surf pop and girl groups. All with a tongue in cheek, political lyrical bent.
Deceptacon is a fantastic bit of off kilter danceable pop, it was always a crowd pleaser when I DJ’d. Great bass and programmed drums and brilliantly catchy in a non conventional way. Hot Topic is a very different song, but again very catchy, I love the bouncy rhythm, the Shangri-Las style backing vocals and the buzzsaw guitar. What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes is pretty amusing, if not exactly subtle, but I like the drum machine beat and the repetitive riff.
The The Empty is probably the most like a Bikini Kill song with it’s very punk verses, but i like the contrast with the almost bedroom melody of the chorus. Phanta is a little sci-fi oddity, I like the organ riff and the little squiggles, even if the song is not the most coherent. Get a little bit of The Specials in the vocal melody.
Eau d’Bedroom Dancing is a great tune, with lovely bass and a pleasing slightly off centre downtempo feel.
It sounds like a not quite as good version of Deceptacon but there’s a great groove on Let’s Run, and I really like the little organ and morse code sounds.
I like the 60s garage rock vibe of My My Metrocard combined with some punk shouting. Great tune.
I get a sense of the Beastie Boys with Friendship Station and Slideshow at Free University, the beats and piano loop on Friendship Station sounds quite like the Check Your Head/Ill Communication era, and Slideshow sounds like it could be on a Money Mark or Cut Chemist album. Both fun tracks.
Dude, Yr So Crazy! is pretty funny, again Money Mark vibes and nice little xylophone loop. The guitar sounds a bit Portishead too.
Les and Ray feels like an attempt at a 60s girl group song that comes out a bit wonky, and consequently is great. I think that’s what I like about Le Tigre, is that they are one of those bands that try to write a song along the lines of their influences, but it comes out slightly off kilter and odd, but in a great, charming way.
Itay not be the most consistent or coherent album, but there are some great tunes, and the lo-fi energy, charm and overall sense of fun easily makes it a high 4 for me. Great stuff.
🐅🐅🐅🐅
Playlist submission: Deceptacon
Snoop Dogg
4/5
Doggystyle
And you even licked my balls
I love the G-funk production on this, along with The Chronic, it's probably the apex of Dr Dre’s production style and sound. He’s almost like Nirvana. In they way they scythed down Hair Metal, there’s a clear delineation in Hip Hop before and after The Chronic, from a quite trebly drum machine sound to the slowed down, laid back, bass heavy sound of this. One of the podcasts I listen to did a breakdown of Nuthin’ But a G Thang from The Chronic and they talked about Dre developing his style so it would sound great in a drop top car while driving around LA, which is interesting - it definitely sounds like it’s made for warm weather, with a funky stickiness, rather than made for parties in basements in freezing cold New York
Snoop is also, obviously, a very charismatic performer, with a great turn of phrase and a fantastic, laid back, laconic delivery. He really is one of the best.
Gin and Juice and Who Am I (What’s My Name)? are rightly classics with great sounds and hooks, particularly Gin and Juice, with it’s languid beat and deep bottom end, but there are a lot of very good tracks on here: Tha Shiznit, Lodi Dodi (great lyrics), Murder Was the Case, Doggy Doggy World, and Gz and Hustlas (great sample/interpolation)
Ain’t No Fun is pure Lonely Island. It is unintentionally funny (and not a little icky), so no wonder it gets parodied so easily and is hard to take seriously, even if it’s great musically. And the skits, while not as bad as some, aren’t great, although I quite like DJ Salty Nuts and W Balls.
It’s an easy 4 - brilliant production, great rhymes and delivery and a landmark hip hop album
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Playlist submission: Gin’n’Juice.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Californication
I really liked By The Way when it came out (and very much enjoyed them at V) and I subsequently listened to this a fair bit around that time. I haven’t listened to any RHCP since then so I was really looking forward to revisiting it.
I don’t know whether I've changed or it hasn't aged well in the intervening years but overall I found this a bit of a struggle. There’s lots I should like; Frusciante’s guitar, Chad Smith’s drumming, Flea’s obvious skill as a bassist, and it's clear they can write some good catchy hooks as there are a few very good songs, Scar Tissue, Otherside and Road Trippin’, but there’s just something about the whole thing I couldn’t connect with. I found Kiedis’s voice tough going, in a way I didn’t 20 odd years ago, and while he can come up with the odd gem there is a lot of lyrical stupidity presented seriously.
Also, I thought this sounded quite ropey - even on really good headphones it felt like I was listening on a portable FM radio from the 90s. It sounds like it’s all on one narrow band with no sense of depth, everything all bunched in the middle. The snare sound is also quite distracting. I do find Rick Rubin interesting, and he’s produced a lot of great records, but he does have quite a few bad sounding records in there too, this included.
Overall it’s not that I disliked it, or I thought it was bad, or that they aren’t very skilled, I just found it hard going over the course of a few what felt like pretty long listens. Maybe it’s a result of the production, or Kiedis’s voice or that there is a distinct sameyness to their formula but I just felt like it’s not really for me, and doesn’t hold a great deal of interest beyond those few good songs. Somewhat with regret, as I was expecting more enjoyment, it's a 3, and an album I’m unlikely to come back to.
🌶️🌶️🌶️
Playlist submission: Otherside
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Variations on a Theme sounds pretty schizophrenic, which sort of encapsulates the whole album. It's messy, but not in a totally uncharming or unpleasant way, although it never quite seems to catch fire and fuse all its disparate parts into a fully realised whole.
The cover of Smiling Phases starts off as a fun bit of rolling rock/soul, but then it descends into some kind of prog rock jazz club, with a A LOT going on, before picking the first bit back up. Sometimes in Winter feels vaguely out of place, it has the same jazz elements, but feels more like lounge music, and the vocals are quite nondescript in comparison to the normal lead singer, although again its not without a kind of slightly gentle charm.
More and More is fun in a funky jazz way, And When I Die’s riff feels quite Sesame Street, especially with its stop start nature, definitely something slightly children’s entertainment about it. I’m not familiar with the original so not sure if it sounds similar?
God Bless the Child’s horn arrangement in the intro sounds a bit like the Welsh National Anthem and He Ain’t Heavy, but it’s a nice enough version even if musically a bit heavy handed. Very nice and controlled vocal though.
Spinning Wheel is probably the standout. I only know Shirley Bassey’s version, but it's a great bit of blue eyed soul with a nice tight arrangement. You’ve Made Me So Very Happy is a lovely song, and again, this is a nice version, particularly the more upbeat parts.
Blues Part II, not sure about this, p robably a bit too much prog jazz and just too much happening in 11 minutes to get any sense of it, although I do like the Sunshine of Your Love bit, and it’s better than some of the Yes type songs we’ve had.
Overall there’s a lot going on in pretty much every song, which although fun, does make you wonder what this would be like with a more focused approach. But then on the flipside the jumping around, time changes and jazz excess (Jazzcess?) seem to be done out of a sense of fun and enjoyment rather than po faced seriousness, so it might lose the appeal it does have. A nice little oddity that I enjoyed, but will probably not come back to - 3.
🩸🥵😢
Playlist submission: Spinning Wheel
Steely Dan
5/5
Can’t Buy a Thrill
It's only in the last 10 years or so that I have come to really appreciate Steely Dan. I had Aja on CD back in Durham, but I never really got it, it felt too AOR and Jazzy. But nowadays I can appreciate that no matter how much technical sophistication or jazziness they try to inject, they can’t seem to help but write incredibly catchy and satisfying soft rock.
Do It Again is the song that probably made me realise how great they are. I remember hearing it at a party at someone’s flat when I lived in London and thinking it was superb. It’s a great example of their genius as arrangers and producers - it just sounds so right, with nothing extraneous or useless, with everything feeling considered and thought through. They also manage to play and produce with such precision, while maintaining a sense of swing and movement, without it feeling static or dull.
That holds true for the rest of the songs on the album too, Dirty Work, Kings and Midnite Cruiser with their very catchy choruses and assured easily melodic verses. Only A Fool Would Say That has some lovely guitar and a slightly more cynical feel compared to the previous songs.
Reelin’ in the Years is pretty well known I presume, and is a nice upbeat song for the start of side 2. Fire in Hole is vaguely melancholic, and I like the slightly staccato piano. Not one of the most immediate songs but still very good. I really love the laid back melody and feel of Brooklyn, again with a great, catchy chorus with great backing vocals. Change of the Guard is another solid soft rock pop song, with some nice overdriven guitar back in the mix. Turn that Heartbeat Over Again is a lovely bit of wistful blue eyed soul, rounding things off superbly.
This may not be their greatest album, but I do love it, and it kicks off a great run of records up to Katy Lied. They may not veer too far from their catchy jazz-flecked soft rock pop tendencies, but they do it so well it doesn't really matter. Great album, easy 5
🤴🤴🤴🤴🤴
Playlist submission: Do It Again
Sonic Youth
2/5
A Nod is as Good as a Wink… to a Blind Horse
This is the same year as their 2nd album and also Rod’s Every Picture Tells a Story, which Ronnie Wood plays on on every track and the other Faces appear. Rod’s voice really is at its peak in this period - obviously he has his distinctive powerful rasp but he combines it beautifully with a lot of tenderness and subtlety, as on Love Lives Here. It’s also when he had the Faces to help choose and write good material for him, and back him brilliantly, although it’s a shame he doesn’t always take the lead on here - although his backing vocals are great I’d love to hear him sing Debris for example
Ronnie Wood’s playing is great, as is that of Ronnie Lane and Ian McClagan. Kenney Jones can occasionally be a bit lumpen, but he’s pretty solid here too.
Miss Judy’s Farm is a great opener, with a very nice, dynamic, propulsive rhythmic quality to it. You’re So Rude is a decent rocker, and as much as I like Ronnie Lane, it would sound better with Rod singing. Last Orders Please is ok, but a bit pub rock really and lacks a bit of punch.
Stay With Me is of course a classic, along with Oh La La their best song. Banger. I do love Debris, its a lovely delicate song, but as above I’d live a Rod vocal on it. The Memphis cover is great, I like the swampy low down vibe they give it. Very nice. I’ve always liked Too Bad, a very catchy Faces rocker. That’s All You Need is also great, love the slide and the outro.
I like the Faces a lot, and this is their best album, although they are probably more of a songs and greatest hits band than a coherent albums band. Nevertheless this a fun early 70s rock n roll record with some great songs, some great guitar and a singer at his peak. 4 stars for me.
😉😉😉😉
Playlist submission: Has to be Stay With Me
Ute Lemper
2/5
Punishing Kiss
I don’t know Ute Lemper at all and I resisted looking this up until I’d given this a listen.
I get what she is going for - that musical, theatrical, 60s cinematic, cabaret, Weimar Republic, interwar, slightly seedy, decadent, melodramatic, orchestral, torch song vibe. The problem is it sounds very dated to the late 90s/early 2000s, and consequently it lacks any sort of atmosphere or any evocation of anything it's aiming for. Rather than sophisticated decadence it sounds more like soulless ham fisted schmaltz.
I also really don’t like her voice or her vocal mannerisms. I get that the songs require that theatrical vocal style and those talked asides, and while she has a strong voice it has a quite unpleasant nasal brutality to it.
Alongside all that, I found the songs pretty uninspiring thematically, lyrically and melodically, even if they were written by people I like, like Nick Cave and Tom Waits. It was a bit of struggle to make it through the third listen, but You Were Meant For Me was the only one that really stood out, the only song where the sound, arrangement and vocal all coalesced to conjure up a dramatic and nicely overwrought whole.
I do actually like Neil Hannon and the Divine Comedy, but his records, while obviously influenced by this type of music, have some wit and charm with a much more considered sense to them.
Like I say I get what they were going for, and if you are into the musical theatre vibes of the German Elaine Paige singing Cabaret and Kurt Weill then I guess it’s a good listen, but I found it a bit of an uninspiring irritation. Reluctant to go 1, even if I’m tempted, so I’ll stick with a 2.
👊💋
Playlist submission: You Were Meant For Me
Beastie Boys
3/5
Licensed to Ill
I’m never quite sure if they are joking on this, or if they actually mean it. I can see why they would say it’s a joke, and bearing in mind the rest of their career, I’m probably inclined to believe them. Even if their wordplay, pop culture references and delivery are all great, and whether it is all tongue in cheek or is actually sincere, the constant fixation on and references to girls, beers and defying the authority of teachers and parents does get a little tiresome over the course of the whole album.
Musically it’s also very of its time and very 80s Rick Rubin, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Led Zep sample on Rhyming and Stealing is great and sets the tone for well chosen samples and big, echoey beats, and its fusion of rock and rap is clearly hugely important, along with Run DMC (with Rick Rubin of course), in Rap's emergence into the mainstream. I suppose the flip side of that is that it also birthed some god awful rap-rock in its wake, like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and particularly and most egregiously Kid Rock.
Rhymin and Stealin, Slow Ride, Girls, Fight For your Right, No Sleep till Brooklyn, Brass Monkey and Time to Get Ill are the standout tracks. I particularly like the Led Zep, War and Creedence samples on Rhymin, Slow Ride and Licensed to Ill and of course Fight for Your Right is a great tune. Girls (aside from the lyrics) and Brass Monkey do indicate some of the musical playfulness they would subsequently exhibit
It may be a bit low, but in the context of their whole career a high 3 probably feels about right - it shows glimpses of their sense of humour, and their ears for a hook, but it misses the sense of inventiveness and fun that you get from Paul’s Boutique onwards.
🤒🤒🤒
Playlist submission: Fight For your Right
Jane's Addiction
3/5
Ritual de lo Habitual
Been Caught Stealing is the only Jane’s Addiction song I know, and it’s a great track. Other than that I don’t know much about them apart from Dave Navarro being the guitarist and the singer’s clunky pun name.
Red Hot Chili Peppers I suppose are the obvious comparison, especially with the Navarro Connection, even if they aren’t completely analogous, but I did find this much more enjoyable than I generally find RHCP. Farrell is similarly not a great vocalist although in a slightly less annoying way, despite a huge preponderance of ‘Whooahs’ and ‘Yeahs’, and their tendency for slower, more drone like songs among the funk rock makes them a slightly more interesting proposition. Things Like Obvious, Three Days and Then She Did sound a little like pre Urban Hymns Verve, a more spacey vibe than hard rock or funk rock.
Been Caught Stealing is the stand out for me, but the run from that song to Then She Did is good, with much more groove and feeling than the first half. Of Course is a bit of a stinker though - big DurkaDurkastan vibes.
I enjoyed this, there’s some good stuff happening between the harder rock moments, and when they go for the lower tempo grooves it works pretty well, and is a lot more listenable than a lot of other early 90s US rock bands. A solid 3 - wouldn’t be averse to listening again, but I may not necessarily seek it out
👩👩👩
Playlist submission: Been Caught Stealing
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
3/5
Jack Takes the Floor
This is definitely an interesting document of a moment in time and of an interesting character in the story of Bob Dylan. Obviously Elliot has value as a performer in his own right, and is more than just a stepping stone in Dylan’s career, but looking at this from 2024 you can see Elliott was the template for early Dylan - Dylan loved Woody Guthrie but based himself on Eliott who based himself on Woody Guthrie.
I suppose the difference between Dylan and Elliott is that Dylan’s sense of opportunism, ambition and purpose, combined with his own skill, charisma and unique internal Dylan filter makes his Woody phase much more interesting and enduring. Dylan’s first album is incredibly reminiscent of this - similar songs, pre song talking and style - and despite that not being his best album, it is captivating in a way Jack Takes the Floor isn’t. Maybe that’s because we know the totality of Dylan’s career, but I also think you can detect a kind of ambivalence in this album in comparison. Elliott seems happy to get these songs down and sing them, but it doesn’t feel like it has any forward momentum. That’s not a criticism at all, I just think it's pretty interesting.
Anyhow, put Dylan aside, this is a nice collection of bluegrass, country and blues inflected folk, with the nice easy charm of his voice and his stories. Even if all the songs end up sounding quite similar his guitar playing is easy on the ear, and the moments when he lets loose with his voice gives things a nice raspy power and sense of conviction. Equally the moments when he sings in and understated way, as on Cocaine, have a nice affecting feel.
Kind of a tricky one to rate, it’s a very pleasant listen without ever really soaring, but it’s also an historically interesting record, both in terms of Dylan, but also the US folk movement and UK-US musical exchange pre Beatles. Musically it’s a 3, contextually a 4, so I’ll stick with a high 3
💬💬💬
Playlist Submission: Cocaine
Prince
4/5
Sign ‘☮️’ the Times
It took me a while to get into Prince, I think was put off by a lot of his 90s output in comparison to the Britpop I loved, and I didn’t really understand what an incredible artist he was and all the great music he made until I met Clair - she loves his early stuff and it was her playing the song Controversy a lot that really got me into him. This is probably his last really good album, ending a pretty incredible run of 5 or 6 albums from Dirty Mind onwards. I’ve really come to appreciate his single mindedness and willingness to try tons of stuff, sometimes all at once. He has that similar facility for music that McCartney has, although coming from a funk and soul angle rather than a rock and pop one, and perhaps without Macca’s degree of melodic and harmonic skill.
The title track is absolutely superb, one of my favourite Prince songs. The sparse synthesisers and drum machine arrangement against the overall downbeat mood creates a nice tension, and I love the keyboard riff. It kicks off a great run of songs, the catchy pop of Play in the Sunshine, the rhythmically driven Housequake and It, the delicateness of Dorothy Parker, the AOR pop of Starfish and Coffee, the pulsing spacey funk of Hot Thing and the slightly hypnotic scythe riff off Forever in My Life. The only misstep for me is Slow Love, a foreshadowing of some of the vaguley flat records he did in the 90s.
Even before I got into Prince I always liked U Got the Look, a classic bit of 80s pop, with added Sheena Easton 80s ness. If I Was Your Girlfriend just about treads the right side of that same line as Slow Love, and is definitely a grower. Strange Relationship I’m not a fan of, one of a few dips on the second disc. I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man is great though, along with U Got the Look one of the highlights of this disc, a super bit of 80s soft rock pop. The first half of The Cross is superb, I love the melody and the guitar, but then the 2nd half’s rock out doesn’t quite convince, maybe due to the dominance of the echoey drums in the mix. It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night I strongly dislike, it’s a real nadir, the woah-e-oo refrain is really annoying and the whole song has an ersatz quality that is really dislikable. Adore brings things back though, a great bit of crooning 80s RnB, I love the organ and the sitar touches.
Despite some fantastic music on here, I don’t think it quite works as a double album. There's an obvious dip on the second disc, and the 3 or 4 cullable songs are of significantly lower quality than the rest. As a single album it would be a 5, but it is too long, and the presence of It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night alone is worth a star deduction in its own right. I’ll settle on a high 4.
☮️☮️☮️☮️
Playlist submission: Sign ‘☮️’ the Times
David Ackles
2/5
American Gothic
I have heard of this, one of those classic lost albums that come up on lists frequently, but I’ve never actually listened.
The first track didn’t make me hopeful though, the vaudevillian theatricality really not to my taste. Love’s Enough on the other hand is actually rather lovely, a tender and affecting piano ballad. Then Ballad of the Ship of State goes back to the musical theatre of the first song and it’s not good at all.
One Night Stand then goes back to the style of Love’s Enough and it feels like a genuine 70s singer songwriter lost classic, with a charming melancholic melody. Starting to see a pattern with Oh California! I think someone should revoke his access to a horn section on the theatre numbers, its quite irritating. Another Friday Night, another pleasant ballad after another vaguely irritating musical number.
Family Band feels like a secondary school music teacher leading the cast through one of the songs he’s written for the school musical. A bit more listenable than some of the others but still not great. Midnight Carousel
Waiting for the Moving Van is another of the very pleasant singer songwriter style ballads, the section with the oboe is particularly nice. More Mr G vibes with Blues for Mr Whitecloud.
Montana is the whole album writ large (or small, whichever is right), some lovely melancholic moments combined with some hand fisted musical theatre.
I get a lot of Neil Diamond and a lot of Harry Nilsson, but without being as good or as interesting as either. So a bit of an oddity, some really great stuff, but a lot of really not very good stuff too, and I can see why it never found an audience. I guess there is a market for the musical songs but I can see there would be a market for the ballads also, but it falls between the two stools and is a bit of a frustrating listen as a result. 2
👵👴
Playlist submission: One Night Stand
ABBA
5/5
The Visitors
I’ve been wanting to listen to some ABBA albums for a while, but I knew there were 2 on the list, so I was waiting for one to come up. I’m glad it did.
The title track, what a post-disco pop banger - absolutely fantastic, not sure why I’ve never heard it before. Went to No 1 in Costa Rica, and who am I to argue with that. I’ve been a bit obsessed with this song today.
I’m not always that keen on some of the Spanish elements of ABBA’s music, and Head over Heels, combined with some non-specific central euro sounds, has some of that Spanish feel, but it actually is great with that killer chorus, great track. When All is Said and Done is one of those ABBA songs I’m only vaguely familiar with, but again it’s a great track, I love the synth in particular.
Soldiers is a great tune, fantastic harmonies. I Let the Music Speak veers too close to musical theatre to me. I know that is a big part of their music, but this is one of the occasions when its too much and is probably the only real misstep on the album.
One Of Us, again some of that Spanish sound, but it’s an undeniably great bit of pop music. It’s a bit nuts how many great choruses they can write that use Anni-Frid and Agnetha’s voices so well.
Two For the Price of One - basically the bit in the middle of a Venn diagram of Video Killed the Radio Star, Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, Escape (The Pina Colada Song) and an Oompa Loompa band. I didn’t think I needed that but I love it. I’ve never been that keen on the verses of Slipping Through My Fingers, but it is rescued by an absolutely superb chorus; those minor chords in the middle are great. Like An Angel Passing Through My Room is a nice oddity, perhaps not their strongest melody but I love the spare arrangement and sad sentiments.
This was great, and got better with each listen. It may not have many of their top tier well known pop classics, but there is some absolutely fantastic music on here and cranking it up on my headphones it sounded fantastic, the warmth of the sound is remarkable considering how synth based it is, and there are some brilliant little music hooks and motifs in pretty much every song, speaking to their skill as melodicists and their sense of craftsmanship. Thematically it’s pretty interesting too, with the cold war allusions, as well as references to their interpersonal dynamics, and an overall slightly downcast feel. There’s always an underlying sadness to ABBA’s music, it's one of the things that makes them great, but on here it feels like a more mature reserved sadness, rather than the more immediate melancholy of say Knowing Me, Knowing You.
It’s a 5 from me - I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn’t really want to stop
🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪
Playlist submission: The Visitors
Chicago
3/5
Chicago Transit Authority
I do like a fair bit of Chicago’s early music, 25 or 6 to 4 off the next album is an absolute classic, but they did tend to make very long albums with very long songs, and sometimes the jazz horns and prog blues of it all can get a bit much, and this is no exception. It does feel like a long hour and 20 minutes and a lot of the songs can feel very long, because, well, nearly all of them are very long.
Having said that, there are good songs and some great moments on here amongst the noodling and the parping. And also one of the cringiest bits of musical stupidity in Free Form Guitar, nearly 7 minutes of utter pointlessness.
Introduction is a microcosm of the album - great groove, a jazzy feel, pretty busy and goes on a bit too long. The actual meat of the song in Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is is very enjoyable, but I’m not sure the broken jazz piano intro really adds a great deal to the whole song.
Having a horn section as part of the band is a great USP, but I think that sometimes leads to an over-application of horn parts, which in turn leads to a lot of busy-ness from the other instruments, competing to be heard. Beginnings is a bit like this, it’s a great bluesy country track, possibly my favourite on the album, but it would benefit from a simpler arrangement, definitely a case of addition by subtraction.
Questions 67 and 68 is a nice bit of jazz rock pop, the piano sounding a bit like Come and Get It, giving it a nice added rhythmic dynamism. Really like the groove of Listen, a great track with a nice bass riff. Poem 58, for what is basically a guitar jam, is very listenable, with a decent groove, the two different parts complementing each other well.
We shan’t talk about Free Form Guitar.
South California Purples is a decent blues groove with great sounding bass, and the cover of I’m a Man is also goof, the jazzy proggyness suiting the song’s repeating organ groove very well. Prologue, Someday and Liberation I guess are meant to be taken as a suite. Liberation is actually great, one of the times when the throw the kitchen sink approach works over the course of it’s 15 minutes.
Overall it’s a bit of a mixed bag. What they do they do very well, and there’s a great deal of skill involved, but their tendency for competing instrumental prominence makes it feel like a slightly overwrought and busy listening experience - in some instances a less is more approach would benefit the album without diluting what they excel at. Don’t think it makes it into the 4s, so a solid 3 feels about right.
🚃🚃🚃
Playlist submission: Listen
T. Rex
5/5
Electric Warrior
I had this on CD, inspired by Paul’s admiration for them, but I can’t have listened to this in about 20 years.
I’m glad it came up, as it has reminded me of what a great album this is: infectious, fun and joyous with endearingly silly lyrics which occasionally dance with genuine profundity.
Mambo Sun and Cosmic Dancer are a banging opening pair, illustrating the two principal styles of song on the album; glammed up rock’n’roll grooves and spacey acoustic driven ballads. I love the string parts on Cosmic Dancer, quite George Martin in the cello and spare arrangement, and, of course, it’s just a great track overall. Jeepster, Monolith and Lean Woman blues finish off the first side brilliantly. Jeepster is obviously a classic, but I love Monolith’s hand claps and backing vocals, and Lean Woman Blues downtempo rock’n’roll blues is just great, with just the right lightness of touch to avoid it being a bog standard 70s blues dirge.
Get It On, still sounds fresh and immediate 50 years on, just a banger. Planet Queen, what a track. I remember loving this back in the days of CDs, but I’d kind of forgotten about it. Superb.Love the mournful brass in Girl, and the engagingly daft lyrics, another great track. Love the little echoes of Get It On in The Motivator and the last 30 seconds are great, almost like morse code. Life’s a Gas and Rip Off round things off superbly, Life’s A Gas slightly downcast lyrics giving a nice bit of sobriety to the album before the scuzzy rock n roll of Rip Off.
It’s such a smartly written, constructed and produced album, the spaciousness and echoey sound giving it a real deftness, allowing room for the grooves to breathe and for Bolan’s hip shaking boogie guitar to snake around the songs.
It’s an easy 5 - a great, fun and playful album of supremely efficient pop rock perfection.
🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖
Playlist submission: Planet Queen
Brian Wilson
4/5
Brian Wilson Presents Smile
I remember buying this when it came out and there was quite a bit of excitement, although I don’t think I listened to it a great deal then.
Kind of an odd one, and tricky to separate the context from the actual music, although I’m not sure its worthwhile to do that - the context of finishing the album he never finished and that caused him to have a mental breakdown is the album and is the music.
Listening today I thought it might sound dated to 2004, but it has aged really well (apart from a drum fill on Wind Chimes), it sounds lovely, with a lot of warmth and depth, and his voice sounds also great, the age and the years in it suit the themes of childhood nostalgia and fantasy in the songs and add an extra layer of being sung 40 years after they were written and first sung.
I think the three suites work well, suiting the recurring motifs and musical references as well as the themes, and going through it song by song misses the point, although the songs already recorded by the Beach Boys do stand out: Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Surf’s Up, Vega-Tables. The version of Good Vibrations is fine, but does lack the charm and freshness of the original recording.
The music of the Beach Boys, and it’s uniqueness is probably a separate conversation, but I really enjoyed this, both for what it is musically in its own right, but also for the context and history - I really like the palpable sense of catharsis turning into joy as he re-visits and tries to finish the album that was in his head in 1967, and there’s no doubt of his skill as an arranger and pop orchestrator. It may not hit the heights of the Beach Boys but its a solid 4 for me.
🙃🙃🙃🙃
Playlist submission: Heroes and Villains
The Jesus And Mary Chain
4/5
Darklands
Less dark and oppressive than Psychocandy, there is a palpable lightness to the music on here, and whilst keeping to the same general template, there are some great little pop hooks and moments - the slowed down bubblegum surf pop melodies that were under the gloom of Psychocandy show themselves here, emerging without the dark and claustrophobic tone and mix of that album. There are still some punk riffs and still some of the same atmosphere, but there is definitely less shade and dark corners.
There are some great little guitar hooks and moments, combining some overdrive with jangly pop and drones, which, as a consequence of the lighter feel, are more apparent than on Psychocandy.
There do seem to be a lot of lifts from other songs, which I don’t particularly mind, Darklands pretty much lifts the melody from Love Vigilantes by New Order for the riff and the Oooh Ooohs on Nine Million Rainy Days are quite Sympathy for the Devil. I could also hear a touch of Sweet Dreams on Cherry Came Too.
But that doesn’t really matter too much as they conjure up some very good songs, Darklands, Happy When it Rain, Nine Million Rainy Days, April Skies and it is nice and succinct at about 35 minutes. Even if some of the songs aren’t quite as good, they all work with the atmosphere and sound of the album.
Like Psychocandy this does depend on whether you like their template and formula, and like Psychocandy, I am a fan. Although the template is similar, this does have that different end result, less moody and less aurally confrontational, subsequently it's a nice complement and partner to Psychocandy. I gave that 4 and I’ll do the same with this.
✝️✝️✝️✝️
Playlist submission: Nine Million Rainy Days
Miles Davis
5/5
Kind of Blue
I’ve tried and failed with Jazz so often, thinking or hoping I’ll like it, and it very rarely connects, including when I’ve tried this album before. However, and maybe as a consequence of doing this list, I feel like I’m becoming more amenable to it. Or it’s that this album is actually so good it transcends the genre and is ultimately just great music.
I also think it’s easy to forget that there are good and bad examples of the types of music I love, and why should Jazz be any different. There must be good and bad, and as with any type of music you are not into a bad album can feel representative of the whole. But like my cock Jazz is not a monolith.
I don’t know enough about modal jazz and hard bop and all that stuff to comment on the technical expertise and theory of this, but it sounds great to me, in a way that hitherto a lot of Jazz hasn’t. From those opening piano notes on So What to the warm fade out of Flamenco Sketches I didn’t find myself getting agitated or annoyed at all. While the drums and double bass plot out the standard jazz tempos the trumpet had a moving and rather lovely mellifluousness to it; it might jump around a bit, but I never got the stereotypical feelings of pointless parping and dissonance I normally get. I suppose that’s why he’s so highly regarded, he is a fantastic trumpeter (trumpeteer? Trumpetsman? trumpetthem?). And not just the trumpet but also the sax is also great, again I suppose because Cannonball Adderly and John Coltrane are superbly skilled saxpeople. The piano, particularly on the Bill Evans tracks, is absolutely fantastic too, with a lovely lightness to it.
It’s hard to really pick out individual tracks as there are only 5 and they all move about musically within the songs while also having the sense of being a musical suite across the whole album. But there are some great moments, the piano on So What, the trumpet right at the end of Freddie Freeload from around 8.54, the melancholy lament of the intro to Blue in Green and it’s overall 3am feeling, the slightly more uptempo smokiness of All Blue and the slightly impressionistic piano on Flamenco Sketches is amazing
I can completely see why this has such popularity and critical respect. Like any great musician, the gaps between what he plays makes this great, and the way he can conjure feelings and moods is fantastic. I can see how something like Astral Weeks was so influenced by this, as well as countless other musicians, and not just jazz and jazz adjacent ones, I know a lot of guitarists love this album and also I think Radiohead are big fans (although that be more to do with Bitches Brew)
I may be succumbing to the critical hype but I’ll give this 5, I listened to it a couple of times yesterday afternoon and have listened non-stop since about 8.30 this morning, it’s been great to work to. I don’t think I’m a jazz convert by any means, but this is just a great album.
🎺🎺🎺🎺🎺
Playlist submission: Flamenco Sketches
Hanoi Rocks
2/5
Back to Mystery City
Do you think the recording of the acoustic guitars in the intro to Strange Boys is supposed to sound so wobbly? I guess it might make you think you are about to listen to a vaguely pastoral album based around Blackbird. But by looking at the cover you clearly aren’t in for that sort of thing.
Indeed you’re actually in for some occasionally pleasingly schizophrenic and stupid but ultimately not particularly good and quite badly recorded Finnish rock. Is it a joke or are they serious? I can’t really work it out if the dumbness is real or deliberate but I am significantly reminded of Anvil.
Malibu Beach Nightmare was apparently originally a calypso. I wonder what that was like if they thought this was a better way to do it? Among the rest of it I quite like the looming (synth?) bass on Tooting Bec Wreck, Sailing Down the Tears is quite a decent pop rock song, as is Ice Cream Summer, and I don’t mind the New York Dolls influenced 60s-sih garage punk of Back to Mystery City at all.
So overall it’s as completely terrible as it might suggest, but apart from some fun dumbness on a couple of tracks it’s not particularly great either. Probably a high 2, not enough to get into the 3s but not totally abject either.
🇻🇳🇻🇳
Playlist submission: Back to Mystery City
Basement Jaxx
4/5
Remedy
I have not thought of Basement Jaxx for a long time. A long time. They were of course really big at the end of the 90s and although I’m by no means a connoisseur of electronic music I never really got into them in the same way as I did with bands like the Chemical Brothers or Daft Punk or even people like Bentley Rhythm Ace or Apollo 440.
Rendez-Vu I remember well and is a great bit of, I presume, balearic influenced house music, the spanish guitars giving a nice soft edge. Yo Yo carries on the vocoder vocals but I like the disco/funk bass and the slightly spare groove is great. Jump’n’Shout is a fun bit of ragga house, the synth bass is nice. I really U Can’t Stop Me, the slightly broken rhythm pattern and vague garage feel is pretty cool, again great bass. 4 bangers to start.
Never been that keen on Red Alert. Although I can appreciate it’s catchiness, I think it’s the mannerisms of the vocalist that I'm not sure about. Always Be There is fine, if a bit forgettable, it feels like its straining for catchiness but not quite getting there. Same Old Show is good, sampling On My Radio and making a very good slightly dubby house track. Bingo Bango is a bingo banger - always liked this one and is great bit of hook laden house.
Stop 4 Love is a nice change of style, a kind of necessary break from some of the four on the floor house, a nice bit of atmospheric electronica. Don’t Give Up is decent, I like the flattened EQ in the more intense sections, but definitely feeling the length of the album now. Being With U I can take or leave, there are some nice little keyboard bits but is a bit underwhelming.
I like the disco and funk influence particularly the bass and the overall good time party music vibe, however there is no getting away that it starts to feel a bit samey over the course of the hour, but then I suppose if you are not into guitar based music you could say the same about a lot of albums I like. Having said that they do seem to have front loaded the first half with their better tracks, there is certainly a bit of filler towards the end.
Also I do think rhythmic/tempo repetitiveness can start to get a bit samey more quickly than melodic or harmonic repetitiveness, and obviously dance, big beat, house all have broadly similar tempos, so unless its a DJ a mix an hour of sequential dance tracks can drag a bit (as they don’t necessarily lend themselves to the idea of the ‘traditional’ album), even if taken individually many of the tracks are good.
Anyway the first half is a great listen and there are some excellent tracks, more than most dance albums have, and also moments throughout, although I’m more likely to pick tracks for a playlist than listen to in its entirety again. Tricky to rate, somewhere between 3 and 4. It’s probably a 3 as an album, but a 4 for them being great at what they do and for making at least 3 or 4 bona fide pop house bangers. I’ll go 4.
💊💊💊💊
Playlist submission: U Can’t Stop Me
2/5
Close to the Edge
“Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time
Insane teacher be there reminded of the rhyme
There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify
Political ends as sad remains will die
Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you
Oooh, ooh’
I mean what can you say about this album? It’s Yes, it’s 18 minute songs consisting of multiple parts, there's lots of technical skill, there's blues and folk influences, the lyrics are shit, the singer enunciates all the syllables at equal length and it’s all a bit lumpen. So it’s exactly what it is - if you are into them and Prog then I imagine this is great. If you aren’t that into them then this all feels a bit pointless.
The Close to the Edge Suite - not a great deal to pick out, the guitar intro is immediately aggravating and I don’t think the reggae inspired beat works particularly well. Although I do quite like the bass sound, there is the odd good guitar run here and there and some of the backing vocals are decent.
There is probably a great folk inspired song in And You and I, but it gets lost in the rather unnecessary musical changes. This is also probably the worst track for lyrics and vocal style. His voice isn’t particularly interesting and the vocal/melodic style isn’t great either. Similarly there is a decent blues/funk rocker in Siberian Khatru, but, again, the musical changes don’t add to it, they rather dilute the nucleus of something good in that riff and bassline.
I think Prog is the genre I’ve struggled most with so far with the list, especially as I feel like I’m now starting to appreciate Jazz (even if I’m not yet fully embracing it). I hadn’t listened to a great deal of Prog before, despite some attempts, so I was looking forward to giving things like this a proper go, but I’m finding it hard going. Not because, I think, I’m struggling with the musical density and difficulty of it, more that I’m struggling with it philosophically. Everything, both musically and lyrically seems to be done for the sake of being complicated or fantastical, with very little sense of either depth or fun, emotional weight or joy, or that it comes from a genuinely different perspective or from actual musical bonkersness or eccentricity - purposefully writing stupid lyrics and overcomplicating songs seems to be the only principle, rather than actually making genuinely interesting music.
I gave the previous Yes album 3, as I think it had better songs and ideas and I probably had more of a sense of innocent open mindedness back at album no 82, but this is certainly a 2. It can’t be a 1, as I think, despite the above, there are some decent moments and I can appreciate that if you are a fan then this is good, but it really doesn’t work particularly well musically or emotionally for me.
🥱🥱
Playlist submission: Siberian Khatru
Adele
2/5
25
I’ve always quite liked Hello, and it is a very good song, the melodramatic and over the top bombast works well, with an interesting melody and some great piano. The lyrical conceit though. ‘Wanna meet up and go over everything that went wrong in our relationship 10 years ago in great detail?’ ‘Nah, you’re alright thanks’
The majority of the rest of it is nowhere near as successful as Hello. Many don’t feel like songs, just half formed ideas that rely on her vocal power to bludgeon them into something resembling a song, if you don’t listen too carefully. And again there’s not a great deal to convince me that she is a particularly great vocalist, or at least not anywhere near the reputation she has. Obviously she has an extremely powerful voice, but it lacks any subtlety or shade, and consequently doesn’t have a great deal of emotional weight, just brutal x factor cruise ship power.
Thematically, of course, it’s very repetitive, which would be fine if the lyrics weren’t so limited and banal, at the level of Moon/June, with absolutely no insight into why this person was so special and so great that she just can’t stop singing about him. It just feels like instagram platitudinal emptiness and it’s particularly bad on When We Were Young (although the bass is nice on that song) and Remedy. River Lea attempts to evoke images of childhood and nostalgia, but it’s so heavy handed in it’s lumpen banality it sounds almost partridge-esque. Also, that something that’s in the water? It’s probably chemical waste.
Musically River Lea and Sweetest Devotion are the strongest songs along with Hello, mainly as they steer clear of the awful piano dirges that make up the rest of the tracks, like Million Years, which is truly bad.
So overall it’s pretty drab, Hello, River Lea and Sweetest Devotion aside, with very little of interest or character, either melodically, musically or lyrically. Tempted to go 1, but it’s not really the shittiest of the shittiest, it’s just insipidly and unambitiously boring
👋👋
Playlist submission: Hello
Sepultura
1/5
Arise
What’s there to say? This isn’t my cup of tea, and even if it was my cup of tea it would have gone cold and have off milk in it.
There really is nothing to redeem it, the lyrics are drivel, it sounds crap and thin, the songs are all the same, it’s not even confrontationally aggressive, it sounds so by the numbers it doesn't even have any shocking power.
Drivel, absolute drivel.
🪦
Playlist submission: Who gives a shit really, but Desperate Cry as it has some synth in it
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3/5
Now I Got Worry
Never really jived with JSBX although on paper there should be a lot I like. I get what they are going for with the edgy and frenetic garage rock/soul/rnb, but the wiriness does make it feel rather disjointed and it doesn’t work consistently enough to make it a truly satisfying listen.
It does grow on you and there are some definite highlights, Wail, Fuck Shit Up and Love All of Me are good and the one-two of Chicken Dog and Rocketship is great. I love Rufus Thomas and having a ‘proper’ singer pulls Chicken Dog together brilliantly, the riff and groove working in unison well. Can’t Stop has a nice rhythmic propulsion and Eyeballin is good too. I like the RL Got Soul riff as well.
I like the drummer and the guitars have some great moments, and I know his vocal style is their sound, but sometimes I wish he’d go somewhere other than the Elvis impersonation or the distorted scream. When he does sing more conventionally, as on Rocketship, it’s good.
I think you have to acknowledge that they have influenced quite a few indie rock bands after them, but there are bands that do this kind of bluesy garage rock better, like the Black Keys and White Denim, who I presume were very much influenced by JSBX, but who manage to harness everything with a bit more care and craft.
Really it's an album of moments and intent and attitude rather than a fully successful artistic statement. Two feels too low, and it at least tries to be interesting, so I’ll go 3.
📿📿📿
Playlist submission: Chicken Dog
R.E.M.
4/5
Green
Despite listening to it all, I'm not as familiar with the full REM back catalogue as I really should be, so I’m not quite sure where Green quite sits in their overall story. Listening yesterday and today, and despite having some very well known songs, it feels like this might be a bit of a transitional album? I can hear echoes of both their more alternative sound and their massive commercial 90s sound, but perhaps without enough of the consistently great songs that make up their ‘big’ albums.
Pop Song 89 is a great bit of catchy pop, and sounded particularly good after Sepultura yesterday. Great melody and hook. Get Up is ok, the ‘rock’ guitar sounds a little unconvincing but the harmonies are nice.
You Are Everything is excellent, one of those very affecting REM mandolin songs, and the accordion adds some lovely touches of colour and tone. Stand, of course, is a brilliant song. It has that great REM thing of a slightly unusual vocal rhythm whilst being insanely catchy. Great stuff.
World Leader Pretend is fantastic, feels like a bit of a lost classic, I love the piano line and the snare drum. The Wrong Child doesn’t quite work for me, nowhere near as strong as You Are Everything, which shares a similar sound.
Orange crush - I have always loved the riff (so catchy!) and bass on this, one of my favourite REM songs. I really like the swampier sound and bass groove on Turn You Inside Out, the slightly rougher edge and less overtly pop melody is a nice counterpoint. Hairshirt is fine, the keyboard in the back of the mix is great though. I Remember California has really grown on me, even I’m not quite convinced by it for some reason. I like the vocal melody and lyrics, but musically I’m not sure about it, particularly the bass and drums. And Untitled is very nice, the organ is great and it has a very pleasant atmosphere of amiable wistfulness.
Not sure what I’m scoring this against, their whole career or as an album in its own right. Probably a bit of both. As a standalone album there are some absolute bangers, but mixed in with some fine, if forgettable tracks. And in the context of what followed it doesn't quite have the majesty or weight of say Automatic for the People or New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I think that adds up to a 4 - still a great album but not in the top bracket
✅✅✅✅
Playlist submission: Orange Crush
Julian Cope
4/5
Peggy Suicide
I love World Shut Your Mouth, but despite liking it, it has never made me want to delve into Julian Cope’s discography. I always get crusty Glasto canal boat vibes, and I don’t want another Levellers on my hands.
However I enjoyed this, particularly on repeat listens. I’d definitely question whether it needs to be 18 songs and an hour and fifteen minutes but I found myself liking the slightly idiosyncratic and trippy folky, baggy, new wave-ness of it. I can hear a bit of Velvet Underground, Inspiral Carpets, Can, Echo & the Bunnymen, early Verve, The Clash, Happy Mondays in it, all good stuff.
Pristine’s folky intro is very nice and I like the build into a slightly psychedelic guitar and organ track. Double Vegetation is a good too, I like the triplets on the acoustic in the back half.
East Easy Rider is great, a nice groove going on with a great vocal. Promised Land has a slightly haunting feel, which I also like. Hanging Out and Hung Up On the Line is a fine punky thrash, but the riff definitely elevates it.
Safesurfer’s guitar pyrotechnics may not be fully successful, but it's a great song with a pretty progressive message for 1991. Lovely groove on If You Loved Me At All, and a great song.
Drive She Said is ok, really reminds me of something, but not one of the stronger tracks. Soldier Blue has a great hypnotic feel, but I prefer the instrumental parts to the verses with the guitar underneath. You…is also just ok, these three songs being a bit of a dip before picking back up with Not Raving But Drowning with it’s great spacey groove.
Head is another great little track, the organ and bass working nicely together. Leperskin is another nice groove, despite the first few bars sounding like the What’s Mr Chips Doing music from Catchphrase. Apostolic Hag is a great insult too.
Not entirely convinced by the calypso of Beautiful Love but I did find myself starting to enjoy it, as there is a bit of joyful carefreeness to it. Not sure there’s a great deal going for Western Front 1992 CE. Can feel quite a lot of Can influence on Hung Up & Hanging Out to Dry, love the drum pattern and the snare sound. I like a lot of The American Lite, but not the spoken word parts so much, they’re bit poetry slam. Quite catchy though. Las Vegas Basement doesn’t start promisingly but it settles down into a sweetly bit darkly melancholic tune with a pleasing, gentle vocal. Great track.
A bit of a surprise overall how much I liked this. Despite there being a couple of possibly redundant songs I really enjoyed its vibes. It's a real grower, and definitely something I will come back to. 4.
🌍🌍🌍🌍
Playlist submission: Las Vegas Basement
4/5
Modern Life is Rubbish
I’ve never really been that keen on this album, and consequently I haven’t listened to it for a long time. Despite there being some great tracks and a lot of hints at where they would go I think always felt that there weren’t enough good songs and that it didn't feel like a coherent album.
That’s why doing this is good, as listening today I’ve vastly reconsidered that opinion. While it may not be as great as Parklife or pretty much all their albums from Blur onwards it's still very good, with a lot of those little Blur things and moments that make them so interesting and so great.
For Tomorrow is excellent of course, great bass and I love the strings, sounding a little like the seaside organ that we hear a lot of on Parklife. Great bass on Advert and I love the little guitar hook. More great bass on Colin Zeal and some excellent Coxon guitar too. I know Alex James is a great bassist but it's easy to forget how good he is - I suppose his persona can make you feel like he's along for a laugh but he has so many great bass lines and really is so integral to their sound.
Pressure on Julian has a nice edgy feel to it, again great bass, but is a little forgettable. Star Shaped is great of course, strong Parklife/Great Escape Vibes, love the ‘I’ve been making plans’ bit. Blue Jeans is great, one of the delicate melodies and vocals, but with the organ and accordion giving it some seaside colour.
Chemical World is great, and I don’t dislike the Intermission section, I just wish they were separate songs. Love the Horns on Sunday Sunday, very George Martin. It sounds quite Parklife and also sounds a little Supergrass-y too. Oily Water is fine, another good melody but maybe not the most memorable track. Miss America is great in that woozy way and Villa Rosie has such a great melody and the guitar is just so good. Coping and Turn it Up are both very good tracks, but I think the length of the album is working against them at this point. A lot of bands would kill for songs like these but they are a bit lost at the back end of this. Resigned is great though, the sad eyed wistfulness is very affecting and is a nice tonal counterpoint to Copinga and Turn it Up.
Loads of the ingredients that make Blur great, but the bass on this is particularly good, in a way I’ve never previously appreciated. It is a bit long though and does suffer from a few too many tracks but it is a great album. Not top tier Blur but close, a high 4.
🚂🚂🚂🚂
Playlist submission: Won’t overthink it, For Tomorrow
Count Basie & His Orchestra
3/5
The Atomic Mr Basie
Nice cover.
Interesting one this. I think had I listened to this back at the start of the year I would have really struggled with it, but now there’s quite a bit I do like and can appreciate, but I would also still say that I’m not yet a fan of the more frenetic dancier Big Band numbers. Luckily on here they are counterpointed by some slightly more lower tempo tracks
The Kid from Red Bank is a case in point - the slightly fraught tempo, piercing horns and rinky dink piano isn’t really my cup of tea - but I can see the skill and I can admire the energy. With something like this you can almost feel the breath of Rock’N’Roll on its shoulder.
Duet is a bit more palatable, at a nicer tempo and the horns seem to be used more melodically rather than rhythmically and forcefully as on the opening track. After Supper is even better, you can still hear the Big Band-ness but it’s so gracefully performed, the piano is great and the horns have a restrained and tasteful feel.
Pure 1950s black and white US sitcom theme music feel to Flight of the Foo Birds. And pure 1950s US chat show theme music feel to Double-O, despite the great piano intro. Teddy the Toad is good though, kind of similar to Duet, and very nicely arranged. Whirly-Bird would be my favourite of the uptempo dance numbers, there’s a real punch to the drums and the horns.
Midnight Blue is probably my stand out, it feels more cinematic and widescreen than some of the others and despite sounding jazzy, the arrangement seems more like a mid 60s pop song - replace the horns with a guitar and it would sound pretty cool.
Splanky has a nice sophisticated feel, again the horn arrangement has a nice restraint and the piano is great. Fantail doesn’t quite do it for me, not sure why, but it probably just falls too close to the franticness of the first track. Li’l Darlin is rather lovely though, a real softness and delicateness to it, definitely one of the standout tracks.
I rather enjoyed this, although I think that's more enjoying it for a late 50s jazz album, rather than as an album in its own right, but I certainly wouldn't be averse to hearing it again. I’m not into it enough to go 4, so it lands as a solid mid to high 3.
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Playlist submission: Midnight Blue
Cream
4/5
Disraeli Gears
Did either of you have this on CD? I never bought it but I’m sure I borrowed it from one of you.
Anyhow, I haven’t listened to this in years, and I can’t really remember much of it, apart from, of course, being very familiar with Strange Brew and Sunshine of Your Love.
Is this Clapton’s most inventive and interesting playing? As we’ve experienced on this list a lot of psychedelic influenced blues rock is woeful, but this feels different, the psychedelic pop approach seems to bring a sense of playfulness and service to the song from Clapton, and he works really well in tandem with Jack Bruce, while Ginger does whatever he wants. Sometimes Ginger does some great stuff and it really adds a different dimension to the songs, and at other times he just seems to be banging relentlessly on his tom toms. Also his two lead vocal tracks are terrible - Yellow Submarine and Octopus’s Garden these are not.
World of Pain, Dance the Night Away, SWLABR, We’re Going Wrong are very good bits of bluesy psychedelic rock. Outside Woman Blues is a great bit of blues, but Take it Back is rather pedestrian and unremarkable in comparison, but overall Strange Brew, Sunshine of Your Love and Tales of Brave Ulysses are the standout tracks.
Overall this is a very very good late 60s album with some great guitar and bass - an easy solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Sunshine of Your Love
Bee Gees
4/5
Trafalgar
I went on a bit of a deep dive through the Bee Gees back catalogue before their disco pop machine pomp as I’ve always been partial to stuff like New York Mining Disaster and Massachusetts. This album and Odessa stood out particularly.
For such a brilliant songwriter as Barry and for how good Maurice can be, it's always seemed slightly strange that, aside from the SNF soundtrack, they don’t really have a defining album. When you listen to their albums there are some great tracks (and some not so great tracks) and a lot of dead ends, and you get a sense that they often didn’t quite know what they were as a band and as artists. Despite them, and Barry in particular, being up there with some of the best songwriters and song craftsmen (craftsthem?) of all time it feels like they never quite found their place, and that they perhaps didn’t have the personality/character/vision of some of their peers to make fully realised albums
However, and despite the similarity in the balladness and tempo of the songs on here, and while they aren’t as immediate as some of their pop classics, this for me is probably their most coherent album, the sense of vaguely melodramatic overthetopness, combined with their songwriting craft and skill makes its a bit of a broodingly atmospheric overlooked gem, with some nice oddness and interest to it.
There is also some great bass on this, a bit like Serge Gainsbourg in its tone and place in the mix but it really adds a great colour to it. I’m not always keen on Robin’s voice and he does sound a bit silly at the start of Remembering and When I Do, but I really love Barry’s voice, and he’s really great on Israel. Their harmonies though, as they always are, are superb throughout, so well considered and constructed with that great fraternal tone.
Standouts are How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? with that super little piano counterpoint, the fantastic Israel, The Greatest Man in the World, Somebody Stop the Music, Trafalgar, the brilliantly and slightly odd Lion in Winter and Walking Back to Waterloo. It’s Just the Way and Remembering and fine but not as good as the others and When Do I and Dearest don’t work so well for me.
Slightly tempted to go 5, but in reality this is a solid 4 - some great tracks, great harmonies, surprisingly good bass and an overall slightly strange and spooky atmosphere.
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Playlist submission: Lion in Winter
David Bowie
4/5
Young Americans
Probably the album from his imperial phase I’ve listened to the least and probably the album I think about listening to the least, despite loving the title track and Fame, so I’m not as familiar with it as I probably should be, so it’s nice giving it a considered listen now.
Win and Fascination are great, fascination in particular really stuck with me on this listen. Love the clavinet on Right and the harmonies/backing vocals are great. Somebody Up There Likes Me and Across the Universe are an undoubted dip, the latter particularly seems an odd choice and an odd arrangement.
Can You Hear Me is great and of course Fame is superb too.
You can really hear elements foreshadowing Station to Station, but without that album's darker and more complicated atmosphere Young Americans’ take on soul music has an air of detachment, of arms length aloofness that doesn't quite land fully. Still great though and a solid 4
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Playlist submission: Fame
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Songs of Leonard Cohen
I had this album on CD, and I think it's the only Leonard Cohen album I've ever properly listened to, until we had You Want it Darker.
It really is quite singular, with that similar feel and structure to each song, but I presume that’s the point - the simple and relatively unadorned backing and structures are to accompany the lyrics rather than being the starting point.
Some great tracks though, I loved Suzanne from the first time I heard it, and of course Sisters of Mercy is an excellent track. Master Song is great and Winter Lady gets better with each listen. I love the rising and dipping sweep of So Long, Marianne (always wondered about the two female names and how they sound similar, Suzanne and Marianne). Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye feels a bit repetitive and also like Father and Son by Cat Stevens. I like the slightly different structure of Stories from the Street, with more of a jig feel with the organ. Teachers is a bit of dip before a nice finish with One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, again that rising and falling lament and again it works well.
His voice really suits the songs and the playing, he doesn’t have great range but his tone and lack of flourish or ostentation complements the songs and the words excellently.
It’s a great album - I’m not sure it’s quite top tier but it's close. I’ll stick with a 4. I really enjoyed revisiting it and it has reminded me to come back to it, and I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with it a bit more.
🍁🍁🍁🍁
Playlist submission: Suzanne
Frank Sinatra
5/5
In the Wee Small Hours
Proof, if proof be need be, that wallowing in heartbreak and unrequited love is old as songwriting and recorded music. But then when you've loved and lost as much as Frank has then, you know what lifes about.
His voice really is great, of course it is, but he has such control of tone and feel, it is quite mesmeric. People always talk about his phrasing, but, and I’m going to sound like an old person here, his enunciation is superb, you can hear every letter and syllable, every pause and every note. Many crooners (and Buble is one of the worst at this), just affect a lazy slur in an approximation of laid back cool, but Frank doesn't do that at all, his voice and his interpretation of he melody has such clarity and precision.
Musically this is so deftly arranged and it sounds great for 1955, the horns punctuate rather than pierce and the strings for the most part avoid the schmalz and melodrama you might expect.
I also like that it frequently feels as though its about to interpolate Jingle Bells (like at the end of Its Cold Outside), giving it a slight Christmassy air. It definitely feels like a autumn into winter album, in the darker evenings with the log burner going.
Overall I really liked this - I thought it would be good but I’m surprised how good it is. I inadvertently saw that you both gave it 4. That feels about right, but I also think it deserves a spot on the podium. So in a blatant bit of score manipulation I’ll give it 5.
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Playlist submission: Mood Indigo
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
Behaviour
Growing up I really didn’t like the Pet Shop Boys, but fortunately now I have seen the error of my ways. Despite them occasionally sounding a bit ridiculous and being very very parodiable (particularly by Lonely Island), they are one of the great pop singles bands of the 80s and 90s.
Aside from Being Boring, So Hard and Jealousy I’m not familiar with this album, and I’m not sure it quite works fully. There are some great tracks but what feels like an attempt to write sophisticated adult electronic music sounds quite dated in places. Even if the songs themselves are good, the sprinkling of ‘tasteful’ wah wah on Being Boring and My October Symphony, the Sade-lite rhythms of To Face The Truth (even though the vocal and melody are particularly melancholy and lovely on this), the ‘rock’ guitar on How Can You Expect to be Taken Seriously - it doesn’t seem to quite have the panache and playfulness of their big hits. Occasionally this more mature sounds does work well, Only the Wind is very nice
When they move closer to a more immediate electronic sound, like This Must Be the Place I Waited to Leave, with its very nice Johnny Marr cameo, So Hard or The End of the World it's great. Nervously and Jealousy are also great tracks, Nervously in particular has a great synth line and slippery rhythm.
Some great pop music on here, but due to its slight 90s dinner party background music atmosphere it doesn’t feel that satisfying, particularly compared to something like their first album. It feels a touch harsh but I’ll go 3.
🐶🏪🤼♂️
Playlist Submission: So Hard
Britney Spears
2/5
…Baby One More Time
Hit me AB159
I’m guessing we’ll all go for the title track for our playlist - not only is it a copper bottomed stone cold classic pop banger it's also the best thing on here, despite there being some perfectly serviceable teen pop on the album.
(You Drive Me) Crazy is decent mid tempo pop with a good chorus and Sometimes, despite being rather coldly formulaic, is cheesily catchy, and is perfectly suited to the teenage Britney.
Soda Pop is unintentionally quite amusing, with a slightly strange vocal, but for some reason its’ very listenable with a kind of winning naive charm to it. It definitely feels very late 90s, one of those songs that might have been turned down by Bran Van 3000 or Smash Mouth before landing at her door.
Born to Make You Happy is another bit of standard 90s teen pop, although it has a cloyingness to it that hasn’t aged that well and is ultimately a bit irritating. From the Bottom of My Broken Heart again is a perfectly fine pop ballad, but definitely a tier or two below Sometimes.
You can really hear I Will Be There is a Max Martin tune, with it’s Bo Diddley rhythm and crafted efficiency, however it definitely feels like filler, not terrible, but apart from the rhythm there’s not much melodic interest.
Obviously this is a genre that flirts heavily with cheesiness, and while there are elements of cheese throughout, it goes full blown cheese on I Will Still Love You. The gospel-ish melody isn't good and the seriousness with which they’ve approached it is very jarring for what is quite a boring song.. Also whoever Don Philip is, he oversings the shit out of it, remorselessly stripping the song of any semblance of quality it might have had.
Thinkin’ about you is a return to the more bouncy pop sound, with some slightly leftfield country touches, and again is perfectly fine. E-Mail My Heart. Not a great song, but what a title, the proustian rush of late 90s internet is strong and pleasingly nostalgic. I suppose nowadays this would be called Snapchat My Dick, or TikTok my Minky or something.
The Beat Goes On is a great tune, no matter who sings it. Interesting that the All Seeing I helped produce it, having done it themselves the year before, and this sounds pretty much the same, although it does seem to suit Britney’s vocal tics well.
Overall this is pretty much exactly what you think it would be. The whole point of it was to make a late 90s teen pop album that would be totally unthreatening and sell a ton of copies to adolescents. And on that front it’s very successful. Everything on it is entirely interchangeable, and apart from …Baby One More Time, which towers above the rest, it doesn’t actually matter what is on here, as long as there are some ballads and some fun pop. And that’s fine, there’s craft and skill in doing that and it makes a perfectly listenable album, but obviously not one I’ll come back to, so on my scale that lands it as a solid 2.
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Playlist submission: …Baby One More Time
Prince
4/5
1999
This is when he took his funk and disco into the computer age. I love the combination of the synth heavy and robotic computer sound with his soul, funk and pop approach - kind of Kraftwerk + Early Hip Hop + Funkadelic + catchy pop.
And what an opening 3 songs on the first side of the original album. 1999 - banger, Little Red Corvette - classic, Delirious - super
Let’s Pretend We’re Married has more than a hint of The Visitors by ABBA, and is a great up tempo bit of disco inflected pop. DMSR is very Afrika Bambataa in its drum sound and I love the two synth lines settling into a great hypnotic groove.
Automatic has another great groove in a similar vein to what’s gone before. I love the rhythm pattern and descending synth motif on Something in the Water (Does Not Compute), it’s a nice change of pace and style and has a pleasing oddness to it. After this fantastic set of 7 electronic funk party songs though, the album does start to run into trouble. It really doesn’t need to be a double and while the following songs aren’t particularly bad they do drag the album out of focus. Free’s more soulful vibe feels a bit strained, and Lady Cab Driver, while having a great guitar groove feels like a not so successful version of the first 4 or 5 songs. All the Critics Love U in New York is good and has a nice Kraftwerk-esque detachedness, but International Lover isn’t great and feels a step too far.
If this was a single album ending at Something in the Water, with perhaps the addition of All the Critics it would easily be a 5. The opening 4 songs in particular are superb, a fantastic run of tracks - funky, catchy and with enough oddness and quirkiness to keep you coming back. As a double though it is too long, with the last 4 songs or so noticeably of a lower quality than the first 7. That makes it a 4
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Playlist submission: 1999
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Fever to Tell
I bought this album on the strength of Maps, which is absolutely great and still stands up. I’m sure I listened to it quite a bit at that time, but apart from Maps and Date with the Night I can’t really remember much about it.
It definitely feels of its time, that early 2000s indie garage rock vibe with added New York grubbiness and sleaziness, but it still sounds good I think, the minimal and unadorned production and instrumentation held together with the rough edged guitar and thumping drums and Karen O’s slightly wired and anxious charisma.
Love the little guitar figure on Rich, and Date With the Night’s stomping garage punk is great too. I like Man’s scuzzy almost funk rhythm, nicely accented by the organ. It starts to get a little samey after that, the groove based garage punk being the template, but each song is so brief, direct and to the point you just move on to the next one without much worry, until the utterly great Maps comes into view. It really is a superb bit of surprisingly tender garage pop, sounding of its time but also timeless. Great guitars, a lovely spare yet rich arrangement and a super vocal. Y Control is thematically somewhat similar to Maps, and although it's not quite at the same level as that, it’s still a great track and great melody. Modern Romance again has some similarity with Maps, but with a bit more vulnerability and another great relationship song. It does seem a bit odd they put the three strongest and most similar songs together at the end, it's kind of an odd sequencing choice.
There’s a lot of good guitar on here, almost Coxon-esque in places, and it’s jaggedy roughness suits them and the singing, shouting, moaning, wailing vocals. Kind of tough to rate as it's a mix of fun but relatively slight garage punk interspersed with some genuinely great songs like Rich, Date with the Night, Man, Y Control and Modern Romance and one absolute classic in Maps. I think it just about shades into a 4 on the back of those songs and the overall sense of energy and style.
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Playlist submission: Maps
Prefab Sprout
4/5
Steve McQueen
Prefab Sprout are one of those bands that for a long time I overlooked. While I’m not fully acquainted with all their stuff I do listen to their first few albums occasionally, they really made some great extremely well crafted 80s jangly indie pop. From memory this is probably their best or most fully realised album, even if it does dip a little in the second half and get a bit bogged down by itself.
The run from Faron Young to Goodbye Lucille #1 is great, the lovely jangly 80s indie pop with country rockabilly guitar of Faron Young, the weary feel of Bonny, the synthy and propulsive Appetite, the jazz inflected pop craft of When Love Breaks Down, the tenderness and delicacy of sentiment of Goodbye Lucille #1 as builds to moments of tension.
I like the guitar on Hallelujah and it has some great backing vocals and nice wry lyric, but has a slight adult mundanity to it. Moving the River is a good track, but I’m not a fan of the little sax motif. Horsin’ Around I really like, similar to When Love Breaks Down with its jazz inflection.
I get the idea behind Desire As, but it has a woodenness and self seriousness that feels a bit overbearing. I struggle with the melody of Blueberry Pies and the overall mood is creates. Itrap. Obviously they have enough about them to be a cut above some of their contemporaries, and it’s fine line between wry and well crafted ‘sophisti-pop’ and slightly dull adult pop, and this one falls into that trap a little. When The Angels is a bit of return to the form of the first 5 or 6 tracks, bringing a bit of life and energy after the dip of Desire As and Blueberry Pies.
When the songs dip on the second side the Thomas Dolby sound can be a bit anodyne, but on the rest of it I love the sound, clean and spacious, suiting the observational theme of the lyrics.
If the quality of the first side carried on to the end I think it would be a 5, but as it is it lands as a solid 4. A very very good album from a very very good band.
🥬🥬🥬🥬
Playlist submission: Goodbye Lucille #1
ZZ Top
3/5
Eliminator
Gimme All Your Lovin, Sharp Dressed Man, Legs - all cheesy as balls but also hugely enjoyable 80s pop rock bangers. The combination of metronomic drums and new wave synths and sequencers with their blues and boogie guitars is a winning formula and gives the songs a satisfying robotic precision and sheen.
The rest of the tracks follow that same pattern to varying degrees of success, without ever quite reaching the immediacy and potency of the three big songs. They are, however, all united by an undeniable enjoyability, even if it’s a rather fleeting and not particularly profound one.
Nothing much more to say apart from that overall it's a fun listen, like an intensely sugary snack. Not necessarily something I want for every meal, but at the right time and place definitely one I’ll munch on again.
🚘🚘🚘
Playlist submission: Legs
The Police
4/5
Regatta de Blanc
This and Synchronicity are the two Police albums in this list and I think they might be the wrong two. Synchronicity goes too far into the jazzy dullness and this one, although really good and a bit of a grower, doesn’t quite match the angular punky reggae energy of their first or the overall consistency of Zenyatta Mondatta.
Message in a Bottle is obviously a great song and one of their best. No matter how many times you hear it it stills sounds fresh and the guitar and drums really are excellent. Sting’s bass is often great, and it’s hardly a hot take but Summer and Copeland really are what make them great. When they are pushed into the background on Synchronicity their sound really suffers.
Regatta de Blanc feels like an idea of a song rather than a song, there’s some great playing but it’s no surprise it developed out of a jam.
Bring on the Night, surely Radiohead lifted the guitar progression for Reckoner from In Rainbows? I can see why though, it’s excellent, although the song itself doesn’t quite match the guitar’s quality. I like Deathwish a lot, it feels like it might be another instrumental, but the guitar is great and the switch between the Bo Diddley rhythms and more standard beat is great.
I never liked Walking on the Moon that much when I had the best of Sting and the Police on CD, but now I dig it. The little elements of jazziness don’t overwhelm, the bass motif is simple but excellent and the almost dub-like tempo gives it a slightly unusual atmosphere. Very catchy vocal melody too, which isn’t always the case for Sting.
On Any Other Day, including its dated lyrics about a gay son, isn’t great. Copeland can’t really sing that well and although it might have worked as a quirky oddity like Be My Girl from their first album, it just doesn’t work and sounds particularly poor after the stateliness of Walking on the Moon.
The Bed’s Too Big Without You is more like it, nailing the rolling new wave dubby reggae vibe without sounding anodyne. Great track. Contact is good as well, slightly off kilter and I love the jangly 60s-ish guitar riff. Not a fan of Does Everyone Stare, it sounds a bit like a song off the Ghostbusters soundtrack, and the piano led sound to me doesn’t suit them. No Time This Time harks back to their debut, but with a more refined and cleaner sound, making a very good closing rocker, if not quite at the level of some of the songs on here.
I gave Synchronicity a 3, and although this is definitely better than that, it’s also not top tier, so I think it sits fairly at 4. A couple of great songs, a couple of very good songs and some ok songs, but all tied together with some excellent playing and overall a good album.
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Playlist submission: Could be a couple, but I won’t overthink, Message in a Bottle it is
Elvis Costello
5/5
My Aim is True
Back when Elvis Costello’s songwriting was exciting and energetic with loads of great ideas, before he settled into writing rather flat and boring ’mature’ music.
I do know this album somewhat, but I haven’t listened as much as This Year’s Model and Armed Forces, so it's nice refreshing my memory.
It really is a great album - a direct, sharp, neurotic, wired and edgy 32 minutes (if you don’t include the excellent Watching the Detectives), with an engaging and exciting blend of punkish energy combined with classic rock, country, soul, 50s rock n roll and 60s pop influences.
Welcome to the Working Week is a great burst of cynical energy, etMiracle Man has that great guitar motif, while No Dancing has the Spector drum pattern and vague soul feel with some nice acoustic guitar texture. Blame it On Cain is great and very Springsteen. It’s not something I’ve connected before and I’m not sure if that’s just because Springsteen has Adam Raised a Cain but I feel like there is a lot of Springsteen influence here, albeit through Costello’s more cynical British lens. Great song though.
Alison is rightly a classic, a melody I could imagine Smokey Robinson singing in the early 70s, and just a lovely song, with a tenderness in contrast to much of the more bitter and angry lyrics elsewhere. Sneaky Feelings is a nice counterpoint to Alison’s more simple directness, a sweet little tune with a nice theme of secretiveness and mistrust. Red Shoes is a great track, one that just feels right in it’s construction, melody and lyric.
Less than Zero uses the Twist and Shout riff and is another great 50is rocker with a great lyric. Mystery Dance is even more 50s and again has some Springsteen about it. Pay it Back has some great guitar and great energy. I’m Not Angry is perhaps the only misstep for me, the guitar is a little too sub-Mark Knopfler classic rock and feels slightly out of place. Waiting for the End of the World though is superb, a great finish. Love the groove in the riff and the drum sound is excellent. Great track.
Overall this is an excellent album, a great distillation of early Costello, some great, if mean spirited, lyrics and some superb songs. 5.
👠👠👠👠👠
Playlist submission: Alison
The Icarus Line
2/5
Penance Soiree
Never heard of this or The Icarus Line before. Resisted looking them up, and wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the cover or band name. Maybe something Metal or some generic American Alt Rock?
Up Against The Wall Motherfucker - kind Alt Rock riffing with a garage punkishness and a bit of RHCP or RATM bass groove. It does sound quite early 2000s-ish and its fine I suppose. Spit on it is less successful and is thankfully pretty brief. On the Lash, has a bit of BRMC to it, but not as good and without the more ominous feel of their songs.
Annnnd….I can’t be bothered to go through the rest of it. It’s fine for what it is as some noisy garage rock, but it’s also quite tedious, with very little of interest to differentiate it from anyone else. There were many more better bands with better melodies and better ideas at that time, so why would you choose to listen to this? Listening twice through is enough. Not wretched, just boring. 2
🤷♂️🤷♂️
Playlist submission: Up Against The Wall Motherfucker
Paul Simon
5/5
Graceland
Hardly a spoiler but this is a 5.
The classic 80s parents album, and I remember really liking it when they played it on car journeys, bouncing bass and synths and echoey drums I guess are particularly attractive to a child's ears. I also remember loving the video and the ubiquity of Call Me Al, and that song is still such a pure nostalgic hit of childhood. I then remember buying this on CD, I think at Uni, and realising what a great album it is, and it’s only got better over the subsequent years.
As has my appreciation for Paul Simon. I absolutely love his songwriting, up there with Macca for melody of course, but he’s such a good lyricist and I love how he lets phrases run across different lines giving a slightly offbeat feel. I also don’t think he’s done a truly bad solo album, even something weakly regarded like Hearts and Bones, which is clearly not as strong as others, has at least one or two great songs and loads of interesting stuff. His initial run of Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Still Crazy is superb and his last 2 or 3 albums are well worth investigating, I listened to Stranger to Stranger a lot when that came out.
‘These are the days of miracle and wonder’, I’ve always loved that line. Graceland is one of my favourite songs of all time, the non secular spiritualism and sense of pilgrimage is beautifully conveyed lyrically and musically, a sense of optimism and a sense of ageing and time passing at the same time. Love I Know What I Know, great opening line and chorus. Gumboots, great, love the accordion and drums. Diamonds on the Sole of Her Shoes, what a song, tender and sad, brilliant. You Can Call Me Al - ‘far away my willy blew up’, what a mondegreen. Can’t help but do air slap bass at the second breakdown.
Under African Skies, superb and lovely, a great melody, excellent harmony vocals and brilliant lyrical imagery. Homeless, just great. Crazy Love, again excellent, great melody, less African influenced but fits the whole theme. The accordion returns on That Was Your Mother, and while it’s cajun rather than African it fits brilliantly on the album. All Around the World is a corker, a great uptempo rocker. Who is the former talk show host?
It’s really interesting understanding more about the genesis, recording and production. Obviously there was understandably a lot of controversy and accusations of cultural appropriation, and I can see why people would feel strongly negative about the whole thing, but it seems to me about him finding inspiration and making his own songs out of it, which is how music has evolved, and ultimately I’d think it’s better to get together and make music across cultural and racial divides.
Anyway, I love this album, and every song on it. I can’t quite express how it makes me feel, musically and emotionally, I just love it. It’s quite disparate, but also thematically linked it seems, by a sense of loss and rediscovery, of getting older but also finding joy and happiness and sadness.
🌍🌍🌍🌍🌍
Playlist submission: Graceland
The Dictators
2/5
The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!
Not sure if I’ve heard of The Dictators or not. The name sounds familiar but it also sounds like the name of a lot of bands from the mid to late 70s who presaged or followed punk.
I thought it might be more like that Germs album, but it’s more listenable than that, reminding me a lot of the New York Dolls, with that sped up frenetic glam rock and blues rock sound, and a bit of the Ramones (esp the cover of California Sun), but without being quite as good or as exciting as either of those bands.
I can see how this would be influential on punk and puncturing some rock posturing, and while some of it is decent, California Sun, Weekend and Cars and Girls, and some of it is a dumb sort of fun, like Back to Africa, Master Race Rock and Teengenerate and the rest just sort of dumb and not that much fun.
One of those albums that, although I didn’t fully enjoy, I'm glad to have heard, even if I’m unlikely to come back to. Solid 2.
🤪🤪
Playlist submission: Cars and Girls
Fats Domino
3/5
This is Fats Domino
I couldn’t find this album on Tidal, there is one called This is Fats, which is from 1959 but I think with
a different track listing from what I could find on Wikipedia. And there is a compilation called This is Fats Domino, but I don’t think that’s the album meant by the list. So I made a playlist of the tracks from album Wikipedia page. Interesting story, that.
Blueberry Hill is great, obviously a 50s classic, a Rock’n’Roll and Soul adjacent but of New Orleans RnB/Jazz/Blues, but it is a great track and stands up fantastically well to modern ears. Blue Monday is the same, an absolute belter.
While the rest of the tracks don’t quite hit those heights they are still all very listenable New Orleans RnB, with some excellent piano and that fantastic voice. You can hear that these are fundamental building blocks on the journey to ‘modern’ music, connecting big band Jazz of the 40s and 50s, emerging New Orleans RnB, nascent Rock’n’Roll and country Blues. Of these tracks Honey Chile, What’s The Reason I’m Not Pleasing You, So Long, Troubles of My Own, Poor, Poor Me, Trust in Me and You Done Me Wrong stood out at that level below Blueberry Hill and Blue Monday.
I don’t know if it’s because I cobbled together the tracks from different compilations but there does seem to be a difference in the recorded sound of some tracks, some sound great, and some not so much. I know I mention it a lot but there is a good episode on Fats Domino in the History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast, which talks about Fats’ producer Dave Bartholomew, who is pretty interesting.
Anway, this is a thoroughly enjoyable bit of historical context, but like a lot of albums from this period it is before albums were considered as a whole, so it doesn’t quite feel like a proper album. A Fats Domino greatest hits album would probably be a 4 or 5, but for this I think makes a 3 is fair.
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Playlist submission: Blueberry Hill
Cyndi Lauper
4/5
She’s So Unusual
Interested to hear this, I love Girls Just Want To Have Fun and Time After Time, classic 80s pop songs and they still sound great despite their ubiquity.
Money Changes Everything is a great little new wave-ish synth pop song. I’m not familiar with the original but it’s a great opener with a nice drum sound and melodica solo. When You Were Mine does sound like a Prince song, but it suits her brilliantly well and I love the synth and guitar arrangement, the sound and overall feel. With Girls and Time After Time that is a great opening 4 songs, energy and excitement along with some genuine tenderness.
She Bop carries that one too with a great 80s sounding synth and drum groove and All Through The Night is also a great song, with an excellent 80s shimmering falling synth. Witness is good, but maybe a little dip from the previous songs, but it does have a pleasing Ska effervescence. I’ll Kiss You is a great upbeat bit of polished angularity, with a nice dip into the softer pre-chorus. Has a slight B-52s vibe.
I hate He’s So Unusual. But Yeah Yeah is great, a nice closer with great energy and I love that organ.
It’s a great, fun listen, upbeat, infectious with a generous helping of fizzy quirkiness, but with a bit more depth and edge than you might expect, and with a couple of all time classics in Girls and Time after Time. I don’t think it’s quite a 5, but it is close, ultimately a very high 4.
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Playlist submission: Time After Time
Sheryl Crow
4/5
Tuesday Night Music Club
I’ve never listened to this even though I’m quite partial to a bit of Sheryl. All I Wanna Do, If It Makes You Happy, Everyday is a Winding Road, A Change Would Do You Good, Soak up the Sun and Steve McQueen are all great bits of classic pop/rock songwriting.
That rock classicism is evident on Run Baby Run, but whereas those songs wear that classicism lightly, on this song it hangs a bit too heavy, feeling rather too studied and stifling.
Leaving Las Vegas is much much better though, the acoustic rhythm guitar helping to give it that nice, loose, rootsy 70s rock feel, which suits her voice, and the melody and lyric is much better than Run Baby Run. Strong Enough is great too, a sweet acoustic ballad with a little groove. Can’t Cry Anymore is very nice too, again the loose rootsy feel working well with the melody, lyric and vocal.
Solidify though sounds a bit out of place after those two songs, it has slickness not in keeping with the feel of the rest of the album. The Na-Na Song shares some similarities with We Didn’t Start the Fire and Bullet Comes, but has an agreeable jam feel to it, even if it is a bit lightweight.
No One Said It Would Be Easy is superb though, a sad and teary country ballad, with some very tasteful guitar and bass and a great feel. What I Can Do For You reminds me of something I can’t quite place, but it's a nice track in the same rootsy vein, even if it's not one of the strongest
You can see why All I Wanna Do was such a big hit, its slightly offbeat country pop brilliance is immediately evident, with its observational narrative verses and hooky chorus, and its very appealing evocation of drinking in the LA sun.
I get the idea of We Do What We Can, but I don’t think it works that well, the jazzy feel doesn't quite hit the right mark and it’s not a particularly strong melody. I Shall Believe is great though, a rather lovely ballad with a country feel and a great hymnal atmosphere.
It would be easy for this type of album and this type of music to end up in Counting Crows style middle of the road anodyne boringness, but, for the most part, it stays away from that. There is a warmth and feel to playing, but mainly I think it succeeds because it’s nice to hear this music from a female perspective, but also because she has a great soulful, expressive edge to her voice, singing the songs with conviction and authenticity.
Overall this is probably a 3 or 4 songs away from being truly great. The warm, loose, rootsy core of the album in Leaving Las Vegas, Strong Enough, Can’t Cry Anymore, No One Said It Would Be Easy, What I Can Do For You, All I Wanna Do and I Shall Believe is excellent, but songs like Run Baby Run, Solidify and We Do What We Can unfortunately detract from the atmosphere those other songs create. It’s still a great listen though, and sits as and easy 4 for me
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Playlist submission: Tempted by No One Said it Would Be Easy but All I Wanna Do is an undeniably great track, so I’ll go with that
50 Cent
2/5
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
"I'm similar to a squirrel, looking for a slut with a nice butt to get a nut"
Never particularly been a fan of Fiddy’s flow and style, although I do like In Da Club, a brilliantly well constructed bit of party rap, and PIMP, which while crass, has a good beat and hook.
What Up Gangsta is kind of what I’d expected, a pretty forgettable bit of gangster rap posturing, but Patiently Waiting is really good, with great strings in the verses, Eminem excellent as usual and a nice synthesiser running through the chorus. Many Men also sounds great with an excellent, even if lyrically it does tread the same ground as seemingly every gangster rapper. High All The Time and Heat are pretty generic and formulaic, If I Can’t sounds good, with nice instrumentation. Blood Hound is pretty ropey, Back Down is good, Like My Style not so much. Poor Lil Rich has a nice synth line, and Nate Dogg on 21 Questions gives it a 90s vibe, although the effect on 50’s vocal is a bit odd and the track overall isn’t great. Don’t Push Me has a nice sense of musical drama, and it almost feels as though he is about to get introspective, but it turns into the usual braggadocio. Gotta Make it To Heaven has a decent production, but isn’t a particularly goo track.
I kind of came round to his slurry mumbly delivery by the end, and I really liked the production, particularly the Dre and Eminem produced tracks. It does sound very early 2000s, but it has a polished sheen I found enjoyable and relatively non-uniform use of instruments and samples, giving a nice bit of interest.
Thematically it obviously covers a lot of the same ground as the 2pac and Biggie albums we have had. Nas is the pinnacle for me in rapping about all this stuff but I found 2pac more interesting and thoughtful behind the belligerence than Biggie, and I think 50 cent sits closer to Biggie. Although a little less puerile and crass than Biggie he still does seem to inhabit the same adolescent’s idea of edgy realness, which ultimately gets quite boring, even if he has lived that life for real. I suppose sensitive singer songwriters sing about love in the same way as every other sensitive singer songwriters, which could also be seen as repetitive, but there are only so many ways and times you can describe how you shoot guns, get blow jobs, sell drugs and spend lots of money before it all sounds the same.
I gave 2pac 4 and Biggie 2. This is better than Biggie but I’m not sure it quite reaches 3, even though In Da Club is a banger. Ultimately I’m unlikely to come back to it, so I’ll stick with a high 2.
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Playlist: In Da Club
5/5
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
I listened to this a lot when it came out, mainly on the strength of This Mess We’re In, which I loved. It really reminds me of coming home from Japan for Christmas in 2000. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, so I’m glad it came up.
Big Exit, is a cracking start, great lyrics, kind of punkish and new wave but accessible. Good Fortune is similar, a bit less aggressive perhaps, but a great song with a great hook and an evocative lyric. A Place Called Home is excellent too, from relatively simple instrumentation and arrangements she manages to make very engaging and interesting songs.
One Line has a kinship with those first 3 songs, but again is great, with a vaguely unsettling atmosphere. Beautiful Feeling is fantastic, has a very folky feel, like the Unthanks, with those great backing vocals from Thome Yorke. Superb song.
The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore is the kind of spiritual centre of the album, a great melody with an undeniable edge and a searching, impressionistic lyric sketching loneliness and isolation in a big city. This Mess We’re In, still great, a lovely melody with a sad and resigned feeling and two great vocals from them both.
You Said Something is another great melody and hook - again the strummed guitar and minimal instrumentation conjures up an atmospheric and intriguing song. Kamikaze has that aggressive punky edge to it, and nice unhinged-ness suiting the title and coming after two pretty pop melodies
This is Love I really remember from when it came out, love the swooping riff and that great tinkly piano. Another great melody and lyric too. Horses in my Dream, feel like the title is nod to Patti Smith, who she obviously shares a commonality with, but it’s a great and haunting low tempo ballad, with an edgy folkiness to it. Her voice sounds great on this one too. We Float is great too, a sense of ending and coming to terms with the end of a relationship, with that hazy drifting chorus with that superb melody. Hidden tracks were such a CD thing, and This Wicked Tongue is a good aggressive and angry song, but feels kind of unnecessary now. Doesn’t detract from the quality of the album at all though.
This has reminded me what a great album this is, kind of amazing how engaging and interesting each song is, despite it in the main being relatively simple drums, strummed guitars and bass with minor additional instrumentation (although from my limited understanding there are some interesting chords happening). Like Let England Shake, I can see how she might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and how if you don’t buy into her style you probably wonder what all the fuss is about, but I think she’s fantastic and like Let England Shake this is an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Still love This Mess We’re In, but I’ll go Beautiful Feeling
Black Sabbath
4/5
Paranoid
Loud, heavy and swampy and bluesy but with grooves and melody - if all metal sounded like this it would be great, but it took this as a starting point and unfortunately ended up all dull and boring and generally a bit rubbish.
Obviously Tony Iommi rightly gets credit for his riffing style and guitar sound, but I didn’t really realise how great a bassist Geezer Butler is and also what a good drummer Bill Ward is. Underneath the riffing there are a lot of great bass lines and bass melodies, and I guess that combined with the drums is what gives the music a groove and slipperiness that sets it apart and makes it still sound good today. Also Ozzy has a very expressive voice at this point, with a bluesy edge and without too much over the top screaming.
War Pigs is excellent, that muddy groove and riffing keeping it moving ever onwards with a suitably daft and portentous lyric. Paranoid of course a classic, a superb riff and a great melody.
Planet Caravan is surprisingly supple, a kind of psychedelic groove but with a vaguely oppressive feeling sitting just out of picture. Iron Man the third of the classic 3 on here, again a brilliant riff, again daft lyrics, but again a catchy melody and it's a fun, moody rocker and you can hear its echoes in all the metal that came after it.
Electric Funeral doesn’t quite reach those heights but is another good song, great bass and a suitable ominous riff and hook. Hand of Doom is great, another atmospheric intro, with a bass that recalls both War Pigs and Iron Man and more great Iommi riffing. Again one that echoes what came after it. Rat Salad has more fun riffing and settles into a nice groove, even if it’s not quite as strong as other tracks. Fairies Wear Boots, I like a lot and it feels very emblematic of their style - long, time signature changes, great bass playing interspersed with heavy guitar riffing and a suitably fantastical lyric and title.
Overall I thought this was a great listen. War Pigs, Paranoid and Iron Man are toweringly good bits of heavy swampy blues rock/early metal, and while the rest of the tracks don’t quite reach that level its all still very good, ranging from atmospheric bluesy psychedelic jams like Planet Caravan, to genuinely enjoyable riffing like Fairies Wear Boots. Comfortable 4.
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Playlist submission: Any one of War Pigs, Paranoid or Iron Man, I’ll go War Pigs
The Smiths
4/5
Meat is Murder
I do have a bit of a blind spot with The Smiths. Despite how great Johnny Marr is and how much I love a lot of their songs I’ve never actually listened to one of their albums, finding that, for me, Morrissey’s voice works better in small doses of 5 or 6 songs, so I’ve just stuck to listening to their greatest hits in chunks.
So because of that I’m not sure where this sits in their canon and how it compares to their other albums. I very much enjoyed listening today though, even though, despite there being some excellent songs, my sense is that it may not be their strongest collection of tracks?
The Headmaster Ritual is a great track, what I imagine when I think of them, great jangling guitar, superb rhythmic and melodic bass and an excellent lyric full of pithy observations of anc criticisms of the education system. Rusholme Ruffians is great too, love the rockabilly feel and the guitar figure.
Lovely guitar on I Want the One I Can’t Have, and although it's a solid track it perhaps feels a little Smiths by numbers. I like What She Said’s slightly more aggressive guitar, but like I Want the One I Can’t Have, while good, it isn’t perhaps as strong as some of the other tracks.
That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore I know from the greatest hits and of course is a great track, probably the strongest on the album. Love the acoustic and the deeper resonating bass sound. Super lyric too.
Nowhere Fast, again a good song, but feels a level below the highlights on here. Well I Wonder is superb though, one of those great mournful sounding Smiths songs.
What a bassline on Barbarism Begins at Home and love the chugging disco/funk guitar. Very very catchy. Meat is Murder is a bit dirgey, I presume intentionally to match the tone of the lyric, but it’s not totally successful.
Like I say I’m not really aware how this sits in the arc of their discography, but it’s a very good album with some superb highlights, and as you’d expect its full of fantastic guitars and arrangements by Marr and excellent bass from Andy Rourke. However its perhaps not quite what I’d expect a 5 star Smiths album to be, so I’ll go for a 4.
Playlist submission: That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
Billie Holiday
4/5
Lady in Satin
Interesting reading about this after listening through it for the first time, as I don’t know much about her whole career outside the big songs, and it definitely felt like her voice didn’t have the sweetness and tone I’d expected. I guess drinking pints of neat vodka all day will do that.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing that her voice sounds cracked and careworn in places, as it tells its own story and gives the album an edge and counterpoint to what could be a bit of a syrupy album, with its slightly Disney-esque arrangements.
Every song pretty much follows that pattern of slightly schmaltzy arrangements all elevated by her vocals, but, to my ear, there is a variance to the quality of the material, meaning that when the songs are good this is excellent, but when the songs are average it’s merely good.
I’m A Fool to Want You, You Don’t Know What Love Is, I Get Along Without You Very Well, You’ve Changed, But Beautiful all stand out as the highlights, particularly I’m A Fool to Want You’s vocals, and I Get Along Without You Very Well, which is just an excellent song.
Kind of tricky to rate, I enjoyed the whole thing, and her vocals are uniformly excellent, but some songs are definitely of lesser quality and the arrangements do get a bit cloying and repetitive. I’d love to give it a 4 for it’s vocal, but it’s really a high 3. Hmm, I’ll tip over to 4 just as her vocals deserve it and for those highlights.
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Playlist submission: I Get Along WIthout You Very Well
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
This Year’s Model
Nice to have this after My Aim is True last week, you can hear the development between the two and it really showcases what was great about Costello in this perido. The Attractions definitely have a rougher, more punk edge, eschewing some of the more 50s touches for a spikier and more aggressive, more angular new wave energy, which suits the mean spirited sentiments of the songs.
There’s some very good bass playing and I love the drum sound that Nick Lowe gets on here, that echoey tom is great, particularly on This Year’s Girl and Pump It Up. And Steve Nieve’s keyboards are excellent, and really make the album what it is, the organ on The Beat is fantastic and you can hear echoes of that almost seaside sound in Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife.
It’s a great set of songs too, although written around the same time as My Aim is True they feel more developed and considered with better arrangements and some great catchy melodies.
No Action has a similar function to Welcome to the Working Week on My Aim is True, a short sharp burst of energy, setting the snarky tone of the record. This Year’s Girl is great, with that Ringo-esque drum pattern and the taut angular guitar. I love The Beat, great chorus and that keyboard pattern.
Pump it Up is of course an absolute stomping banger, Subterranean Homesick Blues-esque in its rapid fire verses, great keyboard riff and just a great song. Little Triggers is another superb track, harking back to some of the doo-wop and 50s influences on My Aim is True, but another truly great song and highlight of the album.
You can hear The Beatles in the opening riff to You Belong To Me, before the keyboard kicks the pace up and it becomes a taut little rocker.
Hand in Hand had a nice gentleness to it’s opening, recalling Alison, before the drums kick in and it settles in with some great organ and guitar and catchy chorus.
I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea is another absolute banger, with that great spiky riff and rhythm echoing the lyric. Love the drums, bass and acoustic guitar on Lip Service, and that piano picking out the way to the chorus is great.
Living in Paradise has more fantastic keyboards, dripping between the lines like honey through the gaps in the floorboards. Excellent song. Lipstick Vogue is also great, with that almost East Asian sounding intro before the frantic bass driven edgy verses. I love the atmospheric intro to Night Rally, echoing the unseen oppressive theme of the song, some superb playing and and the abrupt cut out is great.
I know Big Tears and Radio Radio are additions on the re-issue but they are also great tracks, love Mick Jones’s guitar on Big Tears and Radio Radio of course is another classic early Costello single. Love the version from Saturday Night Live
My Aim is True was and is a 5 and this is better, so it can only be a 5. Great album, no weak tracks and right at the peak of the Attractions and Costello’s fraught, tense, energetic yet melodic powers. Have always loved the cover too.
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Playlist Submission: Pump it Up
Beatles
5/5
Revolver
What can you say that hasn’t been said a hundred times before and a hundred times more artfully? It’s much a perfect Beatles album and therefore just a perfect album. I’ve heard it so many times but I can pretty much listen to it on repeat endlessly, like I have all day today.
Like all of their albums it's amazing how it can sound different every time you listen, and songs you'd previously only liked suddenly become your favourites. For a long time I wasn’t keen on Yellow Submarine, but hearing its genesis on the box set a couple of years back has changed my perspective. For some reason I didn’t appreciate She Said, She Said for a long while, but again, now it's one of my favourites on the album (and I didn’t realise until recently that Paul doesn’t play on it at all)
It’s kind of interesting that this is the start of the fracturing of the 4 headed monster, pre-empting what happened on the White Album, with each person’s song very much their own thing. You can feel George wanting to get his songs heard, Paul is at the start of his man about town supremely confident songwriting period, and while John is descending into LSD befuddlement, he still comes up for air occasionally to deliver some incredible songs that really make the album what it is. He only has 5 or 6 songs, but I’m Only Sleeping, She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows are absolute cornerstones of the album, and without them the whole atmosphere and quality of the record would be hugely diminished.
I’m also constantly amazed by their ability to synthesise sounds with the ideas and themes of the songs, without heavy-handedness or gaucheness or literalness, as on how the piano is slightly off-key on I Want to Tell You, signifying George’s uncertainty in the words, and the horn on For No One encompassing the wistfulness and realism of people drifting apart. Also George’s backing vocals on the chorus, singing Yellow Submarine on one note (in the right channel on the 220 stereo mix), giving a very welcome air of vague cynical detachment, as a counterpoint to the exuberance of the song. There are countless examples of this throughout the album, and it’s surely one of those things that consistently sets them apart from their peers.
I know this is also when George started to fall out of love with the guitar, but some of his parts on here are incredible, not necessarily just for technical complexity, but for feel and most importantly for unusualness, some of the stuff hes does on She Said She Said and Dr Robert are quite odd in a brilliant way. Paul’s bass playing on Rubber Soul is fantastic, but this is at another level. That little groove behind the ‘if you drive too far…’ lines, and the whole of I’m Only Sleeping is just unbelievably good, great in it’s own right but the bass floating around the upper register suits the songs superbly. And Ringo of course is as ever superb - Tomorrow Never Knows (and Rain as part of the sessions) are incredible bits of futuristic drumming, but he’s amazing throughout, I love the deceptively simple pattern on I’m Only Sleeping, the gentle rolls and jazzy feel on Here, There and Everywhere. The into roll and slightly disjointed pattern on She Said She Said is so good, both technically and as a service to the song. He also has that brilliantly tight Stax/Al Jackson pattern and sound on Dr Robert.
As with all their albums is also sequenced brilliantly, the groove of Taxman followed by the deeply resonant Eleanor Rigby, followed by the dreamlike and hazy I’m Only Sleeping, then followed by the Indian sounds of Love You To. That must have been mindblowing in 1966. And then you get possibly Paul’s finest ballad, tender, warm, touching before the schoolyard singalong of Yellow Submarine. Then an Indian/LSD influenced guitar pop banger to finish off the first side.
A sunny bit of barrelhouse rolling piano kicks off side 2 before that great riffing with And Your Bird Can Sing, followed by the amazing For No One, running Here There and Everywhere close, not quite a ballad, but a quite incredible bit of baroque pop with a superb lyric, before we get some more drone influenced guitar pop and then part 2 of if I Needed Someone, with its uncertain and hesitant lyric counterpointing brilliantly with the declarative and unequivocal effusiveness and exuberance of Got to Get You Into My Life, which in turn acts as a brilliant bit of melodic rnb/pop before the experimental and psychedelic masterpiece of Tomorrow Never Knows. This is possibly my favourite Beatles song and I would love to go back to 1966 and hear this album for the first time and then hear this song at the end, what must that have been like?
I oscillate between Revolver, Sgt Pepper the White Album and Abbey Road as my favourites, but this is probably the one I listen to most and if I had a type of pistol to my head this would be my one Beatles album.
Something the Beatles music does, and this album in particular does, is make me think everything’s going to be ok, that if something like this can exist then the world is a good place. That four people made this album and brought so much joy, happiness, curiosity and colour to the world and to my life it makes me feel so incredibly hopeful and touched.
I’ll stop now, as this is more a patchwork of different thoughts than a review. Obviously a 5.
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Playlist submission: Tomorrow Never Knows
Leonard Cohen
4/5
I’m Your Man
I’ve listened to this 4 times today and I can’t work out if I like it or not. Lyrically I know I like it, there are some superb lines, couplets or whole songs, like Everybody Knows (a song I was previously aware of from its use in Palm Springs) or First We Take Manhattan. And vocally he sounds great, that older more gravelly tone with a nice hint of creepy sleaziness is excellent. But musically I just don’t know what's going on. Kudos to him for trying something different to update his sound, but in the way that Graceland sounds of its time but timeless, this sounds of its time but very dated. On some listens the hyper 80s keyboards and stacked backing vocals sound great against his voice, a nice, pleasingly odd contrast. And then on the next listen the whole thing sounds cheesy as all balls.
I suppose it really comes down to whether the songs that work outweigh the ones that don’t. First We Take Manhattan, I think this is just about on the right side of the line. I like the Pet Shop Boys feel of it and keyboards, despite being a bit cliche, I like alot. The melody and vocal is great, very Nick Cave, but the backing vocals are pretty cheesy and rather obtrusive. I’m not entirely sure about Ain’t No Cure for Love. It has that egregious sax in the intro and a structure lifted almost completely from Every Breath You Take, but I do like the chorus and the lyric. Could go either way, this one.
Everybody Knows, I think is great though, excellent lyric and melody and nice pulsing rhythm and keyboard and string riff. The oud is great and the backing vocals work well with the song. I’m Your Man is pretty successful too, despite the keyboard solo.
Take this Waltz I don’t think is great. He does some waltz time stuff on his first album and its nice, but this doesn’t sound good. But its not as bad as Jazz Police, an almost Partridgean level exercise in terribleness, with its pitch shifted keyboards and awful backing vocals.
I like I Can’t Forget, the pedal steel giving it a nice touch of human warmth and country edge working well with the chorus and backing vocals. Tower of Song is great, the more restrained instrumentation and nicely arranged backing vocals give it an excellently off kilter atmosphere, again with a great vocal and lyric.
So overall it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. When it works well like on Everybody Knows and Tower of Song its excellent, but when it’s bad, as with Jazz Police, it’s pretty awful. But, despite that, I still found it fascinating and I certainly didn’t get bored of listening to it. Therefore it’s a bit tricky to rate, it’s inconsistency would make it a 3, but it is weirdly intriguing and I admire him jumping wholeheartedly into a new sound. And the lyrics and vocals are great, and there are a couple of very good songs. I’ll just tip it into a 4 on that basis.
🍌🍌🍌🍌
Playlist submission: Everybody Knows
4/5
Apple Venus Volume 1
I do quite like XTC, but am only really familiar with Drums and Wires because of Making Plans for Nigel, so this was a new one on me.
It’s a genuinely fascinating listen. And in fact I think it’s a bit of a gem, with some undoubted high points, and a very singular and engaging sensibility. You can hear echoes of people like Vaughan Williams and Elgar, and The Beatles and Brian Wilson in the orchestral arrangements and ambition. I really like the folklore-ish themes running through it, and it feels very connected to its Englishness, similar to Let England Shake, although obviously musically very different. I guess one sticking point might be the thin, nasally tone of the vocals on some tracks. It feels like sometimes a richer, fuller voice might work better with the themes and ideas here.
River of Orchids has a bit of that - I love the almost pizzicato strings and the horns, the melody is great and the overall feel is very English and idiosyncratic, however that nasal quality is a bit distracting in parts.
I’d Like That is a very nice bit of acoustic folkiness, building on the pastoral theme with an added touch of romantic excitement. Easter Theatre is excellent, a great example of combining a paganistic sense of Englishness with those orchestral arrangements. The horns are superb, very George Martin-eque
Knights in Shining Karma has some strong White Album vibes, particularly in the intro, evoking Dear Prudence and Julia with its folk guitar pattern, but I really like the atmosphere of gentle melancholy it conjures. Frivolous Tonight, although the upbeatness is welcome it does have a strong 80s TV sitcom theme feel to it, and it’s one of the weaker tracks for me.
Greenman, however, is my highlight, the eastern-esque strings with the folkish triplets and flute, and the lyric about one of the cornerstones of folklore is very evocative and overall it’s a superb song. Your Dictionary is a great bit of caustic bitterness tacked onto a spare and thoughtful arrangement of guitar, piano and strings, before blossoming into that fully fleshed out outro. It’s a nice contrast to some of the more outward looking and pastoral themes and lyrics elsewhere.
A lot of Sgt Pepper era vibes to Fruit Nut, and a great track, the upbeat nature working really well, in the way Frivolous Tonight’s doesn’t. I Can’t Own Her really does suffer from the nasal vocal thing, even if musically it’s good, with an interesting layering of instruments.
Harvest Festival perhaps falls a bit close to being something you’d have to sing at a primary school Harvest Festival, because your slightly hippy-ish teacher loves XTC and because it’s very literally about going to a school Harvest Festival. I’m not as keen on The Last Balloon’s melody, even if it does cast a suitably atmospheric climax to the album.
It’s a bit annoying having to listen on YouTube with adverts disrupting the flow, and if this was on streaming properly I’d put it into rotation as I thought it was a great album and a real grower. Musically and thematically ambitious with a strong sense of its own vision, but it does have a bit of unevenness in places, and the nasal vocals do just nag away - I can’t quite help but think the album is diminished somewhat by them. It’s close to a 5, but I’ll settle on a solid 4.
🍎🍎🍎🍎
Playlist submission: Green Man
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
Sound of Silver
I’m very familiar with this album, one of my favourites by one of my favourite ‘modern’ bands. I listened to it A LOT when it came out and I still return to it pretty regularly. I cannot believe it's actually 17 years old.
Its influences are worn very obviously on its sleeves, with James Murphy clearly magpie-ing from Bowie, Can, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, dance, disco, house, new wave, punk. And while those influences are easily identifiable, they are shepherded together to make something that, although not totally unique, is definitely a great synthesis of all of the above in its own nice
The triumvirate of North American Scum, Someone Great and All My Friends is superb, the cornerstone and heartbeat of the album, and encapsulates what I love about LCD Soundsystem. The new wave/punk edged North American Scum with its wryly amusing lyric, the hypnotic drive and build around the rhythmic and pounding keyboard and sincerity of the lyric of All My Friends. But best of all, Someone Great, which I absolutely love, with its pulsing keyboards and noises and its vaguely cryptic lyric about loss, emotionally resonant yet slightly out of touch.
Either side of that, I love the layering of Get Innocuous! and the insistency of the groove and drum pattern. I love the drum sound on Time to Get Away, and again the groove is great, with the little riff/break for the chorus and angular/new wave guitar.
Brilliant bass groove on Us V Them, I love the cowbell and the breakout into the ‘Block out the sun’ part. Watch the Tapes is yet another great, mesmeric groove with a great beat and another sardonic lyric - 2 new wave dance bangers.
I’ve always liked the lyric of Sound of Silver and the song is a great dazed and moodily atmospheric track built around those words and some excellent keyboard noises. New York I Love You is a great closing track after all the dance driven grooves, with it’s more conventional arrangement and almost doo-wop verses.
I love this album, from the sound of the drums and keyboards to the vocal style, the wry lyrics and the fantastic danceable grooves interspersed with genuinely emotionally impactful moments. It’s very easy for this type of album to fall into the trap of hipsterish imitation, but the fact that James Murphy is a bit older than his peers and his undoubted skill as a synthesist of his influences makes this a cut above, and one of my favourite albums of the last 20 years. Easy peasy 5.
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Playlist submission: Someone Great
Ps, the album after this, This Is Happening is also excellent, and if you like it it’s worth checking out their other 2 albums. The first one is a little rough around the edges but has some great tracks and American Dream, their last one, has a slightly older, more mature feel to it. The 45:33 mix is also good, some of the musical moments and parts in that got pulled into Sound of Silver.
Christine and the Queens
4/5
Chris
I’m aware of a few of Christine & The Queens songs, as he is a bit of a 6 Music darling and I love Girlfriend, but I’ve never ventured into one of his albums.
I really liked the French language version, I think the vocals sound better in his native tongue, but the mixed English/French version is, obviously, easier to understand and much more accessible.
Comme Si is kind of what I’d expected from being familiar with Girlfriend, a very 80s MJ influenced synth pop song, with the keyboard bass, disco-ish guitar and electronic drum kit sound. Great opener.
Girlfriend is still excellent, a brilliant bit of 80s revisionism, very catchy with a great hook and sound. I really like the verse melody on The Walker and its simple arrangement is very nice. Doesn’t Matter, while fine, doesn’t quite elevate itself from its 80s derivative-nes in the way the other songs do
5 Dollars is great though, the melody and the piano work really well together. Goya Soda is excellent as well, I love the ‘big’ synth riff and it has a great atmosphere and melody. Very nice track.
Damn (What Must a Woman Do) is another good track, the synth riff is hypnotic, although it's probably missing a catchier chorus. What’s Her Face feels like rather generic 2010s synth pop, too close to the likes of Lorde, pulling the album out of its largely successful 80s groove. Feel So Good is a return to form, a nice modernised 80s pop song.
Make Some Sense is excellent though, I can’t place what the synth line reminds me of, but it’s a big 80s song. Anyway it’s a great atmosphere with a nice floating and delicate vocal. The Stranger really grew on me, the halting synth pattern and very 80s percussion is great and another really good vocal
It’s kind of what I expected that Lorde album to be, but better and much more listenable - this is superior modern 80s influenced synth pop, with some great hooks and more substance than the obvious inspirations might indicate. Her take and observations on how he is perceived and how she sees her own gender is really interesting and makes for some great music. It’s right on the boundary of 3 and 4, but looking back at what I’ve written above there are more songs I liked than not, so I’ll go 4.
🤴🤴🤴🤴
Playlist submission: Girlfriend
Les Rythmes Digitales
4/5
Darkdancer
It’s been a long time since Les Rhythmes Digitales happened to drift across my transom. I remember liking the song Jacques Your Body back at Uni, as it was on that Citroen advert. I think I also had it on a free CD from Q or Select or something.
Aside from that song I don’t know a great deal about LRD, and didn’t realise until today that he’s not French and that his real name is Stuart Price.
And I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. It has some of that Chicago House influence as on Jacques Your Body, but also has lots of great 80s synth, funk and disco influences too. It may not have quite the naked pop ambition of say Fatboy Slim, or be as interesting or as consistent as the Chemical Brothers, but it probably sits at the Venn diagram of those two - a great, fun, danceable and catchy electronica record. It made me think of the Basement Jaxx record we had last month too, with some similar disco and funk touches, but this I think is much better - the grooves are catchier and the energetic and infectious charm keeps it driving it forward.
Dreamin’ kicks things off with a burst of squelchy synth and a soulful vocal/sample hinting at Chicago House but with added 80s-ness. I love that little riff on Music Makes You Lose Control, reminds me of Barbarism Begins at Home a bit, but it’s great, it’s circularity feeding the groove, bit of a banger
Soft Machine feels like a slight misstep, the vocal doesn’t quite suit it, but it does feel a bit like something from the Contino Sessions by Death in Vegas, which came out later the same year.
Hypnotise is a great return to form though - Dr Who by way of the Eurythmics with a great repetitive insistent groove, excellent track. I vaguely remember (Hey You) What’s that Sound?, taking Skee-lo’s interpolation of For What it’s Worth and turning it into a synth laden electro dance bop. Great track.
Take a Little Time is a banging early 80s throwback, feeling like something the Pointer Sisters or Chaka Khan might have done. ‘Wahahahahahahah’ - love that keyboard sound on From: Disco to: Disco, another hypnotic banger. Brothers goes back to the Chicago House/techno well, may not be as strong as some of the other tracks but the bass is great and it still gets your head nodding.
Jacques Your Body is still great, that slap/funk bassline is very catchy and very air ‘thumbable’. About Funk is interesting, the synth hook that appears halfway through takes it into a different world, more ethereal and spacey, making it more interesting than the first minute or so might indicate
Sometimes is unexpectedly great. He’s obviously a very skilled arranger writer to make very listenable tracks out of repeating motifs and phrases, but this shows a degree of songwriting craft and is an excellent track, with the perfect throwback vocalist. Damaged People, with the same vocalist as Soft Machine, is slightly better than that track, although still not quite sure it works that well.
Overall though, this feels like a bit of an energetic, infectious, overlooked gem from the late 90s - other bands ploughing a similar furrow might have been more successful, but this is a great listen. It also feels ahead of its time, pre-saging a lot of the mid to late 00s electroclash and house stuff like Simian Mobile Disco, Mylo, Justice and all those Kitsune Maison compilations, taking influences from the history of electronic and synth driven music and making a great dance album. Easily a 4.
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Playlist submission: Jacques Your Body
Steely Dan
5/5
Pretzel Logic
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number kicks things off with a classic SD pop song, the piano riff, the jazzy acoustic underneath, the rippling jazz inflected piano in the verses before ceding to a great soft rock chorus with interesting melodic lines - like a lot of their great songs it just feels right, meticulously constructed, crafted and considered. There are 70s cop show theme vibes to Night by Night with the chugging guitar, but it's better than that, again their sense of easy melody elevating it and the acerbic lyric taking it to a different space.
Any Major Dude Will Tell You is a lovely track, the unhurried melody and beautifully soft arrangement giving it charm and poignancy. A clear SD classic. Barrytown shares some similarities in the verses with Tell Me What You See, but its a great track, rolling along with the piano line with a great middle eight. Apparently it’s a backhanded compliment to Dylan, but I don’t quite get that.
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo feels like a vague misstep, as if they wanted to highlight their already clear jazz influence. It’s not necessarily terrible, but if it wasn’t on the album you wouldn’t miss it.
Jim Gordon’s drumming is excellent on Parker’s Band and that repeating hook is great, giving a sense of release, echoing the joy found in Charlie Parker’s music in the lyrics. I like the switch to a more orchestral arrangement on Through with Buzz, you can hear bits of Eleanor Rigby, but filtered through their hands it gives it its own unique feel, and at 90 seconds long it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Along with Rikki and Any Major Dude, Pretzel Logic is the other ‘big’ song on here. Again one of those songs where every decision feels right, from arrangement to instrumentation, feeling like a classic from the first time you hear it. The horns giving a bit of rhythmic propulsion are great.
Love the country-jazz guitar on With a Gun, and there are some great harmonics on the transitions between the verses and the refrain. That piano line in Charlie Freak moving around the vocal line is lovely, catching the ear, but not distracting from the song's structure. Monkey in your Soul is great in how it pulls the rug from under you, as from the opening notes you might feel like it would be a standard blues rock song, but its stabbing rhythm and electric piano gives it an unexpected quirkiness. Great track.
The 34 minutes breeze by and if you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be handing out 5 stars willy-nilly for Steely Dan albums and all the associated jazziness of them I would have looked ASKANCE, but here we are.
As much as I love Can’t Buy A Thrill, I think this is a step above, the arrangements tightened and the craftsthemship dialled up, and it sounds great, that 70s analogue warmth to the production. It can only be a 5.
🥨🥨🥨🥨🥨
Playlist submission: Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Emmylou Harris
5/5
Red Dirt Girl
I’m a sucker for late career albums like this, when commercial and career expectations are low and there’s a sense of nothing to prove. Having said that, there are some absolute stinkers in that field, but thankfully this is not a stinker at all, rather it hits all the right marks - tasteful, restrained, and with a melancholic sense of lives lived and experience gained - a combination that works for me.
And it particularly works when it's in the country/folk/rock genre like this, and it especially works with someone like Emmylou Harris with her fantastic, gentle, evocative voice and slightly spectral presence. The only danger with this could be whether the late 90s production and drum loops are too prominent and distracting, but for the most part that’s not an issue, aside from the odd guitar part here and there.
In fact the drum loops give it a nice shuffley and ethereal rhythmic sense, and I really like how they have woven in middle eastern textures, sounds and instruments with those drum loops and the country folk guitars to make a very immersive and atmospheric listen.
The Pearl is a lovely ruminative opener about hardship and endurance. The christian imagery may be a bit on the nose but it's a great track hinting at the themes and sounds of the album. Michelangelo’s country folkness and vivid imagery are great, but her voice really elevates it. I Don’t Want to Talk About it Now is excellent, notwithstanding the slightly egregious wah wah/guitar effects, a great groove, melody and atmosphere. Tragedy has a lovely melody and another great vocal, as well as a very delicate and sensitive piano part helping echo the feelings of lost love. More loss and sadness permeates Red Dirt Girl, one of the more obviously country tracks, but again it’s a great little track.
More religiousness on My Baby Needs a Shepherd, and I like the interpolation of Too ra loo, giving it a hymnal, lullaby quality and Ethan John’s baritone guitar is very tasteful too.
Further spectral and ethereal atmospherics on Bang the Drum Slowly. The echoing percussion could be cheesy, but it works with the floating piano and musical texture.
Some of it reminds me of The Rising, the Springsteen album, from a year or two after, which makes sense considering he appears on Tragedy and shares some of the middle eastern sounds.
I love that Kate McGarrigle makes an appearance on J’Ai Fait Tout, it definitely has a very folk inspired melodic sense. The skittering drums work well, again they could easily feel out of place and too dated, but they are sympathetically arranged, giving it a nice tumbling rhythmic pattern.
One Big Love is a great track, an excellent catchy melody and I love the organ in the intro. The lyric about letting go and taking chances is great, apart from the Monkey/Funky rhyme, which feels bad in a particularly middle aged way. Hour of Gold is excellent too, her gentle and evocative vocal is especially great with the longing and loss described in the words.
My Antonia I’m not totally sure about, it’s a decent song but I don’t think Dave Matthews voice really suits the folk-ishness of the song or complements her voice that well, and is probably the one time the production moves from tasteful into vaguely distracting blandness. Fortunately Boy From Tupelo follows, a great track with nicely atmospheric guitar and a little tack piano part, the rolling percussion illustrating the keep on moving theme of the words.
You could argue that there is a similarity to a lot of the tracks, perhaps feeling a little samey. I think that’s a fair argument, although its a sound and style I’m very on board with, and it also might be a consequence of it suffering from a bit of CD bloat. 55 mins is pretty long for 12 songs, a bit of judicious editing of song length to tighten it up would probably be beneficial.
But overall it is delicately haunting and atmospheric listen, with her clear, beautiful, gentle and expressive voice, and it is a great example of a mature, late career album, similar to some of Springsteen’s later albums or something like Oh Mercy, with it’s reverb heavy production and slowed down tempos.
Really not sure whether its 4 or 5 - I listened all day yesterday and this morning and didn’t really want to turn it off, and it will definitely go into rotation. As always I’ll go with the higher score - lifes too short to be parsimonious with an entirely arbitrary and subjective scoring system
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Playlist submission: One Big Love
David Gray
3/5
White Ladder
Say hello to Ireland’s best selling album of all time. Say hello to 2001, say hello to Bridget Jones’s Diary, say hello your mum’s CD collection, say hello to Sven Goran Eriksson, say hello to Foot and Mouth, say hello to a 2nd term for Tony, say hello to the coughing major, say hello Al Qaeda, say hello to Popstars, say hello to Phil’s shooter, say hello to David Brent, wave goodbye to Richard Madely and Judy Finnegan, wave goodbye to The Premiership at 7pm, wave goodbye to any credibility if you liked this album, wave goodbye to its time to share or to shaft, wave goodbye to Live and Kicking, wave goodbye to Harry Secombe…wave goodbye to George 🥺
I don’t think this really deserves the amount of opprobrium it gets. It's by no means a great album of course, but it’s a perfectly serviceable folkish pop album with some very early 2000s electronic touches. I remember having it on CD and quite liking it at the time, but the problem is its ubiquity, and it's frankly insane commercial success. And of course there’s nothing like the massive popularity of something so middle of the road to rile up the snob in a 22 year old me.
And looking back at it now, while he is certainly at a superior level, it’s clear that this album opened the door for the James Blunts, Ed Sheerans and Lewis Capaldis of the world. It’s not David Gray’s fault he birthed them of course, but that soggy legacy of sad boy self-absorbed performative sensitivity does remain and does hover over the album today.
At the core of it though, while there are good songs on here, there’s no doubt that in many places it feels rather insipid, partly to do with the production, you can definitely tell that he made it in his flat. While not sounding totally terrible it does have some not particularly charming wonkiness in places and has quite a thin sound, contributing to that rather insipid lack of oomph.
Also songs often have the habit of feeling like they are building up to something, before flatlining somewhat. Babylon is a good example, it's a good song, with a nice hook and nice melody, but it really feels like it needs a climax or crescendo, some sense of resolution or release, but instead it just stays on one level.
Lyrically he’s capable of some nice lines and sentiments, Babylon does have some good imagery, but he’s also guilty of rather prosaic and generic turns of phrase, often in the same song - ‘sail away with me, what will be, will be’ etc. It’s probably telling that the best lyric on the album is the cover of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.
The strongest songs are the bigger singles - Please Forgive Me, This Year’s Love and Babylon are all perfectly well constructed catchy bits of middle of the road folk-ish pop music. My Oh My, White Ladder and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye are decent too, and despite the lack of dynamism I wouldn’t say any of the songs are terrible - the whole thing is just a fine, if slightly snoozy listen. Taking that into account a 3 feels fair.
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Playlist submission: Babylon
Simple Minds
4/5
New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
It’s one of the obvious things that you don’t think much about, but doing this list you realise that pretty much every British band is influenced either by The Beatles or Bowie, or both. The 80s synth/new wave albums we’ve had in particular have been clearly Bowie influenced, and this is the same.
It grew on me a lot over repeated listens. Initially I was struck by the overall hazy and dreamy atmosphere of songscapes, rather than the catchy tunes their pop rock pomp later in the decade. Along with Bowie there seems to be quite a bit of Cure and ABC - a not uniteresting mix.
As I listened more, more melodies and moments emerged and I realised what superb bass playing there is on here, and how many of the songs are both melodically and rhythmically driven by the bass, with guitar and keyboard providing texture and embellishment.
Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) sets the tone with its insistent groove and atmosphere, the guitar riff sounding a lot like Echo and the Bunnymen. Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel is great, excellent bass with a nagging groove and a nice chorus. A real grower.
Promised You a Miracle I know as the single, and it’s definitely the most immediately catchy, although it does sound very ABC. Some great synthesiser parts though. Big Sleep, again some great bass and another grower with its slightly edgy but delicate atmosphere. More atmosphere on Somebody Up There Likes You, this time more hypnotic and mesmeric. I like this one.
New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) is probably the 2nd most immediately catchy track. Up to now it doesn’t seem obvious that this is the same band as Don’t You Forget About Me and Alive and Kicking, but you can hear the genes of those songs in this, a sense that a massive stadium song is about to burst into life, but is being held back, a great bit of tension making a great track.
Glittering Prize is very reminiscent of The Cure, and it sounds slightly odd after New Gold Dream, flatter and less atmospheric, poppier but not as catchy, despite some great bass. Alex James must have heard the bass in the intro to Hunter and the Hunted, a definite Boys and Girls-ness to it. It’s another atmospheric and moody track. Big big Bowie vibes to King is White and in the Crowd, the bass as always is great, and yet more spectral atmospherics.
After the first couple of listens I liked this, but found it hard to pick individual tracks, and I felt I couldn’t remember it, but then it started to get its hooks into me, and I found it’s slightly nervy dream-like quality quite seductive, finding new little interesting parts and moments in it with further listens. I don’t think I would have listened to this without doing the list, but I’m very glad it came up. Not quite sure it’s a 5 (yet), so I’ll go for a solid and intriguing 4.
🧠🧠🧠🧠
Playlist submission: New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
Kiwanuka
I’m pretty familiar with this, although I think I listened to the previous album a bit more.
I'm very into the style and sound on this, the Bondian/John Barry guitar breaks , the cinematic 60s style backing vocals and the indie, pop, soul, rock and jazz influences. I also really like the lyrical themes and ideas, identity, self doubt, self confidence, history and the future all weaved together to make a fascinating and engaging whole.
It really is excellent up to Hard to Say Goodbye. You Ain’t The Problem, Rolling and I’ve Been Dazed is a superb opening run, highlighting all the great parts of the album, those backing vocals, some great guitar and fantastic songcraft. Piano Joint, Living in Denial and Hero are also excellent.
It does dip a bit for me after Final Days, the last 10 or 15 minutes do drag a little, particularly in comparison to the previous tracks - Final Days definitely sounds like it should be the last song.
Despite it being a very good album, I think it's that drag and, and also that I get a slight nagging sense of Radio-2-ness that stops it being a 5.
🦸♂️🦸♂️🦸♂️🦸♂️
Playlist submission: Rolling
Eels
4/5
Beautiful Freak
More Proustian nostalgia with this, taking me right back to the 2nd year of A-Levels. This along with Blur by Blur puts me right back in my bedroom in the middle of A-Level mocks, listening to Radio 1 as well, and taking my driving test, and then on to Uni. Also think Mackie was a big fan.
Anyway, interesting to revisit it as I have really listened to it since that time, although I remember liking the album after this, particularly Mr E’s Beautiful Blues.
Novocaine for the Soul really does stand out, as it did back in 1997, the plinky piano and strings in the intro set a suitably spooky, eccentric tone ahead of the marriage of a catchy pop melody with a despairing lyric. Still a great track. Susan’s House is similar, a pretty, delicate melody and piano motif in the chorus with the offbeat and slightly sad spoken word verses. Like Novocaine this still sounds
great. As Does Your Lucky Day in Hell, another track that still sounds great, an excellent atmosphere and another catchy hook.
In fact I’d forgotten how many great little hooks and melodies there are on here, there’s a lot of pop classicism behind the quirky arrangements, subject matter and approach, which probably makes it endure better than some other albums in the same vein and sets it apart from a lot of other angsty american alt rock.
Beautiful Freak, My Beloved Monster, Guest List, Mental are all examples of this, some great melodies and musical hooks and textures, the bass, organ and guitar on Guest List in particular are really good.
Maybe it’s nostalgia, but this is a lot more enjoyable than I thought it might be, there’s a lot more of interest than I remember, and the combination of quirky post grunge angst with some charming melodies and offbeat instrumentation elevates it above a being a late 90s curio and shades it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: Guest List
AC/DC
5/5
Back in Black
Hard for this to be anything other than a 5. It has no pretension, no swords or dwarves, no parental angst and it is entirely successful in executing exactly what it set out to do - riffs, grooves, booze and sex.
But don’t mistake simplicity for basicness - underneath that apparent simplicity they have a very smart and canny understanding of what works and what doesn't, and they also have their secret weapon; in Malcolm, Cliff and Phil they have a great rhythm section, not particularly ostentatious and obviously capably steady, but they have the ability to give the songs groove and an element of slipperiness that belies the plodding headbanging reputation. And Angus understands exactly what he should do, never overlong or self indulgent, punctuating things with excellent white man overbite air guitar style riffs and runs.
The big and famous songs are thrillingly fun of course, Hells Bells, Shoot to Thrill and the timeless and excellent Back in Black and You Shook Me All Night Long, and while the other songs don’t quite hit those peaks they are still brilliant bits of good time party rock’n’roll, What Do You Do For Money and Have a Drink on Me in particular are great.
Overall it’s an irresistibly fun 40 minutes of head nodding, toe tapping good time rock music, and in that category they are unmatched. Easy 5.
🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔
Playlist submission: You Shook Me All Night Long
OutKast
5/5
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
I had this when it came out, there was a lot of critical acclaim for it, but I struggled to really get into it, aside from the big singles like I Like the Way You Move, Hey Ya! And Roses. I think that’s because It felt very dense with too much going on, particularly The Love Below.
Listening now though I can really appreciate it - it still is very dense and there still is a lot going on, but I can see now it's that over the topness that makes it great. I love the feeling that on Andre 3000s disc, he’s just splurged out everything, thrown all his influences and ideas at it, and while it may not always work, the ambition and willingness to go all out is very compelling.
That’s no to diminish Speakerboxx though. On the surface it may be more conventional and less schizophrenic than The Love Below, but it’s an excellently constructed, subtly subversive and brilliant sounding record. Lots of recognisable hip hop elements; breakbeats, soul and jazz etc, but imaginatively and kaleidoscopically cut up and put back together to make it a great, energetic fun listen.
There are gems of songs and moments scattered throughout, with some great, interesting instrumentation on The Love Below in Particular, the synth line on GhettoMusick, the New Orleans horns and guitar on Bowtie, the cartoonish The Rooster, the vaguely ominous Bust, War, Tomb of the Boom, the organic feel of Knowing, Killer Mike’s cameo on Flip Flop Rock with its skittery percussion, Reste, Last Call, the jazzy Love Hater, Happy Valentine’s Day, the slow jam-ish Prototype She Lives in My Lap, Hey Ya, Roses, the early 80s sparseness of Pink & Blue, the fuzzing synth on Dracula’s Wedding, the country blues-ish of Take Off Your Coat. Great stuff.
135 mins is long, but Speakerboxxx is actually ‘only’ 55 mins or so and doesn’t feel that lengthy, whereas Andre’s is nearly 80 mins, which is essentially a double album itself. And while The Love Below can feel long, it doesn’t feel self indulgent, more like there’s a sense of urgency and an explosion of ideas. And while they aren’t always successful there’s always the feeling that something interesting or a great idea is just around the corner. And that sense I think is what stops the length becoming too much of an issue.
Purely musically Speakerboxxx on it’s own is probably a 5 and The Love Below is closer to 4, but the widescreen, open armed, ambition and Beatles-eque sense of imagination and self expression and why not-ness is exciting and intoxicating for me, just about making it a 5 overall.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
Playlist submission: GhettoMusick
Jeff Beck
2/5
Truth
Had no idea what to expect from this, and had no idea Rod was the vocalist when his voice kicked in on Shapes of Things. Rod’s voice is great on that track, not just the rasp but the tenderness and delicateness he peppers in, particularly in the falsetto parts.
The guitar tone is pretty interesting on it too, it sounds much more 70s/80s than late 60s. I can see why a lot of the 80s rock and metal bands idolise Beck, based on this track alone.
Let Me Love You is not great in comparison to Shapes of Things, a plodding, pedestrian, uninspired and rather woeful slice of late 60s blues rock. Morning Dew is more interesting, it’s folk origin giving it a different slant, and with the wah wah, droning Indian influences and that nice galloping bassline it adds up to a little bit of a gem, pointing to where Rod and Ronnie would head with the Faces and Rod’s early country and folk flecked solo albums.
Why did every blues band in the UK in the 60s and 70s cover You Shook Me? I know it’s cast in iron as a cornerstone of the blues, but I’ve never quite understood why everyone just kept doing it, despite everyone else doing it. This is a particularly bad version, Beck's guitar is egregiously showy and the whole thing just feels like a pointless addition to the wheelie bin full of covers of this song.
Ol’ Man River is a bit of a curio, the orchestral timpani and kettle drum al teals give it a different flavour, and I get that they were going for a big echoey feel, but it feels a bit half baked (if you can bake an echo?). Nice vocal though, the style of this does suit Rod well.
Greensleeves is actually very pleasant, but you can understand why Beck was such a big influence for the character of Nigel Tufnell just from this. Rock my Plimsoul returns to the staid and lumpen blues rock well, and pulls up another bucket of plod.
Beck’s Bolero at least tries for something different with it’s rhythmic foundation, but is largely unexciting. While he is obviously a very good guitarist, and despite the technical proficiency I find his playing particularly unmoving, lacking a visceral sense of excitement I get from other guitarists in this period.
Blues Deluxe disappears into the morass of blues rock, despite listening to it 3 times today I don’t think I’d recognise it if I heard it on the radio again. Finally a more dynamic and enjoyable heavy blues track shakes off the treacle and emerges in, I Ain’t Superstitious. Nice rhythmic propulsion, good licks and a nice vocal make this one good.
Shapes of Things and Morning Dew gave me hope this might be a charming if uneven ragtag bag of late 60s blue rock, but unfortunately the moments that do work, like the above, are undermined somewhat by most of the remaining songs, rather dull exercises in showcasing Beck’s cold virtuosity and him and Rod’s ability to cover/nick/rip off blues classics. Not even Rod’s voice, which is approaching his peak, can make up for the lead booted nature of most of the songs. I guess it was influential on the nascent Cream and Led Zep (I know Page et al feature on here), but they produced more interesting versions of this type of thing.
Kind of stuck between 2 and 3 with this, it has its moments, Rod’s voice is strong throughout, but I’m unlikely to really come back to it. Hmm, I’ll go against type and settle on the lower score.
🎸🎸
Playlist submission: Morning Dew
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
Heaux Tales
I quite enjoyed the songs on this, for the most part they are pretty good examples of modern RnB, with some lovely stacked backing vocals and harmonies, like on Put it Down as well as some really nice instrumental/production touches and flourishes, like the guitar on Lost One, and the throbbing synth bass on Pick Up Your Feelings, a great track. I do also ike Anderson .Paak and H.E.R. so I enjoyed those appearances. Some tracks though feel a little harmonically flat, like On It, which never really gets past that generic r&b feel.
I found the spoken word ‘tales’ quite interesting too. It would be easy to say it’s not made with me in mind, and clearly the world they are describing is so far from my lived experience, but I actually found it quite thought-provoking to be exposed to these ideas of womanhood/feminism/feminity/sex etc. Despite the upfrontness it didn’t seem particularly celebratory or particularly damning, or didn’t seem to shy away from the ups and downs in the attitudes to sex and relationships. Even if it is very sex focused and I initially thought it was rather reductive it did make me think about my reactions to it, which I liked.
Musically it’s decent if rather slight, and thematically it’s pretty interesting, and overall I’m glad to have listened to it. Whether I’d listen again I’m not sure, but I’d definitely playlist Pick Up Your Feelings and Lost One. Due to it being slightly atypical for this list and for making me think more about my feelings towards it, I’ll go 3
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Playlist submission: Pick up Your Feelings
Fishbone
2/5
Truth and Soul
Never heard of Fishbone before and on the basis of this I am unlikely to want to hear of them again.
It’s not entirely terrible, although it definitely has more than enough very low points, like the cover of Freddie’s Dead, the irritating Ma and Pa and the dreadfully unsexy Bonin’ in the Backyard, but it doesn’t really have much to raise it above a middling sense of pointlessness. Pouring Rain is a fine enough lower tempo song, Slow Bus Movin’ is relatively interesting and atmospheric, and Ghetto Soundwave’s use of the Low Rider horn riff isn’t awful, even if the song itself is pretty Level-42.
Skilled musicians making a funked up hybrid of Hair Metal, RHCP and Ska isn’t, I’ve found out, a sound I’m particularly fond of, and the whole thing has a pervasive sense of forced exuberance that makes me feel a little sad. I’m not going to go 1, as that feels too harsh on something that clearly isn’t actually objectionable, so a 2 it is. It exists, I listened to it, and I don’t have to again
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Playlist submission: Slow Bus Movin’
Taylor Swift
5/5
1989
After enjoying Evermore I wanted to check out a few more of her albums but knew some were on here, so was waiting for them to come up. I’m glad this one did.
Welcome to New York is a top drawer opener, that little synth motif is excellent and the whole thing’s atmospheric stompy catchiness is fantastic. Banger. Blank Space has that undeniable Max Martin feel to it, but is an above average electro-pop song.
Style is what I call a Banger-Grower, a Grower-Banger, a Grow-Bang, a Granger, Bower. Anyway, a brilliant bit of modern synthpop. Out of the Woods is also superb, that spacey echoey feel, with a killer chorus and some nicely pitched woahs. All You Had To Do Was Stay has a hint of Call Me Maybe, and while not at the level of some of the other songs on here, it’s still a decent track.
Shake it Off, rightly a modern pop classic, taking the Hey Mickey drums and bolting on an unstoppable chorus and a great horn part. Superb bit of pop music. Same goes for Bad Blood, an undeniably good track.
I Wish You Would is also a bit of a low key banger, another great catchy, hooky track. It’s all good. Nice change of pace on Wildest Dreams, you can imagine this being a rather turgid piano ballad in other hands, but its catchiness and atmospheric production elevates it.
How You Get The Girl feels like a mid 200os throwback, maybe not the strongest track, but a fun bit of catchy throwaway pop. This Love is a very nice ballad, you can kind of tell it predates the Max Martin production, and although it’s nice to break up the synth pop it feels vaguely out of place. Another bulletproof chorus on I Know Places, and the synth bass and guitar on the second verse is excellent. Christ she can write some catchy hooks. Love love the dreamy atmosphere on Clean with its soulful feel and typically idiosyncratic Imogen Heap production and sound. Great great track
It's very hard not to enjoy this, it's a brilliantly well written, well made, well constructed and well thought out electronic pop album, designed to be expansive, fun and catchy, but with the added bonus of her own songwriting nouse and her skill as a lyricist, giving it an sense of substance and autheticity. I presume that songwriting skill and her background in country makes her version of 80s influenced synth pop much better, more interesting and much more durable than a lot of her contemporaries, that skill helping to give the songs a different edge and grounding.
Reading back I’ve used banger a lot, there are at least 5 top drawer tracks, Welcome to New York, Style, Out of the Woods, Shake it Off, Bad Blood and Clean, and the rest are all well above average bits of pop music. For what it is, what it tries to do and for how much I enjoyed it I’ll ride high on the giddiness and give it the full 5.
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Playlist submission: Welcome to New York
The Doors
4/5
L.A. Woman
I’ve never really given the Doors albums a proper listen. Not sure why as I really like them. I probably have listened to this one more than any of their others though, but I’m not really that familiar with it.
Bold strategy to open with Bag it Up by Geri Halliwell. But each to their own. In reality it's a great little blues rock groove, with those great keyboard touches and augmentations you’d expect from Manzarek. Love Her Madly is obviously a classic bit of 60s pop, but the evenness of the album does reveal itself with Been Down So Long, one of a few vaguely aimless blues-jazz jams with some shouty Morrison on top. Cars Hiss by My Window is brighter, but still feels a little rudderless, although some of the guitar is soulfully sweet.
L.A. Woman though is superb, probably my favourite Doors song, the rhythm, the organ, the groove, the hot late night seediness. Fantastic track.
His voice on L’America is great and it’s angularity before dipping into some classic West Coast sunshine melody before heading back into a sinister mood is pleasingly off beat and odd in a great way. Hyacinth House really is very lovely. If you are a Doors fan I presume this is pretty well known, but for me it's a bit of an overlooked gem, a great atmosphere and some excellent drumming.
I wasn’t keen on Crawling King Snake on the first listen, but I really liked it on the 2nd and 3rd listen - the presence of a real bassist is great, and it’s menacing groove is superbly played. A cut above the other bluesy stuff on here. Similarly I liked The WASP more on repeated listens, even if the musical/organ breakdowns feel a bit cheesy and overall it’s not one of the stronger tracks. And then of course the excellent and trippy Riders on the Storm, a great bit of 60s bluesy psychedelia. Krieger really shines with his reverby licks.
Despite some unevenness, the highs of The Changeling, Love Her Madly, LA Woman, Hyacinth House and Riders on the Storm, and their skill as musicians make it a cut above, and lands it as an easy 4.
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Playlist submission: L.A. Woman
Eagles
4/5
Eagles
Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona / Such a fine sight to see / It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowin' down to take a look at me.
Easily one of the most evocative lyrics in all American rock music, such simple but brilliant imagery - I’m right there on that dusty American street corner.
I’m a big fan of The Eagles, although I’ve always tended to prefer the cowboy cosplay of Desperado over this of their early albums. And there's probably a reason their Greatest Hits records have sold in such gargantuan numbers compared to most of their albums, as outside of Hotel California they never quite nailed it I don’t think.
I think this one suffers a little from front loading the album with the two best songs, and it feels like it never quite recaptures the momentum after the superlative Take it Easy and the chugging atmospheric brilliance of Witchy Woman.
The difference between those two and Chug All Night is stark, it’s prosaic country rock lacks any of the things that make them great, and it all just feels banal and insipid. Most of Us Are Sad is ok, but seems like a forerunner of songs like this they would do later that are actually really good. Some lovely harmonies and backing vocals though. Nightingale is good though, perhaps a bit throwaway but a very pleasant bit of laid back West Coast country rock.
You can hear Gene Clark in Train Leaves Here This Morning, I don’t think there’s anyone that can write non mainstream delicately bruised and melancholy country ballads they way he can. Really lovely track. Take the Devil is similar to Most of Us Are Sad, in that it has the building blocks of some of their great songs, but it hasn’t been pieced together the way some of their later songs would be. Earlybird is again similar, I like a lot of the elements, the banjo, the backing vocals and harmonies, but it doesn’t seem to come together as a whole.
Peaceful Easy Feeling though is of course another of their Greatest Hits and an excellent song, the laid back rhythm, the slide, the acoustic, the harmonies all serving the feel and idea of the song. Tryin’ is the kind of straight ahead rocker that they don’t always do that well, but its decent, if a little unconvincing.
It’s definitely uneven, a bit like LA Woman, buts it’s never a tough listen, and although its probably a 3, the presence of Take It Easy, Witchy Woman, Train Leaves Here This Morning and Peaceful Easy Feeling just tip it over to 4.
🦅🦅🦅🦅
Playlist submission: Take It Easy
Queen
2/5
Sheer Heart Attack
I’ve always struggled with Queen, I periodically try but they just never click for me. I don’t mind them in small doses, and I like many of their big songs, myself drifting off when listening to them for any period of time, a bit like when you read a book that's hard going and realise you can’t recall the last 3 pages you’ve read.
Maybe it’s the vaudevillian musical theatre aspect that I don’t like, but then there are other bands doing similar stuff that I do like, and generally I do appreciate a bit of kitchen sink over the topness. I think part of it is that I’m not that keen on Freddie’s voice, even though I know it’s technically very good, and that I find it hard to connect with their melodic style, but overall I get a sense of prissiness and fussiness from their music, particularly May’s guitar. Again I know it’s technically great but I really struggle to connect with it.
Because of all that I didn’t find much of this particularly memorable or engaging. Killer Queen is obviously a very good song, and I quite liked Flick of the Wrist, Misfire and She Makes Me. Stone Cold Crazy and Bring back that Leroy Brown are not very good though.
I can appreciate though that this must have sounded pretty different and exciting when it came out, but I think it and Queen are just not for me. Boring is perhaps too strong a word, I think it’s more that it’s just uninspiring and unengaging. 2 may be to harsh, but I can’t really imagine listening again.
👸👸
Playlist submission: Killer Queen
Ozomatli
3/5
Street Signs
I think I’ve heard of Ozomatli, but only because they did some stuff with Cut Chemist, but had no real idea of what kind of music they make.
Obviously it's a YT listen, which makes it a bit of an annoying experience with ads after every song, and not all the songs are available, so it’s kind of a difficult one to rate. However I did enjoy the general vibe, and mix of Hip Hop, Rock, Salsa, Middle Eastern strings etc. Generally I’m not a fan of Salsa but I like it on here - I think the fact that they stuffed so much from many genres into every song in a clearly joyful way it all kind of works.
I’m a bit of a sucker for Middle Eastern strings, so I really enjoyed Believe, It sounds quite 90s rather then mid 200s in its production but it's a fun opener. Who’s To Blame is excellent, love 2na’s appearance and the middle eastern riff on what sounds like a melodica, with the more Indian sounding percussion. Bit of a gem.
Saturday Night is good too, the dip dive bit and the trumpet punctuating the rhythm. Ya Viene el Sol is nice too. Props to Beatle Bob.
Hard to give it a rating when you can’t really listen properly or fully. What I did hear I liked a lot, an energetic fusion album filled with loads of great bits and influences. I’d definitely listen again, but it’s such a shame it’s not on streaming. I’ll go a high 3.
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Playlist submission: Who’s to Blame
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
5/5
The ‘Chirping’ Crickets
One of those albums where you feel you need to balance the historical importance with the actual music. The historical impact is of course massive, without Buddy Holly you could argue that the Beatles and Stones wouldn’t have been the bands we know, or the idea of the band as a self contained writing and performing entity might not have occurred until much later.
Musically though this is good. Obviously it does sound very 50s, but there is a lot more to it than that, elements and ideas that feel pretty modern, and not just because you know they influenced the big 60s bands. Along with in the Wee Small Hours album this is probably the best pre-60s album we’ve had, and although it’s still not quite an album in the way we understand it, it feels like a coherent collection of songs in a way that many others don’t.
Oh, Boy! and Not Fade Away are a great opening pair, and the quality remains through the rest of the first side, some great drumming on You’ve Got Love, excellent slapback echo on It’s Too Late and the guitar is great on Tell Me How.
That’ll Be the Day is of course excellent, a great melody and the rhythm of the words in the chorus with the drums is excellent, and the slowed down drum punctuated ‘when you make me cry’ at the back end is superb. Again the quality remains to the end, An Empty Cup has a great melody, Last Night has an excellent vocal and Rock Me Baby has a great Ray Charles-esque groove and sounds like a lost 50s gem.
So balancing the influence and the quality of the songs, I think it’s hard to not give this 5. It’s 28 minutes of, for the time, cutting edge, template setting rock n roll music, that’s still a great listen and with echoes you can hear through popular music history.
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Playlist submission: That’ll Be the Day
White Denim
5/5
D
I love this album, a bit of a step change from their previous albums, which have a lot of the same elements, but push the looser experimental jazz psychedelia jams, rather than the more crafted songs on here.
I love how they manage to balance that looseness with the rock, jazz, soul, prog, country, americana, garage and psychedelic influences with the idea of that craft, keeping a sense of fun and on the edge of breaking downness with some pretty tight structures. It’s their first album with two guitarists, which you can hear in the trading of licks and riffs, but it never feels self indulgent or showy, and it’s all anchored by the great, muscular and tight rhythm section.
It’s Him! and Burnished are a great opening pair, kind of setting the template, great drums, dual guitars and warm, seemingly laid back melodies. Love At The Farms crescendoing guitar workout. Street Joy is a nice slower tempo track after the rhythmically driven first 3 songs and is a welcome little breather before the duelling guitars return on Anvil Everything. Love the flute on River to Consider, has a real Magical Mystery Tour psychedelia to it. Drug is superb, along with Bess Street probably the catchiest tune. Love the guitar tone and the driving drums and bass on both. The acoustic rhythm on Bess Street is great, kind of US indie-folk, but with a 70s bluesy rock edge. Love the vocal stretch out on Is and Is and Is and love the baroque string arrangement with the country clip clop of Keys, with a really very sweet vocal melody, and a nicely subdued way to end the album.
It always feels to me, if I had any musical ability at all, that they would be a fun band to play in, although I understand James Petralli, who is essentially the band, isn’t that easy to work with, which you can gauge by the fact the lineup changes pretty frequently. The next album is the last one with this drummer, and it’s only the bass player who has stayed alongside Petralli throughout.
Obviously a 5, great album, great band.
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
Playlist submission: Drug
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Bayou Country
Love me a bit of Creedence, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
Born on the Bayou is superb, a swampy, swirling groove, relatively straightforward but part rock n roll, part country, part southern soul, all with JFs distinctive voice, and lyrics that mention trains and chooglin - all a distillation of what makes CCR great. Bootleg has that great acoustic rhythm guitar with the propulsive drums, working with the chugging electric guitar, again relatively straightforward but a great groove. Graveyard Train doesn’t start too promisingly, a rather generic late 60s blues rock riff, but it settles into the pocket and stretches the groove out. At 8 minutes perhaps a bit long, but still an enjoyable hypnotic jam.
Not as keen on Good Golly Miss Molly, although it's a decent enough version and is pretty brief. Penthouse Pauper pulls the same trick as Graveyard Train, the late 60s blues rock mutating into something more fluid and atmospheric. Proud Mary is of course an absolute classic, more trains and itinerant characters, but a great catchy hook. Keep on Chooglin is a superior type of Graveyard Train, great riff and rhythm, hypnotic in its swampy bluesiness and a great closer.
An extremely listenable bluesy swampy rock album, by a great band. It maybe a little uneven in places and with only 7 songs they all really need to be great to be a 5, so I’ll settle on a straightforward high 4.
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Playlist submission: Proud Mary
Antony and the Johnsons
3/5
I Am A Bird Now
I think he is a bird now?
I remember all the hype around this when it won the Mercury Prize, and I remember buying it but never really getting into it apart from liking For Today I Am A Boy.
Interesting listening again, there are some lovely passages, some moments when the piano, melody and vibrato all come together to create something pretty magical, but it too often seems to pass me by, and I find myself struggling to stay engaged.
However it, or at least parts of it, did grow with repeat listens, particularly in the second half. Hope There’s Someone’s crescendoing intimacy is rather lovely, the strings and flute on My Lady’s Story are great. For Today I Am a Boy I still really like, You Are My Sister’s insistent, winning rhythmic momentum revealed itself and I didn’t for one actually mind Rufus Wainwright on What Can I Do. Fistful of Love’s guitar horns and guitar (and Lou Reed) provide a very welcome contrast to the piano and strings elsewhere and is a great track.
Despite finding much more in its little corners and moments than I have done previously I’m still not entirely sure about it. While I really like his emotional openness and perspective on his identity, his aspirations and that he has crafted a singular, unique album, I still find myself zoning out, struggling to really connect musically with some of it, it feeling longer than it’s relatively brief 35 minutes. Maybe I need more time with it, but for today a high 3 feels fair, with room to come back and try again.
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Playlist submission: Fistful of Love
The White Stripes
4/5
Get Behind Me Satan
I listened to White Blood Cells and Elephant a shit ton, and although I still bought this and Icky Thump, my interest had dwindled by then and I didn’t ever really get into either of those albums, aside from Blue Orchid and My Doorbell on here.
Love the riff on Blue Orchid though, very White Stripes but it also sounds a little different from Elephant, a little more shiny and robotic perhaps, in the way Elephant sounded a little different and more polished after White Blood Cells (which sounded different from De Stijl etc etc). My Doorbell is great of course as well, I love the melody matching the piano.
I guess I wasn’t that into the album back in 2005 due to not really liking stuff like The Nurse, but I quite like its non-typical WS calypso marimba riff and slightly idiosyncratic and creepy feel. In fact that behind closed doors old-timey spookiness permeates the whole album, maybe it’s the focus on piano throughout, with the contrasting tropical sounding marimba accenting the ominous feel in an off kilter way, that gives it a nicely unusual feel.
In fact I like a lot of the songs on here, particularly the first half, from Blue Orchid to White Moon. Forever for Her is superb, a lovely ballad with a very delicate melody, nicely picked out by the marimba and augmented by Meg’s cymbal thrash. And White Moon is also excellent, the mournful piano really does have some spooky moonlight atmospherics.
There are perhaps a couple of tracks in the second half that don’t work as well for me, Instinct Blues and Red Rain are a little too close to a bit of aimless thrash and a kind of unnecessary throwback to their first album or two, although the slide is pretty nice on Red Rain. It really picks up though with the vaguely familiar but great As Ugly As I Seem and the fantastic piano led country-blues of I’m Lonely.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this and appreciated it far more than I did 20 years ago, it’s a nice little side step from WBC and Elephant, exploring different sounds and structures while expanding on the country and country blues elements they’ve always had and adding a bit more Appalachian spookiness. Perhaps a bit uneven and a track or two too long, but it’s a simple and enjoyable 4 from me.
😈😈😈😈
Playlist submission: Forever for Her
Dolly Parton
5/5
Coat of Many Colours
27 minutes of sweetly voiced country pop excellence. Although she doesn’t stray too far from traditional country structures on all 10 songs she has a brilliant way of subtly playing with the form, bringing in elements from other genres to gently add some colour and variation here and there - it really showcases all of Dolly’s skills as a songwriter, arranger and singer.
Coat of Many Colours exemplifies that, a sweet sweet melody and a genuinely moving lyric, a story told with warm hearted succinctness and directness. Travelling Man is a great uptempo country rocker, with that slightly bluesy opening riff and tom tom pattern giving it an unexpected little frisson of spikiness. Great harmonies and lap steel on My Blue Tears, all done and dusted in 2 minutes. If I Lose My Mind is pretty conventional, but the sad sweetness of the words is complemented by the weeping lap steel. The Mystery of the Mystery starts off conventionally too, but the organ that picks up the middle verses is great, giving a swimmy uncertainty that matches the questioning lyric.
I love the proper country structure, title and lyric of She Never Met a Man, the chorus melody doing that country thing of resolving just ‘so’. That bass on Early Morning Breeze is fantastic, again kind of playing with the genre a little by being in the foreground and carrying the song musically. Again a lovely lyric and melody too. That break and ‘bluuueee’ in The Way I See you is special, and the few bars of piano before the final verse and the outro is so tastefully appropriate. The gospel backing vocals on Here I Am are another great example of her subtly adding different colours and tones. Another great melody on Another Place To Live, a really catchy chorus with that marching drum pattern underneath and more great bass. Excellent uptempo way to end things.
I don’t think this can be anything but a 5 - a gem of a country album but also just a sublime set of melodies and lyrics in its own right, performed brilliantly with such warmth and personality, with no fat or filler. Fantastic.
🧥🧥🧥🧥🧥
Playlist submission: Early Morning Breeze
Public Image Ltd.
5/5
First Issue
Mixed feelings on Lydon, but I guess that’s kind of the point, he is an insufferable dickhead, but capable of producing some great music, some great ideas and some excellently pithy and provocative lines, among all the obvious contrarian and artless posturing.
Obviously Sex Pistols had a big musical and cultural impact, but PiL are definitely a more interesting if more challenging listen. I’m not familiar with everything they have done, but I do like the bits I know. I do find myself attracted to their spiky conceptual auto didactic art school experimental ethos and I bought the re-issue of Metal Box on CD, mainly as the packaging is great, but it's a great listen, and I also like the album ‘album’, which has the brilliant ‘Rise’ on it.
I love the cover on this album, the pastiche of the cover of a lifestyle magazine, with his neat hair and suit, poking at his image as the face of Sex Pistols/punk. I know the song Public Image, however I don’t think I’ve actually listened to this album in full before, or if I have I can’t remember it. Track 1 and 3 are a great indication of their approach - superb, prominent bass, abrasive guitar and hit and miss sloganeering. Annalisa is probably the first track that feels like a traditional song, it definitely has echoes of Sex Pistols, with its familiar sneering vocal, but with the bass, drums and wiry guitars it sounds much more modern and far more interesting. And then Public Image is a fantastic bit of agitated post punk, a superb track with its swirling and scratchy guitar and fantastic bass line.
Love the Can/Neu style drums on Low Life and the bass as ever is excellen Attack is perhaps a little underpar, it doesn’t have the immediacy or sense of excitement or new ground that the other songs do. Fodderstompf is great though, superb dubby bass, minimal guitar, sprinkling of synth and some more nonsense from Lydon.
This was released only one year after Never Mind the Bollocks, but it sounds worlds apart, like something from the future (of the early 80s), with its abrasive and wiry guitars, dubby bass and rhythmically interesting drums. You can really hear how influential this was; on where guitar music was going in the years after punk, as a conceptual art punk project, and then down the years on lots of great bands
Conceptually I love it, I find it fascinating and musically I find it pretty addictive. Interesting albums don’t always intersect with good, but this one does. There’s some great ideas and some great music on here, feeling both futuristic and boundary pushing, but with a feeling that it could only be made at the end of the 70s in the immediate aftermath of punk. I love a MOR crafted pop album as much as anyone, but I also love this. You know what, I’m giving it 5.
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Playlist submission: Public Image
k.d. lang
3/5
Shadowland
Wasn’t quite expecting this. I only know and dislike Constant Craving so I assumed that this would be more of that kind of dullness.
But this is actually a perfectly decent and listenable jazz inflected country pop album. The playing is nice, the songs are well chosen and her voice is very good, deeply toned and jazzy. There’s nothing particularly exciting or remarkable, but there’s nothing bad either, and it’s all over in 35 minutes. I suppose the main black mark would be that it does feel rather inessential, sometimes that can be annoying, but it seems fine for this.
I’d probably not choose to listen again, but if I did put it on I wouldn’t mind it. I suppose that makes it the definition of a 3.
👤👤👤
Playlist submission: Honky Tonk Angels’ Medley
The Incredible String Band
4/5
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter
Your wish is not granted unless it's a fish.
Your wish is not granted unless it's a dish.
A fish on a dish is that what you wish.
One of those albums/bands that I always feel I should have listened to by now, but I never have.
It’s a fun, bizarrely engaging listen, particularly the first time around. Each song begins and sounds like it was written and sung by a group of buck toothed, brought up in isolation, hippie fuckwits given some instruments as part of a societal reintegration therapy program. However each song somehow manages to burrow its way into your brain about halfway through, the peculiarity percolating and revealing some amusing, beguiling and memorable if quite odd music; the Indian restaurant vibe and tempo changes of Koeeoaddi There and the wartime Music Hall radio broadcast feel of The Minotaur’s Song, with added creepiness and a deceptively catchy melody. Witches Hat has a real Wickerman atmosphere, with parts of the song being charmingly melodic and other parts charmingly amateurish. A Very Cellular Song is excellent, very infectious and beneath the oddness as quite ordered structure, building from an organ into hand claps and some great harmony singing. It could be Dylan parping about on the mouth organ on Mercy I Cry City, but the harpsichord and drone of Waltz of the New Moon is uncomfortably appealing, the guitar is really very nice, as it plays out into a nicely hypnotic ending. I like how The Water Song’s paganistic lyrics and mediaeval atmosphere lead into an almost Shinto incantation with something that sounds a bit like a Shamisen. Three is a Green Crown feels atonally odd, but kind of opens out towards its crescendo, becoming more and more Indian sounding. Love the percussion sounds in Swift As The Wind, sounds like me trying to carry too much up the stairs and dropping it all. Just needs a for fucks sake. Nightfall has a real hopefully downbeat delicacy to the melody and lyric, an interestingly affecting song.
I can totally understand why this would divide opinion, it's striking how it can sound bad and good simultaneously, which is quite the trick to pull off. But maybe it’s the contrast between the sense of innocent outsiderism and deliberately obtuse instrumentation and experimental song structures (or the contrast of good and bad) that I find so interesting. It’s definitely not a straightforward listen, its a real grower, and I found it more charming each time, picking out little moments and motifs and a sense of humour I have no idea is intentional or not.
Feels like it's kind of in its own weird little category, so kind of hard to rate, but I’ll go for curiously distinctive 4.
🧙🧙🧙🧙
Playlist submission: A Very Cellular Song
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme
I can’t recall listening to this before, or at least not properly, I’ve always tended towards Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water, but I should really have given this more attention, as it’s quirkily great, with some excellent songs on it outside those all time classics in Scarborough Fair, Howard Bound, 59th Bridge Street Song and For Emily.
Scarborough Fair is so familiar I find it easy to not really listen, but those harmonies and the harpsichord really are so fantastically well done. Patterns is an interesting one, a great song and probably emblematic, from what I’ve read, of the songwriting difficulties that Simon had at the time - not in the song itself but the theme of resigned futility and lack of will. Love the bass, and it feels like the guitar break is about to turn into the middle bit of Stonehenge. Cloudy feels like a classic S&G album track, not the most showy perhaps but a lovely melody with and rhythmic accents.
‘All my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity’ - always loved that line. I like the sequencing with The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine’s glib satire after the heartfelt and sad Homeward Bound, and it’s one of those Paul Simon songs like Me and Julio, Keep the Customer Satisfied and Baby Driver that seem to be an attempt to write a rock n roll song, but turn out to be a excellently quirky halfway between folk and rock n roll. ‘Dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep’, another great, evocative line.
The Dangling Conversation is a lovely tune, augmented nicely by harp and strings, the lyric may be a bit heavy handed, but it’s another one of those great sad but not despairing S&G songs, again on the themes of futility. Flowers Never Bend, goes back to the themes on Patterns, more melancholy balancing hopefulness and hopelessness. More excellent sequencing of earnest with amusing with the next song. A Simple Desultory Philippic may be based around the single joke of a Dylan pastiche, but luckily Simon is good at these sorts of wryly amusing lyrics and I like the organ part - again seems like when Simon attempts to write a rock song it comes out slightly odd, but in a good way. I love For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her, one of my favourites, Art’s vocal is superb and the melody is so satisfying as it builds to the I Love You conclusion - the only thing is that it feels like it could be longer, but maybe it’s brevity is one reason it’s so great.
I don’t think I’ve ever really listened properly to the lyrics of A Poem on the Underground Wall, but it’s a great story with some excellent imagery, and I wonder what the 4 letter word was? 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night is the sort of thing that could be heavy handedly sanctimonious, but I find it genuinely affecting, Art’s sweetly earnest and delicate vocal highlights the despair of the headlines. Maybe it’s the 60 year’s remove that makes it work as a period piece but I do like it.
It maybe not be quite at the level of Bookends or Bridge Over Troubled Water, but most artists would kill for one album containing Scarborough Fair, Howard Bound, 59th Bridge Street Song and For Emily, as well as the excellent Patterns and Flowers Never Bend, and there is only a limited number of S&G albums, so I think it’s hard not to give it a cherished 5.
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Playlist submission: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
Koffi Olomide
4/5
Haut de gamme / Koweït, rive gauche
Bit of a character by the looks of things from his Wikipedia page, and by character I mean he looks like a bit of a wrong’un.
I’m not at all familiar with Soukous music apart from perhaps hearing the name once or twice, so I don’t really have a frame of reference for this, but from reading about it looks like it’s a good representation of it, and he’s one of the most popular African musicians of all time.
It’s a thoroughly enjoyable album though, apart from the odd occasion when some 80s/early 90s production and sounds creep in, like the very dated piano on Desespoir, the start of Elixir and the synths on Porte-monnaie, and an hour is also quite a long runtime for the 9 songs.
Despesoir also carries more than a hint of I Know What I Know in the bass, although that may be a common motif in African music (although I would presume) DRC Congo and South Africa have different musical cultures. And after the danceable upbeatness of the first two tracks I really like the slower pace of Koweit, Rive Gauche, and the slightly more low key Qui Cherche Trouve. Elixir, Porte-monnaie are very good, Dit Jeannot is excellent and Conte de Fees and Obrigado are decent enough.
Even if I don’t think I actually know enough about this type of music to distinguish what is actually good, this coming up is what’s great about doing the list, I’d never have found this on my own - it’s great to find things in styles and genres outside my normal stuff and outside of the UK/US. I’d definitely listen again and will try some more Soukous music too, so for those reasons I’ll tip it into a 4.
🌍🌍🌍🌍
Playlist submission: Koweit, Rive Gauche.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Paul’s Boutique
It already feels like a big step forward from Licensed to Ill just from the organ sample on To All The Girls, a bit of instrumentation and a sense of musical influences beyond the frat boy party rap of the first album. Shake Your Rump then kicks in, initially a little like something from Licensed to Ill, but then pulls the rug with a cavalcade of samples as the track careens brilliantly all over the place, all with their customary sense of humour.
Things continue in that vein; meticulously layered tracks based around brilliantly eclectic samples, all tied together with fun, excitement and just an overall sense of sonic inventiveness. It’s worth going track by track through Who Sampled, as the list is incredible, Macca and Dylan on Johnny Ryall, Superfly, Bernard Hermann and Jaws on Egg Man, Eagles, The Band, Star Wars on High Plains Drifter, and of course 5 different Beatles songs on The Sounds of Science….I mean I could go on.
Lyrically it’s also a major step forward from Licensed to Ill, they still have the same sense of humour, but the scope is much wider, full of stories and characters and it has a real sense of New York.
I don’t think there are any particularly weak songs, but the run from To All the Girls to The Sounds of Science is particularly superb, barely putting a foot wrong with great stories, great samples, beats and grooves. It hardly lets up after that though, Hey Ladies is excellent, I love the the heavier Mississipi Queen sample on Barrel of a Gun and the Jackson 5 sample on Car Thief gives it a great funky atmosphere. Shadrach is great too, a brilliantly diverse set of samples all adding up to a brilliantly percussive track. And then B-Boy Bouillabaisse is a musical and production tour de force in sampling, like a mini concert.
Things that were very innovative and influential at the time can often sound dated, but this doesn’t at all, 35 years later it still sounds fresh and exciting and is just a great album. Maybe because sampling at this scale became prohibitively expensive not long after this was never imitated or diluted to death, so it remains along with 3 Feet High and Rising as the apogee of this type of thing.
Anyhow t’s rightly a classic and a seminal album, nothing but a 5.
🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
Playlist submission: Could be a few, but Sounds of Science for the Beatlesness.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
We’re Only In It For The Money
I looked back on what I wrote for Freak Out! And I think I feel largely the same about this, even if my patience for Frank Zappa has maybe worn a little thinner since then. I get the feeling he resented the hippies becoming a part of mainstream culture, not out of ideology, but because he wanted to be the popular outsider, so he just took the piss instead. On the one hand I like that idea of satirising hippies and ’straights’ pretensions and phoniness equally, but on the other his relentless cynicism is can be a bit tiring, particularly on the first side of this, where that joke is rather one note.
That’s not to say it’s not funny in parts though, Who Needs The Peace Corps and Flower Punk are probably the most successful plays on the concept and there are some other great lines and amusing punchlines and images scattered throughout, and his dryly sardonic descriptions of violence I guess were kind of prescient for what happened in the rest of 1968 in the US. I also like the multiple ‘I’m Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the Group’
Musically I think it's a bit more interesting than what I can remember of Freak Out, although musical excellence isn’t the point obviously, particularly on the more skit like tracks. There are passable, deliberate approximations of Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Vaudeville and Acid Rock/Blues bands, and there are some nice musical passages and playing elsewhere; Concentration Moon’s bass and organ are pretty good, and Mom & Dad’s fuggish atmosphere is nicely delivered by the bass, organ and drums, The Idiot Bastard’s Son’s Doors-esque organ is very good and the riff on Lonely Little Girl is great.
I suppose the question is what criteria to use to rate this. Of course on a pure musical level there isn’t a great deal of interest, so I guess it comes down to the tolerance/appeal of the surrealism, cynicism, contrariness and iconoclasm, and the ambition and intent to do something different and poke at things. Rather like Freak Out I do like that intention and that someone is out there doing this kind of stuff, and I think that appreciation just about outweighs some of the tiresome aspects. I gave Freak Out a 3 and I’ll give this the same.
🫰🫰🫰
Playlist submission: Who Needs the Peace Corps
Iggy Pop
3/5
Lust for Life
I remember having a best of Iggy and the Stooges CD which had Lust for Life and The Passenger as the sole representatives of this album, so consequently I know nothing of the rest of it.
Lust for Life and The Passenger are great of course, brilliant bits of late 70s rock, Lust for Life’s 50s-ish rock n roll feel with Iggy’s drawling, punkish charisma is a great combination. I’ve never so closely listened to The Passenger before and there is some excellent guitar under the vocals in the 2nd half. And of course it’s a great song with a fantastic sense of woozy, vaguely sinister momentum.
I know it was a different time but why were people in the 60s and 70s obsessed with singing about 16 year old girls? Sixteen adds to that canon, and from 45 years later it does feel a bit icky. Some Weird Sin is ok, but the guitar licks feel a bit cheesy.
The bass and drums are excellent throughout, and when Carlos Alomar plays lead it's good, but there’s something about Ricky Gardiner’s tone and playing that sometimes feels a bit dated. For a Bowie-produced and co-written album it feels like he generally only has a faint spectral hand in matters, apart from the backing vocals and, of course, Tonight and then the excellently melodramatic Turn Blue (even though it definitely sounds like Iggy’s singing I Shat Myself Down). Success is fine, pretty catchy and the backing vocals are very good.
Neighbourhood Threat feels like a pre Post-Punk New Wave track, and has a nice simmering slightly malevolent quality. Rhythmically Fall in Love with Me is great, and it has a real Station to Station/Lodger feel to it, a great closing track
Not quite sure where this sits, it has some absolute bangers in Lust for Life, The Passenger and Tonight, and great tracks in Turn Blue, Neighbourhood Threat and Fall in Love With Me, but Sixteen, Some Weird Sin and Success are a little underwhelming in comparison, and there’s something about the whole thing I find doesn’t quite grab me fully. It’s clearly a very good album, but it’s probably on the cusp of 3 and 4, and based on how often I might want to revisit, I think I’ll settle on 3.
🍾🍾🍾
Playlist submission: The Passenger
Beck
5/5
Sea Change
I bought a hooky version of this on CD from a bloke selling counterfeit albums on the street outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan in November 2002 while visiting Mackie. I often wonder why he chose this album to copy and that spot to sell it. It doesn’t really say carefree fun loving New York excursion.
Anyhow, funding crack addictions aside, it’s a truly excellent album, up there with Odelay and Midnite Vultures as my favourites of his. The difference between Midnite Vultures’ dynamic soul/funk and Prince-esque vibrancy and energy and Sea Change’s intimate, sometimes bleak, focused and concentrated folk and country-dappled melancholy is starkly brilliant.
While all the songs are thematically and tonally similar, they don’t feel repetitive at all, gently lapping and swaying with each other over the course of the album, all with slight variations in instrumentation, tempo and arrangement. The playing is great, sympathetic and rather lovely little guitar and keyboard embellishments and the string arrangements are fantastic, from the pastoral to the vaguely middle eastern.
The first three songs really grabbed me when I first listened, the country guitar on The Golden Age evoking Lonesome Me, Paper Tiger’s shuffling percussion, guitar and string arrangement are superb, and Guess I’m Doing Fine’s melancholy melody accented by the reverb and guitar is brilliant.
It remains excellent after that, each track is great, but some highlights for me are It’s All in Your Mind with its ghostly and reverb guitar piano, Round the Bends use of upright bass, the fingerpicking of Already Dead, Little One with it’s heavier oppressive guitars, and Side of the Road, a great bit of downbeat country-folk melancholia.
All through the album you can pick up the influences and references - I’m sure Sunday Sun is a Nick Drake reference to Saturday Sun, but there’s bits of Neil, Dylan, other folk and country as well as some electronica inflected rhythms and drums, adding to the subtle variance of the songs.
It’s a great sad album as well as being just a great album. Easily a 5, clive
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
Playlist submission: The Golden Age
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Let it Bleed
This really reminds of university, graduating from Greatest Hits to the albums from their imperious pomp. At that time it was probably my favourite of the Beggar’s Banquet - Let It Bleed - Sticky Fingers - Exile on Main Street axis, and while I would probably tend towards Exile nowadays it’s still up there as one of my favourite albums. Back then I don’t think I really appreciated how much country there was on it, and listening today it’s interesting how nearly every song has some country touch or influence on it. I know their country influences are obvious, but I would probably tend to think songs like Jumpin Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, Gimme Shelter and Brown Sugar are emblematic of this period, but so much of their stuff around this time was very country.
Alongside the totemic Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler and You Can’t Always Get What You Want at the beginning middle and end, there are some of their best albums tracks, the country blues of Love in Vain, the hoedown of Country Honk, the propulsive and rocking Live with Me, the loose, druggy, not so subtle sexual euphemisms and barroom feel of Let it Bleed, the cracked, careworn and satisfying You’ve Got The Silver and the paranoid, sinister absolutely fantastic Monkey Man.
Like all of their albums of this period the playing is great, and is probably in the sweet spot of the tightness of Sticky Fingers and the looseness of Exile, Charlie as always is great, particularly on Midnight Rambler and You’ve Got The Silver. Bill’s bass playing is excellent, a great tone and while not showy there are some great touches and moments, particularly on Let it Bleed. Keith’s playing on here really is exceptional in between Brian withdrawing and Mick entering, so many great lines and phrases, always adding to the songs. I love his playing on Monkey Man especially. Mick’s vocals are particularly sweet too, it might be the best of his singing voice. And the cast of additional performers is incredible, Merry Clayton, Leon Russel, Jack Nitsche, Al Kooper, Ry Cooder as well as their stalwarts Ian Stewart, Jimmy Miller, Nicky Hopkins and Bobby Keys. Hopkin’s piano really is fantastic, particularly on Let it Bleed.
I don’t think I could ever get tired of Gimme Shelter, and I’ll definitely never get tired of that break in Merry Clayton’s voice with the woo in the background. If this was just Gimme Shelter 9 times it would be a 5. If it was just Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler and You Can’t Always Get What You Want it would be 5. If it was those 3 songs plus all the others it would also be a 5. So basically anyway you slice it, it’s a 5.
🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂
Playlist submission: Gimme Shelter
GZA
5/5
Liquid Swords
I only really know the title track, which is superb, with that great organ sample and the excellent delivery. The rest of it is great too, and it definitely gets better with each listen, the groggy feel getting under your skin.
I really love the sound of it all, that kind of thin and piercing snare sound, and the brilliantly built loops and beats, a kind of dense and woozy and slightly wonky world, giving a disconcerting but attractive ambience. The sampling is excellent too, not as exuberant and excessive as Paul’s Boutique, but a judicious use of keyboard, horn and vocal samples, all contributing to the percussive, mesmeric atmosphere. I love that trumpet sample in Living in the World Today, the choral sample in Gold, that little riff in 4th Chamber that sounds like a vibraphone, Ann Peebles in Shadowboxin’ with the great bass line. There’s also that slightly unsteady synth line in Hell’s Wind.
I also love his vocal style and timbre, kind of similar to Method Man but a bit clearer and more distinct. Lyrically it also avoids much of the misogyny of most mid 90s hip hop, and while there is a lot of violence, it seems to be treated thoughtfully (most of the time), making it a more introspective take on the usual unsettling themes.
I really enjoyed this and the world it paints, and there are some excellent tracks in Liquid Swords, Gold, 4th Chamber, Shadowboxin, Hell’s Wind and B.I.B.L.E, along some lots of very god tracks. Illmatic is still the high point for me for this type of album, but with more listens I think this will be up there too. It’s easily a high 4, but I’ll bet on it being a 5 with more listens.
💧⚔️💧⚔️💧
Playlist submission: Hell’s Wind
Duran Duran
4/5
Rio
This makes me think of an early episode of Only Fools and Horses when Rodney tries to impress a girl by turning up with this album under his arm. It also feels like the band my older sister would have been into, had I actually had sister 8 or 9 years older than me.
Rio is an undeniably fantastic bit of pop music, and Duran Duran in a nutshell: great chorus, great melody, brilliantly self-assured, with an irresistible 80s pop-funk-disco-rock-synth sheen and terrible, naff lyrics. Hungry Like the Wolf is similar, brilliantly catchy, a great chorus and ‘I smell like I sound’. I’ve always really liked Save a Prayer too, with its swaying rhythm and wistful melody.
The rest of it is uniformly above average synth pop in that same vein, full of memorable hooks, riffs, synths and choruses, without, New Religion’s 80s cop thriller soundtrack atmosphere aside, quite reaching the heights of those singles.
Lonely in Your Nightmare has a great little earworm of a chorus, Hold Back the Rain has a pleasingly thumpy rhythm, Last Chance on the Stairway has that excellently melodic bass, and The Chaffeur has a great woozy off kilter The Normal style experimental synth vibe.
The rhythm section really is excellent, probably the thing that separates them from some of their contemporaries, there’s some great melodic bass and synth bass and that great 80s drum sound too.
You can hear Bowie (again), Chic Roxy Music - if you are going for this type of synth-pop-funk sound and style you probably couldn’t choose better influences.
Full of hooks and memorable melodies, where the choruses and style outweigh the substance, but it doesn’t matter, it’s such a fun listen that it’s an easy 4.
🐺🐺🐺🐺
Playlist submission: Rio
New Order
5/5
Low-life
I’ve got this on vinyl funnily enough. I had a bit of a New Order obsession about 15 years ago and I bought some cheap copies of some of their albums. This might not be as well known as Power, Corruption & Lies or Technique, but it’s definitely one of their best, most consistent albums and is probably right at their peak of their mix of post-punk, dance, rock and synth pop. Some songs more straightforwardly pop and some more straightforwardly dance, but all with the distinctive New Order combination of detached, mauldin sincerity.
I’ve always loved Love Vigilantes, with its obvious lift from Love Me Do and it’s story about a ghost/non ghost returning from war. And Perfect Kiss is a superb song, a great NO single.
This Time of Night is another excellent bit of dance rhythm driven pop, with some great little hooks and a sinister air. Sunrise is one of those NO tracks that starts out unpromisingly, but its prosaic intro turns into something really hypnotic and immersive, a trick they manage to successfully pull over and over - Bernard’s ‘simple’ guitar patterns, Peter Hook’s twangy bass melodies, Stephen’s dancey rhythms and Gillian’s keyboards/synths really are a great combination and elevate what may seem like a basic structure into something really interesting. Sooner Than You Think is probably the only real dip in quality, but it’s still a more than decent NO album track.
Elegia is a great bit of cinematic synth pop atmosphere, a little like a John Carpenter soundtrack, brilliantly cool, austere but moving tribute to Ian Curtis. It definitely feels very Low era Bowie, which I guess is nodded to by the album title.
Sub-culture, has a very similar sequencing and rhythmic structure to Blue Monday, but is an excellent dance pop song in it’s own right. Face Up has that great NO drum sound, similar to the Temptation re-mix, and has a simultaneously jaunty riff and wistful melody and lyric, a great closing track
I hadn’t listened to this in a while and was thinking it was probably a solid 4, but re-visiting it over the weekend it’s become a 5 - it’s an excellent album of great New Order tracks with 4 absolute belters in Love Vigilantes, Perfect Kiss, Elegia and Sub Culture.
🪫🪫🪫🪫🪫
Playlist submission: Elegia
Radiohead
5/5
In Rainbows
I can’t remember what I paid for the download, but looking back the pay-what-you-want mechanism is the least interesting thing about the album, as the music is absolutely fantastic; jittery and dense punctuated by moments of clarity and beauty, fusing the electronica and dislocation of Kid A onwards with some of the instrumentation and feel, if not the sounds of OK Computer.
I don’t think it feels like a deliberate retrospective agglomeration of those albums though, it feels much more forward looking than that, that they are more comfortable with themselves and how they write and record their music, which probably reveals itself in some of the more personal and intimate lyrics, especially the opening lines of House of Cards.
Each song is great, and each one has so many great moments or elements; the quintuple meter of 15 Step hinting at the rhythmic and percussive weight of the rest of album, the scuzzy riff of Bodysnatchers, the harmonies of Nude, the overall oddity of Weird Fishes, the elegant strings and percussion and ominous synth tones of All I Need, when the strings come in on Faust Arp, the cymbals high on the right channel and the bass underneath on Reckoner, the contrast of ‘infrastructure will collapse’ with the opening lines and beauty of House of Cards, the clarity of Thom’s voice on Jigsaw as it builds, the stateliness and lyrical conceit of Videotape.
Similar to the Beatles, my favourite album depends on the day, but this is always up there, it’s an exceptionally good album, with no weak tracks. Easy 5.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈
Playlist submission: House of Cards
The Who
5/5
Live at Leeds
Another band I had a period of obsession with about 15-20 years ago. I bought the deluxe edition of this on CD when it was released, and I think the CD versions with 14+ songs have become the de facto versions, rather than the original 7 track release. The deluxe version is over two hours long and includes almost the whole of Tommy, and while that’s worth a listen, the other tracks either side of that are on the standard CD release are the most essential, particularly the versions of Heaven and Hell, I Can’t Explain, Young Man Blues, Substitute and the medley strewn My Generation. And of course there are the versions of A Quick One While He’s Away and Magic Bus, which are both thrillingly, transcendently brilliant, especially that moment when Moon first comes smashing in on Magic Bus at around the 3.21 mark. In fact you probably could just listen to these two tracks and ignore the rest and you’d get the idea, and why this is always heralded as one of the best live albums of all time
They do sound incredibly powerful and exciting, right at the peak of the original line-ups' live powers. Also I don’t think the audience were mic'd up, so the crowd noise is almost non-existent during the songs, so you can really hear the alchemy of their playing. Moon is relentless, I know he would have been aided by some substances and would have built up ‘match fitness’ from being on tour but it is incredible how he maintains so much energy from start to end. Entwhistle is obviously a great bassist, but you can really get a sense of their performance dynamic, as he’s somewhere between lead bassist and rhythm guitarist, while Townshend is somewhere between rhythm guitarist and lead guitarist. Townshend really is great on here, showing what an excellent, versatile and clever player he is, oscillating between different volumes and tones and anchoring the whole thing with some semblance of structure. Dan I’m sure you’ll know much more about this but from my cursory reading it seems his set up enabled him to switch between tones and sounds just using his volume knob? Sometimes on record Daltrey’s voice can be a little grating, but here he’s in his element, having to compete with the cacophony the rest of the band were making probably bought out the best in his voice, and he mixes the shouting and screaming with some more delicate tones too.
As always it’s kind of tricky to rate live albums, like the Cash ones and the Jerry Lee Lewis one. The original release misses some of the best stuff, A Quick One While He’s Away most prominently, and the CD releases are pretty long, so it can feel a bit like you are being pummeled in the head by Entwhistle and Moon. Having said that, if you are going to listen to a live album, you may as well listen to this, and whichever version you listen to, the energy and visceral thrill of their live prowess is undeniable, so it would feel churlish not to give it a 5.
🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌
Playlist submission: Between Magic Bus and A Quick One, While He’s Away. I’ll go Magic Bus.
Megadeth
2/5
Rust in Peace
Got one chance, infiltrate them
Get it right, terminate them
The Panzers will, permeate them
Break their pride, denigrate them
And their people, retrograde them
Typhus, detriate them
Epidemic, devastate them
Take no prisoners, cremate them
Is this actually not that bad, or is it not that bad in comparison to the majority of the dogshit metal or metal adjacent albums we’ve had; your Panteras, your Napalm Deaths, your Sepulturas, your Alice in Chains, your Marilyn Mansons? It's certainly more melodic and accessible than those albums, and I didn’t really feel the urge to bin it off entirely, and I actually think I kind of enjoyed the first two; Holy Wars is probably a superior bit of thrash metal and Hangar 18 has an almost latin feel to it and is actually pretty fun. But then that familiar sense of tedium sets in, the rhythmic monotony, the guitar squealing and general juvenile take on politics and war. The odd, occasional moment when it deviates, e.g. when it slows down a little on Five Magics, when those little bits of Spanish guitar that appear here and there and the bass intro on Dawn Patrol, are pretty welcome, but are too few and far between. If you were to take any track in isolation it would probably be a fun enough silly metal listen, but when you stack them over 40 minutes it is pretty tiresome, and fundamentally there isn't really much for me here beyond the novelty of listening to the first couple of tracks.
Like any genre, if you are into metal this is probably great, and you can probably differentiate and appreciate the nuances of all the metal sub-genres, and hear the little things that make this good, but if you struggle with any metal post-Black Sabbath, like I do, it all just become a rather laborious jumble of drums, guitars and adolescent histrionics.
It isn't that bad in comparison to much of that dogshit metal, but for me ultimately it isn’t really that good either, and although I’m glad to have given it a go a couple of times I can’t imagine listening again.
☮️ ☮️
Playlist submission: Hangar 18.
Ps I think that’s meant to be John Major on the right hand side on the cover
Pps https://theonion.com/humanity-still-producing-new-art-as-though-megadeth-s-1819578062/
Abdullah Ibrahim
2/5
Water From an Ancient Well
I resisted looking up anything about this before I listened, from the artist’s name, album title and cover I thought it might have been a Middle-Eastern/North African album.
But of course it’s Jazz, with, when you think about it, one of the most Jazz Club album titles you could imagine, a kind of pretentious earthiness.
I’m still not sure if I can distinguish good jazz from bad jazz, although I’m finding it less of a struggle to listen to than I did before doing the list. And the music on here seems to be a curious mix of not so great cruise ship banality and some genuinely good tracks like Song for Sathima, Manenburg Revisited and The Mountain.
Song for Sathima has a lovely melody, excellent piano and a nice understated feel. Manenburg Revisited’s bass is fantastic, I’ve never really heard much jazz double bass played like that, and the piano led melody is great, punctuated only briefly by the horns, conjuring a nice smooth Film 89 feel, an excellent track. The flute, piano and slightly pastoral atmosphere of The Mountain, make it a rather pleasant and pretty song.
The rest, while not necessarily bad do just tip into slightly irritating, with not enough piano and too many stereotypical jazz tropes of walking bass lines, splashy/brushy cymbals and overly prominent horns. Sameeda is probably the worst for this, with those comically low horns, and feeling like jazz parody.
It also feels like a lot of the riffs and melodies are familiar, like Moon River on the Wedding. Maybe they are intentional references, but often it feels like they are going to turn into something well known, before drifting off somewhere less interesting.
Overall the good tracks do just about outweigh the more boring tracks, and I did find it more listenable with repeat listens. While I may not actively seek this out again I wouldn’t be that bothered if it came on. High 2, low 3 territory, I’ll go 2 as realistically I doubt I will ever listen again.
🚰🚰
Playlist submission: Manenburg Revisited
System Of A Down
2/5
System of a Down
Along with Tool, System of a Down, are one of those metal bands that are always cited as being smarter and more interesting than their peers, but listening to this I don’t really get it. You can hear some slightly more pop-punk/nu-metal elements, some Queen-esque theatricality and moments that reflect their Armenian heritage but on the whole it's just more of the same, double kick drums, heavy guitars, shouting, screaming and burping and GCSE level lyrics about war and bad things. Thank god genocide exists otherwise these people would have no lyrics to describe how angry they are.
It probably doesn’t help that this has come two days after Megadeth, if this had come first I probably would probably have had more tolerance for it. Again I can completely appreciate that this is good if you are into it, but the more metal we get, especially this close together, the harder I find it to find moments of interest.
This wasn’t Sepultura levels of irritation so I’ll stick with the standard 2 stars.
🔽🔽
Playlist submission: Soil, as I like that little guitar riff at 2.36 onwards
Curtis Mayfield
5/5
There’s No Place Like America Today
I’d not really heard of this album before, but I thought it was excellent; kind of sad and despairing with a haunted melancholy to the music and lyrics, but all tied together with that sweet, rich, warm voice.
Billy Jack feels like the other side of Superfly, the sadness of an extinguished life, while the fantastic When Seasons Change feels like an ode to resilience, with that same sad undertow. So in Love feels like one of the few hopeful moments on the record. Musically I like Jesus alot, with that guitar in the chorus, but its overtly religiosity feels a bit overbearing. Blue Monday People is great, a snapshot of reality and futility. Hard Times tight groove is superb, symbolic of words and themes of hardening your heart in the face of tough times. Love to the People’s hints at upbeatness are cut through by the bleakness of the verses, but amplified by the chorus.
The playing, particularly the bass and drums, is absolutely superb. Not overly showy, but tight and precise, augmenting and embellishing when necessary, and letting the songs breathe. I also love the really slowed down tempos, really intensifying the dispiriting themes and lyrics.
This really got under my skin over repeated listens, it’s trading of immediacy and optimism for a spareness and a mournful tone working a slow kind of hypnosis. It was a 4 at first but after a few listens I can’t really think of a reason to not give it 5 - it’s a sad and sombre 35 mins of brilliantly played, fantastically sung, anguished mid-70s soul.
🪨🕒🪨🕒🪨
Jurassic 5
4/5
Power in Numbers
I listened to this A LOT when it came out, especially as I loved What’s Golden, a superb track, aJ5 classic. This and just after was the period where they seemed to be playing at every festival I went to, I think I must have seen them 5 or 6 times.
Despite it being a very good album, I do think it’s a bit odd that this was chosen for the list ahead of Quality Control, which for my money is their strongest album start to finish, as this one does drag a little over the last 15 minutes or so.
It has all the elements that make J5 great though, jazzy organ, flute and horn samples, Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark’ beats and scratching, catchy hooks, the interplay of Akil, Zaakir, Marc 7 and 2na (love 2na’s baritone delivery) and smart, thoughtful lyrics reflecting a range of themes and messages.
Freedom, If You Only Knew and Break is a great run, If You Only Knew’s flute sample is extremely catchy and that little guitar sample on Break is superb. The bass on A Day at the Races really makes the track, a great groove.
What’s Golden still sounds great, satisfyingly catchy and I love the ‘pop music’ breakdown and the verbal Herman Munster. Thin Line is also a great track, the string sample is great, sombre and downbeat, reflecting the lyrics.
It does get a bit patchy after this, it’s never porr, and delivery wise it never lets up, but it does start to feel a few tracks too long and a little unfocused. High Fidelity’s flute and horns are great though, Hey is an excellently low key track and Acetate Prophets is a superb exercise in turntablism.
Its a great listen, and I’m tempted to go for a 5 just as its the sole representative of J5 on the list, but it is for me a rung below Quality Control so I’ll go with a solidly high 4.
🦖🦖🦖🦖
Playlist submission: What’s Golden
Tortoise
4/5
Millions Living Will Never Die
I’m sure I’ve heard the name Tortoise but I don’t think I know anything about them. My assumption is that they are a kind of grunge alt rock band?
The first track was a bit of a surprise on that basis though, and I absolutely loved it, the first 10 minutes kind of reminiscent of Neu! with its motorik rhythm, mesmeric bass line and keyboard lines, before becoming slightly more abstract and ethereal, and then heading off into more of a textured sound collage, before circling back to the feel of the first part. Great track.
Glass Museum feels rather prosaic in comparison, although it is pleasant enough it doesn’t create a particularly interesting atmosphere. A Survey however is great, again very krautrock with it’s mesmeric simplicity. The Taut and Tame is a bit of a grower, the persistent riff and the rhythm pattern in the middle section are pleasingly steady.
Dear Grandma and Grandpa feels a lot like some of the Neu! Album tracks, the occasional fluttering rhythm and dubby bass giving it a gentle calming atmosphere, before segueing into the excellent Along the Banks of Rivers with its cinematic sounding guitar and jazzy organ creating a dreamy, woozy ambience and a great end to the album.
I really enjoyed this, particularly after expecting something more grungy, it was great to get something so interesting and immersive, encompassing those Eno and Krautrock influences, and Djed really is a corker. It’s a solid, high 4 and will definitely go on my list of work/focus albums.
🐢🐢🐢🐢
Playlist submission: Djed
Dire Straits
4/5
Brothers in Arms #1
The saxophone and trumpet of Your Latest Trick comes on and I’m in the back of the car on a late August Sunday in the late 80s, coming back from visiting grandparents. The thought of the end of the summer holidays lingers and the houses I pass are held by the sun’s despondent ennui, hazy and muted. Some people trim their hedges and cut their lawns, waiting for dinner and the Antiques Roadshow and thinking about work. The Funday Times on my lap that grandad saved for me, is calling in it’s nauseous debt, and all there is left to do is let Dire Straits play on and hope there will still be some daylight when I get home.
🎸🎸🎸🎸
Playlist submission: Money for Nothing
2/5
They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Never heard of this, but Liars is such a generic mid 2000s indie band name I assumed it would be something akin to Hard-Fi or Reverend & The Makers or any other mid-tier band of that period.
I really loved the concept of witchcraft and witch trials etc, but I found it struggles to create much atmosphere or ambiance to evoke that. I now understand they are an experimental noise rock band, so a creepy folk feel is not in their wheelhouse, and the slightly awkward nature of the songs is what they are going for, but I think it does need some gentleness and melody to balance the experimental elements of their music and reflect the themes they are writing about.
On the occasion it does work it’s decent, when the droning and rhythm sync and the keyboards bring some life, like on They Don’t Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids and when the tribal rhythms create some spookiness on Read the Book That Wrote Itself, or when they deliver a suitable spectral feel on Flow My Tears the Spider Said, but too often its horizontal banging repetitiveness drags and the songs feel much longer than their run times.
Conceptually it's great, but musically it too infrequently delivers on that concept and consequently it’s difficult to sustain much interest. I had thought it may be a grower, but I didn’t feel much closer to it by the end of the third listen, and I started to get the sense that it’s not as smart or as challenging as it believes it is.
It’s not unlistenable, and I’m all for people going off into weird corners and making esoteric and idiosyncratic music, but I feels this isn't that great an example of that, and even though I like the concept that’s not enough to make want to come back to it, so it lands as a solid 2.
🧹🧹
Playlist submission: They Don’t Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids
Meat Puppets
3/5
Meat Puppets II
Zippy
Animal from the Muppets
Orville
Roland Rat
Kim Jong Il from Team America
Meat Puppets aren’t going to break into that list, even though I liked this.
There’s a nice amount of charm to it, the alt/punk/indie/psychedelic country looseness and stoned slackery chaos really grew on me.
Split Myself in Two feels like a bit of aimless thrash and doesn’t really indicate what the rest of the album is like. Magic shows the slightly wonky charm of things, a nice sped up bit of punky country, which continues with the slightly Byrdsian and edgy Lost. Plateau is great of course, and Cobain’s choice of this, So Me and Lake of Fire show what a good ear he had.
Climbing is fine as a bit of woozy country and I really like Aurora Borealis’s little hook and spaced out feel, and We’re Here is a great bit of plaintive, careworn alt rock with a great bass line. Although I don’t mind the riff, New Gods has quite a similar aimless feel as the first track. I’m A Mindless Idiot is really nice, the guitar interplay is great, a lovely instrumental track. The Whistling Song has a similar feel to We’re Here, a nice bit of wonky stoned alt-rock.
This got better and more interesting with each listen, it’s charm percolating to the surface, and despite a bit of unevenness with the more thrashy/punky tracks it’s a really interesting and idiosyncratic listen. It’s on the margins of 3 and 4, I’ll settle on a high 3. I’ll definitely come back to it outside Split Myself in Two and New Gods, and I think it will continue to grow on me
🍖🍖🍖
Playlist submission: I’m a Mindless Idiot
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
Don’t Stand Me Down
I used to really like this album but haven’t listened in at least 15 years. I can totally see how it is a bit marmite, a bit like Kevin Rowland himself. And I suppose liking or disliking it will depend on your appetite for 12 minute part spoken word conversations, clear musical nicks, oddly crooned vocals and a slightly meandering spirit. Somehow though that all works for me, and I don’t get a sense of deliberate and performative eccentricity, more a sense of a distinctive and interesting voice making an album full of ideas and moments that sidestepped expectations and commercial imperatives post Come On Eileen.
This is What She’s Like is probably the key track, and it either encapsulates what’s great about the band and this record or it sums up all there is to dislike about them. I’m of course on the side of liking it, from the conversational sections to the exuberant blue-eyed soul and celtic-soul fiddle led sections, it’s a great engaging and esoteric listen.
With Dexy’s in general, there is a lot more to them under the surface than they get often get credit for I think, there’s a lot of craft and skill in their arranging, Knowledge in Beauty and The Waltz show this, with some great little parts on mandolin, lap steel and fiddle, and both these track create a great and slightly doleful country tinged atmosphere, a little like Nashville Skyline. One of Those Things shamelessly steals from Werewolves of London, and I think they retrospectively added Zevon as a songwriter, but I like the idea of nicking the riff and then saying all songs sound the same. And then I just generally enjoy their pop/rocksoul/irish/country blend, evident on stuff like Listen to This.
While I don’t think it’s necessarily the great lost masterpiece that many critics seem to think it is, I do think it’s an excellent, quirky, engaging singular listen, full of wit, charm and a unique sensibility that does start to burrow into your consciousness after a while.
⏱️⏱️⏱️⏱️
Playlist submission: This is What She’s Like
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Songs in the Key of Life
I remember being slightly put off by the density of this when I first bought it, after I already had Innervisions and Talking Book, and being slightly underwhelmed by the lack of immediacy of the opening track.
But the truth is Love’s In Need of Love Today is an excellent track, slowly working its charms, much like a lot of the album outside of the super catchy, Sir Duke, I Wish, Pastime Paradise and Isn’t She Lovely.
There’s some many tracks and so much stuff on here, but a few highlights outside the classics above are the spacey, squelchy unusual semi ambient sounds on Have a talk with God, the gentle balladry of Knocks Me Off My Feet and melody of Ordinary Pain, the strut and racial politics of Black Man, the classic laid back Stevie melody of As, the energy of Another Star, the synthy catchiness of Ebony Eyes, the funky All Day Sucker and the melancholy harmonica of Easy Goin’ Evening.
There’s a lot to process and take in, but it is an incredible record, getting better with each listen, often songs that started out unpromisingly become favourites, and it has that same eclectic, scattershot feel of the White Album. It also feels like a final emetic burst of creativity and ideas and his high watermark, and that he was never quite as good after this, becoming more middle of the road and less interesting.
I don’t think it can be anything but a 5.
🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑
Playlist submission: I Wish
The Libertines
3/5
The Libertines
At the time I liked their first album a lot and off the back of Don’t Look Back into the Sun and Can’t Stand Me now I was really excited to see them at Reading in 2004, but they all went tits up and didn’t play.
Listening now Can’t Stand Me Now still holds up, it’s a great bit of mid 2000s indie with added self mythologising, the lyrics feel quite quaint today but at the time it was prime indie melodrama. The Man Who Would Be King and What Became of the Likely Lads are the types of song it seems they are always striving for, that sense of (rather cliched) doomed hedonistic romanticism that they never quite manage often enough. But on these two tracks it does all come together with their ramshackle indie punk vibe to make some very listenable bits of music.
Outside of those tracks though, there isn’t much of great interest. Stripped of the tabloid notoriety and the excitement of the moment much of it feels quite one note and curiously lifeless. The bass is generally good, but despite all the other elements being present - the twin guitars, the punky rhythms, the slurred delivery and deliberately self regarding ‘poetry’ - it ends up feeling too studied and affected to be genuinely dynamic and exciting and there just don’t seem to be enough good songs.
A 3 feels fair, it’s a nice bit of nostalgia with some good songs, but not much else to be essential listening. I may be tempted to stick it on again at some point, but equally I’ll just as easily forget about it again.
🗽🗽🗽
Playlist submission: Can’t Stand Me Now
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
Armed Forces
I love the bass and drum sound on this album, particularly on Accidents Will Happen, the tom, snare and bass combine brilliantly. Production wise it definitely sounds like a bigger, shinier, cleaner more polished version of the sound on This Year’s Model.
It definitely feels a little more poppy than the previous two albums, with that production polish and some catchier, less abrasive melodies and arrangements. The lyrics are no less acerbic and angry though, although the focus seems broader, talking politics rather than purely romantic bitterness.
Oliver’s Army and What’s So Funny stand out as the most immediate and familiar songs and they are both excellent of course. It’s obvious today but the piano on OA really is superb, and it’s interesting to read that Steve Nieve was influenced by Dancing Queen, which makes a lot of sense. And What’s So Funny is just an excellent song. I’m not really familiar with Nick Lowe’s original version, but listening to it now it feels quite lightweight in comparison to the EC version.
You can hear The Beatles in many of the harmonies, particularly on Senior Service and the outro to Busy Bodies. Harmonies in general seem to be much more prominent than on the previous two albums, all helping to give it that poppier edge.
The organ and keyboards throughout are excellent, as they were on This Year’s Model, really augmenting Senior Service, Goon Squad, the Parklife-esque Sunday’s Best and the Booker T-esque Moods for Moderns.
In comparison to the first two albums it perhaps feels a little diminished in some respects by the lack of frenetic edginess of MAIT and TYM, but it’s shift to a bigger, poppier sound and a broader lyrical outlook make it feel like a progression into slightly different waters. I gave both the first two albums a 5 and I can’t really think of a reason not to give this 5 too. Some excellent songs in Accidents Will Happen, Senior Service, Oliver’s Army, Green Shirt, Goon Squad, Busy Bodies, Sunday’s Best and What’s So Funny, no real filler and some still relevant and caustic lyrics and themes make this a great album.
🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘
Playlist submission: Green Shirt
Janis Joplin
3/5
Pearl
Apart from Me and Bobby McGee I wasn’t really that keen on this on first listen, although the playing is much tighter and more professional than the band on Cheap Thrills it feels pretty soulless as it cycles through rather generic overly slick AOR blues rock tropes.
I started to like it a bit more on repeat listens though, when the band turn up the organ and turn down the guitar and it can be pretty good; Trust Me reveals itself as a great little tune, Get it While You Can has a nice smoulder to it. Even Move Over, which I disliked on the first listen, improves on repeat, eventually settling into a nice groove. And of course Me and Bobby McGee is just an excellent song, by far the best thing on here, a great bit of bluesy country soul. Mercedes Benz is kind of fun and Cry Baby’s ubiquity has dampened it’s overwrought charm a little, but it's still a good track
Looking back at our reviews of Cheap Thrills I think I’m a bit more partial to her voice than you both and I think it does sound really good here, particularly as the more conventional production showcases it better then the fake-live sound of Cheap Thrills.
Overall it’s a decent listen, one I might try again, but I wasn’t into it enough for it to trouble the 4s. Solid 3.
🦪🦪🦪
Playlist submission: Me and Bobby McGee
The Pogues
5/5
Rum, Sodomy & the Lash
Never ventured into the Pogues, only really knowing Fairytale of New York, Fiesta and, due to The Wire, The Body of an American.
Wish I’d tried earlier though, as I loved this. On the surface I didn’t think I’d be that keen on slurry sea shanty adjacent jigs, and the idea of folk-punk in general, but I totally bought into the world they built with all the amusing, strange, doleful, exuberant stories of rent boys, Irish history, warriors and politicians, immigrant life in the UK, longing for home, war, pub dwellers, booze, navvies and outlaws, all full of unkempt charm, joy, wistfulness and a ramshackle unsentimental romanticism.
I love the covers/re-arrangements of I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday, Dirty Old Town and Waltzing Matilda. Cait O’Riordan’s vocal on I’m A Man is superb, and the mournful horns on Waltzing Matilda are excellent, a brilliant to way to end the album.
And the original songs a great too, The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn, The Old Main Drag, A Pair of Brown Eyes, Sally Mclennane all veer from tender and heartfelt to ebullient and dishevelled.
The bonus tracks are fun too, including The Body of an American, but the original 12 tracks are such a great, concise and exciting listen you don’t really need them.
There is something about the combination of Irish instruments, punk and traditional folk with the brilliantly constructed narratives that works so well, it’s such an immersive universe they create, making a pint or two of Guinness feel very appealing. I’m struggling to think of a reason not to give it a 5 as I enjoyed it so much.
🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Playlist submission: I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday
Holger Czukay
5/5
Movies
‘Hello!’ ‘Hello Darling!’
No idea who or what this is, but before I listened I saw the album cover had a sticker on it saying Holger Czukay from Can, so I thought it might be some atmospheric motorik driven krautrock. But although you can see the through line from Can, it feels experimental in a slightly more fun way, kind of signposting stuff that would come in the 80s, like Tom Tom Club, Malcolm McClaren et al, although with less obvious concessions to accessibility. Although my sense is that he's the type of person who thought he was making something very poppy and accessible, it just came out funny.
Cool in the Pool is a part Bowie synthy disco, part Can, part Afrobeat, but with added teutonic avant garde noises and oddness, it’s great. Oh Lord, Give Us More Money is maybe the most Can sounding track, but the samples take it somewhere else, occasionally feeling like the theme from a 70s cop show, occasionally feeling like an ominous dream, but always with the insistent drumming and bass. Great track.
Persian Love has a great groove and more pleasing oddness, seemingly built from the middle eastern vocal sample, but ending up as a sort of calypso-folk-funk hybrid, and it sounds a lot better than that combination would suggest.
I absolutely loved Hollywood Symphony, excellent noises, synths and vocal samples, kind of unfolding itself over an unhurried 15 minutes, seeming to settle on a groove and atmosphere before squelching off into some bit of spacey weirdness. I’ve seen in a few places people say that the album laid the groundwork for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and it’s really evident on this one, it sounds quite a lot like America is Waiting.
Although each track has its own sensibility they are all underpinned by truly excellent percussion, rhythms and drumming and absolutely superb bass playing, slightly reminiscent of Jah Wobble’s playing with PiL. It's alternately groovy, melodic and propulsive, working perfectly with the drums, while all the mad shit happens around it.
This was right up my straße, I loved it. It's great when the list throws up something like this that I’ve never heard of making up for all the woeful metal we get. On first listen this was an immediate 4, and it got better and better, I just kept wanting to go round again and have listened to it pretty much non stop for about 5 hours. 5 hours = 5 stars then.
🎥🎥🎥🎥🎥
Playlist submission: Hollywood Symphony
Animal Collective
2/5
Merriweather Post Pavilion
I don’t think I’ve ever consciously listened to Animal Collective. I’ve heard My Girls on the radio or on TV before and I like it, but I haven't ever really felt the urge to explore their music.
It’s strange because I feel like this is the kind of music I normally get into; semi-experimental, lots of droning soundscapes and textures and layered synths, but I did find it difficult to connect with. Sometimes this kind of music washes over you in an engaging way, and as you listen more it starts to unfurl itself and get under your skin. And sometimes it just washes over you leaving little memory or trace. Unfortunately the majority of this seems to fall in the latter category, feeling like it’s neither experimentally odd enough nor atmospherically immersive enough to be genuinely interesting.
My Girls and Bluish are really good though, the vocal melodies on both tracks deviate from what seems to be ACs standard pattern and they pull the music along with them, making a great blend of droning indie folky arty pop. No More Runnin’ I like too, and I like the ravey noises on Brother Sport, bringing a bit of vitality and vigor.
Overall I can’t quite shake a slight sense of falseness to much of it, that they are deliberately making music to appeal to Pitchfork, music that seems complex, dense and psychedelically experimental and original, but is in truth is only superficially those things, underneath it all is a rather pedestrian and safely weird collection of music dressed in calculatedly elaborate robes. Obviously I can’t know AC’s intentions, and there’s plenty of music I like you could make the same accusations against, but this did leave me slightly bored.
I don’t think it’s terrible though, even if it does have some insincerity to it there is of course skill to it as well as some good songs and it passes an hour easily enough. It's on the cusp of 2 and 3. On balance I’m unlikely to listen again, as there are other places I’d go for this type of thing, which rather unfortunately puts it at 2 on my scale.
🐒🦍
Playlist: Bluish
Pixies
4/5
Doolittle
One of those bands whose songs I know well through osmosis, but have never given a proper listen to - and another one of those albums I wish I’d listened to earlier as it is pretty great!
Debaser, Here Comes Your Man and Monkey Gone to Heaven are obviously the famous ones, and they are brilliant bits of immediate, catchy alt rock. Debaser has that slight new wave feel with the drums and then the surfy backing vocals, Here Comes Your Man is a superb bit of power pop and Monkey Gone to Heaven is just great.
There’s some great stuff on here, Wave of Mutilation is brilliantly catchy for a song about driving your car into the sea, I Bleed has some great guitar, Mr Grieves has a kind of country-ish twinge and a great sense of frenetic swing.
La La Love You is great, another catchy bit of jangly surf inflected pop with a slight off kilter sense. No 13 Baby is a superior bit of pre-grunge alt rock with, as throughout, some great bass playing. There Goes My Gun is great too, the superb backing vocals and Duane Eddy style guitar solo really make it shine. I loved Silver too, kind of western-ish with a definite English folk atmosphere.
I expected it to be far more abrasive and far less melodic, but it does a great job at combining those two things, you can hear their alt rock/punk-ish attitudes and origins, but they are combined with a great sense of pop craft, with new wave, surf, classic rock influences and inflections. And of course the lyrics and themes have enough outsider unconventionality to them to keep them interesting and pull them away from their rock/alt rock peers.
A high 4 with potential, looking forward to listening some more.
🧚🧚🧚🧚
Playlist submission: Here Comes Your Man
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Bug
Looking back I seem to have quite enjoyed You’re Living All Over Me, and I feel similarly about this.
J Mascis is not the strongest vocalist, but he has a laid back, slackery charm to his vocals that suit the songs and overall vibe. He also does interesting stuff on the guitar, and despite the noise there are plenty of nuanced variations and touches which pull this out of the morass of US noise/alt rock, like the wah on Yeah We Know, the spacey slide guitar on Let it Ride and the acoustic on Pond Song
There are some good songs, Freak Scene is great, you can see why it’s their most famous song, No Bones has a nice bit of swing to it, They Always Come is nicely plaintive, Budge has a nice chorus and Let it Ride. The less said about Don’t the better though.
Overall it’s a decent noisy guitar album, with some good songs, good drums and some great guitar moments. I’d happily give it a listen again if in the right mood, a solid 3.
🪲🪲🪲
Playlist submission: Freak Scene
Boards of Canada
5/5
Music Has The Right to Children
I’m not as familiar with this as I am with Geogaddi for some reason, even though I know this is generally considered their high water mark, and I haven’t listened to either of them for quite a while.
It’s interesting listening now, how many childhood references and moods there are on this, something that I think must have previously passed me by, even though there are numerous Sesame Street samples and that the title is a big clue. Those samples combined with the vintage synth sounds, lines and burbles give a slightly strange and dislocated haze to it, not quite a dream and not quite a memory but seemingly an evocation of something from childhood. At the same time the intricate, hip hop inflected and meticulously layered rhythms, beats and percussion balance that abstracted mood with a cooler, sharper edge, giving it an overall affecting, ruminative character.
I also thought it might feel a little dated or very firmly recognisably late 90s, but it really doesn’t at all. I suppose the mix of contemporary and vintage synths are kind of timeless, but the drums, beats and percussion still sound great, echoing back to 80s hip hop, but with fullness and depth, and they aren’t overly influenced by the house and big beat of the late 90s, or other contemporary electronica.
While each song is relatively distinct and the track listing follows the pattern of longer songs with shorter vignettes it flows together brilliantly as one piece of music, shifting and moving between textures and moods often in the same song, giving me a similar feeling to listening to some of Brian Eno’s ambient albums or Endtroducing. In fact this feels like a brilliant synthesis of those two artists.
It’s a superb electronic/ambient album but it’s also just a superb album in its own right. Easy 5.
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁
Playlist submission: Hard to pick one out, but I particularly love the synth of Roygbiv.
Yes
4/5
Fragile
The Yes albums we’ve had are mixed up with the ELP album in my memory, so it’s hard to place this one in that context. Looking back at the reviews I didn’t seem to care much for Close to the Edge but I didn’t mind The Yes Album. But I actually can’t really remember much about either of them.
I know Roundabout, apart from Owner of Lonely Heart, it must be their most famous song, and it is brilliant; a catchy melody, an excellent bass line, some great spacey synth noises, a superb keyboard solo, nice acoustic and electric guitars and a suitably melodramatic sense of pomposity. Reading about how it was constructed is pretty interesting, but my favourite thing I read is the genesis of it: ‘The song originated when the band were on tour and travelled from Aberdeen to Glasgow, and went through many roundabouts on the way.’ Inspirationally Craig David-esque.
Thereafter, despite it having the usual, undeniably amusing tang of prog rock self importance, it never veers into overbearing and I found myself enjoying it, it feels like what I’d imagined Prog Rock to sound like before I actually listened to any of it.
Cans and Brahms is probably the one of the few sour notes for me, feeling a little pretentiously forgettable, but We Have Heaven is enjoyably daft with its folky playground feel and South Side of the Sky is really good, giddily powered by the kind of portentous Prog riffing that is genuinely enjoyable.
Five Per Cent For Nothing is thankfully brief, but the keyboards and piano are great on Long Distance Runaround, it’s a relatively straightforwardly accessible bit of Prog pop, with a Supertramp feel, segueing nicely into the The Fish, with its nicely haughty latin in parentheses, and an insistent groove - another good track. As are the rather earnest folk stylings of Mood for A Day. And the Heart of the Sunrise is an enjoyably serious Prog workout, never staying in one place for too long and playing on the margins of disappearing up it’s own fundament, just about staying out of the brown zone.
Sonically this is great too, the bass tone (and playing) is excellent and I love the drum sound, it has that really dampened but resonant quality to it, and the keyboards have a great imperiously bombastic feel to them.
I don’t know whether because it’s my last working day before Christmas so I’m in a good mood and I therefore imagined a sense of humour and sense of self awareness amongst the self importance and magniloquence, but I didn’t find this annoying in the way I did their other albums. I really got into it, growing into it on repeat listens, so much so I’m going 4, as it feels like the only Prog Rock album I want to listen to again
🫡🫡🫡🫡
Playlist submission: Roundabout
Bonnie Raitt
3/5
Nick of Time
I actually listened to this not that long ago, along with quite a few of her earlier albums, after accidentally watching one of her gigs on BBC2, having only really previously known a few of her songs via an uncle of mine who was a huge fan. She really does have a fantastic voice, I love her tone and phrasing, she can lean into a bluesy rasp or go more tender and delicate.
This album is a funny one though, she sings brilliantly and many of the songs are at the very least decent, but the Don Was production is so, so dated. It’s got that precise, professionally smooth, middle of the road, edgeless sound, augmented by some stylistically horrible synths and electric pianos. Love Letter is probably the worst culprit, but it’s almost so cheesy it comes back out the other side and I almost think it sounds good. Ultimately it doesn’t escape the feel of a band you’d hear playing in a dive bar in an 80s movie, like Jeff Healy in Road House.
Sometimes though the songs do push the production though, Nick of Time is excellent, probably the stand out track, Thing Called Love is a catchy if pretty rote bit of 80s blues rock, Cry on My Shoulder has a superb vocal and nice melody. Nobody’s Girl (not that one unfortunately) benefits from the acoustic only backing, showcasing her voice. Have a Heart is decently cheesy, like the end credits song of another 80s movie. After that it kind of drifts off, neither terrible nor too remarkable, to the end, apart from picking up with the nicely forlorn I Ain’t Going to Let You Break My Heart.
If you are after a cheese adjacent late 80s adult MOR blues rock album then this is a supreme example. In the context of her first few albums and how good her voice is though it is hard to escape the feeling that it's all rather insubstantial. However the flip side of that is that it is also decently inoffensive, and in the right mood I’d stick it on again, which lands it as a 3 in my book.
🕰️🕰️🕰️
Playlist submission: Nick of Time
Manic Street Preachers
5/5
Everything Must Go
I remember I was quite late to this, for some reason it was only when Australia was released that I bought it. In fact I think I bought it in HMV in Oxford Street in December ‘96, and subsequently I do associate it with Christmas, probably playing it a lot on my Sony midi hi-fi system I got for Christmas that year.
I haven’t listened in a while but it’s so familiar from so many listens; the windswept loneliness of Elvis Impersonator, the imperious A Design for Life, the new-wave-ish scratchiness of Kevin Carter, the anthemic rockness of Enola/Alone and Interiors, the emotionally triumphant title track, the bleakness of Small Black Flowers, the almost disco funk of I Am the Girl, the expansive escapism of Australia, and the slight callback sound of No Surface. Those are all great, great songs. Removables and Further Away are decent album tracks but not at the level of those tracks.
It is interesting how classic rock and Britpop adjacent this sounds with its grand symphonic arrangements and generally slower tempos than The Holy Bible. You can almost sense the relief of going with such a large, monumental sound after the claustrophobia of that record and everything with Richie, a real sense of freeing themselves from the legacy of all that.
It’s a great album, I should listen more often, but its an easy 5.
🌏🌏🌏🌏🌏
Playlist submission: Australia
Nanci Griffith
4/5
The Last of the True Believers
I thought this was great, a sweet spot of country and folk and pop, where you can almost hear how the fiddle from traditional folk became the fiddle in country, and all tied together with her great voice and her smart takes on classic country stories and themes.
It manages to skirt the edges of saccharine, MOR country, deftly hitting some of those touchpoints before skipping away, making it feel familiar but fresh at the same time.
It really is a lovely 35 and I loved the first 6 songs in particular; the great, skittering opener, the melancholy Love at the Five and Dime, the almost Pogue-ian St Olav’s Gate, the very lovely More Than a Whisper, the picaresque Banks of the Pontchartrain and the how down of Lookin’ For the Time. The Wing and the Wheel is also excellent.
An easy 4, something I’ll definitely return to.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Playlist submission: More Than a Whisper
Ray Charles
4/5
The Genius of Ray Charles
Not massively au fait with Ray Charles, but I know he has a bit of a peripatetic back catalogue, and even though he was right at the vanguard of soulifying jazz I wasn’t expecting the very pop big band swing of the first side, but there’s something really interesting about the very Sinatra-esque arrangements with his raspy soul voice and phrasing, particularly on It Had to be You.
The ballady second side is also full of charm, and feels like a dfifferent album, but is equally successful and an equally great listen.
He might be the epitome of ‘he could sing the phone book and it would sound great, there’s just something ineffably fantastic about the timbre of his voice, that elevates eveything on here, just slipping it into a 4.
🕶️🕶️🕶️🕶️
Playlist submission: Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin’
JAY Z
5/5
The Blueprint
I bought this around the time it came out after hearing, or more likely seeing Takeover on MTV. That still sounds great, the sample is of course excellent, but is used brilliantly too, not exactly subtle, but it creates the groove and the tension in the song.
The Ruler’s Back, Izzo, Girls, Girls, Girls, U Don’t Know, Heart of the City continue the excellent use of samples, using similar funk, jazz and soul influences as G-funk, but with less of the weeded out paranoia atmosphere, making it sound pretty warm and very accessible. The pop sensibility to the music is really evident, and while the lyrics aren’t as hardcore as Biggie or Nas or Tupac, they still touch on those same subjects, but his delivery is so laid back and non-aggressive it feels way less confrontational, combining with the music to make a very enjoyable listen.
Was thinking 4 but on the final listen it might be crossing into the 5s, it’s a great album, lyrically dense but humorous and musically open armed it’s a great listen. It’s much better than some rap albums I’ve given 4 to, ergo I’ll slip into the 5s
🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️
Playlist submission: Takeover
Slipknot
1/5
Utter dreck.
Elvis Presley
5/5
Elvis Presely
It’s surprising how good this sounds and how coherent it feels for something right at the birth of Rock’n’Roll, before the album and before the pop star as we came to know them. I suppose it being recorded in relatively few sessions, relatively close together helps it all feel connected, and while Tutti Frutti and Blue Suede Shoes are more or less Rock’n’Roll songs the majority of it is the rockabilly, country and r’n’b that birthed Rock’n’Roll. That gives it both a nice sense of history and also a sense of continuity.
Ultimately it’s a very listenable and enjoyable collection, and even knowing everything we know now about Elvis, you can still feel the charisma and excitement coming through on the songs, helped of course by his excellent band, their exuberance and attack giving the songs a real edge.
Musically a 4, historically a 5, I’ll split the difference and round up
🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️
Playlist submission: Blue Moon
Eagles
5/5
Hotel California
One of those albums where everything on it sounds just right, both sonically and thematically. Each track works individually but they all contribute to the coked out, unsettling, sunshine drenched, harmony ridden, end of the hippy era vibe.
The first side in particular is excellent, the title track of course is fantastic, New Kid in Town’s and Wasted Time’s harmonies are so so good, and the song reveals itself as an absolutely superb ballad on repeat listens. And Life in the Fast line is their most convincing riff driven rocker, benefitting from the lack of Bernie Leadon’s country influence and Joe Walsh’s more rock approach.
The second side does perhaps dip a little with Victim of Love and Pretty Maids All in a Row, but only in comparison to that first side and the superb final two tracks, particularly the Last Resort. I do also like the Martin-esque Wasted Time string reprise, it gives a nice sense of sad grandeur.
A classic for a reason, the songs are great, the harmonies are superb, it sounds fantastic and it nails it’s thematic concept of ‘loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realized and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work’ - it sounds sunny and hopeful on the surface but is undercut with despair and seediness. Easy 5.
🏨🏨🏨🏨🏨
Playlist submission: Obvious, but Hotel California
Various Artists
5/5
A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector
Just getting this in before going back to work tomorrow, when the Christmas dream truly dies.
One little thing I wanted to mention that I really love is how you can hear the New York accent on Frosty the Snowman, ‘Frorsty the snowman…’, so great.
Amyway all the songs are familiar from so many Christmases and playlists, but it’s a great album, 35 minutes of brilliant sounding do-wop rock’n’roll Christmas pop. I don’t think you can give it anything but 5, it’s obviously not a Revolver or Rumours but it’s unfair to judge it by the criteria of classic albums, as it’s in a specific genre outside of normal pop
🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
Playlist submission: Christmas Baby, Please Come Home
Sonic Youth
3/5
Daydream Nation
No 3 of the 5 Sonic Youth albums on the list.
I can’t really recall much about Dirty and EVOL, but looking back at my reviews I seemed to have enjoyed them without really loving them, and I think I feel the same about this one.
I definitely think they are one of the most interesting US alt rock bands, their looseness and surf pop sensibilities marry well with the interestingly distorted and scuzzy guitar noise, particularly on Teen Age Riot, the standout track.
It may be that I can’t really remember the previous albums well enough but I thought you could particularly hear how influential this, for good and for ill, was on lots of the bands that followed. And despite it definitely being overlong it seemed to be more melodically interesting than the other two albums - the guitar noise framework meshing well with more conventional songwriting, and the bass and drums creating lots of good grooves, like The Sprawl and Total Trash (which the Manics must have liked). I also liked Candle and Eliminator.
I think I preferred this to EVOL and Dirty, although truthfully I’d have to listen to them again to be sure. I don’t quite think though it reaches a 4, so it’s a high 3 for now and I’d like to revisit when I don’t have 11 albums to catch up on.
🕯️🕯️🕯️
Playlist submission: Teen Age Riot
Blondie
5/5
Parallel Lines
The best of Blondie was one of the official minidisc albums I got when I got my minidisc player for Christmas in 1998. Nothing to do with Parallel Lines but whenever I hear Blondie I think about that Minidisc player.
Sweet memories aside this album is just a terrific rush of pop perfection, right in the sweet spot of new wave, disco, reggae, pop, power pop, little bits of country and rock, with a slightly crazy number of classic bangers: Hanging on the Telephone, One Way or Another, Picture This, Fade Away & Radiate, Pretty Baby, Sunday Girl, Heart of Glass, I’m Gonna Love You To.
Some of the less famous songs are great as well, I Know but I Don’t Know has a great seedy pop snark to it, 11.59’s slight doo wop wedded to power pop is super, Will Anything Happen is an excellent bit of new wave vaguely rockabilly synth pop and Just Go Away is a lovely bit of attitude.
All bangers, all the time
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
Playlist submission: Heart of Glass the obvious one, but I love Fade Away & Radiate.
The Birthday Party
3/5
Junkyard
The only thing I know about The Birthday Party is that it’s Nick Cave’s first band, but I assumed it would be some kind of spiky post punk album, perhaps a bit like The Fall. It’s not far off that, although with a bit more funk and a bit more melody poking through the gothic gloom and scuzziness, but without the miserablist humour and sensibilities of Mark E Smith.
You can also hear a few signposts to the music he’d go on to make, a more melodic take on the same themes and structures, with the confrontational and challenging aspects hidden below are slightly shinier veneer.
Although I enjoyed this I don’t think it quite stands up to some of the other post punk we have, like Public Image, or quite reaches the level of other tricky and abrasive music. A solid 3.
🗑️🗑️🗑️
Playlist submission: Several Sins
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Innervisions
It's pretty astonishing that this was released only 10 months after Talking Book. The two albums definitely have a kinship in my mind, almost like part 1 and part 2, Talking Book tending more personal and this one looking more externally. Either way they are both fantastic albums.
I’ve always loved Too High, with it’s bubbling synth, simultaneously upbeat and subdued, emphasising the druggy subject. I never took to Visions much when I first got the album, but it’s grown a lot on me over the years, and now I think it’s great, a lovely latin inflected soul ballad.
Living for the City, of course, is superb, maybe one of his best songs, with a superb groove and melody and subject matter.
Golden Lady really feels like you are on a boat in the Caribbean, coasting along on the laidback breeze. It also sounds a bit like he sings Gordon Liddy, which would make sense with the Misstra Know It All being about Nixon, even if the song seems to be a love song.
Higher Ground is equal to Superstition for Stevie-funk for me, absolute banger. Jesus Children is the sort of song that only Stevie can do, propulsive synth, a soulful and catchy melody with a dark edge. Brilliant. All in Love is Fair is probably my least favourite track on the album - it’s a good ballad but it doesn’t quite reach the standards of the rest of the album.
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing is superb, like You Are the Sunshine of My Life, one of those songs whose melody feels like it might be a latin jazz classic from the 50s, with a sense of instant familiarity. And He’s Misstra Know it all is a fantastic closer, with the lovely piano line, jazzy drums and flute and brilliantly memorable lyrics and melody.
Easy 5.
😎😎😎😎😎
Playlist submission: Could be any track, but I’ll go Too High
Marty Robbins
4/5
Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
I really enjoyed this, putting me in mind of The Big Lebowski or a very watchable western on TV on a Sunday afternoon.
It’s an interesting genre, Western music, I do like it, mainly as I like a lot of the 50s and 60s western movies. It has probably been subsumed by Country and Country & Western, but I really like its Spanish influenced non-fiddle folk feel, and that it’s immediately evocative of a specific time and place, however mythical that world may be.
He has a very 50s voice, almost like a crooner, and he has a great sense of small scale drama that really suits the relatively simple backing and the themes and well constructed stories of the songs. I particularly liked Big Iron, Cool Water, They’re Hanging Me Tonight, The Strawberry Roan, Running Gun and Utah Carol
I could happily listen to this all day, it’s on the cusp of 3 and 4, I’ll tip over to 4 as I’m sure I’ll revisit this more.
🤠🤠🤠🤠
Playlist submission: Big Iron
Linkin Park
1/5
Hybrid Theory
For the first 2 seconds of Papercut I thought this might not be as poor as I expected, but then that annoying little guitar figure appears, then the ‘heavy’ riffing starts and then the terrible sing/rapping kicks in and it is truly awful.
Obviously I’m not at all predisposed to metal or nu-metal, and despite having a soft spot for a couple of not very good Limp Bizkit songs, I was always going to struggle with this. But it is truly awful. It’s very, very dated, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it sounds so bad, the guitars, despite their ‘metalness’ are insipid and limp, his vocals, whether singing or rapping, have a really irritating tinniness and thinness, the lyrics are the worst kind of moody adolescent crap, total I’m 14 And This Is Deep vibes. Forgotten’s ‘in the middle of my thoughts’ is pure Lonely Island
There aren’t even any sort of enjoyably silly moments, it’s all run through with hollow, pompous self seriousness, completely lacking in any sense of light or shade, self awareness or any glimpse of humour. And all combined with such a safe amount of metal edge - despite not being keen on the metal we’ve had at least with most of it there was a kind of sense of them meaning it, whereas this sounds so self importantly calculated and cynical.
One listen is enough. Woeful.
🛝
Playlist submission: Honestly who gives a shit?
Steve Winwood
3/5
Arc of Diver
Big ‘Today on Pebble Mill we’ll be interviewing Birmingham’s busiest Postman!’ with While You See a Chance.
Steve Winwood has a genuinely interesting career and I like a lot of his stuff, and I am very partial to a bit of easily palatable soul inflected AOR/pop, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by this one, at least on first listen. The songs themselves are fine, if a little unmemorable, but the synths are pretty intrusive, on occasion sounding unintentionally amusing, and the whole thing sounds quite strangely mixed - a lot of the keyboards and guitars as well as the synths are way too prominent in the mix and can feel quite jarring.
It did grow on me on repeat listens though, I actually liked some of the songs, and the sound beneath the unbalanced mixing. While You See a Chance is a nice song, I really liked Second Hand Woman, a great bit of uptempo disco influenced pop-soul, Slowdown Sundown has nice Traffic like energy and feel, and Spanish Dancer is actually an excellent bit of slow burning bit of soulful rock-pop.
It does definitely tail off after Spanish Dancer, but overall I found this pretty enjoyable if a bit patchy. If you want a nice bit of plasticy sounding adult pop there are probably some more consistent places to look, but this is a solid album. I would definitely listen again, but I not actively seek it out. Square in the 3s then.
🥽🥽🥽
Playlist submission: Spanish Dancer
Public Enemy
5/5
Fear of a Black Planet
I’ve never listened to this. I had It Takes a Nation of Millions on CD and used to really like it, but I’ve never ventured much into PE, despite liking them.
After listening all afternoon yesterday and this morning I feel like I’ve been punched in the head a lot, but in a good way. Lyrically and sonically this has to be one of the densest albums we’ve had. Nearly all the metal albums we’ve had, with their harsh guitars and kick drumming, aren’t even close to the power and attitude on here. I’m a big fan of the Bomb Squad’s excessively jam packed production, it has a brilliant relentlessness and edge, while also being catchy and groove laden. Looking at Whosampled there are so many samples on each song and they are used brilliantly, either as hooks or are intricately woven into the soundscape of each song - I love when you briefly hear something you recognise and then don’t hear it again.
The well known songs; 911 is Joke, Welcome to the Terrordome, Burn Hollywood Burn, Fight the Power are all excellent and still relevant in 2025. I love the high pace of Burn Hollywood Burn, and Flavor Flav's drawling delivery on 911 is a Joke is great in contrast to the chaotic, noisy production.
But there are also great songs, samples and moments throughout, Brothers Gonna Work it Out is excellent, the bass giving a great relentless groove, I love the use of the guitar stabs of Getting Better on Who Stole the Soul? Revolutionary Generation and Fear of a Black Planet are both great and well ahead of their time, Leave this Off Your Fuckin’ Charts use of soul samples and heavy guitar is great, kind of like a radio stuck between two stations with someone scratching over the top. Final Count is rare bit of minimalism before the onrush of Fight the Power
My only quibble would be that an hour does feel quite long for the amount of musical and lyrical content. But that’s only minor really and doesn’t at all diminish what an incredible album this is, full of righteous intensity and anger, noise, hooks and power. It feels quite apart from many Hip Hop albums, neither revelling in stereotypes nor compromising its anger, combining the articulacy of De La Soul, the byzantine sample based construction of something like Paul’s Boutique, the societal critique of 70s soul and the power of it’s own righteousness - it really is fantastic.
5 is no joke
🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
Playlist submission: Who Stole the Soul?
The xx
4/5
xx
This passed me by a bit when it came out, although I do know some of it as I remember it being played a lot in my old office.
They do have one trick, but it’s a superbly enjoyable trick, the atmosphere they create with relatively minimal instrumentation is very appealing. Elements of indie, new wave and electronica all tied up with a reverb bow and sung over with almost sheepish, melancholic vocals, kind of directed at each other but also seemingly not quite communicating very well.
It never veers too far from that template, but I don’t think it needs to when the overall feel is so immersive, it’s a great headphone listen, a great work listen and, I imagine, a great darkened room listen or a great motorway at 3am as headlights flash by listen. I’m guessing Intro or Stars are ones for Paul’s trains at dusk playlist?
Not sure it quite gets to 5 but its easily a high 4
✖️✖️✖️✖️
Playlist submission: VCR
Television
5/5
Marquee Moon
Diddle-liddle-liddle-liddle-luh
That hook on Marquee Moon is so memorably catchy.
I haven’t heard this album in ages but I was really into around 2002/03, I think I might still have it on vinyl in the attic somewhere.
Listening now has reminded me how massively influential it has been and what a superb album it is, amalgamating punk, garage, new wave, rock and jazz into a classic guitar album that sounds contemporary and timeless at the same time. The guitars interweave beautifully over the skittish post punk drums and bass, the jagged, edgy vocals have a great punky underground New York attitude but it still has a distinct melodic pop sensibility.
I love the whole album but that first side from See No Evil to Marquee Moon is sublime, the title-track’s 10 minutes fly by and I love the feeling of ending at around 9.17 before the bass and hook come back.
Elevation - Surely Californication was heavily influenced by this. I adore Guiding Light, it’s sparser arrangement with piano has an ascending and dreamlike quality sitting really nicely against the rest of the guitar tracks
Every track is great, the guitar interplay is fantastic, the lyrics are superb. An undoubted classic. 5 tvs, moons or marquees, whichever you prefer.
📺📺📺📺📺
Playlist submission: Marquee Moon
Ryan Adams
4/5
Heartbreaker
I listened to this A LOT back in the day when I was really into Ryan Adams. I absolutely loved Gold and then worked back to this and Whiskeytown but by the time of Love is Hell I started to drift away and haven’t listened to him much at all. I think his douchiness put me off him before all the sexy predator stuff.
Aside from the douchiness and the nostalgic rush this is a good little album. It’s definitely a bit patchy and can feel longer than it actually is, and there is more than a hint of self mythologising sad eyed I’m a poet fuckboy about it, but there are some great songs and the relatively spare production is excellent, perfectly in keeping with the deliberately loose and slightly ragged feel.
I always liked To Be Young a great Dylan-esque rocker, he’s good at these sorts of things, but the more plaintive acoustic tracks are probably the tracks that work best on here, the run of Winding Wheel (the organ is great on this), Amy, Oh My Sweet Carolina, Bartering Lines is superb, and Emmylou’s appearance on Oh My Sweet Carolina is great.
I like the chorus of Call Me on Your Way Back Home, but the overall mauldin nature of the track is a bit trying. The lyrics on Damn, Sam have always annoyed me, a kind of teenager’s idea of romanticism, but are ultimately hollow.
That mawkishness does bubble to the surface on occasion down the back half. Come Pick Me Up I’m not that keen on,To Be The One is great in it’s almost Nebraska-esque sparseness, but Why Do They Leave, from the title to the melody, and despite Gillian Welch’s backing vocals it’s all a bit too overwrought. Shakedown, despite being a rather prosaic rocker is welcome burst of energy. In My Time of Need is another great, spare ballad, and the piano on Sweet Lil Gal is a nice variation on the banjo/guitar and has a nice ghostly ambience.
He is clearly a great songwriter, there are great melodies and hooks throughout, but revisiting this now I do cringe at some of the lyrics I was into as a 22 year old. Overall though it is a very good album, a bit patchy in the middle but up to Bartering Lines it is truly excellent and it finishes strongly as well. Combine that with the nostalgia and it pushes it into the 4s.
💔💔💔💔
Playlist submission: Oh My Sweet Carolina
Jeff Buckley
3/5
Grace
Hmmm. Like everyone else I had this, and I think I tried to convince myself I liked it, but there’s something about it that never quite landed with me. On the surface it should be something I like, and in parts I do appreciate it, but I think I always got a sense of self indulgence from it. And despite him obviously having a good voice there’s some quality to it that I struggle with, to the point I find it a little bit annoying. The songs themselves I also feel tend to wooliness, not quite reaching the elegiac, transcendental heights he’s obviously striving for, and maybe that disconnect is what gives me the sense of self indulgence
Having said that I do like The Last Goodbye, and despite it being played to death Hallelujah is an undeniably good version.
Maybe the circumstances around his death and the reputation this album subsequently developed has created unrealistic expectations, but ultimately it feels like an average album with some good moments. I wouldn’t rule out listening again but it doesn’t really grab me. It feels a bit wilfully obtuse to give it 2 so it just scrapes a 3.
🏊🏊🏊
Playlist submission: The Last Goodbye
Pink Floyd
5/5
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd are on the list of ‘Bands I really must get into someday’. Today (and yesterday) is that day.
Obviously I’ve heard a lot of Pink Floyd songs in the ether and I know many of their songs by cultural osmosis, but listening to this on repeat I can see why people love them, and how people might think that listening to it stoned out of their minds at 3am might give them ‘the answer’.
I don’t know what that question is that might lead to a drug fuelled psychic awakening, but this does answer my question of ‘What’s a Pink Floyd album like?’. Listening to this it’s a meticulously built 44 minutes of brilliantly layered, slow tempo sonic atmosphere, movingly structured around a loose concept.
Although there are distinct songs it’s really about experiencing the whole thing, the feel and movement of the full run time, with synths, solos, melodies all unfolding at a languid pace, all with an occasional disquieting undertow. The solo on Have a Cigar is particularly good.
I don’t know if this is prog rock, I suppose in a way it is, but it’s far richer and far better than the Yes and ELP albums we’ve had. It may share the same seriousness, but it never crosses into unintentional pompousness or silliness, it feels self contained and self possessed in a way those other albums don’t.
Having never listened to a Pink Floyd album before, but having been keen to give them a listen I’m glad this lived up to expectations - perhaps today (and yesterday) were supposed to be the day I liked it, the psychedelic mystery of Pink Floyd was fated to reveal itself on this very day (and yesterday).
💎💎💎💎💎
Playlist submission: Shine on You Crazy Diamond (all IX parts)
Orange Juice
4/5
Rip It Up
I’m pretty sure I’ve given this a go in the past, probably after watching a BBC4 documentary about Postcard Records, and aside from the obviously well known title track and I Can’t Help Myself I can’t recall much about it.
Listening now though I find it strange that I don’t remember much of it as it’s a pretty great little album. I can understand how the clear notes of feyness and tweeness might be off putting, but I really enjoyed their slightly quirky vibe, a kind of pale Scottish guitar band who clearly listen to a lot of Talking Heads, Disco and Afrobeat, but aren’t quite able to nail the funk element, resulting and something that is neither quite jangly guitar pop nor disco-funk, sitting attractively somewhere between the two.
Rip it Up is a great example of that, I love how they wanted to do a Chic/Disco influenced track, and while you can hear that, it comes out as a far less muscular and more delightful bit of Scottish indie, with some great bits of squelchy synth whimsy and it really is a superb song, a brilliant bit of pop music.
A Million Pleading Faces is excellent too, toe tappingly good with some great little guitar runs and a great Afro-groove. Mud in Your Eye's first two drum beats sound a lot like Tusk, before it goes into a very nice New Wave Soul hybrid, kind of like Elvis Costello but with less wired abrasion. Turn Away has more of the New Wave, Talking Heads vibe, and Breakfast Time has a nice amount of reggae edge to it, kind of Specials-y but less sure footed, in a good way.
I Can’t Help Myself is another great bit of disco-jangle pop, again the feeling Chic gets fed in one end and something pleasingly odd and catchy comes out the other end.
There is a bit of a sense of drift towards the conclusion after the excellent first 6 tracks, but I do like the horn embellishments of Flesh of My Flesh, and Louise Louise has some great harmonies and Hokoyo is another great Afrobeat bop.
This is a solid 4, a great little album, not perfect, but a very enjoyable listen with plenty of charm and idiosyncrasy and enough going on musically to make me want to come back to it.
🧃🧃🧃🧃
Playlist submission: Rip it Up
Wild Beasts
3/5
Two Dancers
I definitely have a bit of a blind spot with post-Strokes late 00s indie. A lot of the bands either passed me by or I struggled to sustain much interest as time passed. Wild Beasts are definitely one that passed me by, I know the name but I don’t think I know any of their music. Whether it was because the name is in the same ballpark as Animal Collective I had thought it may be in a similar vein and therefore not that great.
In actuality, and while it does seem to have some commonality with AC, it’s a better album and a more enjoyable listen than Merriweather Post Pavilion, and sounds perhaps a bit closer to The National, with a sprinkling of Future Islands.
There is definitely a similar percussion feel as The National, but it feels more dynamic and intricately constructed, and, I assume, his falsetto might be a bit marmite, but I liked it, it has a kind of detached weariness to it, and it actually reminded me a bit of the Orange Juice album in places.
The Fun Powder Plot is a really nice opener, some of the almost far eastern sounding guitar is great, as are some of the lines on Howling and Hooting. All The King’s Men is great, nice toms and a nice melody, and it’s probably the best track.
Two Dancers (i) and (ii) are great as well, with their respective propulsive and dreamy atmospheres. This Is Our Lot is good as well, the prominent bass providing the hook is really nice, and it ends well with Empty Nest (Through the Iron Gate being an iTunes bonus track). The rest of the tracks are fine, if slightly less good variations on the stronger tracks.
I don’t think it quite gets into the 4s, although I enjoyed it and I’m intrigued to see if it grows on me in time. Mid to high 3.
👯👯👯
Playlist submission: All The King’s Men
Frank Sinatra
5/5
Songs for Swingin’ Lovers
"You know what the title of that book should be? Yes I Can if Frank Sinatra Says it's OK, because he calls all the shots for those guys"
From the moment his voice kicks in on You Make Me Feel So Young to the final note of How About You this just sounds so great and so right; the songs, the arrangements, the production and the vocals all combine perfectly.
Many of the same thoughts apply to this as they did to In The Wee Small Hours; the horns and strings, while substantial and weighty don’t pierce or overpower, and Frank’s control of tone, phrasing and enunciation is sublime, that clarity and precision combined with the elegant and sympathetic approach to the songs is just fantastic.
Despite the more upbeat nature of the songs, it doesn’t go bombastic or over the top. It doesn’t have the same melancholy tone as In The Wee Small Hours, but it does share the same appreciation of nuance and subtlety, I think due to Nelson Riddle’s arrangements and Frank’s skill as a song interpreter. Also a lot of the playing, particularly the bass is superb, you can really hear the skill the musicians have
I don’t know if these are the definitive versions of these songs, but the do feel like it, not only the big songs - You Make Me Feel So Young, Pennies From Heaven, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Anything Goes - but the ones I know less well, It Happened In Monterey, You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me, Old Devil Moon, I Thought About You, Swingin’ Down the Lane.
It really is a great listen, an easy, swingin’ 5
🎺🎺🎺🎺🎺
Playlist submission: I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Green Day
4/5
Dookie
Not necessarily my favourite genre, but I have a bit of a soft spot for this sort of pop punk, post grunge and pre emo, and this is surely the best example of this type of music. It’s not their fault they birthed Sum 41, Blink 182, Cupboard 37, Hook 92 and Toast 13, and that Busted and McFly teenified them.
Their melodic sensibilities are clear, and while some songs are stronger than others when it’s good it’s really good; Longview (one of the better songs about wanking) Welcome to Paradise and Basket Case are excellent, catchy bits of power-pop-punk.
Lyrically they stand apart from their peers too, there’s none of the puerile lyrics of Blink 182 and they eschew the self pitying, cringeworthy, teenage, my parents hate me whininess of many other bands. Their focus on the frustration, boredom, anxiety and the limited horizon of teenage and young adult life feels true to life and authentic in a way many punk, metal and alt bands from the same time do not.
It’s a really enjoyable listen, with some great highs and generally solid tracks. As it’s the best example of this sort of thing It just crosses into the 4s
💩💩💩💩
Playlist submission: Basket Case is obviously great, but I’ll go with Longview
Paul McCartney and Wings
5/5
Band On the Run
If I listen to Mrs Vandebilt I get the ‘Ho, Hey-Ho’ bit stuck in my head and sing it for days, annoying Clair no end.
Even the less heralded songs on here, like Mamunia or No Words, which may be considered slight in comparison to the other tracks, are brilliantly catchy and melodic bits of superbly crafted music, the vague African feel on Mamunia and the excellent orchestral soft rock of No Words, the kind of thing ELO wish they could write. And then of course the more heralded songs on here are some of his best solo tracks; Band on the Run, Jet, Ms Vandebilt, Let Me Roll It and Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five.
The bass is superb throughout, both in tone and playing, as would be expected, but I particularly love its rollicking tone and feel on Mrs Vandebilt, a bit like on Old Brown Shoe, and its resonance on Let Me Roll It.
We all know Macca loves a song suite, and the title track is one of his best, but also the call backs and references in Picasso’s Last Words work brilliantly with the patchwork feel of the song itself (love the broken drums at ‘3 o’clock in the morning’ and the clarienet) and before it fades into the fantastic Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five, which in turn fades out with the Band on the Run intro.
Bluebird has grown on me a lot over the years too. I wasn’t always sure about it, but now I really like its yearning feel and it works really well breaking up the exuberance of Band on the Run, Jet and Mrs Vandebilt.
I can see how it might get dismissed as slight, as his facility for melody and songwriting seems so effortless, but there is so much craft, inventiveness and clearly a lot of thought running through all of it, and it is just a consistently fantastic album of great songs. Straightforward 5.
✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️
Playlist submission: Let Me Roll It or Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five? Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Beggar’s Banquet
I love all 4/5 albums from their imperial phase, but the patchwork, rootsy, folky, country-blues of this has always stood out to me, feeling more fractious and less country-fied then LIB and Sticky Fingers and less louche and decadent than Exile, maybe because Street Fighting Man and Sympathy for the Devil are more contemporarily socio-political than much of what was on the albums that followed.
It’s also remarkable how much the acoustic (and slide) dominates, forming the backbone of the album, with only SFTD, Street Fighting Man and Stray Cat Blues not being built around acoustic guitars.
Despite the fact I’ve played it to death, Sympathy for the Devil is ageless, and still sounds fantastic everytime I hear it. Street Fighting Man is the same. No Expectations I think is one of their best slow blues/country blues, the slide is great and the whole atmosphere is excellent. Dear Doctor is a great little country ditty, but Parachute Woman is a definite favourite, the bass is superb and the whole murky blues groove is great.
Prodigal son is another great little country blues and I love Charlie’s drum pattern on Stray Cat Blues, I always think it sounds like it could be used for a hip hop or DJ Shadow track, and the guitar is superb. Filthy words but a banging track. Factory Girl’s folk flavour with eastern percussion is another one of my favourites, it may be rather throwaway but I love the tune and simplicity of it. And salt of the Earth is a great gospel inflected track, similar to You Can’t Always Get What You Want in vibe, despite the slightly laughable verses coming from Jagger, although the middle 8 does undercut the verses somewhat
Great, great album. Obviously a 5.
👿👿👿👿👿
Playlist submission: Could be a few, but I’ll go obvious and Sympathy for the Devil
Randy Newman
3/5
Good Old Boys
I’ve listened to this a lot today, and I’m still not totally sure where it lands. A couple of listens passed me by and then a couple of times I found it really engaging
Conceptually and thematically it’s great and there are some excellent songs, but I think what’;s confusing me is that there can be a bit of saminess to his song writing, and sometimes it feels like the focus of the album becomes a bit diffuse and it meanders into too much wryness and whimsy.
When it’s good it’s pretty great I think, Rednecks taking aim at both Southerners and Northerners smugness and attitudes to race, Birmingham rolls along nicely and Marie is a super, downbeat ballad. Mr President is great too and sounds like an early version of I Love LA, but I think a lot of his songs sound like I Love LA, and in these 4 songs you kind of have the 4 Randy Newman song archetypes.
I really like the string motif on Louisiana 1927 and it’s another good song, kind of downcast and bluesy before unfurling with a nice orchestral arrangement. I like the use of Every Man a King followed by Kingfish, about the person who wrote the former, it works really well with the album’s themes. Naked Man owes a bit of a debt to Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da and A Wedding in Cherokee County is pretty good, I really like the Moog and Arp noises and overall feel of the track
Back on My Feet Again and Rollin’ are good songs, but I think by the end I got the feeling that his songs seem to work better in smaller doses of 2 or 3 songs at a time, there’s something about 12 tracks sequentially that dragged a bit.
I think maybe this is one of those albums where the idea of the album is better than the whole album itself, and maybe listening to 5 or 6 of the songs gets the idea across better than the entirety of it. I’d definitely listen again, but it probably won’t go into rotation, making it a solid 3.
🧣🧣🧣
Playlist submission: Rednecks
Maxwell
3/5
Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite
Lynn, these are sex people
I vaguely remember Maxwell, and this is the sort of thing I would have really hated in the 90s. I’m more open to this sort of thing now, and there are parts to this I really enjoyed, but it suffers from being the type of music that, due to how seriously it takes itself, has been so extensively parodied that it’s hard to remember to take it completely seriously. Eg Til the Cops Come Knockin’ is utterly Lonely Island.
I also don’t know enough 90s R’n’B or Neo Soul to know where this sits in the oeuvre. I do like his voice, it's obviously very Michael Jackson influenced, but it does have a lovely smooth tone and feel. The percussion and bass are also nice, again a very smooth, clearly very 70s soul influenced sound, and they do have a great pocket and groove on most of the tracks, and the organs and keyboards also maintain that retro feel. The guitars however aren’t good at all, (which is quite mad when you see who played on this) they don’t sound 70s or retro at all, they sound incredibly cheesy, and a lot like Garageband loops from 2004. Which is quit
It’s obviously a very different album from Good Old Boys, but I have a similar feeling that individually or in small doses many of the songs here are enjoyably listenable, but in its entirety it doesn’t quite work and the sex message gets rather laboured.
Despite the guitars I liked Welcome and Ascension is really good, a nice overbite bit of 90s funk-soul. Dancewitme is probably the stand out track for me, a great groove with a nice bit of energy. Suitelady, despite some of the unintentionally funny lyrics and guitar, is also a nice bit of slowed down groove, and I didn’t mind the closing Suite Theme at, despite it teetering on the edge of complete cheese with the sax and whispered vocals.
I didn’t hate this, and quite enjoyed it in parts. It’s not something I would ever have chosen to listen to, but I’m ultimately glad I did. I may not revisit it that often, but it feels like a solid sex album in the 90s R’n’B genre, so I’ll go for a smooth and buttery but goes on too long 3.
(Also, is Maxwell’s Hang Suite just Maxwell’s House? If so he’s missed out on a potentially lucrative marketing opportunity with Maxwell House coffee)
🍬🍬🍬
Playlist submission: Dancewitme
ZZ Top
3/5
Tres Hombres
I have listened to this a few times in the past, as one of my colleagues loves this album and always recommends it, and also because La Grange is a great track, but I think I found it a little underwhelming.
Listening through a few times today it’s better than I remember, but I don’t think it fully catches fire, being divided by good southern/boogie/blues rock tracks and less good but fine southern/boogie/blues rock tracks.
Waitin’ for the bus is one of the good tracks, I like the riff, but the segue into Jesus Just Left Chicago improves it, as Jesus Just Left Chicago is probably the standout track alongside La Grange, a kind of moody, atmospheric, r&b slow march, and the two songs work well side by side.
Master of Sparks is the next of the good tracks, the rhythm/drum pattern is great, kind of jumping around a bit making it feel slightly off kilter and uneasy. Move Me on Down the Line is a nice bit of propulsive blues, a good driving song on a sunny day. And La Grange of course is excellent, an irresistible bit of 70s boogie. Sheik also stands with as a slightly different feel, the same bluesiness but with a slight psychedelic edge, it almost sounds like a 80s new wave track.
I do like this type of music, but I do think it’s probably more of a various artists genre than an individual artist’s album genre. Jesus Just Left Chicago and La Grange are perfect boogie/southern/blues/driving playlist tracks, and there are other tracks that would work well in that context, but as an entire album I do feel the lack of variety dragged a little. Still its a solid, unpretentious listen, which makes it a solid 3.
ZZ🔝
ZZ🔝
ZZ🔝
Playlist submission: Jesus Just Left Chicago
Kanye West
4/5
The College Dropout
The man is mentally ill, I’ve seen him eat a plastic pie
It’s kind of hard to think back to before he was a bit Nazi and before his megalomaniacal narcissistic personality emerged when he made great pop-rap like this album.
It is a bit long, and like many hip hop albums the skits are completely pointless, but it is a great pop album, full of great hooks and samples and it sounds excellent. You can tell it’s from the mid 2000s but it has a nice round fullness to the sound, there are no sharp edges to it, or much rhythmic harshness, and the pitched up soul samples and gospel inflections give a nice bit of warmth, adding to the overall accessible feel.
Lyrically it’s also really accessible, ranging across religion, race, working at the Gap, fame etc and mixing bravado with introspection and a degree of self awareness that is pointedly different to what came along later.
Jesus Walks and Through the Wire are bangers but there are great tracks strewn across it; We Don’t Care, Spaceship, Never Let Me Down, Get Em High, School Spirit, The New Workout Plan and Two Words are all great, diverse tracks.
Dickheadedness not withstanding this is a great listen; catchy, melodic, amusing and great sounding. Solid 4.
🐻🐻🐻🐻
Playlist submission: Jesus Walks
New York Dolls
3/5
New York Dolls
I was quite into this album around the time of The Strokes etc, although I don’t think I ever completely loved it. It’s definitely one of those albums loved by the bands you like, and you can really see its place in music lineage and its influence, coming 3 years before punk but creating a template; scuzzy Chuck Berry / Stonesy guitars, simple songs and energetic tempos with sneering vocals and attitude.
Some of the songs are great proto-punk rockers, I always liked Personality Crisis, Looking for a Kiss, Trash and Jet Boy, and of the moments when they slow it down Lonely Planet Boy is great, with it’s slight country touches. The rest, while not always that memorable or great, is at least all carried along by attitude and enthusiasm, and there are always some great Johnny Thunders licks strewn about each song.
I like it, it’s a decent album of trashy proto punk and it’s clearly very influential. Not sure how often I’ll come back to it, so it sticks as a high 3.
🪆🪆🪆
Playlist submission: Jet Boy
Björk
4/5
Vulnicura
I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to a Björk album before. Which is strange as she makes the kind of music I like, but I think it’s probably a product of my teenage brain not understanding her back in the 90s and then never really getting round to trying any of her albums.
I’m not sure if this is the best album to start with, but I thought it was great, getting better each time. It’s hard not to use words like icy and glacial to describe the music, as it’s probably too on the nose for someone from Iceland, but the detached coolness of the music; the strings, the synths, the discordant fractured rhythms and percussion against the very personal and expressive lyrics is a great combination. It’s kind of moving, chilly, distant and uplifting at the same time.
It feels a grower, its not immediately melodic, but the tunes do start to burrow into your brain through the textures, and it probably works best as whole piece rather than individual tracks, as the more austere and crawling first half evolves into the spikier and more rhythmic second half, with some more melodic string parts.
I think it needs to sit a little longer, and I’m keen to give it some more listens with some space in between but it’s a solid 4 for now.
🇮🇸 🇮🇸 🇮🇸 🇮🇸
Playlist submission: Atom Dance
Neil Young
5/5
On the Beach
I remember the anticipation after buying that bootleg copy at the Dunelm CD fair - it was great the first time and it’s still great now. See the Sky About to Rain, Revolution Blues, Motion Pictures and Ambulance Blues are some of my favourite NY songs, but every song is great and the whole album is fantastic - melancholy, angry, loose, atmospheric. I love the Wurlitzer on See the Sky and the banjo on For the Turnstiles, and the bass, whoever is playing, is excellent.
After the Gold Rush, Harvest, this and Tonight’s the Night is an incredible run of albums, 4 of his best. Sometimes those ‘lost’ albums can be better in the imagination, but this is excellent in reality.
Actually hard to say much more, it’s just brilliant. Easy 5.
🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️
Playlist submission: Really depends on my mood, today I’ll say See the Sky About to Rain
UB40
4/5
Signing Off
UB40 are one of those bands that just exist and seemed to have always existed, but I’ve never been that curious about them. I do like One in Ten and Rat in Mi Kitchen, but I don’t really like their versions of Red Red Wine, I Got You Babe or I Can’t Help Falling In Love, which appeared on the soundtrack to Speed 2: Cruise Control.
I liked this album though, especially on repeat listens. It’s way more dubby than I expected, I suppose easy to compare them to The Specials as a similarly multi-racial band from the same time, but rather than the uptempo, energetic punky-inflected ska this has a much more woozily atmospheric haze to it.
I suppose it’s the nature of the genre that the songs have similar structures and on first listen sound alike. But after a few listens it felt like the songs started to reveal more individual character. Tyler, King, Burden of Shame, Food for Thought, Little By Little and Madam Medusa really standing out, as I started to notice some Jazzy and eastern inflections and some nice keyboard touches, like the almost harpsichord stabs on Food for Thought. The rhythm section as well is excellent, the bass and drum combination on something like Madam Medusa is great.
I really enjoyed this, much more than I was expecting I would, the dubby atmosphere and slow tempo grooves are great, suiting the ideological bent of the lyrics and themes. Solid 4.
🖋️🖋️🖋️🖋️
Playlist submission: Food for Thought
Randy Newman
3/5
Sail Away
I think I preferred this to Good Old Boys, although I broadly feel the same; on some listens and with some songs it’s really engaging and with others it seems to pass me by.
The comparisons with Nilsson are more apparent on this than Good Old Boys, and not that I need to prefer one to the other but I do find Nilsson’s version of vaudeville-pop-rock generally more engaging. Although Newman is probably more interesting lyrically, Nilsson is more interesting and varied musically and melodically, which helps the songs stick a bit better.
There are some great songs on here though, probably more than on GOB. Sail Away is a real grower and a great track with a great sardonic lyric, He Gives Us All His Love has a lovely downbeat feel. Last Night I Had a Dream is a nice bluesy bit of rock pop, building and falling very nicely. Burn On (Major League!) and Dayton, Ohio 1903 are both great tracks along a similar theme. Memo to My Son has nice jauntiness and God’s Song is an excellent religious take down.
Maybe I need more time to get into Randy Newman, there’s lots I do like and I could see myself getting into him, but I still can’t quite help zoning out from time to time and after 4 runs through I was keen to listen to something else. Although I preferred this to Good Old Boys I’m not sure it crosses into the 4s, so I’ll say a high 3.
⛵⛵⛵
Playlist submission: Burn On (because of Major League)
Neil Young
5/5
Harvest
Dual BBC Cups!
I can’t quite remember the timeline, but I think I got this in Makro with my parents, or my parents bought it in Makro and I subsequently nicked it, but I think I got into it around Christmas in the 2nd year of Durham. But I don’t know what prompted the purchase or nicking it, whether Paul already liked him, or he was on TV or I just heard this album somehow. My parents also had the BBC concert recorded off the telly, so I nicked that, which sparked off a quest to find the song Dance Dance Dance. There was scant information about it and it didnt seem to be on any albums. I remember buying Fly Like an Eagle by the Steve Miller Band album because it had a song called Dance Dance Dance and I thought it might be the same one. (It’s not, but it's a great album anyway)
Harvest though was the start point for Neil Young and he is one of those few artists, and this is one of the few albums that felt like a truly transcendent discovery. Not like the first bands you get into at 13, 14 or 15, but one you get into slightly older, you liked music before and after, but finding this particular artist feels significant. All my other favourite artists I was aware of in the ether growing up, The Beatles, Stones, Dylan, but with Neil my fandom just appeared one day.
Without the nostalgia it’s still, of course, a fantastic album. I think I’ve said it about all the NY albums on here but this album has some of my favorite NY tracks; The yearning, desolate Out on the Weekend, the rolling Harvest, the classic and catchy Heart of Gold, the stomping Are You Ready for the Country and of course the resonant and enduring Old Man and The Needle and the Damage Done. 6 bangers. But then I also love A Man Needs A Maid, There’s a World, Alabama and Words.
I also love how this was recorded, you can hear some bum notes here and there and sounds of people accidently hitting things and making noise, but it adds to the whole warm, welcoming atmosphere, despite some of the lyrical themes, alongside some of the great guest appearances and excellent playing, particularly Ben Keith and Kenny Buttrey.
Oh and obligatory mention of the 4 album run from After the Gold Rush to Tonight’s the Night
A bit like On the Beach I’m struggling to think of anything further to say about these songs, they’re so familiar and so well loved there’s nothing much I can add that’s worth saying.
It’s great and its a 5 - Don’t Miss It!
🪡🪡🪡🪡🪡
Playlist submission: Out on the Weekend, Old Man or Needle and the Damage Done - today I choose Old Man
Duke Ellington
3/5
At Newport ‘56
My main thoughts of Duke Ellington are of his spirit living in the attic in Big Mouth writing songs full of sexual innuendo and trying to bang the ghost of Whitney Houston.
Nothing like that is happening here though. This is a perfectly fine live big band/swing/jazz album with two stand outs. The smoky, piano-led Blues to Be There is great, the horns are used to augment it brilliantly and it genuinely feels like it tells a musical story. And the frenzied energy of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue is undeniable, you can really feel the feedback loop of the players and the crowd and the resulting manic excitement. Generally I’m not a fan of this sort of uptempo Jazz, but this performance feels genuinely electric and you can’t help but be carried along on a wave of jazzy commotion. Jeep’s Blues is probably the best of the rest, with Festival Junction and Newport Up being fine but forgettable.
Outside Blues to Be There and Diminuendo there probably isn’t a great deal to return to, but those two and Diminuendo in particular are so good they carry it to a medium-high 3.
🔵🔵🔵
Playlist submission: Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
Goldfrapp
2/5
Felt Mountain
Hmm, a bit of a curate’s egg. I really liked Lovely Head and Utopia, and Pilots, Felt Mountain are decent, and some of the instrumental touches here and there, theremin, organ, synth etc are nice, and it feels like it’s the sort of album that could be great, however I get an overriding sense of annoyance with the whole thing and it reminded me a bit of that Ute Lemper album we had, which I felt similarly about.
The cabaret/lounge/50s & 60s soundtrack thing has to be done really well and I don’t think this is, the breathy, jazzy vocal style feels too close to musical theatre and I don’t think the string arrangements capture the atmosphere they are going for, so overall it, unfortunately, creates a sense grating boredom, which only really dissipates on Lovely Head and Utopia.
It’s not truly awful, but there are much better examples of what they are going for with the smoky, cinematic atmosphere, Portishead being the obvious one. I can’t think I’d listen to this again, which puts it as a solid 2.
⛰️⛰️
Playlist submission: Lovely Head.
Dion
4/5
Born to be With You
I really really liked this, but there’s no clear discernible, describable reason quite why though. It’s not necessarily musically groundbreaking or thrilling or melodically inventive, but there is a feel to the whole thing that I really liked, a kind of slightly quirky middle of the roadness that I found interesting and engaging.
It definitely shares that feel with Spector’s early-mid 70s work, especially Lennon of course, and it is a sound I really like; slower tempos, lots of reverb and separation, but great overall. There is some really nice instrumentation throughout as well, and I like the slight country influences scattered around, particularly on something like New York Song, and there is also some very George-esque slide in places.
I’ve also always liked his voice, my mum had a late 80s album of his and although it was a bit cheesy he sounds great on it, and despite being pushed back in the mix a little he sounds great on this too, I love his tone and the New York accent that slips through. He sounds particularly great on In and Out of the Shadows and Only You Know.
I listened about 5 times on repeat and it got better each time, and it’s definitely going in rotation. Solid 4.
🐣🐣🐣🐣
Playlist submission: In and Out of the Shadows.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
5/5
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
I don’t really like saying why is X on the list and not Y, and obviously I’m a fan so I would say this but I do think it’s odd that this is the only Tom Petty album on the list, when Sonic Youth have 5 and Elvis Costello has 6 and considering how good Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises are.
I do love this album, despite some roughness around the edges and some patchiness in song quality. There are some excellent songs; Breakdown, The Wild One, Forever, Anything That’s Rock’n’Roll, Fooled Again, Luna and Last Nite, I mean American Girl, but it definitely sounds like a debut album. You can hear elements and signals of the future in those songs, but even the patchier tracks have moments and ideas that make them interesting, the rhythm on Rockin’ Around, the Springsteen pastiche of Hometown Blues, the backing vocals on Strangered in the Night, the doo-wop groove of Luna.
It also feels a bit inconsistent in production and sound in places, particularly Mike Campbell's guitar, the sense he’s searching for a sound, eg the tone on Strangered in the Night just doesn’t quite sound right.
Musically this is easily a high 4, and any album that has Breakdown, The Wild One, Forever and American Girl is a banger, but as this is their only album on here and I want to acknowledge how great they are as a band, it's a 5. And if you don’t like that you can tongue kiss my shithole.
💘💘💘💘💘
Playlist submission: Breakdown
Devendra Banhart
4/5
Rejoicing in the Hands
One of those artists I’m very aware of but have never actively listened to, so nice to give an album a go.
I like its sparseness and kind of outsider art feel, like someone who isn’t aware of musical conventions and starts writing and performing folk songs. But at the same time he’s obviously very talented and steeped in all sorts of folk music as well as Indian and blues too. I think it takes a lot of thought and skill to get the balance of innocence and familiarity right and conjure those feelings of outsider primitivism. His voice probably does help carry that feeling too, and I can imagine it’s a bit marmite for some people, like Joanna Newsome, but I like it a lot, it does suit the songs and style of the songs really well.
However It does also feel quite long, even if it’s only 42 minutes with relatively short songs. Maybe it’s that there are 16 songs that makes it feel that way, as though it loses a bit of focus by having so many songs.
There are some great songs, particularly the first half; This is the Way and a Sight To Behold are a great opening pair, The almost gallic The Body Breaks is great, I love the eastern tinged, slightly wonky and odd Poughkeepsie and the short but sweet Dogs They Make Up in Dark is really good. After that Rejoicing in the Hands has a lovely almost Incredible String Band feel, and I like the injection of the lively rhythm of Fall, and I love the ethereal slide on When the Sun Shines on Vetiver, There Was the Sun has strong echoes Nothing in the World by The Kinks nicely.
Overall, despite the great songs it does feel a bit wooly and the dip in the middle does affect it. Right on the cusp of 3 and 4, I’ll go 4 for the highlights
🙌🙌🙌🙌
Playlist submission: Poughkeepsie.
Depeche Mode
4/5
Music for the Masses
Quite partial to a bit of Depeche Mode even if I’m not that familiar with them outside Violator and the singles/greatest hits.
This does feel like a bit of a mix of their more overtly pop stuff and their more gothic whips and semi-knocking tinged electro stuff, it has some echoes of People are People, Everything Counts and New Life and Just Can’t Get Enough but also echoes of Master and Servant, Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence.
They are really great at catchy synth hooks, seemingly done with one finger. There’s a couple of great ones in Strangelove, but they are scattered throughout on some of the excellent tracks on here; Never Let Me Down Again, Things You Said (hello Kraftwerk), Sacred, Behind the Wheel, Nothing. The combination of those poppy hooks and the drum sound with the dark lyrics and gloomy, brooding atmosphere is great. Aside from the obvious Kraftwerk reference you can also get a sense of Bowie and mostly Joy Division if Ian Curts hadn’t died, kind of meshing the music New Order make with the lyrical and atmospheric approach of Joy Division.
It doesn’t always work though, Little 15 is way too musical theatre cabaret and is pretty annoying as a result, I Want You Now’s sex breathing and horizontal melody feels pretty flat. I half like and half dislike Pimpf, the repeating motif is nice, but that circularity does make it feel it never really goes anyway.
I enjoyed this a lot, the great songs are great, but it doesn’t quite sustain the highs of Never Let Me Down, Strangelove and Nothing. But it’s still a very good album. 4.
💅💅💅💅
Playlist submission: Strangelove
Talking Heads
5/5
More Songs About Buildings and Food
This might be my 2nd favourite TH album behind Speaking in Tongues, on a par with, although very different than, Remain in Light and slightly head of Fear of Music and Talking Heads: 77
It definitely feels like a step forward from their first album, the rhythm section is similarly groove driven, but it feels more stronger and more agitated, and the guitar is slightly more prominent and more intertwined with the bass and drums. And Brian Eno’s keyboard and synth augmentations add a different texture than their first album, as well as his production skill adding a different dynamic.
The lyrics are also slightly less opaque, although still enigmatic enough, but David Byrne’s bemusement at his inability to understand how ‘normal’ people live their lives is clear, particularly on The Big Country.
It also has some of David Byrne’s best melodies and some of their best musical hooks. Thank You For Sending Me an Angel is a banger, I love the stomp of With our Love and as it changes to and from the synth bass parts. The Girl Wants to Be With The Girls has the great twinkly piano and an excellent bass riff and that great guitar motif around the chorus. Found a Job has that brilliant break into the synth/piano riff from 3.16 onwards and a brilliant rhythm overall. The Take Me to the River cover is great, excellent synth/organs. And Big Country is superb, with its country twinges and marching rhythm and detached lyric.
There really isn’t a weak track for me, it’s a great album, unsurprisingly a 5
➕🎶🏢🏢🍲
Deep Purple
3/5
Machine Head
This is really only about Highway Star and Smoke on the Water - both songs clearly stand well above the rest on here.
Those other songs aren’t bad, and there are some good moments among them, but they did pass me by rather unmemorably. Never Before does have a nice psychedelic middle eight and Space Truckin’ is decent enough.
The organ/keys do give them a point of difference and I can appreciate their influence on metal/hard rock, but it does feel more like they established the rather generic template for it, which adds to the slightly forgettable nature of it.
Overall, one of those albums that’s fine and doesn’t elicit a particularly strong reaction or many other thoughts beyond liking some of it and not being that fussed on the rest. For Highway Star and Smoke on the Water I’ll give it 3.
🟪🟪🟪
Playlist submission: Highway Star
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Imperial Bedroom
His 7th album in 5 years!
I’m not really that familiar with the albums after Get Happy!!, I always assumed they start the slide into things like Brutal Youth, ie fine but with a lack of excitement and dynamism.
That’s not entirely the case here, there are some great, energetic tracks and some great instrumentation and varying styles, but there’s also stuff like The Long Hands with its accordion, and the jazzy dullness of Almost Blue, both the kind of EC I struggle with.
Beyond Belief is a great opener, I love the rhythm pattern, Tears Before Bed Time is very good, the organ and piano are excellent. Shabby Doll is good, it has that great bass/synth part. Man Out of Time is excellent, lovely instrumentation and that sped up section at the end is a great shot of excitement. …And in Every Home is really interesting, the debt to the Penny Lane horns and George Martin string arrangements is clear but it works well.
I love the Sitar and Horns on Human Hands. Pidgin English is a great melody and I really like the harpsichord both forwards and backwards on You Little Fool, it’s a very catchy track.
As on previous EC albums Steve Nieve really shines, his piano and keyboard playing is excellent throughout. The bass is perhaps not as interesting as This Year’s Model or Armed Forces but the drumming is great. And you can see why he wanted Geoff Emerick to produce it, as the Beatles influence and inspiration is very clear - the instrumentation and arrangements are very Sgt Pepper.
Kind of stuck between 3 and 4. I enjoyed it, there are some great tracks, but it also starts to develop the feel of a lot of his music from the mid-80s onwards that I have a hard time enjoying, and it does feel pretty front loaded, with a definite dip on the 2nd side. It also, like Brutal Youth, has a feeling of being longer than it actually is. Ultimately I’m not sure how often I’ll revisit, it’s more likely I’ll just whack the highlights on a playlist, so I’ll go high 3
🛏️🛏️🛏️
Playlist submission: Man Out of Time
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Raising Hell
Peter Piper - It’s Tricky - My Adidas - Walk This Way is a superb, exciting run of 4 songs. The interplay of the two voices and the bell hook on Peter Piper is excellent. It’s Tricky is superb, the vocal hook is very catchy and the Knack sample is excellent. My Adidas is great and despite it;s ubiquity Walk this Way is a banging bit of rock-rap pop music.
It’s hard to maintain that quality thereafter, although Raising Hell’s guitar mash up is good and You Be Illin’ is great, as good as those first few songs.
Aside from the songs I love the whole sound of this, it’s got an almost minimalist focus on beats, scratches and vocals, with samples and instrumentation sparsely deployed to accent the drum machines and rapping. It makes a nice contrast to what would come in the following years with the density of the sound of Public Enemy and the intricate, complex layering of samples on 3 Feet High and Rising and Paul’s Boutique.
Thoroughly enjoyable and hugely influential, it’s still a fun and exciting listen. Solid 4.
👟👟👟👟
Playlist submission: It’s Tricky
U2
3/5
Achtung Baby
U2. I don’t know if I like or dislike them. I definitely like a lot of their songs as well crafted bits of pop rock. But as soon as I start thinking I like them as a band I start thinking I don’t like them and as soon as I start thinking I don’t like them I start thinking I like them. That seems to happen within the first minute of many of the songs on this album.
Maybe it’s the earnestness that gives them a bit of naffness, whether they are knee deep in Americana rootsiness, or if they are doing their Bowie/Eno euro rock like this. I don’t doubt they mean it, and take it very seriously, but there often seems to be an underlying sense of meaninglessness to it all, that they really seem to be oblivious to. One for example, I think I liked it back in the day, but listening to it now, it does have a feeling of vacuousness, a Coldplayian emptiness underneath the pseudo-sagacity of the words. But I suppose you could level at many of their songs, they aim for universal but end up a bit nothingy
They clearly know how to craft good melodies and hooks, and an appealing sound, and there are good songs on here, Even Better Than The Real Thing, So Cruel are good, but that sense of a lack of meaning below the surface does become clear on repeat listens. Some lyrics and delivery start to grate - the ‘sheer face of love’ line in The Fly has always bothered me
I do think their desire to change their sound and style from the Joshua Tree to this is to be admired, although underneath the production and electronic rhythms and sounds many of the songs are pretty conventionally U2 - Even Better Than the Real Thing and Mysterious Ways would sit very comfortably on The Joshua Tree if they were produced in that style.
Overall though this isn’t a bad listen, it’s enjoyable enough and I really like some of the songs, particularly So Cruel but it doesn’t linger long on the musical tongue and it does feel quite long at nearly an hour. A 3 feels fair
👶👶👶
Playlist submission: So Cruel
Björk
4/5
Medúlla
In other people’s hands this could very easily be pretentiously unlistenable and just too much hard work. While parts of it are definitely not easy to listen to, particularly the pervy sex-fucking noises at the end of Ancestors, it's always interesting and engaging, tripping from dreamlike and ambient to discordant, chaotic and jumpy, via a bit of beatboxing and Gregorian chanting.
A few tracks stand out individually - Where is the Line, Vokuro, Who Is It, Submarine (feat. Beaker from the muppets), Mouths Cradle and Triumph of a Heart (beatboxing and cats) - but it definitely works better as one 45 minute piece of music.
You can’t help but admire her singularity of vision. To make a 45 minute album created almost entirely from human voices, encompassing melody, harmony and rhythm is pretty amazing, and then to make it listenable, interesting, engaging and moving too. I don’t think many people would be able to do that.
Feels like something I’ll come back to and delve into again, it really is a fascinating album. 4.
🦢🦢🦢🦢
Playlist submission: Mouths Cradle
Steve Earle
4/5
Guitar Town
I really like Steve Earle. Copperhead Road is a great album and he has an excellent run from I Feel Alright to Jerusalem, where he branches a little further away from his country rock sound. I’m not as familiar with this album as those, but this is a very enjoyable country rock album, with some rockabilly and Latin accents here and there, if not quite as ambitious as some of his later stuff.
Although the production is pretty conventional 80s country rock, particularly the drums, I do really like the ‘big’ sound to it and there is some interesting instrumentation on some of the songs, the odd synth or string part here and there, and there is some good country guitar riffing and interplay too.
Lyrically he is quite atypical for the genre, there’s a lot of Springsteen in the tales of blue collar hardship and longing to escape, but he’s also not coming from a Conservative-Christian-Country viewpoint, he has a much more empathetic, progressive perspective and some righteous anger about lack of opportunities and small town hypocrisy.
It gets off to a great start with the first 3 songs, all great uptempo country, and Good Ol Boy is great as well, a more rocking song with a nice organ and guitar line. Someday has a really interesting loping swing to it, always feeling like it’s slightly behind the beat, and a very Springsteen small town lyric. Little Rock’n’Roller is a good song too, it has a kind of doo-wop country vibe. I really like Down the Road, it has a Tom Petty vibe to me and I really like the organ and mandolin.
🎸🏙️🎸🏙️
Playlist submission: Good Ol Boy
Motörhead
2/5
Ace of Spades
First listen, this is pretty fun rollicking punky rock’n’roll metally thrash, if you don’t pay attention too closely to the lyrics. Musically, as a rock’n’roll/metal/punk act they are good at what they do, and the energy and attack are great. They are clearly far superior to the thrash and late 80s metal they inspired, probably due to that rock’n’roll swing and less double kick drum.
However the 2nd and 3rd time around it does start to lose much of that ‘charm’, the lack of deviation from their standard template becomes pretty obvious, and, apart from (We Are) The Roadcrew there not being anything nearly as good as Ace of Spades means it does start to get quite stale as a whole 35 minute listening experience.
Lyrically it’s pretty charmless from the off, and aside from a couple of songs it mainly consists of songs about shagging, which unfortunately conjures the mental image of Lemmy remorselessly humping groupies in squalid dressing rooms, smelling of sweat, unwashed leather trousers, fags and booze. And then of course there’s Jailbait. Charitably speaking you could say it hasn’t aged well, or that it’s a song satirising rock stars who shag underage groupies, but realistically they are a band not known for their subtlety. Either way the song is a pretty gross listen.
On first listen I thought this might scrape a 4, but on subsequent listens it regressed to the cusp of 2 and 3. Ace of Spades is banger and I like (We Are) The Roadcrew, but the other songs are a bit forgettable and/or a bit icky. Think I’ll stick on high 2 as I don’t think I’ll come back to it.
♠️♠️
Playlist submission: Obviously it’s Ace of Spades, but for a change I’ll go (We Are) The Roadcrew.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Catch a Fire
I think this is the first time I’ve listened to a Bob Marley album outside the Legend greatest hits album. Aside from Stir it Up I don’t really know any of the songs and unsurprisingly it’s just a great collection of songs, with brilliant bass playing, grooves and melodies with Bob Marley’s fantastic, warm voice, and a winning mix of protest songs and romance. You can see how and why he became so popular worldwide after this.
The slide on Baby We’ve Got a Date (Rock it Baby) stood out on first listen and sounded incongruously great. I’ve since read Chris Blackwell put some rock overdubs after the Wailers had recorded it, including this, and it’s not that popular with fans, but I think its great, giving a slightly otherworldly atmosphere to it.
Really enjoyed this, exactly what I expected, solid 4.
🔥🔥🔥🔥
Playlist submission: Baby We’ve Got a Date (Rock it Baby)
Pink Floyd
5/5
The Dark Side of the Moon
After enjoying Wish You Were Here I was waiting for this to come up, I’m glad it arrived not long after.
I think I probably just about prefer Wish You Were Here, but it’s still obviously an excellent album; moody, portentous without being pompous, grand, elegant, serious.
Some of the same things hold true for this as they did for WYWH - ‘a meticulously built 44 minutes of brilliantly layered, slow tempo sonic atmosphere, movingly structured around a loose concept.’ and ’it’s really about experiencing the whole thing, the feel and movement of the full run time, with synths, solos, melodies all unfolding at a languid pace, all with an occasional disquieting undertow’
The female vocals are also great, they give a different texture to an already excellent sounding album. Gilmour's guitar tone is great, the solos on Time and Any Colour Your Like are excellent, and I love the synthy noises on On the Run. And of course the money bassline and sampled rhythm intro are superb. I really like the 2nd side from Us and Them to Eclipse, with Brain Damage a highlight.
It’s obvious why its got such a great reputation, it’s a fantastic listen. 5.
🌗🌗🌗🌗🌗
Playlist submission: Brain Damage
Astor Piazzolla
2/5
The New Tango
Much more listenable than you’d expect for a live tango-jazz fusion album by a concertina player and a vibraphonist, but ultimately it’s very long, a bit too plinky plonky and not really in my wheelhouse despite some nice passages and the obvious skill involved. I don’t think I’d think to listen again, that makes it, perhaps unfortunately, a 2.
💃💃
Playlist submission: Little Italy
Nas
5/5
Illmatic
One of my favourite hip hop albums and one of my favourite albums in general. I only really ‘discovered’ it about 2 or 3 years ago but I absolutely love it.
There’s a minimalism to the beats and use of samples that matches the desolation and despair of the lyrics. The hooks are insistent, they nag and punctuate like a drone particularly on the excellent NY State of Mind - the bass, the piano and the And I really just love the production and sound overall and the snare sound in particular.
He is obviously a brilliant rapper too, there’s a real density to it all in the internal rhymes, the cadence as well as the overall story telling. The verses on the World is Yours are pretty incredible, for example.
He’s definitely in the same mould as Biggie and Tupac etc, but I find his lyrics less brash and self-aggrandizing and much more like reportage. While there is some triumphalism, overall it feels much more introspective with an undertow of bleakness and futility, and a feeling of being trapped by your circumstances.
The whole first half up to Halftime is superb, it might dip slightly with Memory Lane but One Love with Q tip with it’s jazzy bass and xylophone is excellent, I love how his voice works with the bass sample One Time 4 Your Mind, Represent is a banger, that piano/bell sample is great, and It Aint Hard to Tell is superb, the Human Nature sample knocked back in the mix is lovely
Overall great album, easy 5.
🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Playlist submission: NY State of Mind
Tricky
5/5
Maxinquaye
I’m not sure why, but I’ve never listened to this, even though I’ve always thought I would like it, if I ever did listen to it, which I have now done, and I was right that I would like it, even before I ever listened to it, which I have now done.
It is a great album in the Portishead-Massive Attack milieu, but with it’s own distinct variances, mainly due to Tricky’s rapping style, subject matter and his lyrics being sung by Martina Topley-Bird - I suppose her being a cypher for his thoughts and the thoughts of his mum add to the sense of dislocation and unsettledness of much of the music.
The overall mood is pretty downbeat and hazy, as might be expected, but it sounds great, with a nice variety of instruments, samples and approaches, from scuzzy guitars to Public Enemy covers to Michael Jackson samples. I also like the Hell is Round the Corner story, that he apparently heard some early Portishead mixes and decided to use the same Isaac Hayes sample.
Suffocated Love is excellent and probably the standout track, but there’s great stuff throughout; His version of Karmacoma, the creepy plinkiness of Ponderosa, the drone of Pumpkin, the bluesy Abbaon Fat Tracks, Strugglin’, they’re all great, but none of the tracks are poor, they all add to the whole.
I’ve listened to this a lot over the last few days, there’s a lot of detail in the production and sampling that emerge on repeat listens, and I liked it more and more each time, I’ll give it a nice’n’hazy 5.
🪄🪄🪄🪄🪄
Playlist submission: Suffocated Love
Sleater-Kinney
3/5
Dig Me Out
I think I would have really liked this when it came out. It’s fun and punchy with a nice punky energy, and there are some good hooks and songs, especially when the lead lines go a bit droning and dissonant. However, and although it does have a point of difference, it does get a bit too generic 90s US alt rock adjacent at times for me.
Dig Me Out is a good example of the whole album; fun, great attack, energetic spirit, nice guitar lines, brief and to the point, confident and charming but perhaps lacking a bit of swing or rhythmic variation or some kind of je ne sais quoi to make it really good. Turn it On is probably my stand out, the almost Indian guitar licks give it a pleasingly different texture. Words and Guitar and It’s Enough are also very good, the lead lines giving a similarly nice tone, and the change of pace of Jenny is nice too.
Overall it's one of those albums where, despite the appealing energy and overall brevity, you start to feel the limitations of the guitar, bass and drums format. That doesn’t make it bad, there are some very good tracks, and I would listen again in the right mood, but it doesn’t quite get above being decent, making it a solid to high 3.
⛏️⛏️⛏️
Playlist submission: Turn it On
Cee Lo Green
2/5
Cee-Lo Green… Is the Soul Machine
Fine, if a bit forgettable and far too long. There’s no need for this to be over an hour, particularly as there’s nothing as good as Fuck You to provide some focus
I do like his voice, and the sprawling nature of the album and oddities that pop up, and there are some nice moments across it. The Neptunes produced Art of Noise is cool. All Day Love Affair is also good, the horns are very nice, but it would be even better without the little wah guitar licks. I like the theremin/spooky noises on Scrap Metal’s verses, but the chorus kind of lets it down. Glockapella starts out unpromisingly but turns into a decent track, the slowed down Funkadelic interpolation is good.
It’s not unlistenable, it just needs a bit of an edit and a few more good songs to elevate it. I wouldn’t be averse to listening again but I can’t imagine I’d ever come back to it, I’d rather listen to Outkast for this kind of thing as they do it much better. On the cusp of 2 and 3, maybe a bit mean but I’ll stick on a high 2
🟢🟢
Playlist submission: All Day Love Affair
Public Enemy
5/5
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
I did have this album on CD at uni, I think inspired by watching that Channel 4 series, The Hip Hop years. I liked it a lot back then and like it alot now.
It is interesting listening to it after listening to Fear of a Black Planet for the first time last month. Obviously they are cut from the same cloth, both a righteous pummeling of noises, samples, anger and beats that make you feel quite exhausted by the end of the hour. Although it’s an enjoyable, exciting pummelling. I always thought the CD version sounded a little thin, despite the kitchen sink production, and although it does sound much better than I remember and packs quite a punch it doesn’t quite have the fullness of the sound on FOABP.
It also perhaps feels less groove-laden than FOABP, with fewer obvious soul samples and more pounding rhythms and quicker tempos, accentuating the lyrics and rapping.
The well known tracks, Bring the Noise, Don’t Believe the Hype, Night of the Living Baseheads (don’t think I ever noticed the Bowie sample before, even though it's obvious), Rebel Without a Pause and Prophets of Rage do stand out as the most immediate, but there are great tracks throughout, Louder than a Bomb, Caught Can We Get a Witness, She Watch Channel Zero?! and Party for Your Right to Fight are great, with the same density and aural bludgeon.
If FOABP is a 5 star this has to be too, it’s not exactly a relaxing listen but its density and chaotic power are pretty thrilling.
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Ray Price
3/5
Night Life
Quite the contrast to Public Enemy.
I really like the crooning vocals and slightly jazzy drumming with the bluesy reverb heavy guitars and pedal steel on the title track, and I also like the more obviously Honky Tonk The Wild Side of Life.
And those two songs are pretty much the general vibe for the rest of it, with it not deviating too far from either, all tied together with that kind of country-jazz crooning - e sounds a lot like Dean Martin singing on the Rio Bravo soundtrack on Sittin’ and Thinkin’ in particular.
Luckily I do like those two song types, I also really like his voice and the downbeat lyrical themes, so overall this was a very pleasant 40 minutes. I’d definitely listen again, but I don’t think it's quite worthy of a 4, so I’ll stick with a solid 3.
😴😴😴
Playlist submission: Night Life
Madness
3/5
The Rise & Fall
I used to love my cassette copy of the best of Madness when I was about 12. I have memories of playing Super Kick Off on my Game Gear while listening to it on my Sanyo walkman in the back of the car driving through France on holiday.
They are definitely one of the best greatest hits bands, loads of excellent (and some not so excellent) singles, but I’ve never listened to one of their ‘proper’ albums. I know Suggs can divide opinion, and he’s not the greatest vocalist, but he is quite distinctive, he does give the songs some character and he does have some good lines and lyrics.
It may be through familiarity but Tomorrow’s Just Another Day and Our House are the standouts, both excellent bits of pop music, with Tomorrow's Just Another Day’s sombre lyrics contrasting nicely with the upbeat chorus. But there are other decent songs too, Rise and Fall, Blue Skinned Beast, Sunday Morning, Tiptoes, That Face, Calling Cards. There’s a definite sense of maturity on many of the songs that falls outside the House of Fun Nutty Boys persona, and more influences on top of their core ska foundation, a fair bit of jazz and music hall in the piano in particular.
The playing is good as well, the keys and piano underpin a lot of it and they can still create a nice lilting ska-style groove on most tracks, Tiptoe for example is great on this count.
Not everything works though. I do not care for Madness (Is All in the Mind) at all, the jazziness feels overly confected and the whole thing is annoying. New Delhi is also a bit of an odd one - I actually like the groove and tune, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that sincere in its approximation of Indian sounds and instruments in the way that other songs by other people in that vein do. And the Indian accents in the outro sound quite jarring to modern ears
It’s a solid album that’s very listenable. A couple of great tracks, a handful of decent ones and a few that miss the mark. I think that makes it mid-high 3.
💹➕🍂
Playlist submission: Our House
Madonna
4/5
Like a Prayer
Madness might be an archetypal ‘best of’ band, but Madonna must have one of the best Greatest Hits compilations and her run of singles from her first one up to, say, Justify My Love, has a fucking crazy hit rate:
Everybody - great
Burning Up - absolute banger, one of my favs
Holiday - absolute banger
Lucky Star - absolute banger
Borderline - absolute banger
Like a Virgin - absolute banger
Material Girl - absolute banger
Crazy For You - absolute banger
Angel - great
Into the Groove - absolute banger
Dress You Up - banger
Gambler - banger
Live to Tell - absolute banger
Papa Don’t Preach - absolute banger
True Blue - absolute banger
Open Your Heart - absolute banger, possibly my fav
La Isla Bonita - absolute banger (last night I danced with some Pedro)
Who’s That Girl - absolute banger
Causing a Commotion - banger
Spotlight - decent
Like a Prayer - absolute banger
Express Yourself - absolute banger
Cherish - banger
Oh Father - decent
Dear Jessie - decent
Keep it Together - decent
Vogue - absolute banger
Hanky Panky - erm, not great
Justify My Love - great
And then later on she has Take a Bow, Frozen, Ray of Light, Drowned World, Beautiful Stranger, Music, Hung Up.
Anyway there are three of those absolute bangers on here in Like A Prayer, Express Yourself and Cherish. The rest don’t ever quite reach those heights, but looking at that list you could argue that Like a Prayer or Express Yourself are among the best in her entire catalogue, so what does? They’re both joyfully fantastic songs of course, but for some reason I really love Express Yourself, there’s something about the melody line and percussion I just love. I had a nice silent disco dance to it earlier when I was making a cup of tea.
Love Song is very Prince, but also what you might imagine a Madge/Prince (Pridge? Pradonna?) fusion to be and it’s definitely a grower. In fact most of the songs are growers, Till Death Do Us Part I really liked, Promise to Try I wasn’t keen on initially but it is a very nice piano ballad. Dear Jessie has a pleasing quirkiness, and Oh Father might have one of her best vocals. She’s an incredibly distinctive and characterful vocalist, but not necessarily the strongest, most technical singer, but on this she sounds fantastic. Keep it Together may not be as strong as many of her singles but it’s still a superior bit of synth-funk-pop. Spanish Eyes is also a grower, it feels cheesy initially but is actually a very nice melody and atmosphere. Act of Contrition is more Pridge, but isn't totally successful, even as a bit of experimental fun.
It’s probably not consistent enough as a full album to get into the 5s, but it's a high 4 - anything containing Like a Prayer, Express Yourself and Cherish can’t be anything less.
🤲🤲🤲🤲
Playlist submission: As good as Like A Prayer is, I do love Express Yourself
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Bookends
This is on the same level BOTW as my favourite S&G album, even if it feels slightly more piecemeal than BOTW despite the concept, but it does have the imperiously magnificent America and the fantastic Save the Life of My Child, Overs, Fakin’ It, Mrs Robinson, A Hazy Shade of Winter and At the Zoo.
The Moog on Save the Life of my Child is pretty interesting and must be one of the earliest examples on a major pop record? The song itself is great, and the Moog sounds more modern than other contemporaneous uses, I like the little Sound of Silence interpolations and the whole thing mixes melody and experimentalism in a fantastic way. And crossfades superbly into the majesty of America, brilliantly taking the specifics of the first song into the wider picture and open narrative of the latter. Overs is great, the bluesy folky intro building up to Art’s ethereal entrance at 1.16. Voices of Old People does it’s job in the context of the concept of the first side, and I like the ‘an old person without money is ‘ line, but it does slow down the momentum into the delicateness and melancholy of Old Friends and the plaintiveness of Bookends a little.
I’ve always loved Fakin’ It, it has a little vibe of those S&G and Paul Simon uptempo acoustic songs like Baby Driver or Keep the Customer Satisfied or Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard, but with a more folky structure. Punky’s Dilemma is not a bad song, but does feel a little throwaway in comparison to the songs around it especially as its followed by Mrs Robinson, A Hazy Shade of Winter and At the Zoo.
It’s an easy 5, some of their best songs, a concept done brilliantly on the first side and an overall sense of personal wistfulness and introspection against wider musings on contemporary society and culture, all tied together with Paul Simon’s slightly off kilter melodic brilliance and Art’s graceful and otherworldly vocals.
📚📚📚📚📚
Playlist submission: America
Wilco
4/5
Being There
I bought this around the time it came out. It seems odd looking back that I bought an alt country album in 1996 when I was solidly mid-Britpop, but I remember hearing Outtasite (Outta Mind) on the radio and liking it enough that I bought the album. I also remember loving I Got You (At the End of the Century).
Anyway I did like it a lot then, even if it was probably more country than I expected, but nowadays it would be the Wilco album I listen to least.
Listening now it's definitely still a really good album, with a nice mix of styles on top of their country rock foundation - the Stax-esque horns, Stonesey guitar and country inflections of the excellent Monday is great and there is some really nice oddness and experimentalism spread across the track, with some lovely melodies and delicate moments
It is definitely unnecessarily long though, and it doesn’t need to be a double album. There aren’t really any bad songs as such, it's just there’s just too many, meaning the 2nd half of the disc 2 definitely drags. The Lonely 1 is a lovely song and one of the strongest on the album, but it does get a bit lost in that drag, as does the hoedown stomp of Dreamer in my Dreams.
Alongside Outtasite, Monday, The Lonely 1 and Dreamer of my Dreams there are other excellent tracks: Misunderstood, Red-Eyed & Blue, I Got You (At the End of the Century), Hotel Arizona, Say You Miss Me, Sunken Treasure, Someone Else’s Song, Kingpin (Was I ) In Your Dreams. Those tracks would make an excellent single album.
You can definitely see the start of what made their subsequent albums great, the hints of experimentation with sounds and textures, their eclectic approach to songwriting and an overall careworn feel, but it's much more tied to Tweedy’s country roots with those punk and rock’n’roll touchstones. This is not a bad album in any way due to that, but as they start to get less clearly tethered to their country foundations and add more off kilter pop to their sound you can really sense them making big leaps forward into more interesting territory, especially when Glen Kotche joined after Summerteeth. Ken Coomer is a good drummer, but Kotche is a step above and allowed them to be more rhythmically dynamic
If this had been a single disc album it may have just got into the 5s. It’s s a high quality set of songs but it just a bit too long, and isn't quite at the level of their next 3 or 4 albums
🆗🆗🆗🆗
Playlist submission: Monday
Sinead O'Connor
4/5
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
I found this a genuinely moving listen. I recently listened to a podcast about Nothing Compares 2 U, I knew a bit about her life, but it really is very sad what happened to her as a child with her abusive mother, and what happened later in her life with her mental and physical health struggles, leading to up to her death, and the overall the perniciousness of the Catholic Church in her life and her struggles with religion. It definitely paints this album in a much more poignant light.
Her voice, of course, is excellent, she combines tenderness and delicateness with forcefulness and anger brilliantly, and whatever she sings she sings with sincerity.
I really love the Nellee Hooper pre trip-hop pre Bjork production on I Am Stretched on Your Grave, it’s a superb track. Three Babies is a lovely delicate tune and vocal with a nicely cryptic lyric. It does sound a bit Enya in places with the swell of the strings, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Black Boys on Mopeds is superb as well, balancing the political and personal without being cloying or lumpish. Nothing Compares 2 U is of course excellent, perhaps it suffers from its ubiquity but it is a fantastic bit of music and she really makes it her song, interpreting it so brilliantly.
It closes out really well with the final two songs, particularly the excellent I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
I was surprised how much I liked this, although it does sound quite late 80s early 90s in places, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good, the lyrics and Irish influenced folk rock is great, without veering too much into The Cranberries or Enya. Easy 4
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Playlist submission: Could be a few, but I’ll go with I Am Stretched on Your Grave
Steely Dan
5/5
Countdown to Ecstasy
This has always felt like a more streamlined progression from Can’t Buy a Thrill, the same elements of precision soft rock and jazz, but more high gloss and more focused, which then continues on to Pretzel Logic.
I totally get how something like Razor Boy’s glockenspiel could make it come across like lift music, but underneath that it’s a great track with lovely piano and interesting changes. That does go for a lot of the songs, the piano driven structure underneath the instrumentation gives it a sense of jazzy propulsion with a soft rock easy listening sheen over the top.
Like all their albums the sense of exactness and craft is all over it, I think the meticulousness of getting everything sounding correct and correctly in place is a big reason why I like SD so much, particularly on the first 3 albums.
For me there’s not a dud on the album but highlights would be the satirical Bodhisattva and Showbiz Kids, the picaresque The Boston Rag, My Old School and the superb, bass-driven King of the World. The second side in particular is excellent from Show Biz Kids to King of the World.
Like Can’t But a Thrill and Pretzel Logic and like Aja will be, this is an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: King of the World
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Natty Dread
Looking back at Catch a Fire I feel similarly about this, although I think the grooves and overall song quality is better here; Lively Up Yourself, No Woman No Cry (although it’s not quite as good as the more well known live version), Them Belly Full, Rebel Music, Natty Dread, Talkin Blues and Revolution are all excellent, but in truth all the tracks are good and it’s a very listenable album.
The rhythm section is fantastic, brilliantly in the pocket and the keys are also great, and the overall sound seems a bit better than Catch a Fire.
Not sure it’s quite a 5, but it's definitely a high 4.
🐳🐳🐳🐳
Playlist submission: Lively Up Yourself
Louis Prima
3/5
The Wildest!
This isn’t at all wild, but it’s very enjoyable in an Elf/LA Confidential/When Harry Met Sally soundtrack way. It’s a very easy listen with a nice sense of fun and playfulness, the New Orleans swing really gives it some movement and life. The horns aren’t overbearing as they often can be and I really like the combination of his and Keely Smith’s vocals, his growling jumpy exuberance and her chatty jazzy style have a nice carefree feel together.
In the right mood I’d definitely listen again, but it probably won’t go into heavy rotation, making it a solidly enjoyable 3.
🦧🦧🦧
Playlist submission: (Nothing’s Too Good For My Baby)
Milton Nascimento
5/5
Clube Da Esquina
Wasn’t sure what to expect with this one - I presumed it might be in a similar vein to other Brazilian albums we’ve had like Astrud Gilberto or Machito or Elis Regina, enjoyable if not particularly my sort of thing.
However it’s not like those at all, you can hear some Bossa Nova and Samba but there’s a lot more folk and pleasant oddness to it. It’s not as overtly psychedelic as Os Mutantes, but it does share some of that, as well as some more ‘Western’ rock’n’roll. It actually reminds me a bit of The Incredible String band with an added bit of Prog and Samba.
That doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does, it’s great! It has a real sense of creative and artistic freedom and exploration, a kind of relaxed sprawling-ness, without self consciousness or pomposity. Reading about the time it was made, under the military dictatorship, it’s seeming carefreeness is in sharp relief to the oppressiveness of the regime.
It is quite long, but it does have a great ebb and flow, I never really drifted off at any point, it always stayed engaging, even if I have no clue what they’re singing about. In some ways I like not knowing, it all adds to the curiousness and sense of exploration. O Trem Azul has a lovely lilt and groove to it, as does Saídas e Bandeiras Nº 1. Cravo e Canela I really liked, San Vicente has a very Beatles between Pepper and the White album feel to it, Paisagem Da Janela is great in that vein too. Os Povos I liked, Um Gosto De Sol has more George Martin/Beatles vibes. Pelo Amor de Deus has a nice psychedelic folk vibe and along with Lilia it might be my favourite track.
There’s a lot of great bass playing too alongside the keys and and acoustic guitars, the whole thing has a lovely sway, from marching tempos to more breezy tempos.
Overall I really liked it. and it’s one of the albums that makes doing this fun, it’s one I would never have heard of without the list, and it makes slogging through some of the not so good albums very worthwhile. I’m tempted to go 5 - it’s been a while since I got carried away and given a 5 to an album I’ve only just heard, and although I’ve listened through about 5 times I feel I need to listen some more, but fuck it I’ll go 5.
📐📐📐📐📐
Playlist submission: Pelo Amor de Deus
The Streets
5/5
A Grand Don’t Come For Free
I’m mmmmassshhhhed
I loved this album when it came out, I really listened to the shit out of it. I have revisited it intermittently over the years since, and I still think it’s great, it wasn’t really like many other albums at the time, and is pretty unique now, with it’s homemade beats, Brummie accented slightly awkward flows, and very British and wryly observed lyrics and lines. That many of the choruses and hooks sound like they were created by someone who can’t sing just adds to the whole thing for me.
I’ve always really liked horns on It Was Supposed to Be So Easy, and I love the Birmingham twinge on ‘money’. It's a great track, one of the stronger songs alongside the brilliant Blinded By the Lights, the bouncy holiday fun of Fit But You Know It and the beery heartache of Dry Your Eyes. I do actually like all the songs to varying degrees and they all work with the overall story. The only real misstep for me is when it gets a bit Craig David at the end of Wouldn’t Have it Any Other Way, ‘the ash tray needs emptying…’
One other thing that has always bothered me too, is how did the £1,000 fall into the back of the TV? Even if it was twenty £50 notes and it was a CRT TV with air vents I don’t know how that could actually fall in the back?
But ultimately it’s a great album, with a unique, singular feel to it. I get why people hate it and hate his rapping style, but to me he’s not so much a rapper as rhyming colloquialist, and I just really like his music. Cusp of 4 and 5, I’ll tip over to 5.
💷💷💷💷💷
Playlist submission: Fit But You Know It
Boston
5/5
Boston
More Than a Feeling is an absolute banger but I have never felt the urge to check out a full Boston album.
I wish I had as this is a lot of fun, with just the right amount of pleasurable cheesiness - I love its Ron Burgundy rock'n'roll soft rock power pop vibe, like The Cars crossed with Foreigner, Todd Rundgren and a bit of Tom Petty. You can see why it sold by the bucket load
Aside from the meticulous layers of guitar with that sweet sweet 70s tone, there is some great bass playing and some excellent harmonies and backing vocals on here. He’s quite famous for his studio jiggery pokery and making his own studio gizmos and it really does sound excellent, crisp, warm and smooth. Like a heated up Granny Smith.
The more I listened, the better it got and the more I can see why it sold by the tonne. Peace of Mind, Rock & Roll Band, Smokin, Something About You, Hitch a Ride and Let Me Take You Home Tonight are classic 70s rock banhers, with great arrangements and catchy melodies. The only thing I’m not keen on is the Foreplay section of Foreplay / Long Time, it goes way too prog and way too close to Yes for comfort and kind of distorts the flow. However the Long Time section is a great groove and an excellent track.
After 3 listens I thought this was a solid 4, but listening again today and reading back what I wrote above I think this is a 5; it's enormous fun, the songs are great, it sounds superb, the guitar is tasty, it nails exactly what it sets out to do and it’s all done and dusted in 37 minutes. Excellent
🛸🛸🛸🛸🛸
Playlist Submission: More Than a Feeling
The Charlatans
4/5
Tellin’ Stories
Ask me to rate this when it came out and it would have been a 5 and then some. I saw them on the Tellin’ Stories tour at Portsmouth Guildhall on the 5th of May 1997. I bought a hooky band t-shirt outside the gig which was too tight and the colours ran.
Listening now it’s still good, particularly the front half; With No Shoes, North Country Boy, Tellin’ Stories and One to Another is a great run. It’s never not diverting but it definitely loses a bit of steam after How Can You Leave Us, despite picking up again with How High. The B-side to How High, Title Fight is great and it’s a shame it’s not on the album.
I loved One to Another when it came out as a single, the piano riff and guitar riffs are excellent and its Stones meet The Chemical Brothers vibe is still great. The Stones and Dylan are the obvious touchstones throughout, their previous album was quite Exile but this feels very Beggars Banquet influenced, particularly With No Shoes, and there are lyrical and melodic nods to Bob all over it. I guess I can see the hip hop influence on something like How High, but I think the Hip Hop Soul moniker is a bit of a stretch.
The piano and organ definitely give them textural distinctiveness, and they are definitely have an earthier bluesier than other 90s bands, and their dancey origins and the involvement of the Chemical Brothers obviously inform the bass and rhythms as there is also a lot more groove and swing to them than many of their contemporaries, even if the production does sound a little wooly in places, like a lot of mid 90s indie albums.
Overall, some cracking songs, some perfectly fine if not always exciting tracks and a couple of meandering instrumentals, a bit of groove, some excellent organ and guitars and a lovely creamy dollop of nostalgia adds up to a solid 4 for me (Even though I would dispute whether anyone who doesn’t already like the Charlatans would need to hear this before they die)
📖📖📖📖
Playlist submission: Historically One to Another, but I’ll go Tellin’ Stories
Slayer
2/5
Reign in Blood
_I don’t like Nazis, I'm just interested in them_
Everytime we get one of these types of albums it always seems to follow the same pattern
- Try to have an open mind before listening
- Kind of don’t mind the first song initially
- Start to lose interest towards the end of the first song
- Get increasingly bored with each song musically
- Get increasingly bemused by the tedious, adolescent lyrical bollocks
- Don’t want to listen again
For no discernible reason I didn’t mind this as much as other metal / thrash albums, it’s only 29 minutes and I can appreciate Rick Rubin’s hand in adding some clarity so it isn’t just one big wooly sludge.
And I kind of admire how they doggedly stick to their template, which philosophically is really no different from bands I love in different genres sticking to their templates and repeatedly making similar songs and albums. However the issue is I don’t like metal or thrash, and I keep trying to articulate to myself why. I think it’s because it all feels so hollow - in relying solely on such self serious performative edginess, loudness, speed and guttural noises they really are only creating a juvenile approximation of aggression and danger, there really is no substance or weight to it, no real power or hardness. It’s not difficult or challenging in any way, there’s no tangible sense of in your face combativeness and aural assault that I get from something like Public Enemy - ultimately it just all feels like very guitar heavy background music.
For no real reason I found it better than your Sepulturas, your Panteras, your Napalm Deaths, so therefore it probably sits on a par with Megadeth and Metallica, meaning a low 2. I’ll never listen again but it did perhaps help me think more about why this type of music doesn’t resonate with me.
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Playlist submission: They’re all much of a muchness, I’ll go Jesus Saves.
The Temptations
4/5
All Directions
Strangely the version of this on Tidal is missing Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone, it just goes from track 2 to track 4. It might be a rights issue, but the song is on Tidal on other Temptations albums and compilations. It's a bit annoying to have to skip around to listen to it all in the right order, luckily though it's a fantastic track.
It seems like Funky Music Sho’ ‘Nuff Turns Me On is actually fake ‘live’, which is both strange and perplexing, as a proper studio version would be great - it’s an excellent song with superb vocals but this just sounds murky and indistinct and the stereo mix seems a trifle strange too.
Run Charlie Run is a great bit of non-singalon funk-soul, and sounds like Funky Music should. Papa is of course a classic, and completely justifies its 11 minutes.
Love Woke Me Up This Morning is a classic bit of throwaway Temptations syrupy balladry, the piano is great and as always the vocals are excellent, making a fun confection but one that ultimately doesn’t last long on the tongue/ears.
I Ain’t Got Nothing I really loved; great melody, vocals and Shoo-wop-shoo-wops as well as an excellent string arrangement, a nice counter to the rather cloying string arrangements either side.
Vocally it’s a fantastic version of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, the piano and bass supporting very nicely, but the strings are a touch too saccharine and I feel like they pull the song under a little. Love the timpani on Mother Nature and another great lead vocal, leading nicely into the superb Do Your Thing
Alongside the uniformly fantastic vocals, harmonies and vocal arrangements the Funk Brothers playing is magnificent, but the bass playing is particularly excellent, melodic and rhythmic with a great tone and no hints of overplaying - which you would expect with Bob Babbitt and James Jamerson’s playing.
Overall it is a slight oddity in its sense of thrown together unevenness, but with the vocals and playing making up any shortfalls it’s never unlistenable, and in Papa there is one absolute classic and four excellent tracks in Run Charlie Run, I Ain’t Got Nothin’, Mother Nature and Do Your Thing. It’s just a shame they didn’t do a proper version of Funky Music to really elevate it. As it is it makes it into the low-mid 4s
🧭🧭🧭🧭
Playlist submission: Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone
Lauryn Hill
4/5
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Haven’t listened to this in a long time, a long time.
It’s easy to forget how popular it was when it came out and looking back how different it was to a lot of mainstream male-fronted hip hop and r’n’b.
Skits aside, the first half absolutely rips. Lost Ones, X Factor and Doo Wop are fantastic, great lyrics, delivery, samples and arrangements. Doo Wop is my standout track but the Bam Bam interpolation and bear of Lost Ones runs it close. To Zion, Superstar and Final Hour are also great tracks, the Light My Fire interpolation and sample on Superstar is brilliantly deployed. Final Hour’s aggressive rapping and flute sample are a nice counterpoint to some of the more r’n’b style singing elsewhere.
It’s of course hard to maintain that quality and it is definitely much more uneven after Final Hour. When It Hurts So Bad and I Used to Love Him descend sharply into aimless and melodically moribund territory and they both feel a bit fat dude with a 5 string bass and hackneyed r’n’b vocal runs.
Forgive Them Father is decent, and Every Ghetto, Every City is excellent, a real highlight, it’s Stevie-eque funkiness is fantastic, and along with the superb Everything is Everything they are the highlights of the back half, strewn amongst the more unremarkable and humdrum 90s r’n’b workouts.
It is a great album though, with some truly excellent music, it’s just a shame it suffers from CD bloat with a handful of actually quite tedious tracks and too many skits tacked on to the end of some of the tracks. Because of that I don’t think it can be a 5, so a solid 4 it is.
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Playlist submission: Doo Wop (That Thing)
Mudhoney
3/5
Superfuzz Bigmuff
I’ve heard plenty about Mudhoney and their influence but have never knowingly heard anything of theirs.
Their influence on Grunge and Nirvana in particular has definitely not been understated, there are clear throughlines in sound, structure and approach, but what is also clear to me is that Nirvana are a better more evolved band taking the parts of this they like and adding more pop and traditional songwriting craft.
This is still enjoyable though as it’s own thing, separate to the it’s influence, particularly as it’s just the 6 songs on the original version. Out of interest I listened to some of the other tracks on the repackaged album and while there are some good tracks, the scuzzy grungey earnestness and punky vibes of the original tracks work well and it doesn’t get the chance to drag by going on for too long.
Need, Chain that Door, No One Has and n ‘n’Out of Grace are solid enough proto-grunge but Mudride and If I Think are a bit more interesting, the changes in tempo and mood from those straight ahead songs creates a bit more of a dynamic atmosphere, particularly Mudride with the wah wah and slightly Indian guitar parts in places.
So overall it’s a fine album and interesting staging point in a genre of music that went stratospheric. I may not reach for it again, but I wouldn’t be averse to giving it another go, if the mood were to strike, which means it just edges into the 3s
💂💂💂
Playlist submission: Mudride
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
Tusk
What do you do after Rumours? What do you do after Sgt Pepper, what do you do after London Calling? Make a rambling multi-disc record, that’s what!
It definitely has the feel of the comedown after Rumours, there’s a melancholy thread running through the whole thing, even the ‘up’ songs sound quite sad. And the sprawling, fragmented nature of the songs gives it a sense of disconnection and uncertainty, which probably reflects their drug assisted mental states after the madness of Rumours, and the different routes they wanted to go with their music.
From reading about it it makes sense that they indulged Buckingham’s desire to make something different and add some new wave influences to stop him leaving, and that is exemplified by the curious mix of the polished sound and style of Rumours with Buckinghan’s tracks that sound very much like demos and ideas rather than full songs.
That fragmented feel is obvious throughout but is exemplified in the first two songs, the sad, country twinged but lovely Over and Over, followed by what seems little more than a quirky sketch of a song with The Ledge.
Although Buckingham dominates the album and has some great songs in What Makes You Think You’re the One, That’s All For Everyone, Walk a Thin Line and the excellent title track. That’s All For Everyone has some George vibes to me, and I really like the nod to the Beach Boys with the harmonies in Walk a Thin Line.
But for me it’s Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie that provide the majority of the highlights. Sara, Storms, Sisters of the Moon, Angel and Beautiful Child are great Stevie songs, particularly Sara and Sisters of the Moon and I always love Christine’s songwriting. She is probably my favourite FM songwriter, there’s just something about her style that really resonates with me. Over & Over, Think About Me, Never Make Me Cry, Honey Hi and Never Forget are all excellent.
I can see why this has gathered more critical respect in recent years, it would have been almost impossible to follow up Rumours with Rumours II, so by not going down that route they probably wrong footed a lot of people. But over repeat listens it’s White Album-esque strange corners and sad, fragmented nature becomes very beguiling and hypnotic. There’s a slightly dreamlike haze to it so when I get to the end I can’t quite recall it properly and I want to listen over to see if I can piece it all back together again.
It’s definitely not a better album than Rumours, but it feels like there could be a really great focused single album with Stevie and Christine’s tracks plus a few of Lindsey’s, but without that scattergun, uneven charm it would probably be less interesting and would lose the weird, enticing quality it has.
After the first couple of listens it was a solid 4, but that has definitely climbed to the border of 4 and 5 as I’ve come back to after listening to the other albums and I’m really very torn between the two. As is my wont I’ll tip it over to a 5.
🦣🦣🦣🦣🦣
Playlist submission: It’s Tusk really but I’ll say Sara
The Young Gods
3/5
L’Eau Rouge
Swiss Industrial-Cabaret Synth-Rock. I suppose if Switzerland has no real culture of producing 20th century popular music it’s natural you’d end up with something as idiosyncratic as this.
On one hand, this is bad. And on another hand it is also bad. But at the same time it’s interesting-bad, and there is somehow some degree of charm amongst the cabaret parts, the guitar samples and the pissed old French bloke in a tabac drinking red wine at 7am shouting axis. Like a Francophone Tom Waits, Tom Attend, if you will.
It’s not my thing really, but I do get the sense that they are trying to make something different, or interesting, or at the least coming at this sort of thing from a different angle, rather than the performative ‘difficulty’ of a lot of metal, grunge and alternative music. Accordion and vocal style apart, I like the Bernard Hermann/Hitchcock string or brass arrangements, as on La Fille De La Mort, L’Eau Rouge and Les Enfants, which give it a slightly sinister melodrama, and some of the sampled and looped guitars serve their purpose well - more like they are designed to support the son’s intent, rather than designed to ‘go hard’ and impress teenage boys - as on Rue des Tempetes or Longue Route. And out of interest I listened to the CD bonus tracks, more of the same but I quite liked L’Amourir.
I don’t think I’d listen again, which would put it at a 2. But to me it at least has an idea behind it and singularity that makes it a little more interesting than the majority of 2s, so I think I’ll just nudge it into a very low 3
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Ville Notre
Tom Waits
3/5
Heartattack & Vine
I completely forgot until today that I used to have this on CD. Not sure why, I think maybe I bought it for Jersey Girl.
Heartattack and Vine is excellent. I love the dirty guitar and gutbucket feel, and how it evokes a seedy Los Angeles with the sax punctuating the straightforward instrumentation. Nice of him to pop in an instrumental. Even if it is a bit aimless it might have been nicer later on on the record for a bit of respite. Saving All My Love passes me by a bit, they jazzy balladry doesn’t really generate much excitement.
Downtown is great though, the organ and descending momentum is nice. And Jersey Girl is of course great, a solid bit of bluesy pop yearning.
Til The Money Runs Out carries a hint of Shakin’ All Over but is a decent track. On The Nickel is the best ballad, it does have more than a smidge of Randy Newman taken to extremes, but the melody and tenderness is rather sweet. Mr Siegel is a pretty forgettable track, in the same vein as but, not as good as Downtown or Heartattack and Vine. And Ruby’s Arms has some nice moments, the horn intro is good and it has a bit of Fairytale of New York, but it is also a bit forgettable.
I like Tom Waits and I like his voice, but the songs on this are a bit of a mixed bag. The good tracks are very good (Heartattack and Vine, Downtown, Jersey Girl and On the Nickel), but the rest are inferior versions of those tracks and not particularly interesting, making it a 3.
💓💓💓
Playlist submission: Jersey Girl is great, but I’ll Heartattack and Vine
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Hot Buttered Soul
I’m kind of familiar with the album mainly through the version of Walk on By - a classic on the cusp of Soul going from the 60s Motown style pop to the more serious and gritty 70s style. It’s also been sampled a lot, you hear it cropping up a lot.
It really is a fantastic track, the guitar and various riffs and melodies picked out on the strings, horns and keyboards are fantastic, creating a sense of drama against the at turns languid and pleading vocal. 12 excellent minutes.
By The Time I Get to Phoenix isn’t as successful, despite being excellent from around 8.50, when he starts singing and the strings swell. The horn motif is excellent, the keys and organ are superb and it all just sounds fantastic. It’s just a shame that the extended spoken word intro is so superfluous - it is a bit of a slog to get through to get to the good bit, and unlike Walk on By that makes it feels like its full 18 minutes.
In between those Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic is excellent, a wah wah driven bit of funky late 60s soul with an fantastic groove and some lovely piano along side the superb bass. But then I find One Woman, despite some nice moments, a little bit overwrought with a slightly histrionic string arrangement, and as a result it doesn’t land quite as well as the other tracks.
His keyboard and Marvell Thomas plus The Bar-Kays playing is fantastic throughout though, and it sounds superb, the bass and drums are excellent and it has the perfect amount of lushness, not too cloying or over the top but with a nice depth to it.
Walk on By and the 2nd half of Phoenix are as good as this type of late 60s/early 70s soul gets, but when there are only 4 tracks any weaknesses do get amplified, and the first half of By The Time I Get to Phoenix and the slightly underwhelming One Woman are definitely weak compared to the rest of it. I think that makes it a solid to high 4.
🧈🧈🧈🧈
Playlist submission: Walk on By
Roxy Music
5/5
For Your Pleasure
I thought this would be good, Do the Strand is great, but I wasn’t expecting it to be such a fantastic album from start to end.
I suppose it’s the band in a nutshell but I love the dynamic tension of Ferry’s croons and yelps, Manzanera’s guitar, the pre-new wave dancey rhythms and bass, the 50s sax and Eno’s synth atmospheres and textures, all wrapped up with an Art School spirit and wonky glamour. All the factions seem to be constantly pulling at each other and with Ferry trying to write catchy pop songs and Eno trying to make them weird it gives every track a really interesting energy and exciting quality.
Do The Strand feels like a continuation of Virginia Plain in some ways, and is a banger with classic Ferry Lyrics. Great bass too. The shimmery keyboard and overdriven slide on Beauty Queen is a fantastic embellishment to a brilliant track that exemplifies the push and pull of the different strands of the band.
I love the keys on Strictly Confidential with the oboe before the guitar comes in and before the oboe goes very high. It’s got a bit of Bowie to it, like something from Heroes, which this predates of course. I like the 50s rock’n’roll feel of Strictly Confidential, it’s a nice bit of uptempo energy between the songs either side of it.
In Every Dream Home a Heartache is absolutely superb, slightly weird with a sinister edge and the theme of poking around behind closed doors and what weirdness happens under the surface is great, something Damon Albarn does a lot.
The Bogus Man is a bit of a grower, but after a few listens I started to love it’s uneasiness and shifting feel, it’s got a groove, but with a bit of hesitancy that builds into something hypnotic, while the sax and synths and guitars swirl and stab and melody moves in a slightly unsettling way. It definitely has some Talking Heads vibes to it and is another great track.
Grey Lagoons has some excellent piano and guitar and I really like the vocal melody and again is a great bit of uptempo 50s influenced rock’n’roll before the fantastic For Your Pleasure. I love the reverby twang on the guitar and those weird synthy noises and rumbling tom tom fills, again theres a an off kilter feeling that really makes the song
I’ve never really considered what a great guitarist Phil Manzanera is, there’s loads of great fills, licks and textures and he seems to play for the song brilliantly, there’s nothing extraneous or overtly showy, everything is in service to the mood of the songs. And the drums and bass are great too, there's a slipperiness and grooviness that gives everything a great sense of movement and momentum.
I loved this and I wish I’d given this and more of RM other than the best of a go earlier. There are so many obvious influences on many bands I love and the whole thing feels about 10 years ahead of its time, it would have fitted right in around Blondie and Talking Heads and all those new wave bands in the early 80s. Fantastic stuff. 5.
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Playlist submission: For Your Pleasure
PS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88am-ZnQ5Yc&ab_channel=2007TGD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BonWfTW7jKc&ab_channel=BryanFerry
R.E.M.
4/5
Murmur
Not sure I’ve listened to this, I get a bit mixed up with their albums from Murmur to Green.
I do like REM a lot, but I’m nowhere near an aficionado, so I was quite surprised at how fully formed and ‘REM’ this felt stylistically, I had thought it might be an album of them feeling for their sound, but the jangly guitars, rhythm patterns, bouncy bass and melodic character are all in place, and it it feels reminiscent of their albums post New Adventures in HiFi, Perfect Circle for example sounds like it could have come straight off Reveal or Around the Sun.
I suppose what’s missing is a really great song or two. Despite Radio Free Europe and Talk About the Passion being very good, and there being no bad songs at all, there is nothing that truly transcends as some of their later songs do.
Having said that, it is still clearly a very good album, especially for a debut. And despite the lack of a killer song or two, as a whole 45 minutes it's a very coherent and enjoyable listen, with well crafted songs and the requisite amount of enigmatic lyrics and vocals. Not much more I can say, its a solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Radio Free Europe
Robert Wyatt
4/5
Shleep
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. Knowing Robert Wyatt’s reputation I thought it may be a bit off beat and it’s certainly eccentric in its serene, childlike folky jazz prog. Some songs are pretty immediate, while others feel like the ramblings of an old man with the mind of a child. But the more I listened the more I was pleasantly surprised by how much I started to enjoy it, quirks and all.
The first two tracks show the mix of convention and eccentricity, Heaps of Sheep is excellent with its bobbling Bo Diddley rhythm and airy feel, while The Duchess is harder to get to grips with. Musically it’s great, a kind of Can or Faust groove but the nutty discordant ramblings and jarring fiddle are tougher to digest on first listen.
However that combination of melodies and discordance makes the whole thing intriguing, especially on repeat listens and upon coming back to it after listening to other things. The sonic and lyrical meanderings really got under my skin; Eno’s synths and textures, the brass band sounds, the folkiness and nursery rhyme and childlike feel, Phil Manzanera’s (hello again!) guitar all contribute to the unique, singular feel.
Maryan is excellent, the picked guitar figure is lovely, the horns evoking a colliery brass band before the almost middle eastern strings come in and it fades out. Free Will and Testament is also great, the spacey guitar is excellent and I like the woozy, dreamy September the Ninth. Alien sounds like it could be from The Next Day or Blackstar, in fact quite a lot sounds like later Bowie. A Sunday in Madrid is another charming, beguiling track. The Subterranean Homesick Blues interpolation in Blues in Bob Minor has a great, naive charm to it
Heaps of Sheep I liked straight away but on first listen I wasn’t sure about the rest, but with repeat listens over a couple of days I started to really like it’s strange and singular charms, even the slightly wonky songs like The Duchess I started to really like, and overall it has a kind of beguiling gentleness to it. As well as late Bowie It reminded me a bit of the spirit of that Julian Cope album, Peggy Suicide, that we had before and I can see why people like Weller and Radiohead are fans of his. I’m really glad this came up, I would never have listened to it without the list, and I can see myself returning to this to try and figure it out further, thus making it a solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Heaps of Sheep
The Smiths
4/5
Strangeways, Here We Come
My second listen to a Smiths album after Meat is Murder last year. Similar to that one, as I have a bit of a blind spot with Smiths albums I’m not sure how this sits in their 4 album run, apart from knowing it’s their last one.
All the classic Smiths elements are here, and Andy Rourke shines as usual, but Marr really seems to be on one, with more ostentatious guitar hero licks than I expected, especially on I Started Something and Noely G I think must have used some of the licks on Stop Me as the basis for his lead playing. And after listening to Meat is Murder and Death at One’s Elbow on here I hadn’t realised how much country/rockabilly influence there is in the band, but thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense. I also really like the different instrumental colours, the marimbas, synths, horns, harmonium and autoharp, and the piano seemingly being more prominent too.
I Started Something, Girlfriend in a Coma, Stop Me and Last Night are obviously the well known songs and they are excellent, A Rush and A Push is great too, but I really loved Death of a Disco Dancer, it’s maudlin drone, bass line and chugging guitars are fantastic. Not sure where Smiths fans rate this but it already feels like one of my favourites of theirs.
I really like the melody to Paint a Vulgar Picture, and the country inflections of the aforementioned Death at One’s Elbow, but it does feel like the 2nd side isn't as well cooked as the first, running out of steam a little, and Unhappy Birthday is one of those slightly irritatingly churlish Morrisey lyrics, that can be a bit off putting.
I think I’ve still got a thing with The Smiths, I think they’re great, but they’re one of those bands that I like and admire, rather than truly love. I don’t find it that hard to park my feelings about current day Morrisey, and he was capable at this time of some fantastic lyrics and imagery, but I’ve always found his voice and overall presence slightly tough going after a few songs in a row, even before I knew much about his public character, so I guess that plays a part in my overall feelings. It's better than Meat is Murder, there are some excellent songs in the first half and it's a very good album, but overall I don’t think it quite reaches a 5, so I’ll stick on 4.
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Playlist submission: Death of a Disco Dancer
Guns N' Roses
5/5
Appetite for Destruction
Questionable ethics and lyrics aside I love this album, the only hard rock album I actually like from start to finish. Obviously they are hair metal adjacent, but they always had some kind of alchemy that set them apart, the right blend of glam, punk, metal and blues with songwriting nous and a melodic ear. Rather than being slavishly devoted to purely metal influences their rock’n’roll bombast makes this a fun and exciting listen.
Obviously Slash gets a lot of attention for his playing, but Izzy Stradlin is also great, his rhythm and occasional lead is such a big part of why this sounds as good as it does. McKagen is also a very good bassist with a nice tone and a sense of restraint. But I think Steven Adler is probably their secret weapon, he may not be the most technical, but he has a great swing to his playing, and he eschews ostentation or lumpen double kick drum metal cliche, giving the songs groove and motility, like the loping, broken pattern on Mr Brownstone or on Paradise City.
Aside from the obvious bangers (Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City and Sweet Child o’ Mine), there are other excellent tracks; It’s So Easy, Nightrain, Out Ta Get Me, Mr Brownstone, My Michelle and Rocket Queen. And while Think About You, You’re Crazy and Anything Goes may not be at the same level as those other songs they are still decent enough album tracks, and don’t lack for energy or lasciviousness, and keep the mood of unpretentious fearful and angry griminess.
Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City and Sweet Child o’ Mine would be enough on their own for this to be a classic, but well supported as they are by the rest of the tracks, this can only be a 5.
🔫🔫➕🌹🌹
Playlist submission: Sweet Child O’ Mine
Suzanne Vega
3/5
Suzanne Vega
On first listen this is very pleasant but very mid 80s sounding folk rock. That 80s sound is great for upbeat pop music and pop rock and metal, but for something more hushed and intimate like this it sounds too big and too austere, which is a shame as I really like her voice and storytelling. It really feels like it needs some 70s analogue warmth or at least some fake analogue warmth or something to give it some kind of oomph to puncture either the cold politeness or cheesiness of the sound.
The first side doesn’t seem quite as strong as the second, Cracking has a nice atmosphere, but the spoken word parts don’t really work for me. Freeze Tag has a bit too much of that squeezing extra words and syllables into the meter thing and is a little bit annoying. Marlene on the Wall is catchy though and uses the meter thing more judiciously, you can see why this would be the main single, it has a nice sense of completeness.
Small Blue Thing sounds a little like What I Am by Edie Brickell but is a really nice song. Straight Lines suffers a little from the 80s production, the electric guitar sounds particularly anaemic, but the synth is nice.
Undertow is nice, it has a pleasing sense of rhythm and doesn’t out stay its welcome. Some Journey is great, the one time the production style works and I like the violin solo a lot, its slightly chaotic and brings a nice bit of energy to things. The Queen and the Soldier is very good too, it feels quite Leonard Cohen melodically, with a Dylan-esque lyric. The slightly acerbic feel of Knight Moves is nice too, the bit of anger breaking through the pleasantness. Under that cheesy 80s sound Neighbourhood Girls is actually a nice bluesy song, and reinforces the second side being more interesting than the first
I really like her voice, lyrics and much of the songwriting and its an enjoyable enough album, but it’s slightly removed sense of pleasantness means it doesn’t linger in the memory as much as you feel it should. Would listen again and am interested enough to try some more albums, but I’m unlikely to reach for this too much. Which makes it a 3
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Playlist submission: Some Journey
Venom
1/5
Black Metal
Yeah, lol, no.
⬛
Playlist submission: Countess Bathory
Peter Gabriel
5/5
Peter Gabriel (3: Melt)
_‘Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willy, Willy is happy again’_
Don’t be blue, Peter
If you were to trace my enjoyment of this album it would look like an inverted bell curve. On the first listen I really liked it, on the 2nd listen I wasn’t as keen, but on the 3rd and 4th listens I really enjoyed it again.
It’s hard not to read about the production and sound of this and its introduction of the gated reverb drum sound, but it does sound excellent (despite there being a liberal sprinkling of Chapman Stick across it), and it does sound ahead of its time.
Intruder starts things off in a suitably dissonant and unsettling way, the vaguely discordant synth noises and sinister vocal and lyric is great. No Self Control has a feel of Remain in Light by Talking Heads, which came out later the same year
Start feels like a slightly unnecessary cheesy sax interlude but it does fade nicely into the excellent I Don’t Remember, which combines more Talking Heads vibes with a bit of Genesis, and has a nice nagging catchiness. Family Snapshot adds more unsettledness to what starts as a relatively standard piano ballad, before a bit of pleading bombast gives it an almost Meatloaf feel
And Through the Wire is possibly the most straight ahead rock song on the album (with some nice Jam guitar from Weller), and it’s a great one before the excellent and catchy Games Without Frontiers. Not One of Us returns to the Talking Heads feel, although it moves into some more proggy territory, before an excellently hypnotic outro.
Lead a Normal Life may not be the strongest track, but I really like it’s insistent nature and that it is almost a palette cleanser between Not One of Us and the absolutely fantastic Biko. The Xhosa recordings, Gabriels emotive vocals and lyrics and the bagpipes all combine, a brilliant and moving song.
Overall I really really liked this and its creeping, odd, Eno & Talking Heads, New Wave, World, singular and idiosyncratic nature. I assumed it did have some Eno involvement from its feel, I was surprised it didn't although there is obviously a crossover with Robert Fripp. It’s definitely a grower, with lots of weird, unsettling details, deliberate artiness and a real density and intensity to it. It’s on the border of 4 and 5, I think I’ll tip to 5 as it’s increasingly the sort of thing I find myself liking more and more.
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Playlist submission: Biko
Pet Shop Boys
5/5
Actually
Looking back at the review for Behaviour that seemed quite patchy, but this feels a coherent and very strong collection of songs. What Have I Done to Deserve This and It’s a Sin are the obvious big songs, but this is excellent throughout, the only song I wasn’t sure of was It Couldn’t Happen Here, although it did grow on me.
On the surface there is a plasticy late 80s yuppie sheen to it all, reflecting some of the themes and lyrics. But underneath that it's a brilliantly constructed set of songs, a great sounding mix of synth, electro, Hi-NRG and pop, all tied together with the coolly detached mundanity of Neil Tennant's delivery, touching on politics, emptiness and loneliness, boredom, money, and love.
One More Chance is a great dancey opener and I have always loved Dusty’s ‘Since You Went Away…’ part, a great pop moment. Shopping is great, despite the lyric occasionally being too bluntly literal. Rent is excellent, built around the excellently sardonic ‘I Love You, You Pay my Rent’ chorus. Hit Music is another bit of frothy and catchy dance pop, celebrating the joy of music, the almost salsa-piano giving it a nice bit of extra texture. I can see how It Couldn’t Happen Here provides a change of tempo and feel with it’s allusions to AIDS, and although it grew on me and the trumpet is forlornly excellent, it does drag a little, maybe just because melodically it doesn’t quite land as well as the songs around it.
It’s a Sin is of course an absolute banger, the campily melodramatic religious overtones of the synth/string line and the chorus hook are superb, a moment of pop perfection. I Want To Wake Up feels perhaps a step below the songs either side of it, but it is another well crafted bit of dance pop, the vocoder and descending chorus are very nice.
I completely forgot about Heart, it’s also banger, that sampled vocal hook is superb. According to wiki ‘The song was also intended to be used in the Steven Spielberg-produced film Innerspaice but the dance sequence it was intended for was at the wrong tempo for the song’ For shame.
King’s Cross ends things on a bit of a down note, the hangover to the upbeat songs, it feels like a glimpse of reality behind the yuppiness parodied and satirised on the rest of the album. Great track.
I’m finding it hard to think why this shouldn’t be a 5 - great hooks, great dancey rhythms and beats, a unique vocal and melodic style, an interesting set of thematic threads and consistently excellent songs all add up to make this a fantastic album. 5.
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Playlist submission: It’s a Sin
Otis Redding
5/5
Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
I have very strong memories of listening to this on my headphones in the library at Durham, maybe in the 2nd year. It was a bit of a favourite back then but I haven’t listened in a good while, so it’s nice to revisit now.
He’s possibly my favourite singer of all time, and he’s matched brilliantly to Stax, Booker T and the Mgs and The Memphis Horns/Mar-keys, their country inflected southern soul grit complements his rasp and tenderness perfectly. As amazing as the Funk Brothers and Motown were, I don't think he would have sounded nearly as good with them as he does with the MGs. Steve Cropper is excellent here, as is Booker T and Donald Dunn, but Al Jackson in particular is superb, I just really love his drumming and how well he hits the snare on something like Respect.
I love Ole Man Trouble, it's got such a sweet bluesyness and countryness to go with the yearning soul vocal and contemplative lyrics. Aretha may have made Respect hers, but I do love the energy of this version. Sam Cooke’s original is great of course, but I love Otis’s version of A Change is Gonna Come, the doggedness, frustration and perseverance in his voice is incredible. Again he makes Down in the Valley his own, the band are brilliant, giving it a gravelly, hypnotic groove.
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long is the standout for me, Booker T’s piano is superbly emotive and it’s another fantastic, pleading, powerful vocal.
Shake is a great soul stomper (with an abrupt fade out) and although My Girl is so ubiquitous now, it had been out for less than a year when he recorded it. Al Jackson is great on this and it’s a very nice version with another superb vocal. Similarly Wonderful World is another nice version of the original with excellent vocals.
The interplay of Steve Cropper and Otis on Rock Me Baby is mesmerizingly fantastic, its a superb version. Love Satisfaction, bringing it back to its original Otis inspiration and giving it a frenzied and chaotic soul workout. Banger. And You Don’t Miss Your Water ends things brilliantly, another superb vocal and excellent horns.
I don't think there are many 60s soul albums to match this, the ebb and flow between the ballads and foot stompers, the grit, rasp, tenderness and feeling in his voice and the superb playing. An easy 5.
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Playlist submission: I’ve Been Loving You Too Long
Radiohead
4/5
Hail To the Thief
Along with Amnesiac I tend to overlook this album in their post OK Computer era, I always gravitate towards Kid A, In Rainbows, The King of Limbs or Moon Shaped Pool instead.
That’s because this does feel long at nearly an hour, and while taken individually they are actually very good songs, Sail To The Moon and We Suck Young Blood sound very similar tonally and tempo-wise. Sail To The Moon is actually lovely and the chords and backing vocals on We Suck Young Blood are great as well, but along with the other similar sounding pair of I Will and Scatterbrain, and the interesting but relatively throwaway The Gloaming they colour the album with a sense of dirge and ponderousness.
Despite that, there are superb songs on here. 2+2= 5 is one of their best post OK Computer rockers, the arpeggiated (my how they love arpeggios in this period) intro leading to the release of some pent up chaos, the pulsing Backdrifts is excellent and I love the time signature changes and guitar bursts of Go To Sleep. Where I End and You Begin is also excellent, the bass groove and drum pattern are great, a bit Can/Faust, and I love the scratchy guitar. There, There is, along with Go To Sleep, probably the most conventional track and it is very good, the bass under the toms and guitar is delicious. A Punchup At a Wedding I absolutely love, one of my favourite Radiohead songs. The piano and bass are superb, giving it a real hypnotic groove. Myxomatosis is excellent too, I love the drum pattern and synth bass parts. A Wolf At the Door is very good too.
I don’t think it’s quite on the same level as Kid A, In Rainbows, The King of Limbs or A Moon Shaped Pool, or OK Computer. The same tense, fraught sensibility behind their best stuff is here, but combined with the overall length and slightly plodding, similar sounding nature of some of the slower songs it does feel a bit one note in places, and it does drag a little. Despite that it’s still a great record with some absolutely brilliant songs, an album that few other bands could match. If it was someone else it probably would be a 5, but, fairly or unfairly, I think I hold them to a higher standard, so I’ll go a very high 4, even though that does feel a bit penurious.
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Playlist submission: A Punchup at a Wedding
Ps it’s worth listening to the Com Lag 2+2=5 EP from this period, there’s, I think, a slightly better version of I Will and an excellent track called Paperbag Writer.
Tori Amos
4/5
Little Earthquakes
Just because you can make me come, doesn’t mean you're Jesus
Wise words.
I really liked this, but I’m struggling to think of a great deal to say about it.
Apart from the cabaret excursion of Happy Phantom and the unconvincing bluesy-quirk of Leather there are no bad songs and there are some great songs; Crucify, Girl, Precious Things, Winter, China and in the duo of Me and a Gun and Little Earthquakes it has an emotional charge and frankness that is incredibly affecting and harrowing - the reverb heavy crassfade to Little Earthquakes is superb
It feels a bit reductionist to make the comparison but I suppose Kate Bush is the obvious touchstone, particularly on something like Girl, but her emotional frankness and directness makes her quite unique.
It’s on the border of 3 and 4, but I think those final two tracks being as great as they are just push it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: Little Earthquakes
4/5
Wild Gift
A short, fun and entertaining punky album that nimbly sidesteps 3 chord thrash, bringing in some very enjoyable surf, powerpop, rockabilly and bluesy influences as well as some nice guitar licks and riffs.
It’s full of some great little moments across some very good songs, I love that little bass riff in The Once Over Twice, the almost reggae lope of Adult Books, the chorus of Universal Corner, the riff of It’s Who You Know, the licks and bass of In This House I Call Home, the groove of White Girl, the rockabilly scratchiness of Beyond and Back, the catchiness of When Our Love Passed out on the Couch, the Beach Boys, hanclappy, Chuck Berry powerpop of Year 1.
It’s right on the cusp of 3 and 4. It’s definitely a superior version of this type of album, and I can hear its echoes in lots of contemporaneous bands like the Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers and The Clash, as well as lots of bands that came later, particularly The Strokes. I think I’ll tip to a 4 - I’ll definitely come back to it if I’m in the mood for 30 minutes of very enjoyable and influential punk adjacent fun.
❌❌❌❌
Playlist submission: Year 1
Small Faces
4/5
Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake
Despite being a big fan of Small Faces for numerous reasons they never really managed to make one consistently good, solid album and their discography is a bit all over this place with UK and US versions mashing things together. And this one is a funny one too, one side feeling a bit like a collection of r’n’b-blues-psychedelia and music hall odds and sods (albeit with some excellent songs), and then the other side a fairy tale concept album, (again with some great songs). But I always wished they’d either done the whole album around the concept of Happiness Stan and incorporated things like Long Ago and Worlds Apart, Song of a Baker, Lazy Sunday and Afterglow into it, or done an album of standalone tracks with those songs and Rollin’ Over
I love Ronnie’s bass sound on the title track and it’s an excellent swirling bluesy psychedelic instrumental. Afterglow is superb, up there with Tin Soldier as a brilliantly strained r’n’b/rock’n’roll song. Long Ago and Worlds Apart is a nicely atmospheric psychedelic jam with some r’n’b touches. Rene takes the cockney knees up of Lazy Sunday too far, it’s not a pleasant listen. Song of a Baker is one of those great punchy, muscularly soulful SF rock songs and surely the template for much of Moseley Shoals. Lazy Sunday I oscillate on, sometimes I find it charming and at other times too trite.
I love the Stanley Unwin interlocutions, and the story Happiness Stan is a classic bit of 60s psychedelic concept and it’s nicely told via Stanley Unwin and the suite of songs. Happiness Stan itself is the kind of easily parodied 60s track, but the remaining tracks are great. Rollin’ Over is an excellent, grooving track and The Hungry Intruder is nice in a pseudo-fantastical way with some nice flute. The Journey is fine, but Mad John is excellent in a dramatic semi-folky way before more Cockney knees up on the last track.
Overall a bit of a mixed bag, a slightly mismatched collection of songs and themes masquerading as an album, but it has some really excellent songs in Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, Afterglow, Long Agos and Worlds Apart, Song of a Baker, Rollin’ Over and Mad John and a pleasingly 60s concept on the 2nd side. Between 3 and 4 again, and again I’ll tip into 4, mainly for sentimental reasons.
🔩🔩🔩🔩
Playlist submission: Afterglow
Fun fact, I once had an email correspondence with Ian McLagan after he put his email address in the back of his autobiography back in the early 2000s. Simpler times
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Savane
Ali Farke Toure is one of those people I’m aware of and have heard quite a bit of through various compilations, but I haven’t ever listened to one of his albums fully.
Anyway I really liked this, the desert blues, the middle eastern inflections, the rhythms, the horns, harmonica, acoustic guitars, and his guitar tone, the words seemingly dipping in and out of Arabic and French, it all feels very evocative of a place I’ve never been with a beautiful stateliness and warmth. On some listens I just let the whole thing warmly wash over me like and on others I paid closer attention.
Songhoy Blues was the other Desert Blues album we’ve had and I really liked it, but that felt more youthful and energetic, whereas this felt older and more comfortable. Maybe it’s because Savane sounds a bit like What Good Am I or something from Oh Mercy, but I get the same feeling that albums gives me, kind of ruminative and contemplative, but also with a sense of being at ease (even though I don’t know what he’s singing about).
I enjoyed pretty much every track, but the run of Beto-Savane-Soya-Penda Yoro is great, and I really liked the folk-ish desert blues of Soya. Hanana I liked too, the arabic fiddle, tabla percussion and drone is great, very charmingly hypnotic. N’jarou is great too, the rhythmic brass and guitar together are lovely.
It’s a lovely, meandering, charming album, like gentle waves of lovely warm water lapping over your feet on a lovely sunny beach - solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Soya
Kraftwerk
5/5
Trans Europe Express
This was the first Kraftwerk album I bought on CD, I’m not sure why I chose this one over The Man Machine, maybe as I already liked the song Trans-Europe Express.
Anyhow I love this album, it’s the perfect step from the coolly electronic and not quite fully formed Autobahn to the (slightly) more humanistic Man Machine. The opening track feels like an adapted for sunday train travel Autobahn, evoking similar feelings of movement and passing through but with a more soothing and meditative ambiance, especially when the choral vocals come in.
Hall of Mirrors and Showroom Dummies I have always found really creepy, but in a good way, I love the concept of the showroom dummies breaking out of their windows and going to a nightclub.
Trans-Europe Express (and Abzug) are a slightly punchier version of Europe Endless, the train rhythm and slightly sinister hook is great and I love the matter of fact, detached description of travelling from Paris to Dusseldorf and meeting David Bowie and Iggy Pop.
Franz Schubert is a really lovely bubbling melody, crossing into the Endless Endless refrain, feeling like a nice satisfying sit down after a long train journey, before it all starts again.
As always with Karftwerk, they are incredible at locating you in a mood and place based purely on repeating electronic rhythms and minimalist melodies. How they create such an immersive and mesmerising sound from seemingly so little is amazing really, and I love how on here many of the refrains and motifs repeat, adding to the slightly hypnotic feel of the whole thing.
Fantastic album, an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Europe Endless
The Who
4/5
My Generation
I do like the early Who r’n’b period, this has a charming roughness, both in the recorded sound, which is a bit ropey (especially in comparison to how good Rubber Soul from the same year sounds), and the overall garagey, energetic chaos. I think proto-punk is a bit of a retrospective reach, but it definitely has a nicely abrasive, immediate feel to it.
My Generation and The Kids are Alright are the obvious tracks and they are both excellent. My Generation does suffer from familiarity, but it is a fantastic song. I’ve also always really loved The Good’s Gone with its circular, hypnotic feel. La-La-La Lies is great too, as is Much Too Much with those Beach Boys harmonies (Moon was a huge Beach Boys fan). A Legal Matter and Circles from the US version are great too and I like the wonkiness of The Ox too.. The more bluesy Please, Please, Please and I’m a Man don’t work as well, the Who are definitely better at the r’n’b end of things rather than the blues end, Daltrey doesn’t sound that into it and it ends up being rather unconvincing.
It’s not their greatest album and doesn’t really signpost art-pop they would go to next, or the more involved and concept led late 60s and early 70s peak, but is an excellent snapshot of their early roughshod energy and charm and one of the better examples of a British rock’n’roll take on r’n’b, which for me just edges it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: My Generation
Little Simz
4/5
GREY Area
They play LIttle Simz on 6 music quite a bit, but it’s always tended to pass me by a bit, so it’s nice to give this a go.
The first 3 tracks in particular are superb but it’s very good throughout. The drum pattern on Offence, with the excellent bass is fantastic, and I love the flutes and strings. The bass riff on Boss is also great, a proper head nodding beat. I’ve heard Selfish quite a bit without really knowing it, but the hook is great and the jazzy piano driving the rhythm is lovely.
Wounds is a nice downbeat and sad contrast to the ebullience of the first two tracks and the jazziness of Selfish. Venom has a great ominous feel to it and some excellent sexual swear words. 101 FM I’ve definitely heard before, the east Asian inspired synth line is fantastic, and I like its nostalgia themed lyric, it’s only slightly let down by the Giles Peterson sounding DJ bits.
Pressure feels quite Michael Kiwanuka with a nice rapid delivery before the Little Dragon parts. Nice track. Therapy’s good too, nice bass and a very good hook and I like the almost LCD Soundsystem sounding beat of Sherbert Sunset, with more great bass. And then Kiwanuka does appear on Flowers, which is a nice soulful jazzy end to the album.
Delivery-wise she takes a bit of getting used to, but I really like her flow, and lyrically, particularly on Boss, it may not be for the kids of grandparents but I like her point of view and descriptions of her experiences and general ruminations on things.
It’s an easy, solid 4, looking forward to listening to it some more, and the next one after this, which is supposed to be even better.
🩶🩶🩶🩶
Playlist submission: Offence
Lou Reed
4/5
Berlin
I liked Transformer, but this feels like a much more fascinating and ambitious album than that, but also a lot more downbeat and despondent, and in parts it feels genuinely sad, as on Kids when you hear the crying children. I suppose if you are going to do a story of two drug addicts it’s likely to end up feeling pretty bleak.
I like the jazzy/cabaret/Weimar vibes to the intro song, building into the sweeping and dramatic but still showtuney Lady Day. The bass on Men of Good Fortune is great, which makes sense as its Jack Bruce, and there are some nice guitar moments too. Caroline Says I and How Do You Think It Feels I really like too, some great horn and guitar on the outro of the latter. But I can only think of our Jim or American Pie with Oh, Jim.
Caroline Says II is a re-working of Stephanie Says, but it’s a great track setting up the fantastic, but sorrowful Kids, whose forlornness and sadness continues with the death of Caroline in The Bed and then Sad Song, both excellent, if mournful tracks.
It definitely works best as a whole album, telling the story, the more upbeat if more prosaic first side leading to the very sad but excellent second side, with the run from Caroline Says II to the strongest track, Sad Song. The string arrangement, circling and swirling as it all ends is absolutely superb
It was a 3 on first listen, but it’s an easy 4 now, the concept, although bleak, is explored to its logical end, the music emphasising the sadness of the story for a downcast but fascinating album.
🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪
Playlist submission: Sad Song
Elastica
3/5
Elastica
I’ve always liked the well known songs off this, Line Up, Connection, Car Song, Waking Up and while the rest of the album doesn’t quite reach the level of those songs it’s still a very enjoyable wiry, post-punk, Britpop adjacent album. The riffs, bass and drums are very good, and I like Justine’s slightly bored sounding vocals, it suits the aesthetic they are going for well.
However from time to time I do find their schtick a little bit affected, there’s more than a touch of performative cooler than thou iciness, wearing their obvious influences in a slightly hipster way. Plenty of my favourite bands nick stuff from other bands and rip people off, but if talent borrows but genius steals they are definitely on the talent end of that. Connection, while great, is essentially a rather routine rip off 3 Girl Rhumba by Wire, and you can plainly hear more Wire, The Stranglers, Magazine and Blondie (and Spinal Tap at one point).
Having said that, there are no really bad songs, it’s all very listenable (and doesn’t outstay its welcome at 38 minutes), even if it doesn’t linger on the mind too long after listening. I’d happily play it again, although I’m not sure how frequently I’d seek it out, which I think makes it a solid 3.
🚙🎵🎵
Playlist submission: Line Up
Love
4/5
Forever Changes
Actual good 60s stereo mixing!
I’ve never found this quite as good as its reputation suggests, but I do still like it, particularly giving it repeat listens now. It's definitely one of the better summer of love/psychedelic albums, its acoustic-folk underpinning makes it more interesting, enduring and listenable than many of their interminable blues-noodling acid rock peers.
Alone Again Or is of course fantastic and the standout song - a great late 60s hippy lyric, a lovely guitar figure, an excellent string arrangement and brilliant mariachi horns, giving it all a warm, Hot LA sunshine feel.
Aside from Alone Again Or, I do like A House Is Not a Motel, The Daily Planet, Old Man, The Red Telephone, Bummer in the Summer and You Set the Scene, but all the songs are at least decent, with no real stinkers. There’s some great bass playing and tone, I also like that when there is an electric guitar, it is much more of an embellishment, rather than the whole point.
There’s no doubt the songs do share a similar feel though, with string and brass arrangements, but I do like that it sounds like the 60s LA of my imagination that never was - Mexican/hispanic horns, Laurel Canyon/folk guitars, UK influenced Baroque strings and an acid/hippy/love everyone ethos.
Listening to this after listening to the Mothers of Invention albums is also interesting. How they are the opposite sides of the same thing improves them both for me.
This is the most I’ve enjoyed this album after listening now and again over the years, so I’ll put it at a solid 4.
👨❤️💋👨👨❤️💋👨👨❤️💋👨👨❤️💋👨
Playlist submission: Alone Again Or
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
Broken English
I do really like this album, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for it, despite it obviously sounding a bit dated. But I think it is one of those albums that needs to be taken in context, she was an early adopter of synth/new wave and that paired with her caustic, cracked, scratchy vocals the lyrical bite gives it enough weight beyond the synth-dance-rock surface.
The title track might be the worst culprit for superfluous and dated squelchy R2-D2 noises though, but at least it never goes full Jazz Police (and this was released 10 years before I’m Your Man). Thereafter the synths feel more structural and melodic rather than as mere sound effects.
Witch’s Song is good, much warmer feeling with the acoustic, but I’m not as keen on Brain Drain.
Guilt is great though, it has a bit of a Slow Train Coming vibe and an excellent lyric. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan sounds a lot like We Belong by Pat Benetar to me, but I really like it, it's a great synth-pop version of the song. What’s the Hurry is a nice if slightly forgettable bit of synth rock. I’ve never really been a fan of Working Class Hero as a song, but I quite like this version, particularly as it's more of a tribute than a bit of self-mythology.
And that leaves Why’d Ya Do It. The angular guitar matches the contempt and spite in the vocals and lyrics, and it is great hear her sing dick, fanny, snatch, cunt, bitch and pussy
Right between 3 and 4 - I’ve always enjoyed it, and it’s on the side of 4 for the genuinely scornful lyrics and vocals, and while I like it musically it is hard to escape some of the datedness of the sound, even with context, and that pushes it down to the threes. I think I’ll go 3, I’ll listen again of course, but it’s not one for regular rotation
🏴🏴🏴
Playlist submission: Why’d Ya Do It?
Traffic
3/5
John Barleycorn Must Die
I used to really like this album, but listening now I’m not sure it’s as good as I remember. Maybe I just loved the song John Barleycorn Must Die and thought it was all in that vein, evocative, pastoral and folky, rather than it being so proggy with jazz inflections.
Glad’s jauntiness wears thin pretty quickly, the piano and organ are great, but I find the groove/riff a bit dull, and the horns and wah wah are on the annoying side of cheesy, before it just drifts away. Freedom Rider is more enjoyable, the bass line is great and I like flutes, but it’s not the most interesting song.
Luckily it picks up with Empty Pages, a great soul inflected track, with a nice bouncy groove and feel. There are some nice moments in Stranger to Himself but overall it’s a little forgettable. JBMD is the standout though, a fantastic version. It’s arranged in a brilliantly simple way, the flute, piano and backing vocals beautifully augmenting the tune. And Every Mother’s Son is another nice blue eyed and bluesy bit of soul to end on.
As with all Traffic albums, Winwood’s vocals and playing are excellent, and it all has a nice, warm sound. But While JBMD is excellent and Empty Pages and Every Mother’s Son are also very good, the rest is extremely skilled but slightly uninspiring jazz-prog-rock, which puts this at a 3.
🍺🍺🍺
Playlist submission: John Barleycorn Must Die
Black Sabbath
4/5
Looking back I wish I’d given Paranoid 5, especially in light of all the awful metal that we’ve had subsequently.
I love the portentous storm and bell ringing sound effects leading into the title track. Like the Paranoid album it treads the fine line between silly and serious (or stupid and clever), being both enjoyable and pompous at the same time, and the song is great, swampy and heavy and then galloping, all propelled by excellent drumming and bass playing. The lyrics are also good - whereas later metal bands used satanic imagery to try and shock in an adolescent edgelord way, here the story is more about the religious fear of evil.
The Wizard in the same vein is great too, and everyone is happy when the wizard walks by. Little bit of Led Zep to Behind the Wall of Sleep but some nice bounce in the bass. NIB is great, some excellent bass again and I like the riff. I didn’t realise that Evil Woman and Warning were covers at first. I don’t know the originals but I like these, they fit the whole vibe well. And Sleeping Village is excellent, a nice bluesy groove, and the slightly middle easter riff is great, and it gives a slightly different feel to the album.
I don’t think it’s quite as good as Paranoid, it definitely feels like the precursor to that album (which in a Beatle-esque manner came out only 6 months later), but it’s still an excellently enjoyable bit of heavy rock, with excellent bass, drums and guitar. If Paranoid should have been a 5 this is an easy 5.
🖤🖤🖤🖤
Playlist submission: Black Sabbath
Fugees
4/5
The Score
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. When it came out, in the middle of Britpop and with the ubiquity of Killing Me Softly I really didn’t like the Fugees, and by the time I started to get into Hip Hop it ended up passing me by.
I love the sparseness and minimalism of much of the production, and although it seems to be a machine there’s a live sound to the drums and percussion which I really like. There isn’t an overload of samples, it just loops some great moments and motifs, creating some great grooves and they obviously have a great pop sensibility, finding some great hooks in that relative sparseness.
Ready or Not, Fu-Gee-La and Killing Me Softly are of course great bits of pop music. Ready or Not has a great ominous undercurrent and Fu-Gee-La is brilliantly catchy. Aside from those are some other great tracks on here. The little flute loop on How Many Mics is great and the reggae delivery and doo wop samples on Zealots is fantastic, a great track. The Beast is also excellent, the hypnotic bass sample is superb, but it could probably do without the Chinese restaurant bit at the end.
The Mask and Cowboys are great too, another excellent bass sample on The Mask, and Cowboys with its sitar sample is an interesting look at violence and insecurity. And Outro/Manifest covers similar themes with another great sample/hook.
Lyrically I like that they seem to be a progression of the Daisy Age scene, with a little more social grit, but never descending into basic gangsta rap tropes.
It is a bit long, a victim of CD bloat and the always baffling inclusion of skits, but it’s a great album, much better than I was expecting. I wouldn’t quite put it on the same level as say Three Feet High and Rising, or Illmatic, or Kendrick, or Public Enemy, or Wu Tang but it’s a great mid 90s hip hop album. Solid to high 4.
🎼🎼🎼🎼
Playlist submission: The Beast (minus the Chinese Restaurant)
Kings of Leon
2/5
Only By the Night
From Aha Shake Heartbreak:
–
All the elements are there for something I should like - southern rock style guitars, garagey drums, but its generally a bit nondescript. It’s not objectively bad, it's just not as good as you feel it should be and kind of passes by without anything to make you sit up and notice. Whether it’s the strength of the songs or a general lack of energy I’m not sure.
So overall a handful of good songs and a nice sound, but in the main pretty forgettable but fine. I think that makes a 3, a 2 feels a bit low.
–
That mainly holds true for this one, there’s not much I can add really, it’s all competently made and isn’t unlistenable it’s just not that satisfying. Although I did really like Crawl, as that had a nice dirty, swampy groove and muscular weight to it, and is a bit more interesting and memorable than the rest including the big singles. Realistically I’m never going to listen again so I’ll go for a 2.
🌃🌃🌃
Playlist submission: Crawl
Fever Ray
3/5
Fever Ray
Took me a while to work out how I felt about this one, mainly as it wasn’t quite what I was expecting knowing The Knife and after the first track.
If I Had a Heart is a great opener, kind of medieval moody chanting over a minimally layered electronic landscape, a little bit Bjork with the vocals, setting the album up for some icy-cool Scandinavian/Northern European house inflected electronica with some oomph.
However it stays in that sparse, frosty, heavily Bjork influenced lane, with few of the tracks ever feeling like they get out of 2nd gear, like they never quite blossom into full on bangers, and it all felt like one of those albums that is longer than it actually is.
On further listens I liked it more, and that feeling of never quite exploding is one of its strengths, as it creates a nice bit of tension, the deliberate austereness and constrained atmosphere is actually really engaging, and sprinkled through it are some great tracks and moments. Aside from theIf I Had a Heart I really liked When I Grow Up, Seven, Triangle Walks, Keep the Streets Empty for Me and Stranger to Kindness.
As good as it is at creating that icy atmosphere it definitely does drag towards the end without a great deal of variation, and it does go on about 10 or 15 minutes too long. As it feels more like a suite of music, a tighter, more condensed version would probably be a lot better and feel like a much more self contained experience.
Overall I like it, some of it is excellent, and it is good to work to. It’s very nearly a 4 but it’s length and the loss of focus is a bit of an issue, so I’ll stick it as a high 3.
🥵🥵🥵
Playlist submission: Triangle Walks
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
…The Dandy Warhols Come Down
I was quite into the Dandy Warhols, I really liked this album and the two after it, but I can’t have thought about them in about 20 years.
It’s kind of interesting for 1997, although they sound very American and you can hear a bit of alt rock/grunge to it, and it definitely has some Britpopness to it, but it actually feels more like a lot of indie from around 2000 onwards.
They are pretty good at creating a droning, Sonic Youth type groove with layered sounds, as on Be-In, Boys Better, Good Morning and The Creep Out, but they can also write some very catchy melodies - Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth and Everyday Should be a Holiday are great bits of pop music. Cool as Kim Deal is good, and Minnersoter and Hard On for Jesus are decent as well.
But I suppose the issue is that the songs in between those two types, while not bad, either are probably not catchy enough or quite atmospheric or interesting enough, so it feels uneven and does drag in places, eg Orange, I Love You, Whipping Tree, Green and Pete International Airport. It’s also another bloaty CD album at 66 mins.
Overall though it's an enjoyable enough listen with some good songs and a fair amount of filler. I would happily listen again, but I doubt I’d reach for it that frequently, making it a standard issue 3.
🥫🥫🥫
Playlist submission: Everyday Should be a Holiday
Jungle Brothers
5/5
Done By the Forces of Nature
I’ve never listened to this until today, and although I know a few JB tracks I wasn’t really aware of this album and that it is considered one of the classics of Golden Age hip-hop, alongside A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul (who make appearances on Doin’ Our Own Dang)
Being a fan of DLS and ATCQ and Natives Tongues in general, I feel I should really have known about this, as it is an excellent album, right in that late 80s Afro-centric socially conscious hip hip sweet spot. I’ll House You from before this is a great song, and that house influence carries on in places here, What U Waitin’ 4 has a nice house beat and a great synth bass (and a reference to I’ll House You’). There’s also a slight presaging of the west coast sound with the high pitched synth on Belly Dancin’ Dina.
But there’s also some great jazz inflections across it too, as on the title track, as well as some early 80s synth influences, and that hip-hop-house-synth-jazz synthesis gives it a slightly different feel to the other Native Tongues stuff, with a more consistently upbeat dance/party vibe, albeit with similar lyrical themes like on Acknowledge Your Own History and Black Woman.
This has been a great discovery, I’ve listened quite a few times and have looked forward to coming back to it each time. The only thing is that although it’s brilliantly constructed with great samples, the overall sound lacks a bit clarity especially compared to 3 Feet High and Rising and the first two Tribe albums, but that’s a minor quibble, that doesn’t really detract from the overall quality. Was a 4 on first listen but on repeat it just tips over to 5, it’s a great companion to 3 Feet High and Rising and People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴
Playlist submission: Doin’ Our Own Dang
Lenny Kravitz
2/5
Let Love Rule
I didn’t really like this. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to dig it but it was way less enjoyable than I thought it might be. I don’t really get the appeal of Kravitz (although he is clearly quite a sexy man in a yoga instructor way), his music just feels pretty anodyne. I did like Are You Gonna Go My Way when I was 13 and it was on NOW 24, but that was before I’d really heard any actually good music.
I generally don’t have a problem with derivative music, but this is derivative in a particularly uninspiring way. He takes from the artists he likes (Prince, Hendrix, Beatles/Sgt Pepper) and just produces wafer thin facsimiles, never capturing whatever it is that actually makes those artists great and filtering it through his own style and coming up with his own take, it just comes out as boring soundalikes. What starts off as tribute becomes a pastiche so weightless and ephemeral that it is weirdly oppressive by about halfway through, especially combined with the ropey hippy dippy platitudes of the lyrics.
It’s not wretched like some of the stuff we’ve had but it is right on the cusp of 1 and 2. I’ll go 2 as I guess it’s heart is in the right place even if it’s pretty moribund. I quite like Mr Cab Driver though.
🚕🚕
Mr Cab Driver
Oasis
5/5
Definitely Maybe
There’s definitely nostalgia in the mix, but I do still love this album. Rudimentary thump thump drums, tons of shameless musical lifts and nicks and, a barely discernible low end, a thick nearly muddy sound and a confident, brazen embrace of cliche. All that made it exciting to me as a 14 year old in 1994 and I still find it great now. I guess songs about escaping your surroundings and circumstances and imagining something more exciting is a universally resonant theme, irrespective of where you come from or where you are in life.
It’s also interesting coming as another right after LK. While that was boringly imitative, this is derivative in a much more overpowering and interesting way, Cigarettes and Alcohol unashamedly nicks the Get it On riff, but the song isn’t a T-Rex copy, passing through the Noel filter and becoming something quite different.
The Beatles influence also seems a bit of a chimera on this album. Apart from Nole having a seemingly Macca-esque melodic facility, it’s much more like a psychedelic glam Sex Pistols. There’s a lot of Steve Jones to some of the licks and runs, and on things like the endings of Rock’n’Roll Star and Shakermaker and the whole of Columbia it has a real swampy, psychedelic groove to it.
But ultimately the imitations and plagiarisms don’t really matter when there are so many excellent songs. Rock’n’Roll Star, Live Forever, Up in the Sky, Columbia, Supersonic, Bring it On Down, Cigarettes & Alcohol and Slide Away are fantastic.
Slide Away is probably their greatest song, it’s got a kind of hooligan, roughhouse sensitivity, combing Liam’s snarl with Noel’s sentimentality, and the way the melody slides from the verse to the bridge to the chorus is fantastic, a kind of obvious allusion to the title, but as with so much of Noel’s best stuff it's the obvious done brilliantly and shamelessly.
The only misstep for me is Shakermaker, which I’ve never really liked that much. And while Digsy’s Dinner definitely has the whiff of filler, it at least has some charm and lightness that Shakermaker lacks and I presume they wanted something to break the heaviness between C&A and Slide Away. Married with Children also always felt like a bit of an afterthought, oddly placed at the end, but nowadays I do like that it’s a bit of a downbeat ending. It also seems a bit strange that they didn’t include Sad Song on the CD version but had it on the vinyl version. It's a great track, but maybe they didn’t want a Noel vocal on the album, who knows.
Great songs, universal themes, a brazenly pilfering swagger and a big dollop of remembering first getting into music makes it an easy 5.
🚬🚬➕🥃🥃
Playlist submission: Slide Away
Orbital
4/5
Orbital 2
I really liked this. I only really have a patchy knowledge of the history of dance music and its various sub genres, but this kind of minimalistic, hypnotic, ambient (hypnombient?) techno is superb. You can hear the influence of Eno in the feel of much of it, and Kraftwerk in the percussive, rhythmic synths, but the added percussive energy of the dance beats gives it a mesmerising, kinetic groove. I found myself listening on repeat, where time becomes a loop, incredibly easily, noticing little moments and details each time.
Although there is some degree of variation between the songs; the atmospheric soundtrack mysticalness of Planet of the Shapes, the more thumping Lush 3-1 and Impact and the Balearic influenced Halcyon + On + On, it works best in one go as a brilliantly flowing 65 minute piece of music and atmosphere.
It’s a great album, easily a high 4, and will definitely come back to it
⭕⭕⭕⭕
Playlist submission: Monday
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
4/5
Devotional Songs
I don’t know anything about qawwali or Pakistani music at all, but similar to the Call of the Valley album, there’s something about this type of music that really appeals to me.
I’m not saying I’m at Harrrison levels of reverence and devotion but I did think this was excellent. Maybe it’s the hypnotic and mesmeric feel to it with the vocal chanting and percussion, or that not understanding Urdu means it has a degree of mystery (although even with not understanding Urdu the themes of religious reverence are pretty obvious), or that there are some elements that feel familiarly folky or Western sounding, eg the guitar on Yaad-E-Nabi Gulshan Mehka or the Spanish sounding intro on Haq Ali Ali Haq (a song about Ali Ireland need to get rid of some phlegm) and the intro to Ali Maula Ali Maula Ali Dam Dam (a song about Ali Ireland playing Rugby and being quite vicious)
I would never have listened to this without the list, I’d never have heard of him or thought about listening to this type of music, but I’m really glad it did.
4.
💖💖💖💖
Playlist submission: Ni Main Jogi De Naal
Radiohead
5/5
Kid A
I’d been living in Japan for about 6 weeks when this came out, and I remember being extremely excited about it, the anticipation of their new direction (you are witnesses to the birth of Radiohead mark 2) and how different it would be. I think I bought it in the music section of the small department store above the station in Hanno (Don't look for it, it's not there anymore).
I was still a bit homesick and slightly dislocated, which, looking back, probably matched the tone of the album much more than I realised at the time. But I loved it immediately and I still love it now. I didn’t know many of the bands they were taking inspiration from back then but I’ve come to know some of them in subsequent years, so it doesn’t quite have the arrived out of nowhere mystique it had 25 years ago, you can piece together the influences more easily now, but it still holds up as a superb album, and the fact they made such a sharp turn after OKC I still love.
The surge of synthesisers and cut up noises in the build to the release at 2.51 in Everything in its Right Place is superb, but the whole song is excellent, I love the main riff and how it sounds claustrophobic but also like you are simultaneously standing on a glacier.
The National anthem is one of many great bass lines on the album, although I didn’t realise until now it’s Thom playing it, and along with Optimistic and How to Disappear Completely one of the most immediate tracks, despite the cacophony of horns and noises. Treefingers is very Eno, and after the tumult of the National Anthem and the spectral, sad How to Disappear and before the more traditional sounding Optimistic it’s a great little pause.
Idioteque I remember liking straight away and it’s still fantastic, the patchwork imagery in the lyrics and the drum pattern are superb together. Morning Bell feels quite OKC, and the skittery snares are great. It definitely seems like the foundation for quite a few of their songs after Amnesiac, and there is some great guitar and arpeggios in the last minute or so. Motion Picture Soundtrack I have always loved, the pedal organ, the bleak words and the disney-esque harps, strings and choral effects is a great pairing.
Although I was a massive fan of OKC, this is the point where I started to really love Radiohead, finding everything they did from this point on more interesting and exciting, even if there were some patchy moments to come here and there. Along with In Rainbows and possibly A Moon Shaped Pool this is my favourite of theirs, it really is a wonderful album.
🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻
Playlist submission: Everything in its Right Place
5/5
The Lexicon of Love
Banger after banger after banger. Apart from Theme from ‘Mantrap’, which isn’t great, even if it is in keeping with their vibe, but I’m not counting it as it wasn’t on the original release.
The original release is superb though, not a duff moment or misstep. There’s Bowie, Eno, Roxy Music, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Motown, Stax, Disco and synth pop Britishness all put through the filter of some lads from early 80s Sheffield with the production genius of Trevor Horn and arranging brilliance of Anne Dudley, coming out as a archly sincere synth-art-soul-pop classic.
Poison Arrow and The Look of Love are obviously fantastic but It feels like every song could have been a single. The intro to Show Me with the strings and horns before the superb bassline kicks in is wonderful, and the bridge into the chorus is just fantastic. I love how it segues into the hook laden brilliance of Poison Arrow. More fantastic bass on Many Happy Returns and more great hooks too. The same goes for Tears Are Not Enough, a vaguely, but arguably better, Duran Duran-esque disco pop banger. I love the staccato pop melodrama of Valentine’s Day, another hook-laden song to end side 1.
The Look of Love, what a song, a great blend of crooning chic-disco-Roxy Music and Trevor Horn’s production, superb. It’s brilliant how an album track like Date Stamp keeps up the momentum, it’s another great disco-pop song, and you can hear the ideas and sounds that Trevor Horn would take into Relax a few years later. What a superb song All of My Heart is, a brilliant piano hook with excellent string embellishments and an effortlessly artful and dramatic vocal and vocal melody. I guess this is overshadowed by Poison Arrow and The Look of Love, but it’s just as good and has such a lovely musical sweetness to it. 4 Ever 2 Gether is yet another banger, with more excellent bass and another fantastic string arrangement, and I like the overdriven guitar giving it some tension. And the instrumental Look of Love is an excellent way to bookend the album and leads nicely back to the string intro to Show Me.
I love Martin Fry’s turn of phrase. I’ve seen reviews highlighting his lyrics have an advertising catchphrase quality to them and I think that’s true, little one liners and couplets that stick in the memory.
An assured, melodramatic, fantastic, joyful, sophisti-disco-pop banger from start to end. 5.
🏹🏹🏹🏹🏹
Playlist submission: All of My Heart
The Cardigans
3/5
First Band on the Moon
I was never into The Cardigans back in the 90s, I really disliked Lovefool back then, and although I do know it’s a good pop song I’m still not keen on it.
I really appreciate their gift for bullet proof Scandinavian pop melody, and I like the combination of sugary catchiness and acid tongued lyrics, but it too often falls too far into loungey, nouvelle vague kitsch for my taste. It’s all very skillfully played and crafted, there is some very nice guitar, drums and bass and it’s arranged brilliantly for what they are doing, but it sadly doesn’t really resonate that well with me.
I did really like Been It though, there's a bit of bite to the music, matching the acerbic words and the result is a great, lithe bit of pop. And Step on Me is nice too.
It’s obviously not bad and I didn’t dislike it, it is a listenable album, but it just doesn’t really land with me. I’m unlikely to seek it out again, but a 2 does feel too low, so I’ll go with a 3.
🌕🌕🌕
Playlist submission: Been It
Willie Nelson
4/5
Red Headed Stranger
This is a bit of a gem, if an album that's sold over 2m copies can be a gem. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a whole Willie Nelson album before, but I thought this was fantastic, a stripped down and spare concept album, with a gently evocative sombre charm.
As well as highlighting his laid back and understated delivery, there’s a pleasing unsentimentality to it all, the tale unfolds through his own compositions and his arrangement of other’s songs, complemented by some lovely instrumental embellishments - the harmonica on Just As I Am and the little bits of Mandolin on Denver, and the piano throughout. Some great bass too, both in tone and playing.
All the tracks contribute to the story, and even I’m not that keen on the ragtime of something like Down Yonder, there are some superb songs on here - Time of the Preacher (as it weaves in and out), Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Just As I Am, Denver, Can I Sleep In Your Arms and Bandera are all expressively brilliant, evoking a dusty time and place. I also love how clear the folk and blues elements that make up part of country music are in it, helping to emphasise that sense of place.
It’s a brilliantly performed and crafted narrative album and it gets better with each listen, right on the border of 4 and 5. I’ll stay with a very high 4 for now.
🧑🦰🧑🦰🧑🦰🧑🦰
Playlist submission: Time of the Preacher
Incubus
2/5
Make Yourself
‘I’m not eating the bullshit that’s being fed to me’
You may not be eating the bullshit, but we’re all listening to it.
It’s not as abject as Linkin Park, which is a very low bar, and there are occasionally some vaguely interesting instrumentation and melodies, but it’s still just not very good. The utter unfunkiness of their funk-metal just absolutely reeks of ankle length jorts, wallet chains and soul patches, and the whole album starts to feel very stagnant after 3 or 4 songs, and is a slog to get through.
It's on the cusp of 1 and 2, I’ll go 2 as relative to some metal we’ve had it’s not horrifically terrible, but ultimately it is a very uninspiring collection of dated, re-hashed metal tropes, DJ noises, adolescent lyrics and whiny vocals.
👿👿
Playlist submission: I Miss You
Frank Zappa
5/5
Hot Rats
Wow, I was not expecting this to be so great. I had vaguely heard of it but didn’t know anything about it. I was thinking it would be something in the vein of the MOI’s deliberately abrasive outsider contrariness, but I was very surprised that it was a relatively straightforward psychedelic jazz rock album, with a nice dash of eccentricity and a massive amount of improvised guitar high jinks.
There’s a recognisable little pattern in Peaches en Regalia from about 0.22 to 0.39, it sounds like it’s from Freak Out or We’re Only In It For The Money, but then the songs moves off gracefully into a different space, played absolutely fantastically with some brilliant refrains and passages. Love Willie the Pimp, Beefheart really suits it, and the fiddle and guitar riff is great on the first half before it branches out into the jam section with some excellent guitar. Like every song on here the rhythm section is superb, locking into a fantastic groove, and I’m not normally that into improvised guitar workouts but on here it is absolutely brilliant.
It’s the same story on Son of Mr Green Genes and the superb, mesmeric The Gumbo Variations. Another fantastic pocket that the rhythm section hit, and I love the reappearance of the fiddle. Little Umbrellas I like too, a more traditional jazz style song, but it’s got a vague feeling of underlying uneasiness to it, as does It Must Be a Camel, with its great piano and slightly frantic bass. Some great passages in that too.
I thought this was absolutely fantastic, one of the best surprises so far, hypnotic, graceful, a bit odd and full of great moments and passages. Can’t be anything but a 5.
🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀
Playlist submission: The Gumbo Variations
The Pharcyde
4/5
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
I do like The Pharcyde, they are brilliantly skilled rappers and their jazzy post-golden age beats and samples are great. The live drum sound on this is also fantastic and the whole thing sounds superb.
Despite that I’ve always felt they aren’t quite at the same level as some of their peers from just before and just after. While bands like ATCQ, DLS, Digable Planets, The Roots and J5 combine thoughtfulness with playfulness and humour, The Pharcyde, for me, too frequently overdo the sex-obssesed humour, and on repeat listens, lyrically it can be a bit trying - while musically brilliant some of their songs do have the tenor of skit tracks. When they do steer away from that they produce some absolute classics, like On the DL and Passin’ Me By, with great hooks, beats and samples.
They are, of course, a great band and this is their best album, but through listening on repeat that lyrical overindulgence puts it a notch below things like 3 Feet High & Rising, Tribes first two albums or the JBs album the other week, which puts it at a solidly excellent 4.
🎢🎢🎢🎢
Playlist submission: Passin’ Me By
The Flaming Lips
3/5
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
It’s weird thinking back to the abrupt popularity of this album. It seemed to just suddenly be the album of the moment, coming out of nowhere. I suppose it hit the zeitgeist with its themes of humanity and technology, just after the millennium and right at the advent of the internet becoming a normal part of everyday life.
Being a very suggestible person of course I bought it at the time, being so easily swayed by critical opinion. I remember quite liking it, but aside from a few songs I never really loved it. Although I did really enjoy seeing them at Lowlands.
Listening now it starts off strongly, despite Fight Test being a direct copy of Father and Son. I must have realised this at the time with Boyzone’s cover being in the recent cultural past but I feel like I only noticed it now. One More Robot is great, lyrically and musically, and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1 is still excellent, a lovely dreamy/nightmarish bit of psychedelic pop.
It starts to lose me a bit after that - although I do like their hazy experimentalism, it sometimes feels like they aren’t always experimenting with particularly interesting ideas, or that the artfulness is slightly too deliberate, or that the songs aren’t always that strong, and the run from Yoshimi Pt 2 to Are You a Hypnotist?? feels very samey.
Do You Realize?? is superb though. As with the first few tracks, when their hazy soundscapes and squiggles combine with a great lyric and dreamy melody it is excellent and you can see why people latched on to this. I Like Approaching Pavonis Mons too, again the dreaminess and atmosphere come together and it creates a great track, and the horns are particularly great.
It’s been nice revisiting and I can see why it got picked up on, as some of the highs are great, but I don’t think it’s a particularly strong record overall, landing it as a solid 3.
🤖🤖🤖
Playlist submission: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1
Deerhunter
2/5
Halcyon Digest
Some moments of sweetness in a hypnotic indie-shoegaze-sonic youth way, but it suffers from being cut from the same cloth as a lot of US alt/indie from that late 00s, Pitchfork, droney, tom-tom heavy era, a style I’ve never really got on that well with.
It’s perfectly adequate, but despite picking up over the last 3 songs it’s also perfectly unremarkable. While listening there were songs and parts I liked, but after I finished I couldn’t really recall anything, other than the very Jesus & Mary Chain Fountain Stairs and the synthy-bubbly He Would Have Laughed
It’s fine, but really I can’t ever see myself revisiting so I’ll go for a perhaps slightly harsh 2.
🦌🎯
Playlist submission: Fountain Stairs
The Coral
4/5
The Coral
I loved this album when it came out and although I never totally stuck with them after Magic and Medicine I love the song Lover Undiscovered from the Coral Island album a few years ago, and I really like Bill Ryder-Jones solo stuff.
I still really like the kitchen sink approach, all their influences all jammed together. Rather than selectively magpieing what they like, I get the sense they thought this might be their only record so just chucked everything in - Beefheart, Love, 60s psychedelia, Madness, Beatles, sea shanties, the Doors, folk. How you feel about the end result probably depends on how much charm you find in that approach, but do find it very wonkily engaging, never stopping in one place, and all tied together with open mindedness, some great rough hewn musicality and some lovely psychedelic-indie guitar.
I like how Spanish Main frames the album as a psychedelic cosmic voyage through all their influences, and while not every song works totally, none of them are boring and some of them are absolutely fantastic. I Remember When’s Doors-eque croon moving into the uptempo is excellent and Shadows Fall’s psychedelic ska is woozily great. Dreaming of You is still superb, the bass and organ are superb together and it's a great melody with lovely harmonies.
I love the S&G lifting folky vibe of Simon Diamond, the reverb slide and seaside organ give it a great atmosphere, along with the amusing lyrics. Goodbye is superb, Bill Ryder-Jones late 60s riffing and tremolo parts are lovely and it’s another great melody and set of backing vocals.
Even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of that first half thereafter it’s still a very enjoyable and interesting listen, and I love Skeleton Key and Bad Man’s scouse Beefheart-ness, and Calendars and Clocks ends things in a suitably wide running way.
There is a definitely a touch of early 2000s to it but it has held up better than many of their peers in the post Britpop/early 2000s indie scene, not only does it have a pleasing scatterbrain eclecticism it also has a lovely eccentricity to it, which means it still sounds interesting and very loveable 23 years on. It does fade a bit in the back half but it’s still a great album and a mid-high 4.
🪸🪸🪸🪸
Playlist submission: Goodbye
David Bowie
5/5
Blackstar
Where The Fuck Did Monday Go?
I don’t think I’ve listened to this since it appeared, and then when he orchestrated his death as part of the artistic statement. I remember thinking it was a great album, but I’ve only rarely revisited since, as it all feels a bit sad.
So it’s great listening 9 and a bit years on, and it's clear at this remove that this is a truly excellent album in its own right, irrespective of the sadness and death and legacy. And it’s probably worth 5 stars for the opening track alone (and another 5 for track 2, and trac 3, and so on). But when you do factor in his death and how and when he recorded it, it gives the album a genuinely affecting resonance and fall of light.
References to death and existence and mortality are everywhere in the lyrics and, I think, in the celestial harp sound at the very start of and throughout Blackstar. But it’s never maudlin or self indulgent, and neither is it cold or detached, it seems to tread the line between the two, balancing introspection and playful curiosity.
Musically it’s dense and weighty but simultaneously ephemeral, it glides and skims as well as anchoring itself, and it feels like there are musical references to his past too, some drum and bass, some Station to Station-ness. The percussion is also incredible throughout, and I love the jazziness, it really suits some of the sombre and discordant tones.
The title track is superb, maybe one of his best songs, the skitteriness and synth bass before it moves into the second part with the ‘Something happened’ lyric and nagging refrain. ‘Tis A Pity She Was a Whore is incredible too, it feels strangely disconcerting and creepy, and the agitated playing is fantastic. Lazarus has a slight Roxy Music-ness to it, and a great, mesmeric groove and superb, moving lyric. I like how it shifts slightly with the gritty, funk guitar and slightly echoey, ecclesiastical sounding vocal of Sue, the combination creates a great bit of tension and strain. Girl Loves Me is another amazing song, the hook is extremely catchy and I love the James Murphy assisted funereal-synth feel. Dollar Days of course has the dying to/too pun and despite the melancholy lyrics has a slightly hopeful feel to me, flowing fantastically into the serenity of I Can’t Give Everything Away. It’s a brilliantly sequenced album, moving gracefully from anxiety and restlessness into acceptance and a sense of stillness and peace.
I’ve listened to this a lot over the past couple of days, I just kept wanting to come back to it, and to be able to orchestrate this as his swansong is unbelievable, knowing he was dying and making one of his best albums is absurd really, and to make an album about mortality that is so full of life, that makes you want to come back to it. It’s probably only really matched as a eulogy to en ending by Abbey Road.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
Playlist submission: Blackstar
5/5
Live 1966 (The Royal Albert Hall Concert)
The fact that the Judas moment is missing has thrown me for a bit of a loop with this.
I started writing that it’s hard for some things to live up to the myth, especially when the myth is Bob Dylan and the people creating the myth are Dylanheads and 60s rock journalists, and that the ‘Judas’ moment does genuinely crackle, Dylan’s sneer of ‘I don’t believe you, play it fuckin’ loud’, the hit of the snare, the energy of it all is palpable, you can feel it 59 years on.
But that’s not on the streaming version, and I can’t remember from when I had the CD whether there was more talking between other songs too. I don’t think there was, and it was as presented here, with no audience interaction, giving it a characteristic Dylan aloofness and otherworldliness.
And as great as the Judas moment is, and whether the streaming version is missing in between song chatter, it’s not the greatest thing about this album. The acoustic set is stunning, utterly captivating in its crystalline, glassily mesmeric simplicity and starkness. His pin sharp, spectral, alien charisma is tangible, how just guitar, harmonica and voice can freeze time and hold an audience in stillness is remarkable.
The electric set is great in a different way, the Band/Hawks really is excellent, feeding off the sense of confrontation and creating a roughshod brilliance, especially on the version of Baby Let Me Follow You Down, which I love, and of course on Like A Rolling Stone.
But it's the acoustic set that lingers and that I keep coming back to, both for its magnetic, ghostly magnificence and as a snapshot of someone at the peak of their artistry, while close to a physical and mental breaking point.
The electric side has historical significance of course, and is worth a high mark on its own, but combined with the first set this is an easy 5.
🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸
Playlist submission: Desolation Row
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
Bandwagonesque
I loved Songs From Northern Britain from a few years after this, and really liked Grand Prix too - they’re one of those bands I always assume I like, without ever really properly listening beyond those two albums.
I do know The Concept and What You Do To Me, but everything else on here is unfamiliar. I wasn’t expecting there to be so much My Bloody Valentine/Jesus & Mary Chain and so much fuzzy distorted guitar, but it makes sense for 1991 and also as a Creation band in the early 90s.
On first listen I found the noise-ness a bit distracting, and things like Satan sound a bit unconvincing, but I grew into it, and some of the sunny pop melodies emerging through the haze of distortion really are fantastic. The Concept, December, What You Do To Me, I Don’t Know, Star Sign, Pet Rock are all great songs.
That mix of fuzz and melody, although perhaps a little unbalanced in favour of noise, does give the album quite a distinct character, but it does drag a little towards the end. I know this is regarded as their best album, but I do prefer those subsequent albums when everything’s a bit tighter and more focused on melodic jangle pop.
Tricky one to score, on the edge of 3 and 4. I really like them as a band and there are some great tracks on here, but I’m more likely to go to Grand Prix or SFNB, so I’ll go high 3.
💰💰💰
Playlist submission: What You Do
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
It’s Blitz
I’ve not listened to this album before. The first four tracks are excellent, Zero and Heads Will Roll are fantastic disco-garage-indie-punk bangers, Soft Shock has a synthy Maps vibe and Skeletons is a superbly catchy bit of atmosphere and mood. I love the synthesiser addition to their sound and the general idea of adding some dancefloor to their garage style.
It does dip a little after that stellar start, but it's always listenable and there are some great tracks - I like the back half of Shame and Fortune, the riff/hook is great and the synthy spacey funkiness of Dragon Queen is excellent, and Faces is great as well.
It’s a very enjoyable dancey, indie-garage album, elevated by the synthiness, some great melodies and Karen O’s charismatic voice and presence, tipping it into a 4.
🥚🥚🥚🥚
Playlist submission: Skeletons
Hüsker Dü
3/5
Warehouse: Songs & Stories
I’m quite partial to a bit of Hüsker Dü, but I’m not quite sure why. They don’t do anything particularly differently to bands in this style I don’t particularly like, and they do only have a few furrows they plough. Maybe it’s something to do with Bob Mould's particular melodic style or their uncomplicated musical template.
I found this a very decent listen, but there’s no way it needs to be a double album, even if they weren’t getting on and had 10 songs each. There’s nothing that’s particularly filler, it’s more that it’s 2 or 3 types of song done 20 times. Pick the 10 best tracks and this would be an easy 4 and something I’d thrown on when I want a nice quick hit of REM adjacent punk-power-pop, but as it is I’m only likely to come back infrequently, meaning a 3.
🟣🟡🔴
Playlist submission: Ice Cold Ice
PJ Harvey
4/5
Rid of Me
This was a real grower, it took a few listens to get into the scuzzy, grungey intensity and rawness but after a while I really started to appreciate its twisting, abrasiveness and uneasiness. It also definitely benefits from being played loud, where you can really feel the snarl in the guitar and the thump of the drums and bass.
I love some of the guitar sounds that she and Steve Albini conjure up, the prowling opening to Rid of Me before it kicks in (love the unsettling backing vocals on this too), the solo on 50 ft Queenie, the break on Dry and the slide on Ecstacy in particular.
She’s such a characterful singer and performer too, that she manages to sell every song, even if they are all broadly in the same ballpark, and is great at creating some memorable melodies like 50ft Queenie and Yuri-G amongst the caustic sonic attack and biting lyrics.
I didn’t find it as fascinating and as stellar as Let England Shake, and I probably prefer the slightly softer edged Stories from the City, but as a singular album of scratching, sludgey, punky, bluesy grit it's very good. I’m keen to come back again so I’ll go 4.
🐍🐍🐍🐍
Playlist submission: Dry
5/5
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory
Over 22 million copies sold. That’s one for every man, woman and child in Sri Lanka
Although Definitely Maybe is my favourite Oasis album, there is a whole different level of nostalgia to this, as well as a quite mind bending level of ubiquity and popularity, that I find it hard to extricate myself from. Roll With It is pure summer after GCSEs battle of the bands, and the whole thing has an intensely pervasive 1995/1996/1997ness to it. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven; A-levels, TFI Friday, button down shirts, UCAS forms, Radio 1, round sunglasses, Euro 96, Britpop, learning to drive, The Beatles Anthology, Soldier Soldier.
While things like Roll With It, Hello and Hey Now are catchy enough, I perhaps don’t find them as satisfying as the DM album tracks. However the big songs, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Some Might Say, Cast No Shadow, Morning Glory and Champagne Supernova are absolute powerhouses, megalithic distillations of all Noel’s borrowed influences, compounded into transcendently memorable, undeniable, arm round the shoulder drunken communal singalongs.
Also listening back now there seems to be a slight undertow of introspection that I didn’t pick up on as a teenager. Whereas DM was about escape, and I’m sure part of their appeal at the time was how much they relished and enjoyed their fame and success, there seems to be a sense of a slightly sad goodbye. Not a self indulgent treatise on the hollowness of fame, more a feeling of things will never be the same.
While he may not be a hugely innovative musician or songwriter, and he still clunks his way through lyrics, there’s no doubt Noel is an extremely emotionally expressive melody and hook writer, and, similar to Definitely Maybe, that gift is to the fore. And like Definitely Maybe he never shies away from the obvious and the stolen, but again his melodic skill and brazen shamelessness carries them through - the ‘yeaheah’ into the ‘I’ve been standing at the station’ part of Some Might Say is cheesy and straightforward for example, but it works brilliantly, a great moment.
Liam's voice is also excellent compared to Definitely Maybe (apart from Slide Away perhaps). It’s better recorded, but he also seems to have much more nuance in his tone, on Cast No Shadow he gives it a nice sense of defiant melancholy and on Champagne Supernova he has a lovely sweetness, adding a kind of restive wistfulness.
I also find the change in drumming fascinating, Alan White is clearly a much much more skilled drummer, and songs like Wonderwall, Cast No Shadow, Don’t Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova wouldn’t have worked at all with Tony McCaroll, and rhythmically this is much more interesting, but I do think his lumpen simplicity added something intangible to the mix. Some Might Say, which he drums on, has this slightly treacly feel that I find very appealing, not so much that he’s playing behind the beat, more that his tempo is slightly at odds with the rest of the track, and it’s a song I’ve really started to love in recent years.
Similar to DM there are some cracking B-sides from this period - Acquiesce, Round Are Way, Talk Tonight, Rockin’ Chair, Underneath the Sky, Step Out, The Masterplan. I know not all of them were written when they recorded the album, but Acquiesce, Talk Tonight, Underneath the Sky and The Masterplan instead of say Hello, Roll With It, Hey Now and the Swamp Song, would undoubtedly improve the overall quality.
Coming into this, and part way through Hey Now I was thinking it’s probably a 4, but by the time Some Might Say wallops you in the head, followed by the excellent Cast No Shadow, and then by the time Morning Glory and Champagne Supernova have played out, and adding in Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger it surely has to be a 5.
I also don’t think the 16 year old me, who thought this was one of the best things ever, would understand me giving it 4, which, devoid of any emotion you could argue it might be. But I don’t want to remove the nostalgia and I want to be nice to teenage me. 5.
🌄🌄🌄🌄🌄
Playlist submission: Some Might Say
The Beach Boys
4/5
Surf’s Up
I used to listen to quite a few albums from the Wild Honey to Holland period, when I was in Japan for the 2nd stint a friend of mine was very into them, particularly this period, and I kind of got into it via osmosis. I bought most of the albums on CD, when they used to put two albums on one disc, but I haven’t revisited them that much recently.
This period is definitely interesting, if a bit inconsistent, but there are some real gems and this is definitely one of the best, even if it’s just for the fantastic Feel Flows, the superb title track and a nice sense of amiably directionless eccentricity.
There are undoubtedly a few missteps. Musically I really like Don’t Go Near the Water, but you can tell Mike Love wrote it, as the lyrics are characteristically bad. And Student Demonstration Time has a very unhip Osmonds rocker feel to it, and again you can tell it’s a Mike Love composition from the fact it isn't very good. Take A Load Off Your Feet I like for its oddness, but it does feel a little inconsequential. I can also see how some might find Disney Girls schmaltzy and saccharine, but rather than cloying I find it has sweet and affecting sentimentality.
But outside those there are some superb songs, Long Promised Road, the utterly fantastic Feel Flows, one of their greatest songs, and the superb closing trio of A Day in the Life of a Tree, ‘Till I Die and Surf’s Up. Fantastic melodies, atmospheres and themes across those tracks, I love the idea of a song from a tree’s perspective, and the moving melancholy of Surf’s Up is superb. But Feel Flows really is a fantastic song, the phased Moog and veiled lyrics combing brilliantly.
As much of a visionary as Brian Wilson is, I don’t always find I enjoy many of the songs from his dominance of their post-surf era. While I admire Pet Sounds, I’m not sure I truly love it, and I find in this period, where Carl and Dennis come to the fore a little more, it’s a bit more relaxed and less controlled, and little oddities, naiveties and eccentricities are allowed to come to the surface, and we get some variation from Brian’s melodic style. As on this album it doesn’t always bear totally convincing fruit, but there is a loose, warm charm to it that I really like. It’s right on the cusp of 4 and 5, some great songs, some flaws, so I think it just falls shy of a 5, a high 4 it is.
🌊🌊🌊🌊
Playlist submission: Feel Flows
The Divine Comedy
3/5
Casanova
I don’t think I particularly liked the Divine Comedy when this came out - they’ve got all the hallmarks of a band I wouldn’t have liked as a teenager - but listening now has triggered a long forgotten memory that I bought the Becoming More Like Aflie single.
Something for The Weekend and Becoming More Like Alfie are a great start, both excellent 60s-lounge adjacent pop songs, but it’s definitely a bit of a mixed bag after that. Some of it I really enjoyed and some of it grated. When it’s on the right side of knowing archness it’s a great cabaret-chamber-pop album with some nicely wry lyrics - Down and Out in Paris and London, Songs of Love and Through A Long and Sleepless Night I really liked and The Frog Princess is excellent. But it often stumbles the other way, and you get a sense of slightly smug self satisfaction, the feeling he’s not quite as clever as he thinks he is and the music becomes too cabaret and too musical theatre - Middle Class Heroes, Charge, Theme from Casanova and The Dogs and the Horses are all quite irritating.
He has a great ear for a melody and a hook, and he's more often than not a very good lyricist, and I quite like the 60s cinematic lounge style of Something for the Weekend and Becoming More Like Alfie a lot, I just get a bit lost when he leans to heavily into cabaret. It’s probably just about tips into a 3.
❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Playlist submission: Becoming More Like Alfie
Fiona Apple
4/5
Fetch the Bolt Cutters
One of those names I know, but who’s music I’m not really that familiar with. I wasn’t sure about it on first listen, it felt a bit like a deliberately obtuse Phoebe Buffet, but serendipitously the episode about Criminal on 60 Songs that Explain the 90s came up on my podcast feed, and that gave me a bit more background and context, which helped when I came back to it.
On repeat listens I started to really really like it, the focus on percussion and rhythm gives it a slightly unsettling, unpredictable, shifting feel, with some lovely piano lines and little memorable melodies peeking through and around the slightly cluttered sound. The structure and approach feels quite like jazz, even if the sound itself isn’t particularly jazzy, apart from a bit of double bass, and there also seems to be quite a bit of Tom Waits.
Shameika, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Ladies, Heavy Balloon, For Her and Drumset are the standouts, I keep singing the refrains from Shameika and Fetch the Bolt Cutters to myself, but For Her is probably my favourite, dense, sad, angry, a great great song.
From being a little lukewarm about at first I ended up thinking this is a great album, slightly odd and off balance, but always fascinating, to the point where yesterday afternoon I just wanted to keep listening to it. Definitely one I’m going to come back to. 4.
🍏🍏🍏🍏
Playlist submission: For Her
Tina Turner
3/5
Private Dancer
I listened to the 10 track international edition, rather than the 9 track US edition.
I do like the 80s-ness of this, but I’m not sure it actually makes for a great album. When it works well, when the songs written for her and the song choices are good it’s very enjoyable, there’s a nice contrast between her distinctively fantastic 70s soul voice and the slick 80s production. I Might Have Been Queen, the excellent What’s Love Got To Do With It, I Can’t Stand the Rain, Let’s Stay Together and the great Private Dancer all work really well.
But the flipside is that when the song choices aren’t great or the songs aren’t as good, it doesn’t work that well, and not even her voice can cover over the deficiencies. While some of the changes in the chorus are nice, Show Some Respect’s deliberate referencing of Nutbush City Limits just makes you want to listen to Nutbush City Limits. Better Be Good to me is ok, if a bit forgettable. And Steel Claw just isn’t a good song. I don’t mind the sound of 1984, and although I would give credit to her and Heaven 17 as Bowie fans for picking it, but you can’t escape the feeling that it was chosen because they were making the record in the year 1984. And the cover of Help is woeful - tempo, sound, instrumentation, everything - it just feels utterly pointless and devoid of any meaning or sense of interpretation.
Overall a bit of a mixed bag, it’s all enjoyable enough in an 80s way, but with a few stand outs. Think that’s a solid 3 then.
💃💃💃
Playlist submission: What’s Love Got to Do With It
De La Soul
5/5
3 Feet High & Rising
So many great memories of this album, helped by not being able to listen to it between getting rid of all my cds and all the rights being sorted and it coming on streaming.
To get the one negative out of the way first, like many Hip Hop albums, the skits and fillery tracks do disrupt the flow, and apart from the ‘gonna win all the money’ line, they don’t bear the weight of repeat listens.
But apart from that it absolutely holds up as a brilliantly joyous, inventive, kaleidoscopic record of samples and vibes - it still is a fantastic album. The Magic Number, Eye Know, Me Myself and I are high water marks for sunshiney, catchy golden-age hip hop, but there are superb songs throughout - Change in Speak, Jenifa, Ghetto Thang, Tread Water, Potholes in My Lawn, Say No Go, Plug Tunin’, Buddy, This Is a Recording. Samplewise its as dense and as intricately constructed as Paul’s Boutique, but I couple I really love are, Kraftwerk on Ghetto Thang, Peg on Eye Know, I Can’t Go For That on Say No Go.
The overall atmosphere and feel is fantastic, even the skits and filler cant bring down the mood, it still one of the funnest and most enjoyable listens - easy 5
🦶🦶🦶🦶🦶
Playlist submission: Eye Know
Slint
4/5
Spiderland
I’m sure I’ve heard the name Slint mentioned before, but I didn’t really have any preconceptions before listening, apart from remembering they might be a grunge/alt rock band judging from the name, and year of release.
While it has the feel of early 90s US alt rock I found this far more interesting and engrossing than a lot of that music. The tempo, guitar sound, sparseness, and repeating, mesmeric grooves and riffs are musically and emotionally much more satisfying and resonant than many of their peers.
There’s a bit of Neil Young/Crazy Horse, a bit of Sonic Youth, and you can hear Steve Albini’s production style clearly, but it feels apart and separate. It’s drums, bass, guitar and vocals but it has a distinct feel and atmosphere; tense, eerie and reserved, but also confident and assured, it’s pretty unique.
Aside from the guitar tone I love the drumming, it’s got a slight Can and Dub feel to it, it’s slightly spacey and untethered, but also hits some great grooves alongside the guitars. And I like how the alternating spoken word and singing helps give it’s own character too, without the stereotypical US rock voice of the period.
After the first listen I wasn’t expecting to end up liking this as much as I did, it’s very hypnotic, and I was very happy to let it run on repeat, the swirling and narcotic atmosphere washing over me. I’m certain this will improve with more listens and it’s almost a 5, but I’ll go 4.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️
Playlist submission: Washer
The Everly Brothers
4/5
A Date With The Everly Brothers
I can’t imagine what I’d have done if my dad came up to me when I was 16 and said ‘girls were made to love, that's why some have eyes of blue, that's why some stand five feet two’.
With a lot of the pre Beatles/Dylan/Stones albums and artists a lot of the value is the recognition of what bits those and subsequent artists took and were influenced by, and it can be easy to overlook the merits of the music itself. I think this one straddles that line. The fraternal close harmonies are timeless, and sound fantastic 65 years on, and that combined with some great country-rock’n’roll-pop songs; Made to Love, That’s Just Too Much, Always It’s You (lovely, longing sound on this), Love Hurts, So How Come, Cathy's Clown, makes this an immensely enjoyable album in it’s own right, conjuring images of checkered sports jackets, state fairs, high school basketball and Saturday night at the hop. When it goes more bluesy, as onStick With Me Baby, or the more overtly rock’n’roll Lucille it’s less convincing, if still enjoyable
But you can also hear the influence, particularly on the Beatles early records; the harmonies, some of George’s guitar lines (although I presume they were also influenced by Carl Perkins) and the country shuffle and swing of the drums.
The quality of their harmonies, the quality of the songs, the 30 minute brevity and their influence on who followed make this a great record, and an easy 4.
🤡🤡🤡🤡
Playlist submission: Cathy's Clown
Fleet Foxes
4/5
Fleet Foxes
I haven’t listened to this in a while, so it’s nice revisiting, and this has to be one of the most ‘pleasant to listen to albums’, the folky acoustic, the canorous and expressive lead guitar, the vocals and vocal harmony, the reverby atmosphere, the sweet melodies it all makes for a warm, soothing, restorative listen.
I occasionally wonder though whether there’s a great deal beyond that, is it an exercise in style and mood rather than a fully satisfying album? But then I think the sound, the atmosphere, the niceness of it all is more than enough, and it exudes such an agreeable sense of joyfulness and craftsmanship, that you only really need to take it at face value and simply enjoy. And beneath the sweetness of the sound I think it does have sufficient depth and substance to it, which stops it from becoming too earnest, or too twee or too Mumford and Sons.
I’ve always loved Sun It Rises, the harmonies plus the circular little riff are fantastic, and White Winter Hymnal is of course superb. Tiger Mountain is also great, and I love the melody of He Doesn’t Know Why. But it’s some of the songs I forgot about that I really noticed listening now, Heard Them Stirring with its great organ undercurrent, Meadowlarks spare gentleness is really lovely and the finish of Blue Ridge Mountains with the piano and Oliver James is super.
I’ve always loved the Bruegel cover too, it suits the music in it’s evocative, pastoral delightfulness, while having just enough oddness going on to be engaging.
It’s a great album, but I think it just falls short of a 5, so it stays as a very high 4.
🦊🦊🦊🦊
Playlist submission: Sun It Rises
Guided By Voices
3/5
Alien Lanes
Another one of those bands I’d heard of but whose music and style I don’t really know.
I can hear some Replacements, some Pavement, some Dinosaur Junior, some punkishness, with some great melodies, hooks and riffs, but it’s ultimately a bit of a frustrating listen. Not for the muddy sound, which I actually really like, it’s just when you are getting into a song it ends and they do another one, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, and then they abruptly finish that one and do the same thing again. I don’t know whether it's a wilful lo-fi-ness, a slacker can’t be arsed to finish thing, or an artistic statement. If it is from an underground sense of obtuseness. I kind of admire it, but at the same time it feels like a shame, as 10 or 12 of these songs fleshed out could make a great album, or if they just did ten 2 minute songs for a sharp 20 minute album.
It also feels like they must have been an influence on Blur and specifically Coxon, Chicken Blows feels a lot like a Blur/13 era song.
There’s lots of great stuff on here, little snippets and gems of punky lo-fi pop, but the songs are so brief and come and go so quickly that it’s hard to get a real handle on it. I’d listen again though and am intrigued to try some of their other albums, I’ll go 3.
👽👽👽
Playlist submission: Blimps Go 90.
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
Talk Talk Talk
Dumb Waiters is great and of course Pretty in Pink is a classic, a new wave pop banger. I Want To Sleep With You is good too, if only for its directness, I like Mr Jones and also the subtle, nuanced Into You Like A Train. And All of This is Nothing’s acoustic intro is a nice misdirect before the band come back in.
You can hear the punk and specifically Lydon influence in the nasal, confrontational vocal delivery. It’s not the strongest voice, but it is effective, even if its charm does diminish somewhat over the course of the album. I also like the new wave sound, you can hear further Lydon influence in the PiL sound with the occasional drone, synth, scratchy guitar and overall atmospherics, although with more straightforward melodies and hooks. Not totally convinced by the amount of sax, but it does give a slight variation to their sound.
It’s an enjoyable album, a nice early 80s snapshot with one bona fide pop classic in Pretty in Pink. Not sure how often I’ll come back to it, but Pretty in Pink, as well as Dumb Waiters and Into You Like a Train ensure it's a solid 3.
🩷🩷🩷
Playlist submission: Pretty in Pink
Public Enemy
5/5
Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Back
‘Clear the way for the ass to ass 1ws’
I know he doesn’t sing that, but it certainly sounds like it.
I don’t know this one as well as Fear of a Black Planet and A Nation of Millions, I do know it’s not quite as well regarded as those two, but listening through now I do it’s just as good as those. Because it is less densely produced, due to them re-recording and Hank Shocklee being less hands on, it’s more musically direct and with some of the live drumming has a more organic feel. I do love it when they go full kitchen sink, but this does benefit from the contrast with their other albums, even if thematically and lyrically it's still just as intense and aggressive.
Lost at Birth shows the less full on style, it’s just one descending, repeating siren rather than 8 sirens all competing at once, and the clarity makes it much more immediate, a great opening track. Can’t Truss It’s intro sounds a bit like The Way I Are by Timbaland I think, but I love the repeating horn piano breakdown samples. The guitar sample is also excellent on I Don’t Wanna Be Called Yo N***, and the bass is also excellent. By The Time I Get To Arizona is my standout, the bass sample/groove is mesmerically good. Move! Feels most akin to Black Planet and Nation of Millions in it’s sound. 1 Million Bottlebags, Shut ‘Em Down and Get The Fuck Out of Dodge are also great. I’m not sure the Anthrax version of Bring Tha Noise adds much to proceedings though
It’s interesting coming so soon on the list after 3 Feet High and Rising, as there are a few references to it, the same This is a Recording sample in Lost at Birth, Me, Myself and I in By the Time I Get to Arizona.
Over multiple listens I do think this is just as good as Black Planet Nations, the sound is a bit easier to digest, and there are some slower grooves and tempos, but lyrically it’s still as dense and as interesting and as confrontational, and it just gets into the 5s
📢📢📢📢📢
Playlist submission: By the Time I Get to Arizona
Van Halen
2/5
1984
Jump is fantastic, cheesy but undoubtedly a 80s synth-metal-pop classic. Panama is a fun bit of 80s pop metal too, with a great catchy chorus, and Hot For Teacher is a nice bit of dated silliness. The rest is largely forgettable 80s metal, apart perhaps from I’ll Wait, which has a nice bit of synth driven propulsion.
Of all the guitar heroes of this period I think Eddie Van Halen is maybe the least interesting, or for me the least expressive. There’s occasions when he gets a bit psychedelic like on the solo on Panama or with the bluesy shuffle riff of Hot For Teacher, but I feel pretty unmoved by his licks and solos, I don’t find myself admiring the technical proficiency, or particularly enjoying the melody, harmony and tone of his playing. And Dave Lee Roth, for all his renown for his 80s, sleazy, onstage showmanship and as a ‘character’, I’ve always found him to be a pretty uninspiring singer, his voice doesn’t have much sense of uniqueness or personality, and he’s also in general an awful lyricist.
Overall, one great song, 2 decent 80s rockers, with the rest being broadly routine 80s metal. It’s not execrable, but it’s not that interesting either. It’s on the cusp of 2 and 3, I’ll go 2 as I can’t see any reason to listen to the whole thing again.
🚬🚬
Playlist submission: Jump
Prince
5/5
Purple Rain
1999 and Sign ‘O’ the Times both got 4, but this is an easy 5; 9 excellent tracks, all done and dusted in a superbly crisp and enjoyable 42 minutes.
Let’s Go Crazy is an absolute banger, one of my favourite Prince songs, and up there with When Doves Cry and Purple Rain, but the rest of the songs are great as well, with some superb hooks and melodies. I love the little acoustic guitar figure on Take Me With U, and it’s a brilliantly catchy song. I love the 80s power ballad vibes of The Beautiful Ones, culminating in some Macca-esque vamping.
Computer Blue is another great song, the piano motif and drum machine rhythms excellently set up for the solo passage leading into Darling Nikki. I have some practical questions concerning the opening lines, but nonetheless it's a brilliantly smutty bit of 80 tiny sex man r’n’b.
When Doves Cry always seems to be one of those songs that pre-existed the time I first heard it, the piano hook and whole construction of it just feels immediately right. I’ve always tended to overlook I Would Die 4 U, but listening properly now I realise what a great song it its, the shimmering drum machine/synth part and chorus melody picked out by the piano is super. I love Baby I’m A Star, a great bit of propulsive, energetic synthy disco funk, a great bit of sequencing before the brilliantly grandiose and widescreen Purple Rain.
I do love Controversy, 1999 and Around The World In A Day, as well as Sign ‘O’ the Times, but this is probably his best, most consistently great album - every programmed drum beat, hook, melody and arrangement add up to a joyously great, undeniable disco-synth-pop-funk-rock classic.
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪
Playlist submission: Let’s Go Crazy
The Stone Roses
5/5
The Stones Roses
This definitely feels like lightning in a bottle, a great combination of musicians in exactly the right balance at the right time. Squire’s guitar is, of course, excellent, but it doesn’t dominate, or more accurately the Jimmy Page influence doesn’t yet dominate and result in too much noodling. Mani’s bass is superbly melodic and works beautifully with Reni's fantastic, shuffling drums. Despite the Madchester label, the rhythms aren’t overtly dancey, but they are more roll than rock and definitely suggest danceability. And all the obvious criticisms of Ian Brown’s voice are there, but it has been recorded brilliantly, and the thin etherealness suits it all so well. You only have to listen to the live tracks on the end of the deluxe edition to realise how good they are on here.
I’m not necessarily a fan of the backmasking on Don’t Stop, but aside from that every other song is fantastic, it all flows so fantastically, and even the less obvious songs like Shoot You Down, Sugar Spun Sister and Bye Bye Badman have such great moments of melody and playing. Made of Stone in particular has really grown on me in recent years, This is The One is superb, Waterfall too, of course, I Wanna Be Adored, brilliant, and I loved I Am The Resurrection as a teen when I first got into them, but I really love She Bangs The Drums, one of the most summery, sunshiney songs imaginable.
There is of course a lot of nostalgia and university memories all tied up in it too, which only adds to the warmth and brilliance of this, and even without that nostalgia its an undeniably great guitar op album
🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋
Playlist submission: She Bangs the Drums
Kate Bush
4/5
The Dreaming
This was a real grower, becoming more fascinating and more enjoyably off beat the more I listened. Initially though it felt a bit of a mixed bag, Sat In Your Lap and Pull Out The Pin I liked immediately, but the musical theatre aspects seemed too prominent and drowned out the more subtle and interesting elements.
However with further listens that gap between those two things started to blur. There Goes A Tenner’s cock-erny opening verses stood out at first as a little too am dram, but with repeat listens it seemed to make more sense, not only narratively but in contrast with the middle sections, helping morph the whole song into something quite odd and rather brilliant.
While there are still occasions where those theatrical tendencies threaten to overwhelm, she always manages to either pull it back or push it into more unusual and compelling places.
The run from Sat In Your Lap to Suspended in Gaffa is fantastic, I love the rasp in her voice in the I love life part of Pull Out The Pin. The Dreaming is another song that at first felt too like a musical, but again it really benefited from repeat listens, the sampled and looped voices and didgeridoo combining to give a slightly creepy, otherworldly, dreamtime feel. Night of the Swallow is a superb song, perhaps the most conventionally structured, but still with enough texture and unsettling drums, and a beautiful vocal and lyric. I think there is a slight sense of drift with All of the Love and Houdini, or at least a sense that they aren’t quite at the same level as the preceding songs, despite a suitably odd atmosphere to All of the Love. Get Out Of My House is superb though, the anger in the screams feels very real, and musically it feels like something from the Peter Gabriel Melt album, with the guitar and drums.
While there are some great melodies and hooks, there’s a lot of brilliant stuff happening rhythmically with the percussion, Fairlight and the piano. It put me in mind of Fetch the Bolt Cutters quite a bit, and, although it’s a bit reductive to always compare female singers to each other, it feels like there is a throughline, not just rhythmically but also in the sense of true self expression
It’s definitely an album that rewards time and effort, appreciation doesn’t necessarily come easily, it’s full of oblique corners and unexpected deviations into strange places, and it has a definite weight and density to it, despite the slightly floaty and ethereal character that hovers over it. It moved up from the 3s to the 4s after repeat listens. I’m not quite sure it reaches a 5 but it’s a high 4, a fantastically strange and intriguing album.
💭💭💭💭
Playlist submission: Pull Out The Pin
Circle Jerks
2/5
Group Sex
This is completely what it is meant to be; 14 short US punk songs lasting 15 minutes. All the tracks are perfectly serviceable for what they are, and there are some good little hooks and moments (the tempo change on I Just Want Some Skank, the solo on World Up My Ass, the surf tom toms on Don’t Care) across it, but the point is not to develop or craft ‘proper’ songs or anything out of the tracks, the point is entirely to write noisy, angry, short, sharp, earnest missives.
It’s a tricky one to rate. Although it got better with repeat listens, it’s not musically or sonically all that interesting, despite some good moments, so it hovers around the 1s or 2s. But it doesn’t feel like they were interested in being musically or sonically interesting, so on their own terms it’s very successful, and I do quite admire that, especially as I get genuine sincerity and lack of pretension from it, which elevates it on the border of 2 and 3.
So, on balance I’ll go a 2. That puts it on a par with The Dictators, which feels about right. A worthwhile listen, and I’m glad it came up, but I’ve got all I’ll ever get from it across the 3 listens I’ve had.
👫💦
Playlist submission: Back Against The Wall
Keith Jarrett
5/5
The Köln Concert
I thought this was absolutely fantastic. I’m definitely more open to Jazz than I was before doing this, although I don’t think this felt particularly jazzy, apart from the fact it was improvised. It feels more like a classical piano composer like Lizst or Satie or Debussy, or a more modernist composer like Bartok or Phillip Glass, but made up on the spot.
As well as his incredible touch and tenderness there is something very visual about his playing, managing to conjure images and movements, incredible really for one man on a subpar piano. And I love the growling and shouting when he hits upon a passage he knows is great.
And the amazing backstory really does add to the whole thing, knowing the limitations of a slightly fucked baby grand has resulted in in an hour of superb improvised playing.
This is a 5, just incredible skill and its virtuosic in the greatest sense, it’s not empty technical mastery or grandstanding, it’s just an exceptional hour of moving, magnificent piano playing
🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: It’s all great, but I did like Part IIb for some particular reason
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
4/5
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Great album, I remember buying it when it came out and enjoyed it, but haven’t revisited recently, and didn’t even know they made a second album.
I love the percussion, drums and bass. As you would expect Paul Simonon and Tony Allen are superb, Simonon’s bass is dense and deep, but with some softness, and Tony Allen’s slightly jazzy shuffle and swing is fantastic. He’s less heralded perhaps, but some of Simon Tong’s guitar is also excellent, at times slightly psychedelic and spacey like the Verve, but never too showy, it’s always embellishing the music. And it’s interesting that a lot of the piano and organ evokes Parklife and the Great Escape, but whereas there was an exuberance to those albums, this has a much wearier feel, like there’s a few more miles on the clock.
It also stands slightly apart from its contemporaries in the late 2000s, it’s influences are more folk and dub, with a bit of spacey rock, and its sounds less dated than a lot of music from that period. Despite the slightly downbeat themes and atmospheres it still has a degree of life and an emotional weight that other albums in those years are perhaps missing.
The first half of the record is particularly strong, History Song, 80s Life, Northern Whale are all great, and Kingdom of Doom and Herculean are absolutely superb. Herculean has a great, catchy melody and I love how it builds to a slightly frenetic close. The Bunting Song is also excellent, another great forlorn melody and melancholy feel, but with added electronic beeps and noises. It perhaps does stick too closely to the formula after that, not that any of the remaining songs aren’t very good, they are, but they tend to retreat into more hypnotic, repeating grooves, which are great, but it could perhaps do with a little more contrast and perhaps less restraint, although the fantastic title track does build on it’s evocative, doleful melody, building to a brilliant, expansive crescendo.
Despite the fact it stays largely within its own furrow this is a great album, melancholy and plaintive, but with some superb melodies, and some utterly fantastic playing. A high 4.
👑👑👑👑
Playlist submission: The Good, The Bad and the Queen.
Wire
4/5
Pink Flag
Another album of multiple short songs!
I know Three Girl Rhumba and I know how influential this album was, but I don’t think I’ve ever listened before.
It is right in the sweet spot between punk and post-punk, straddling both those genres; there’s some of the riffing and urgency of punk, but with an added (subtracted?) minimalist edge with some great bass hooks and drum patterns, as well as some sludgy creepiness like Strange. They also have a great line in catchy singalong melodies among the punkiness, Ex Lion Tamer, Pink Flag, Fragile for example. I also really like his voice, it’s of course not the most technical, but it has some of the punk sneer but with a slightly more detached feel.
With Guided By Voices and Circle Jerks the shorter tracks are the whole point of what they do, whereas on here the shorter tracks interspersed with longer tracks feels more considered as part of the overall feel and sequencing of the album. I don’t get the same feeling of frustration as I did with GBV, something like Feeling Called Love is only 82 seconds but feels like a fully formed song with a beginning, middle and end.
Although it's perhaps less in thrall to rock classicism It feels a bit like Marquee Moon in places, from the same year, as well as some of the Modern Lovers first album. There’s also a bit of Ramones in some of the more bubblegum punk moments, like the backing la la las on Mannequin or the overall feel of The Commercial. You can also hear the influence it has had through the years, Elastica most obviously, but also on Blur and some of the Strokes/Libertines era bands. And of course on some of the bands and music that immediately followed it, PiL, Magazine, Talking Heads and post-punk and new wave in general.
It’s a great punk/post-punk album, wth some great songs, some great bits of frantic urgency and minimalist, wiry grooves. A solid 4 but keen to let it percolate some more, I think it will improve.
🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
Playlist submission: Mannequin
Saint Etienne
3/5
Foxbase Alpha
In the end I had to listen to this on YT, as Tidal doesn’t have all the tracks available, so it’s slightly difficult to rate as the listening experience is a bit fragmented, and occasionally, such is the nature of some of their music I wasn’t sure if it was one of their songs or a Vrbo advert.
I know their version of Only Love Can Break Your Heart, and I’ve always liked it, the dreamy electronic feel works well with the plaintive nature of the song, but I didn’t realise until today that it’s not Sarah Cracknell singing.
I really like Stoned To Say The Least, with its Richard Whitely sample and excellent, propulsive, nagging bass line as the song unfolds over a leisurely and excellent 7 minutes. Kiss and Make Up is great too, the 60s guitar and string arrangement with the dancey bass and drums is great. London Belongs to Me is another great, dreamy track, the harpsichord/keyboard part giving it a nice texture.
I didn’t listen to the US version of the album, although I did listen to Kiss and Make Up from it, which was released as a single, and that is another great track.
I do like their dreamy, spacey, slightly dubby, trip-hoppy, 60s lounge electronica, and I quite like the proto David Holmes, pre mid 90s use of movie and tv dialogue samples It does have a nice atmosphere that washes over you very pleasantly, although some of the bass and drum sounds do feel a little too early 90s, and while that washing over-ness is one of it’s strengths I think it does also slightly let it down, some of the tracks are a bit fillery and that does colour it with a slightly anodyne sheen. Overall though, despite the YT interruptions, it’s a very nice album, great for working to. I’ll go for a high 3
🦊 🦊 🦊
Playlist submission: Stoned To Say The Least
Pixies
3/5
Bossanova
I enjoyed Doolittle and its surfer alt rock, but I had heard a few songs from it previously. With Bossanova I was unaware of any of the tracks, and despite liking the album, I found it a bit underwhelming in comparison.
Cecilia Ann is very good, it has some of the vibes of doolittle with a bit more wiry post punk too, reminding me a bit of Magazine. Allison is great too, as is Ana and Havalina. In fact the songs with girl’s names are probably the best tracks, they all highlight their undoubted melodic sense. I think Velouria is a girl's name too, and that fits nicely on that bucket too. And it also works well where they play a bit with rhythms and tempos and lean into the post punk vibe as on Dig for Fire and Stormy Weather.
Where their proto-grunge and goth tendencies mix with their alt surfer vibes, like on Rock Show, Down to the Well or Hang Wire I find it less interesting and less memorable, putting me in mind of someone performatively wearing a big black hoody on a sunny day at the beach.
Overall it’s a good listen, and similar to Doolittle you can see it’s influence on what came after with the quiet loud bit, although, aside from a few exceptions, I don’t think many of those subsequent bands can match their melodic skill. I think it’s a notch below Doolittle, although still good, so I’ll put it at a high 3.
🧚🧚🧚
Playlist submission: Allison
R.E.M.
5/5
Automatic For The People
I was listening to a podcast about Euro 84 the other day, when France won and Platini scored 9 goals in 5 games. Apparently he was in one of those periods where everything he did and everything he touched turned to gold. If the squad were playing cards he won, if he saw a horse race on TV he picked the winner, if they played tennis or table tennis he won, and everything on the pitch went his way, he knew France would win the tournament, it was inevitable.
I kind of get that feeling from this album, one of those times where it feels like every decision, every string arrangement, every guitar figure, every drum pattern, every piano and keyboard note and every bass line is just right, when the artistry and artisanship meet perfectly. It also sounds fantastic, and nothing like much else from 1992, either in songwriting style or production, almost timeless, or out of time you might say.
For the most part it's all glacially paced, with only Sidewinder and Man on the Moon really recalling their earlier upbeat jangly sound. But it’s a compelling, stunning album, melodically rich and emotionally, melancholically resonant with some of their finest songs: Drive, Try Not to Breathe, Everybody Hurts, Sweetness Follows, Nightswimming and Find the River. And the remaining, perhaps lesser known songs like Monty Got A Raw Deal, Ignoreland and Star Me Kitten are excellent too.
I can see why some people might have been hesitant about it, compared to their slightly more rough-edged 80s albums. From those 80s albums I’ve listened to they have the exciting sense of the band pushing the outer edges of their talent, but this feels different, that they moved beyond what they had done previously, striking out into a stately, magisterial assuredness.
A fantastic album from start to end, there’s no weak tracks, and no weak moments - I kept wanting to give it just one more listen. A clear 5.
✴️✴️✴️✴️✴️
Playlist submission: It could be all of them, but today it’s Sweetness Follows
4/5
The Joshua Tree
Despite the pompousness, the generally unvarying musical palette, the earnest, self important hollowness of the lyrics and the clear dip in the middle this is an undeniably good album. Whatever you think of U2, Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, With or Without You and Bullet the Blue Sky is a fantastic 4 track opening run, the first 3 in particular, as well known as they are, remain 3 excellent bits of expansive stadium rock U2 songwriting - great melodies, meaninglessly universal lyrics and simple, uncomplicated arrangements. Despite the cheesy spoken word America bits Bullet the Blue Sky is a nice welding of their post punk origins with a dollop of Joy Division gothicness and their aspirations of worldwide, and in particular American, popularity, creating an, unusually for them, muscular bit of music, driven by Clayton’s relentlessly simple and effective bass line.
It definitely feels like it loses steam after that. Running To Stand Still, Red Hill Mining Town, In God’s Country, Trip Through Your Wires, while perfectly serviceable bits of rock-populism don’t have the clear sighted, eyes on the prize, ambitious quality of those first three songs. It does pick up towards the end, One Tree Hill, Exit and Mothers of the Disappeared, while still not quite at the level of the opening run, are a notch above the tracks on the middle of the album.
I know The Edge gets a lot of stick for his rather basic delay based sound, but it’s interesting in an era of excessive guitar heroes, he eschews grandstanding and soloing, and his sound is crucial to the non-threatening open armed, big sound they are going for.
While not a massive U2 fan I’m not really a hater either, and I quite admire the ruthless efficiency of this album. And despite there being a notable lack of depth and shad in the end I can’t really refute the quality of some of the songs on here, and altogether it adds up to an enjoyably undemanding listen that I will very happily listen to again. 4.
🏜️🏜️🏜️🏜️
Playlist submission: Bullet the Blue Sky
Sisters Of Mercy
2/5
Floodland
Bowie + Joy Division + Depeche Mode + Billy Idol = a decent enough album that starts well before fading away, getting lost in the similarity of tempo, tone, melody, sound and song structure.
On the strongest songs, Dominion/Mother Russia, Lucretia My Reflection and This Corrosion, the pompous 80’s goth-pop-rock atmospheres work well and make for some enjoyably catchy tracks. The other tracks, whilst not necessarily bad, are either not so successful variations on those tracks, or slightly dirgey and not that memorable.
It’s an interesting listen, a nice little snapshot of a genre I’m not that au fait with, with a few good songs, but ultimately it’s not something I can see myself coming back to. Cusp of 2 and 3, but as I’m unlikely to return to it I’ll go high 2.
👭👭
Playlist submission: Dominion/Mother Russia
The Triffids
1/5
Calenture
Never heard of The Triffids, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve been missing out.
It starts off with a very pleasant 80s country and Irish folk twinged pop-rock track, and while there’s but after a few songs that overall sense pleasantness descends into a limp and anodyne insipidness that I actually found a bit aggravating. Combined with the vague whiff of Christian-rock and the 80s production it became a bit of a slog to get through, despite the on the surface ‘nice-ness’.
Bury Me Deep in Love, Trick of the Light and Holy Water are obviously the strongest songs, the melodies and arrangements are good and there is a sense of quality and interest that is missing from much of the other tracks. While some of them pass by inconsequentially well enough, if, as I say, rather limply, like Hometown Farewell Kiss, Open For You, Blinder By The Hour or Jerdacuttup Man, a few are actually actively quite bad, especially when they attempt a harder, rockie edge on Kelly’s Blues, Unmade Love and Vagabond Holes.
The pleasant songs are ok, if rather mundane and unremarkable and the bad songs are bad in a particularly banal way, adding up to a rather annoying listen. There’s no reason to ever come back to it, and that irritating nature I think rather harshly puts this as a 1, albeit, and as if it matters, as a high 1.
🌱
Playlist submission: Trick of the Light
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
Siembra
I found this very enjoyable, more so than I was expecting. Although I’m still slightly ambivalent about Salsa, I found the undeniable energy with added disco accents quite pleasing.
The Sly Stone disco funk bass and string intro to Plastico is excellent, and although it shifts more into salsa it’s a great track. Maria Lionza also has some nice disco bass, both of these kind of highlight the NY latin influence on disco. Pedro Navaja must have been an influence on Escape by Rupert Holmes, the verses are very similar. I like the refrain of Buscando Guayaba, the change of tempo with Dime and the slightly sinister tone and strings in Siembra, but it’s easy to let this drift off a little, as to my unknowledgeable ear the songs do broadly sound quite similar.
Nevertheless I do like the breezy charm and generally upbeat nature, despite, from what I gather, the socially conscious lyrics. I suppose this type of music always carries the tang of Salsa classes in village halls on Tuesday evenings, but the little bits of disco and the obvious quality of the playing make this a very listenable mid to high 3.
🕺🕺🕺
Playlist submission: Plastico
Justice
4/5
Cross
I remember liking this when it came out, around the same time as Simian Mobile Disco’s first album, and also when they were on a few of the Maison Kitsune albums. But I haven’t listened to it since then, and kind of forgot about them.
So it’s great to revisit now, and it still sounds excellent. The obvious comparison is with the similarly French, similarly electronic and similarly two-person Daft Punk. They obviously share some DNA, and while Daft Punk are perhaps slightly more eclectic and take their music into some strange places, I like Justice’s similarly disco influenced but more straightforward and belligerent sound with its excellent dirty, scuzzy basslines, squeaky noises and crunchy sound effects
It does perhaps fade in the middle, I’m not as keen on Valentine and The Party feels like a slightly misguided break in the momentum, but it’s also perhaps because the first 5 tracks are so great, that everything after doesn’t seem as good, especially the deliberately strained Stress. Although I do love the string stabs and ABC feel of DVNO, and One Minute to Midnight has a great 80s soundtrack feel, like Delorean Dynamite by Todd Terje.
It’s also interesting reading about the sampling, lots of snippets you wouldn’t immediately notice, manipulated and cut up, although the Dr Dre one in D.A.N.C.E. is great.
It’s a great electronic album and a great album. Despite the dip in the middle it’s very well sequenced, for an album of similar tempos and structures it never feels fully one note or too repetitive. Easy 4.
✝️✝️✝️✝️
Playlist submission: D.A.N.C.E.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
3/5
Come Find Yourself
Haven’t thought about or listened to this in years. I had it on CD around the time it came out. I’m not sure what prompted me to buy it, I think it might have been the King of New York single, as listening now it gives me a very strong Proustian hit of summer 1997.
It certainly sounds very mid-late 90s (in a good, interesting way) with its movie dialogue samples and very Beck and Beastie Boys, 70s soul and blues influenced rock and rap, and it’s still very enjoyable, even if there is a fair bit of nostalgia tied up in it.
It is also a bit inconsistent, or at least for me not every track works. When they are hitting the more soulful, bluesy, jazzy grooves like The Grave and the Constant, Smoke Em, I Can’t Get With That, King of New York, Bear Hug, Come Find Yourself or the catchy pop of The Fun Lovin’ Criminal or Scooby Snacks, it's really good, with some excellently arranged horns, but when they are at the overdriven rock out end of things it it’s far less successful. Passive/Aggressive isn’t great and although I quite like the idea behind Bombin the L with the Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Judas Priest interpolations I don’t think the end result really works. And despite some nice guitar moments I’ve always thought the cover of We Have All the Time In the World is a bit odd.
Still, it's a very nice reminiscilisten. Some of it is great, some less so, and despite only being 50 minutes it does feel a little long. I would definitely listen again, but not sure it quite gets into the 4s, so I’ll go high 3.
🚬🚬🚬
Playlist submission: The Fun Lovin’ Criminal
Sebadoh
3/5
Bubble and Scrape
I bought their album The Sebadoh from a few years after this, while we were at Uni, having seen them do Flame on TOTP. Looking back, that was quite a strange booking for 1999, well after the peak of their influence as a lofi alt rock band. I remember liking that album at the time, and I had a quick listen today and it’s still good, and sounds quite different to this, a lot more confident and crafted perhaps.
Roughshod charm with the odd lovely melody poking through I guess is their whole thing, and this delivers that, but similar to Dinosaur Junior and a lot those US bands in the indie-alt-rock-grunge adjacent space it never quite feels like it quite lifts off, like they kind of lose a bit of steam halfway sometimes, or in the case of Eric Gaffneys songs they just aren’t that great to start with. I suppose that drift, again, is part of their schtick and appeal, but it feels a shame that they didn’t develop some of it further, or cut a few tracks (ie Eric’s) off the album as 17 is too many really.
Barlow’s songs are probably the strongest, or he has the best ear for a hook or melody, Soul and Fire, Sacred Attention, Homemade, Forced Love and Think are nice slackery lo-fi pop.
It’s more enjoyable, due to those songs, than other albums in this genre, and they do have an indefinable quality that makes them likeable. I’d listen again but it’s not necessarily something I’ll come back to that often, I’d definitely listen to The Sebadoh album if I fancied a piece of them. I think it just squeezes a 3.
🫧🫧🫧
Playlist submission: Forced Love
Afrika Bambaataa
3/5
Planet Rock: The Album
The title track is still absolutely superb, early hip hop 80 Roland and Fairlight beats with some great synth lines and a big sample of Kraftwerk. It still sounds amazing - icy cold, imposing and austere yet expressive, and it’s massive influence is clear on hip-hop, sampling, new wave and electro.
I hadn’t heard any of the other songs on here previously, but it continues with more electro-kraftwerk-synth grooves with Looking for the Perfect Beat, another excellent track. Despite the slightly rudimentary by modern standards rapping, musically this also sounds well ahead of its time.
Renegades of Funk is good as well, especially on repeat listens, with the afro chanting, synth hooks and sound effects, but it definitely a notch below Looking for the Perfect Beat and a couple below Planet Rock. Frantic Situation is decent as well, the beats, synth bass and hip hop party chorus are all good, but again does continue the slide into diminishing returns after those stellar opening 2 tracks. Who You Funkin’ With isn’t great and suffers from sounding very different, especially with Melle Mel’s OTT delivery. Go Go Pop has some nice hooks, but again the rapping kind of lets it down. They Made a Mistake is also fine, but is pretty standard bit of early 80s hip hop, especially in comparison to the glacial magnificence of Planet Rock
If this was just the first 2 tracks this would probably be a 4, but it its a case of subtraction by addition with the rest of the tracks. Frantic Situation and Go Go Pop are certainly enjoyable enough, but nowhere near the brilliance of Planet Rock. I think that means it ends up as a high 3.
🌍🪐🪨
Playlist submission: Planet Rock
Anthrax
1/5
Among the Living
I didn’t mind the sludgy, Black Sabbath-esque opening to the first track, but oh, yep there it is, the double kick drum and power chords combo and the ensuing musical moribundity. It does get a little more interesting when the tempo shifts back and forth, and I didn’t mind the solo, but ultimately it’s pretty much a rehash of every other thrash metal song. Which is also true for the rest of it, despite their perhaps being a slightly broader lyrical palate than some of their peers, and the odd occasion like on Indians or One World where they create a more memorable hook/chorus.
Obviously it’s not my thing, but I didn’t dislike it as much as say Sepultura or Venom, and I can see if you do like metal and thrash this is a good example, but for me a it's a very Partridgean shoulder shrug when he’s introduced to the man who’s just revamped current affairs, as I can find very little to be interested in.
🤷
Playlist submission: Indians
Paul Weller
4/5
Wild Wood
I’ve never really realised how Traffic influenced this album is, until now. It’s not quite as jazzy as Traffic, but it still has that nice keyboard bumpiness and acoustic guitar sound. It definitely benefits from Weller arguably being a better, or at least more consistent, songwriter and melodicist than Winwood, from it’s retrospective take on classic rock, folk and soul (Moon on your Pyjamas is very Style Council), and from the context of Weller’s career to that point - finding his way out of the wild wild wood might be a bit literal but it’s pretty true.
The singles/well known songs, Sunflower, Wild Wood, The Weaver and Hung Up are all excellent, but I’ve always particularly loved Wild Wood. In the context of the album it really is superb, encapsulating all the themes of contemplation and introspection, and alongside the melancholic-pastoral and folk influenced tracks like the superb All the Pictures on the Wall, Has My Fire Really Gone Out, Country, Foot of the Mountain, Shadow of the Sun, it gives the whole album a very sweet tone of thoughtfulness and reflection.
I listened to Stanley Road not that long ago, and while there are some superb songs on there, and it was of course far more commercially successful and culturally zeitgeisty, I think this is a better album, the folk and pastoral elements give it a deftness and lightness that is missing from some of the plod of Stanley Road.
It’s perhaps 3 or 4 songs/10 minutes too long but it’s a great album, interesting songs and influences and some excellent tracks. Not sure it quite gets to 5, so I’ll go with a high 4.
🪵🪵🪵🪵
Playlist submission: All the Pictures on the Wall
The Jam
5/5
Sound Affects
I was really into The Jam around A-Levels. I loved the Greatest Hits so I bought the Direction, Creation, Reaction box set with my Christmas vouchers. It was all their albums and singles plus b sides and outtakes, but I never really listened to it much. It had two studio albums per disk so it never felt like each album was distinct, so I just used to listen to the Greatest Hits. A lot of their singles really were quite incredible - In the City, The Modern World, News of the World, Down in the Tube Station, Eton rifles, Going Underground, Start!, That’s Entertainment, Funeral Pyre, Absolute Beginners, Town Called Malice, Bitterest Pill, Beat Surrender - so I think their albums tend pale in comparison, and to me, despite this one, All Mod Cons and Setting Sons being very good, they don’t quite have that killer, go to album.
Pretty Green is a banger, great bass of course, and I love the sitar in the outro, indicating the Revolver influence that would become outright homage/theft on Start! I fall on the homage side, it’s a great track, especially with the horns towards the end. Monday is great, a kind of slippery melody and structure, with very I’m Only Sleeping Macca bass. I like But I’m Different Now, a bit of classic Jam punky-angry-pop, one of the few times they hit their earlier sound. Set The House Ablaze I love, one of their best album tracks, the psychedelic influenced riff and marching bass in the verses are great and I really like how it breaks into the very Jamian chorus. I like how Dream Time starts off dreamy and backwards and psychedelic sounding before ending as a tight bass, drums and power-guitar song with a great chorus and some lovely horn embellishments. I love the 60s Kinksian feel of Man in the Corner Shop and its ruminative lyrics. Music for the Last Couple is obviously ska/2-tone influenced and I love the guitar break bass and piano refrain against the parts with the melodica. Boy About Town I remember from that box set, a great catchy melody and a great song, with lyrics that I think deliberately nod to I’m Only Sleeping. And Scrape Away has great, slightly sinister new wave-ish feel, mainly due to Foxton’s excellent bass line, and a great, righteously frustrated lyric.
And of course there’s That’s Entertainment, possibly their greatest song. Fantastically bleak, evocative lyrics, you feel the greynes and the early 80s-ness, with one of my favourite lines ‘Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight, two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude’. Superb.
Foxton is consistently excellent on this album, the Macca/Revolver inspiration is clear, but he also adds a great urgency and ominousness to some of the songs. Even with that I think you can hear Weller chafing against the limitations of the trio format and their sound. They always had wider influences and a classic 60s pop and soul in their sound but you, and despite Rick Buckler being a very good drummer and the soul and funk influences being apparent, there is still a tinge of a punky thudiness to his drumming, and in retrospect The Style Council seems like the obvious next chapter.
There’s a lot of great lines and lyrics and some interesting things happening musically, even if they are sometimes a bit buried in the mix, but I really enjoyed this, especially on repeat listens, and it has re-ignited my interest in The Jam. Started a straight ahead 4 but I think I’ll tip into 5.
🫙🫙🫙🫙🫙
Playlist submission: Obvious but That’s Entertainment
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
2/5
Rising Above Bedlam
‘Oh look mummy, a speed restriction’
TLDR; Stuart Pearce talking new age nonsense over excellent bass playing
The bass is clearly great throughout, as you might expect, and Visions of You’s proto-Tattva vibes and Sinead O’Connor vocals makes for a great opener. And musically much of the rest of it is good, in a noodly world music way, although a couple of tracks are pretty musically and culturally questionable
But it’s the canal boat, Thai fisherman trousers, roll ups, short fringed lady vibes alongside the stunning revelation that advertising tries to sell you things that sours it. If it was purely an instrumental album I think it could have pushed close to a 4 - but the contrast of the breadth and warmth of the music with the really quite bad lyrics and vocals really does detract from the whole thing quite a bit, putting it at the cusp of 2 and 3. The bass is undoubtedly good, but I can’t ever see myself listening again, unless there are vocal-less mixes, so I’ll go 2.
😮💨😮💨
Playlist submission: Visions of You
Brian Eno
5/5
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
I came to this album quite late, after hearing Adam Buxton talk about it on his podcast, I think with Eno, a few years ago.
It really is a fantastic album, with elements of Eno’s synths and ambient soundscapes, and Byrne/Talking Heads’ wiry funk, but with the added density of all the samples and found sounds, making it shift between slightly uncomfortable and anxious, eg the ‘I made a mistake’ line on Mea Culpa, and more expansive and groove laden as on Regiment. It was recorded before Remain in Light and its influence on that album is very clear, taking the World Music/African sounds and polyrhythms and experimental spirit behind this and putting it through the band. Help Me Somebody and The Jezebel spirit could absolutely be on Remain in Light.
It’s also another one of those hugely influential albums that still sounds modern, even 35 years later. On some early sample heavy records it can sound a bit stilted, but the looped percussion, live instrumentation and synths give it slipperiness and sense of movement and momentum that still sounds fresh. It’s also got that thing that lots of Eno albums have, in that there is lots of detail and texture that you can really tune into, while it simultaneously plays with mood and atmosphere that you can let passively wash over you.
It’s a fascinating album, musically and atmospherically with some superb bass and some excellent grooves, as well as some brilliantly layered synths and arrangements. Easy 5
👻👻👻👻👻
Playlist submission: Very Very Hungry
Curtis Mayfield
5/5
Superfly
You had noo right, son, noo right at all.
To make such a great soundtrack for a not so great film.
Little Child Runnin’ Wild is a superb opener, the drum and horn hits followed by the string stabs is excellent, setting up the whole album. Pusherman and Freddie’s Dead are, along with Superfly, I suppose are two of his best known songs and of course they are both bangers. The main riff of Freddie’s Dead repeated on bass in the breakdown part is just fantastic. Junkie Chase is possibly the only track that really feels like incidental music for the film, Think, the other instrumental feels more like a song or piece of music that can stand alone from visuals.
I really like the little harp notes on Give Me Your Love, and the riff strings and wah wah all lock in brilliantly. Eddie You Should Know Better’s intro feels quite soundtracky, but once the lyrics kicks in it’s another superb, sad and bleak bit of soul, similar to No Thing On Me. And then the title track, which remains superb no matter how many times you hear it.
It might be easy to see this as a kitschy 70s wah wah, afro wigs at Flares, watching blaxploitation films ironically kind of thing, but the lyrics are pretty blunt social commentary and it fits in with his other albums in the early 70s, like There’s No Place Like America Today we had back in November
It’s a great album, irrespective of its soundtrack origins, with three of his best songs alongside some lesser known gems, and it’s all tied together by superb playing and that amazing, mellifluous, warm voice. And it’s all done in 36 minutes.
🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰
Playlist submission: Pusherman
Incredible Bongo Band
2/5
Bongo Rock
Bongo bongo bongo bongo, bongo, bongo bongo bongo. Bongo. Bongo bongo bongo bongo bongo, bongo. Bongo bongo bongo.
Bongo, bongo, bongo bongo bongo bongo bongo, bongo bongo bongo bongo. Bongo bongo bongo. Bongo bongo, bongo bongo, bongo bongo bongo bongo. Bongo bongo bongo. Bongo bongo bongo, bongo bongo.
Bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo. Bongo, bongo. Bongo, bongo, bongo bongo bongo, bongo bongo…bongo. Bongo.
TLDR; Bongo
🪘🪘
Bongo: Let There Be Drums
Elvis Presley
4/5
From Elvis in Memphis
That opening track is great, I love the older, more worn tone to his voice and the excellent reverbed backing vocals, twangy guitar, organ, piano, and the fantastic bass.
I don’t think I’d heard of Tommy Cogbill, which seems a bit crazy when I read about the songs he’s played on and how people regarded him. And that makes sense as the bass on the whole album is absolutely superb, sitting brilliantly in the space between soul, country and gospel, sometimes busy like on I’m Movin On and Power of My Love, sometimes back in the pocket as on True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, but always with a great tone and melodicism.
Despite the bass, and the superb playing in general, in terms of songs and overall tone it is a little inconsistent. Wearin’ That Loved On Look, Only the Strong Survive, Long Black Limousine, I’m Movin’ On and In the Ghetto all work brilliantly, and the version of Gentle on My Mind improves with every listen, and it gives a glimpse of what a fully excellent Elvis country soul album could be. But I’ll Hold You in My Heart, It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’, Power of My Love, After Loving You, Any Day Now seem a bit rote by comparison, never quite taking off or not being the right song choices.
The early Elvis albums we had, although also a bit inconsistent, felt consequential. Looking back from 70 odd years their influence and importance is innate, whereas this doesn’t have that same sense. It’s a very good country soul pop album, with great playing and lovely tone to his distinctively great voice, but some of it has the slight feel of being knocked out as part of a recording contract. Even though reading about the album that doesn’t seem to be the case, but I do get the feeling that on a few of the songs, he came in, sang and left and never fully engaged. But maybe that’s unfair, especially in comparison to the approximate 347 soundtrack albums he knocked out in the years previously.
But it is still very enjoyable and very listenable. It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4, but I will tip over to 4 for the superb bass and for the timbre of his voice.
👑👑👑👑
Playlist submission: Wearin’ That Loved on Look
Miles Davis
5/5
Bitches Brew
I’ve tried this album quite a few times in the past, but it’s never really stuck, too cacophonous, too unstructured with too many Jazz tropes; parping, noodling horns, seemingly arbitrary changes of direction, no spaces or breaks, random interjections from some organ or guitar and lots of drum fills.
Doing the list though has made me less fearful of Jazz and more open minded I think, and this is the first time I think I can say I enjoyed it, and perhaps I even started to ‘get it’. I’m a bit reluctant to say ‘get it’, as it feels loaded with the sanctimonious, pork pie hat wearing, earnest and superior Jazz-pseud, someone who thinks they understand music in a way other people can’t possibly comprehend because they get Jazz. But what I will say is that you are witnesses at the new birth of Tom, mark 2. I hope you enjoy my new direction.
There’s no doubt though that it’s not an easy listen, especially over 90 minutes. There’s a lot going on, either through various instruments coming in and out, or the phrases and structure shifting around frequently, and it’s very easy to not know what's going on and look down and see you are only 5 minutes into Pharaoh's Dance and there’s another 42 minutes before you even get to Track 3.
But the more I listened the more I got sucked into it, and found myself enjoying it’s structured chaos, and getting into the rhythm of very long songs that take their time to develop and unfurl themselves, and it's one of the first times with Jazz where I can start to understand how they are interweaving with each other, or how they are aiming to shift the direction of the songs. And the quality of musicianship is undoubted, and it’s nice to note that the bass player is from Wolverhampton.
On the first two tracks particularly you can really hear the influence on Kid A, especially Everything in its Right Place, Kid A and Idioteque. And you can also see how it also birthed Jazz-rock and, on balance for the worse, gave legitimacy to Jazz-fusion.
I’m not sure I totally understand all of it, and it’s not something to casually throw on, but I do think it is a pretty incredible album, the density of stuff going on makes it hard to process without multiple listens, and it is a long record, but how you can even imagine this and then make it is brilliantly crazy and an amazing musical achievement. I think it can only be a 5.
🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖
Playlist submission: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Everything But The Girl
3/5
Walking Wounded
I really didn’t like EBTG back in the mid 90s, I really, really hated Missing and I would have hated this album.
But I was wrong to think that, and I don’t hate it now at all. But I have been going back and forth on how much I like it. The production is very mid-90s, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and it is a nice collection of understated, downbeat electro pop, but really it’s all about Tracy Thorn’s fantastic voice. If you took her vocals off the album I think the music on its own might feel rather too insipid and impermanent.
But then I think it’s the deliberate musical restraint that makes it work, the rhythms and percussion without the embellishments or atmospherics of say Massive Attack or Portishead showcase her vocals brilliantly, the sparseness combining with the melancholic and doleful lyrics and melodies.
I’m still not quite sure where it lands. On some listens I found it too lethargic and too dry, but then on other listens I found it really appealing, its musical iciness and her voice very compelling. There are some great tracks, Wrong, Walking Wounded and Mirrorball among them, and it’s never bad, but how much I enjoy it does vary everytime I listen, and I don’t think it really needs the two remixes on the end. Another on the cusp of 3 and 4, I’ll go high 3 - I’ll listen again, but I’m not sure how often
🤕🤕🤕
Playlist submission: Mirrorball
Grateful Dead
2/5
American Beauty
Slighty wary after the rather trying live album we had early on, although I did have some expectations that this would be good, based on its reputation.
In truth it's a fine if ultimately unremarkable late 60s country rock album, not really at the same level of skill or interest or quality as CSN/Y, The Byrds or CCW from the same period. Sugar Magnolia is nice though, with its CSN harmonies, Candyman has some good guitar, Brokedown Palace has a pleasingly fractured feel and Till the Morning Comes also has some toe-tapping energy. But the rest passes by in a bit of a blur of unexceptional country rock.
If this is considered their best album then I’m struggling to understand the reverence, or the idea that they broke the rules, or they transcend to a different plane of psychedelic musical consciousness. It’s not awful, it’s a much better listen than Live / Dead, but that is a low bar. Maybe it’s because I had some (any) expectations for it, but it just feels a bit inessential, and I can’t think I’d come back again, which I think means it's a 2, if a high one.
🌹🌹
Playlist submission: Brokedown Palace
Elliott Smith
3/5
Either/Or
Similar to Figure 8, had I listened to this when I was between 16 and 21 I think I would have loved the morose sensitivity of it all, but it doesn’t quite hit the same in my mid 40s, despite it being a well crafted and obviously sincere album.
He is good at what he does, although he does have a particular vocal, melodic and harmonic style, a kind of drone, which I do actually like, but it does start to feel very samey over the course of the album, even one one that’s only 37 minutes.
Although I did quite enjoy the overall soporific feel, I did struggle to really pick any songs out, probably due to that sense of sameness. I can, however, see that in the right mood it might land better, and although I would listen again if I’m in the mood for some gloomy acoustic introspection, but there are other albums or artists I’d likely go to ahead of this. Think that makes a 3.
🥹🥹🥹
Playlist submission: Ballad of Big Nothing
The Electric Prunes
2/5
The Electric Prunes
I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) is a garage-psychedelic staple, a Nuggets classic, all ominous bass, fuzzed out guitar and ‘mind-expanding’ lyrics. There’s nothing else quite as good as that, the rest of the songs being either more bluesy-garage-psych in the vein of I Had Too Much to Dream or semi-baroque whimsical hippie psychedelia. The former camp is far better; Bangles, Are You Lovin’ Me More, Train for Tomorrow, Get Me To the World on Time and Try Me for Size are all decent enough, but the latter camp is mostly not very good, About a Quarter to Nine and The King is in the Counting House in particular, and The Toonerville Trolley is absolutely awful.
It follows the pattern of a lot of those late 60s psychedelic-garage-acid-blues-hippie rock albums, in that they aren’t that great overall but they have one or two little gems that are worthwhile, backing up the idea that it’s best served as a compilation/playlist genre. It’s on the cusp of 2 and 3, I Had Too Much to Dream is definitely in the plus column, but the sub (Listen to) The Flower People whimsy and the awful Toonerville Trolley mean that I’m unlikely to want to listen again.
🍇 🍇
Playlist submission: I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)
Queen
2/5
A Night at the Opera
While You’re My Best Friend and of course Bohemian Rhapsody are excellent if a bit overplayed, after a few listens this added to my feeling that Queen aren’t really for me. Although I think I liked it more than Sheer Heart Attack I still have the same issues of struggling to connect with it and finding Freddie’s vocals, May’s guitar and their overall melodic style hard work.
Death on Two Legs is better than the more overtly show tune/cabaret/vaudeville/music hall songs like Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Seaside Rendezvous and Good Company but on repeat listens it felt like the vocal histrionics and guitar sounds were all there was to it, the melody is kind of unsatisfying.
I actually quite liked I’m in Love With My Car, Roger’s earnest daftness is quite appealing, and I thought ‘39 was good in a folk sea shanty singalong way. Sweet Lady is probably the most successful rocker along with Prophet Song, although again I started to find them less enjoyable the more I listened to them. I know Love of My Life is considered one of their best songs, but I struggle with it, again I just find it hard to enjoy the vocals and the harmonic and melodic style.
Perhaps my preconceptions and biases have got the better of me, but I found this harder to like the more I listened, it was probably somewhere in the 3s at first but after repeat listens I started to like it less and less, and despite the excellence of You’re My Best Friend and some other decent tracks, I can’t really see myself listening again.
Maybe 4, but ultimately for me its a 3, Bohemian Rhapsody and You’re My Best Friend are of course excellent, and I liked Death on Two Legs, I’m in Love with My Car and ‘39 but there are at least 3 awful songs in Lazing on Sunday Afternoon, Seaside Rendezvous and Good Company with the rest a bit too fillery for me. Unlikely to listen again, but 2 feels too low for the quality, so I’ll say 3.
👫👫
Playlist submission: You’re My Best Friend
Mj Cole
2/5
Sincere
Call 999, it's an emergency
Beats and Grindah killed an MC
Someone take him to A&E
Then perform some lyrical surgery
I’m sure it was included as Garage was a nascent, new genre when the first edition was released. It’s good to have some representation, and I’ve always liked the title track and Crazy Love, but I think there must be better albums, or shorter albums or less repetitive albums.
It’s not awful, I actually found it quite easy to work to, but it is very, very one note and very, very long, the slightly imperceptible variations on the same beat and keyboard sound does just make it feel like one long lump of Garagey-ness. When there are little interjections and variations they don’t always work. The jazzy inflections I think are supposed to evoke sophistication, but they just tend to add to the flatness, the Spanish guitars on You’re Mine feel quite cliche and trite and the Stevie-esque keyboards on Slum King sound unconvincing. Rough Out Here is pretty ropey Curtis Mayfield knock off.
There are some good vocals, Crazy Love, Sincere, I See, but some of the rapping isn’t great, MJ FM Interlude for example, but there’s not really anything on it to make you want to come back to it, unless you need some rhythmically undynamic music to work to, so I’ll give it a 2.
🛍️🛍️
Playlist submission: Sincere
Baaba Maal
4/5
Djam Leelii
I’ve heard of Baaba Maal, but have never heard any of his music, and I’d not heard of Mansour Seck at all.
It’s hard to describe this other than just a lovely series of hypnotic, beautifully woven acoustic and electric guitar lines and vocals, seemingly simple percussion and the occasional embellishment of kora and balafon (I’ve just learned they’re called that)
Those excellent, circular, fantastic-sounding guitars wash over brilliantly, evoking sunsets and sunrises, and lonely nights in the desert (with a Land Rover). Obviously I have no idea what Baaba Maal is singing/chanting/crooning, but his vocal and melodic style add to the enchanting feel of it. It’s less muscular and overtly bluesy than the similarly West African Songhoy Blues we had, and without some of the more middle eastern/North African influences we had with Ali Farka Toure, but it is no lesser an album for it’s apparently more simplistic approach and arrangements
The songs broadly follow the same template and do sound quite similar, but I didn’t find that a bad thing at all, the sound is so expressive and the feeling they elicit so lovely I could (and did) listen on repeat all day, especially the final 4 songs in Maacina Tooro, Djam Leelii, Bibbe Leyde and Sehilam.
Similar to Songhoy Blues and Ali Farka Toure, it's a 4, another great album I’m looking forward to coming back to, and another artist to find out some more about.
🇸🇳🇸🇳🇸🇳🇸🇳
Playlist submission: Bibbe Leydy
The Beach Boys
5/5
Pet Sounds
I’ve listened to this so many times but apart from Wouldn’t It Be Nice, God Only Knows and Sloop John B it’s always seems to be an effort to recall any other songs or tunes from it. And although I do like it when I listen, I often find myself drifting off, and it doesn’t seem to stick in my memory like Surf’s Up and Holland do.
As I heard it after Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper I think I expected it to be as good as those, or at least as good in a similar way, considering the mutual admiration. And while I think you can hear some stylistic crossover and shared ambition, I don’t think the comparison is that helpful, even though I find it hard not to. John, Paul and George were all fantastic songwriters and combined introspection with a wider interest in the worlds around them, so there was an inbuilt eclecticism, where Brian as the sole songwriter with an inward looking personality makes for a more monolithic album - one person’s vision versus the push and pull and dynamic tension of the group. I presume that's why if you are tuned into Brian’s sensibility then you really love this album.
I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen in love with it, although I think I have learned to admire it greatly and appreciate the intricacies and complexity, the skill, craft and the thematic conception and imagination, it really is an incredible piece of work, even if, apart from God Only Knows, it doesn’t make me feel how say Revolver makes me feel.
Perhaps it’s the density of the instrumental arrangements and the amount going on that makes it hard for me to really get to grips with. Listening closely to it, again I admire it hugely and I do marvel at one person conceiving of it all and managing to translate that into actual music, it really is incredible, with moments of genuinely transcendent beauty, but as a whole it doesn’t quite move me the way some of my favourite albums do, even if it does have some truly excellent songs.
I’ve listened to it a lot over the last few days, as well as listening closely, listening multiple times has made me like it more, with more songs becoming more fixed in my memory, although I still seem to have a disconnect when I see the song titles written down - listening to say I’m Waiting for the Day I really like the tune, but seeing it written when not listening to it I have no idea what it sounds like.
Obviously his death last week does cast a different light over it though, the tenderness and sadness that underlies much of it feels heightened, and That’s Not Me, Don’t Talk, God Only Knows , I Know There’s an Answer and I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times all feel particularly redolent. There’s also a distinct emotional tone to it that I hadn’t really picked up on before that I do find very fascinating, a sort of sense of an introspective and naive psyche - that might be back projection in the light of last week’s news, but it’s certainly there for me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what to score it. It would be convenient to say that in listening to it on repeat I’ve discovered an affection for it I didn't see before, but that’s not really the case. My appreciation of, and wonder at, it, however, have grown hugely, and there is something about its thematic tone that I never noticed before. I may not always love it, but God only knows I do think it is an incredible album in conception and execution, and removing its veneration and comparisons to my favourite albums (and looking at what I’ve given 4s and 5s to), it has to be a 5.
🐕🐈🐇🐐🐏
Playlist submission: Obvious, but God Only Knows, a truly sublime song
The Who
5/5
Who’s Next
I was heavily into this album around 2003/2004, just after the deluxe edition CD came out. I remember buying it in Tower Records in Shibuya. Don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore (actually it's still there).
It’s still my favourite of theirs. Although I like much of their earlier R’n’B and their psychedelic and rock opera periods this is probably the best combination of Townshend's conceptual endeavours (even though the full Lifehouse concept fell by the wayside) and their desire to straight ahead rock’n’roll.
It is also their best sounding album I think, the early ones sound quite thin, and while Tommy sounded better this one sounds excellent. It’s probably Daltrey’s best recorded vocals, as well as his best singing. I think it also has some of Townshend’s best guitar playing, I love his bluesy acoustic on Love Ain’t For Keeping as well as his lead/rhythm amalgamation. The production and its place in the mix also highlights how integral Entwistle’s bass was to their sound, his playing is excellent throughout. And it has some of Moon’s most considered playing, even if he still does a lot, I really like his thumping march on The Song is Over and his rhythm pattern on Won’t Get Fooled Again in the early verses (and throughout) is superb. The synths are pretty interesting too, they are an important part of many songs, Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again most obviously, but they never go too overboard, they make up part of the texture of the record rather than being hugely prominent or purely for decoration.
Baba O’Riley, Behind Blue Eyes and Won’t Get Fooled Again are rightly the big songs, but the rest of the album tracks, apart from perhaps My Wife are also excellent (even though I love the drums and the horns on My Wife, it’s the lyric and Entwistle’s vocals that sour it a bit). Bargain and Love Ain’t For Keeping are excellent after Baba O’Riley. The Song is Over and Getting in Tune are a great duo, particularly The Song is Over, I love the ‘searching for a note, pure and easy’ part. I suppose Going Mobile is a bit throwaway, but I do like it, particularly the treated guitar solo part. I’ve always loved Won’t Get Fooled Again, but it’s interesting listening to the lyrics now, how disillusioned they are for 1971, although I suppose the hippie dream had already soured by then.
A classic album in the classic sense of a classic album, it’s a straightforward 5.
🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿
Playlist submission: Won’t Get Fooled Again
Björk
5/5
Vespertine
This slow burns and burns slow like a UTI, albeit an ultimately pleasurable one.
The rhythms and percussion are what stood out on first listen, kind of glitchy but also delicate and textured, and incredibly detailed. And, I imagine, painstakingly constructed. Vocally it took a bit longer to appreciate, the floaty whisperiness and unusual meter on many of the songs adds to the slightly untethered, snowy, ghostly atmosphere, but once I listened a few times the subtle, expressive, introspective tone really appealed to me.
It really doesn’t sound 24 years old at all, it’s moody, swirling soundscapes and fractured rhythms sound incredibly modern, and while the melodies and lyrics initially might feel impenetrable the whole album rewards time and patience and repeat listens.
I’m not quite sure where it lands on the border of 4 and 5 though. For all its unique, Bjork’s-world-in-a-snowglobe feel, and fragile, crystalline, intense intricacy, its glacial-ness can make it feel a bit distant and slightly too remote at times, But it is an undoubtedly unique and singular album by a unique and singular artist, so, despite it not being an easy album, I think it has to be a 5.
🦢🦢🦢🦢
Playlist submission: Pagan Poetry
CHVRCHES
3/5
The Bones of What You Believe
I had no idea they were Scottish or a group, I thought it was the name for the lead singer and she was American.
In any case I liked it well enough, especially the first three songs, some nice synth pop. But it is a bit diminishing returns, as the songs do start to feel a bit samey, although I really loved the final track, You Caught the Light, that oversaturated synth is excellent.
It also falls a bit between two stools for me, there's a lot of 80s retro in the main synth sound with modern electronic percussion, but apart from a handful of tracks (The Mother We Share, We Sink, Gun, Night Sky, You Caught the Light) I’m not sure it comes together convincingly or interestingly enough, or they quite combine those two things with their pop sensibility to create great pop music, that you feel they might be capable of. And although I like her voice, she has a tendency towards breathy sad indie girl John Lewis Christmas song vocalisations, which doesn’t help.
Overall it’s a decent, very well made album that never quite catches light or takes off in a way that you think it might. I’d give it a go again in the right mood but not sure how frequently, making it a 3.
⛪⛪⛪
Playlist submission: You Caught the Light
Orbital
4/5
Snivilisation
I really liked Orbital 2, and initially I didn’t enjoy this as much, finding the first half in particular a little too uniform, and with too much of a twinge of shirtless male dancers in headdresses and goggles banging mad max style oil drums with spanners on Top of The Pops.
However, in the back half there’s a bit more variation and texture, eg the piano on Kein Trink Wasser, and the feel of Philosophy By Numbers and Are We Here? And on further listens the whole thing grew on me a lot, especially as I just let it run on repeat while I was working. And I started to really like the sampled voice on Philosophy by Numbers, it had a 90s fly on the wall doc/information phone line vibe that was pleasingly nostalgic.
I don’t think it has quite the same sense of minimalist flow as Orbital 2 though, it feels a little more disjointed between the 1st half and 2nd halves, it doesn’t quite have the feel of musical movement across it’s runtime, but it still is a great electronic album that I’ll definitely come back to, making it a solid 4.
🛢️🛢️🛢️🛢️
Playlist submission: Are We Here?
AC/DC
5/5
Highway to Hell
It has no pretension, no swords or dwarves, no parental angst and it is entirely successful in executing exactly what it set out to do - riffs, grooves, booze and sex.
But don’t mistake simplicity for basicness - underneath that apparent simplicity they have a very smart and canny understanding of what works and what doesn't, and they also have their secret weapon; in Malcolm, Cliff and Phil they have a great rhythm section, not particularly ostentatious and obviously capably steady, but they have the ability to give the songs groove and an element of slipperiness that belies the plodding headbanging reputation. And Angus understands exactly what he should do, never overlong or self indulgent, punctuating things with excellent white man overbite air guitar style riffs and runs.
That’s what I wrote for Back in Black, and this is pretty much the same - incredibly enjoyable and fun good time rock’n’roll. I think Back in Black is marginally better, in that it has 3 all time classics in Hells Bells, Back in Black and You Shook Me All Night Long, whereas the title track is probably the only true classic on this. However it’s still an excellent album with great seedy tracks like Girls Got a Rhythm, Touch too Much, Beating Around the Bush, Shot Down in Flames, If You Want Blood and the uber-sleazy Night Prowler.
Despite being a notch below BIB it’s still a 5, another brilliantly fun 40 minutes.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission; Highway to Hell
Fred Neil
4/5
Fred Neil
I listened to this not so long ago, I’m not sure what prompted it, I think it might have been because The Dolphins was in an episode of The Sopranos.
The Dolphins is a fantastic track, the tremulous voice and tremolo guitar are a great combo and I love the solo on, I think, the Bouzouki. Aside from perhaps the very nice psychedelic drone of Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga it’s perhaps a little bit of an outlier from the majority of the rather lovely folk-blues with a hint of country on the rest of the album.
He has a great wearied and worn voice and the melancholic melodies and arrangements remind me a little of Jackson C Frank. Everybody’s Talkin’ is of course also a great song, although Nilsson’s cover is probably the better version, but all the songs have a very pleasant and unhurried feel, the electric guitar working nicely with the acoustic and the shuffling rhythm section.
It's comfortably a 4, I know I’ll come back to it for some soothing folky blues with some 60’s psychedelic touches and that great careworn voice and sensibility.
🐬🐬🐬🐬
Playlist submission: The Dolphins
Kanye West
2/5
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
‘You took your pussy game up a-whole-nother level, this is some Cirque du Soleil pussy now’
Kanye being a dickhead aside, having liked The College Dropout and knowing this is regarded as his best album I was interested to hear this one.
But I thought it was a bit of a mess. He’s of course not the greatest MC, but it worked on The College Dropout when there was a sense of humour and fun to the lyrics and a sense of a viewpoint, whereas this is either lazily misogynistic or ludicrously self referential and self indulgent.
I don’t really like the production either - although TCD did feel of it’s time, the lush, soul sample heavy sound worked well. Whereas on this, despite some nice grooves here and there, Dark Fantasy’s verses, I didn’t really like the layered voices and self important gospel overtones, and the nature of many of the hooks - despite some being catchy I found a lot of them a bit annoying, particularly POWER and Lost in the World. And Blame Game is a really bad song.
Maybe it’s that you can see some warning signs of the narcissistic fascism that he slid into that affected my opinions, but I didn’t think this was much cop, and I can’t imagine listening again really, so it’s a 2.
🤡🤡
Playlist submission: Monster
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
4/5
Welcome to the Pleasuredome
Relax, don’t do it, when you want to suck a Chewit.
I love Trevor Horn, and this showcases his skills brilliantly, I don’t think there’s anyone else who can make that hi-nrg-disco-rock-new wave pop sound as good as he does - Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Relax and Two Tribes are excellent in that regard. And I love his art meets commerce sensibility, I feel like he’s a bit like a musical Roy Liechtenstein or Keith Haring, a pop-art pop producer.
However songwise this is certainly a bit of a mixed bag. I really love the ambitious eclecticism and all the bases it touches, but I’m not totally convinced it quite works as a whole double length album. It does feel a bit scattershot and unfocused as it gets to the 3rd and 4th sides of the original vinyl. A single, more concise album, probably just the first 2 sides plus a couple of other tracks would be a great album
I like how The World is My Oyster and Welcome to the excellent Pleasuredome act as a bit of an overture, you hear glimpses of songs from the album running through it, as well as some great bass and synth driven grooves, and Welcome to the Pleasuredome leads brilliantly into the fantastic, mischievous hi-nrg disco pop of Relax - it may be ubiquitous but it is absolutely brilliant.
I do like the cover of War, hinting at the rhythmic hook of the original, and although it’s a bit dated now the Reagan impersonator speaking about Che Guavara and George Jackson and War would have been very zeitgeisty for the time it was released. And Two Tribes is of course another absolutely superb song, fantastic guitar and bass, its timelessly and brilliantly 80s.
I like the melancholy and tender little cover of Ferry Cross the Mersey, an interesting but successful song choice I think. I presume the juxtaposition of Bruce’s widescreen American open road freedom yearning bombast of Born to Run sung by a Liverpudlian pop group is part of the reason they covered it, and while that is quite amusing and despite the energetic performance and Holly Johnson’s hyper-committed vocals I’m not sure it’s ultimately that worthwhile. That goes similarly for the cover of Do You Know the Way to San Jose, I guess the connection/contrast with Born to Run is partly behind it, and while it’s a fine enough version, it also feels a little unnecessary, those two covers signalling a little bit of wooliness as it heads towards the end of the album
There are a few good songs to come though, Wish (The Lads Were Here) is a nice bit of pop, and similar to the cover of Ferry Cross the Mersey, the slightly melancholic instrumental of The Ballad of 32 is nice. And Black Night White Light is a great disco-soul groove. I’ve never liked The Power of Love, I’ve always found the melody a bit hard work and the whole thing has a slightly flat, dirge-like quality. And although I presume the OTT power powerballad-ness of it is deliberate I’m just not keen.
Holly Johnson has hints of Freddie Mercury, he must surely have been an influence, but he has a bit more of a knowing punkish sneer and playful sensibility, so that he stops himself falling too far into melodramatic theatricality.
Length, inconsistency and being front loaded with 3 absolutely fantastic songs in Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Relax and Two Tribes aside I really enjoyed it and will definitely come back to it. It may not totally work, but it’s got a huge amount of scattershot, eclectic charm, and Trevor Horn’s production is fantastic throughout. A single album of the first 8 tracks plus Ferry Cross the Mersey and Black Night White Light and I think it would be a 5, but as it is I’ll go for a solid 4.
😎😎😎😎
Playlist submission: Two Tribes
The Only Ones
4/5
The Only Ones
I didn’t think I had heard of The Only Ones, from a cursory look at the wikipedia page they seemed to be in that post punk power pop world I really like. Listening to the first song it had more sax and island vibes than I was expecting, but I thought the singer sounded like the guy from that Another Girl song. And of course he is because Another Girl, Another Planet is the second track. It's a 6 Music staple, but I never knew who sang it, and it is an excellent post-punk power pop song, the best song on the album.
While nothing is quite as good as that there are some very good songs, City of Fun’s high paced shuffle is great, the riff/hook on The Beast is excellent and I love how it builds to the climax with horns and guitars, and The Immortal Story has some great organ and more excellent climactic horns.
There’s quite a bit of Television and Velvet Underground to them, and some Howard Devoto, and I like the looseness of the playing, particularly the drums, and there are some lovely guitar runs and riffs with some little psychedelic touches. It’s on the edge of 3 and 4, it’s an enjoyable, loose 30 minutes of power pop with one excellent song and a couple of very good ones. I’m quite likely to come back to it, so it just slips into a 4
🪐🪐🪐🪐
Playlist submission: Another Girl, Another Planet
Ice Cube
2/5
AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted
Bit of a funny one. On the one hand there is quite a bit of cliched misogyny, guns, bitches, dick sucking and beef, but there is also a lot of storytelling of the reality and experiences of the environments he talks about. Things like Once Upon a Time in the Projects, Endangered Species and Rollin’ with the Lench Mob are excellent, angry diatribes about the futility and violence of that world, but things like Get Off My Dick and Tell Yo Bitch to Come Here, Who’s the Mack and the terrible It’s a Man’s World are depressingly cliched and nasty.
I’ve always liked Ice T’s delivery though, and he has some great rhymes, but with the misogyny, cliche and the slight sense of insincere anger the whole album does get a bit tiresome after a while, and pushing through to the end is a bit of a struggle.
I like the Bomb Squad production, it sounds a bit more polished and soulful than on Public Enemy albums, with more of a West Coast sheen and less of their usual frenetic, kinetic energy, and some great grooves, like Once Upon a Time in the Projects, or the fast paced rush of The Bomb.
In NWA he helped birth some of those gangsta rap tropes, but, to sound like a massive knob, they had a visceral thrill to them, talking about a world so far removed from my experience. But on here aside from a few exceptions, it doesn’t carry that same power, undermined by a thread of cynical misogyny. I think a 2, as I don’t think I’ll come back to it
🇺🇲🇺🇲
Playlist submission: Once Upon a Time in the Projects
Dwight Yoakam
3/5
Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room
I’m not totally sure of all the subgenres of Country, despite having a general liking for it as a whole. And I had a general liking for this, on the whole.
He has a nice, gentle voice without too much country over enunciation, and I like the relatively stripped back production and instrumentation. Even if it has a little 80s sheen on the sound of the vocals, drums and bass, it has a nice sense of the sparseness of the Memphis Three and some of the 50s country stars. It doesn’t sound particularly rockabilly however, the slide, lap steel and fiddle giving it a more rounded country flavour.
I like the slight bluesyness of I Got You with the walking bass and guitar and fiddle, and it continues to roll along pleasantly with One More Name and I like the snare shot drum sound and guitars of What I Don’t Know, a great slightly more uptempo track. I like the accordion on the title track and Streets of Bakersfield as well, another little instrumental texture, and I really like the little descent into the verses on Floyd County
Overall, it’s a very pleasant listen that I would come back to. I like his voice and the bluesy, stripped back sound, and that it skips by in an unhurried, mid tempo 30 minutes. Not sure how long it stays in the memory though, so I think that makes it a 3.
🤠🤠🤠
Playlist submission: What I Don’t Know
Goldie
4/5
Timeless
I listened to the 2 CD version first, and then I made a playlist of the 8 track single CD version for repeat listens.
It’s a perfect album for working to, if you need to focus. It is long though, whichever version you listen to, but despite an inevitable similarity across the tracks I didn’t find it boring at all, or inert in the way the MJ Cole album was. The synths, keyboards and occasional guitars give it a great brooding atmosphere, with elements of ambient, and the vocals by Dianne Charlemagne have a lovely soulfulness, a little Soul II Soul, a little Massive Attack.
The title track is great, the ‘Inner City Life, Inner City Pressure’ hook and the flutes are excellent. and Sea Of Tears is great. But it's the overall mood and feel I liked, for an album based around a specific rhythmic pattern and with very little vocalism and lyrics I did find it very expressive, little bit of anger, little bits of sadness, little bits of beauty.
It's on the cusp of 3 and 4 - I'll definitely listen again when I need to focus or am in the mood but does that make it a 4? The length is definitely an issue, but it is a very good album nonetheless. Think it just edges a 4
⌛⌛⌛⌛
Playlist submission: Sea of Tears
OutKast
4/5
Stankonia
‘Gobble up jism like school lunches’
I love the eclecticism of this, that they would take forward into Speakerboxx/The Love Below. I loved the overtop-ness and anything goes-ness of that album, but this benefits from being more condensed, even if it's still quite long at 73 minutes and even if it does tend toward sex quite a bit.
It occasionally falls into slightly demeaning and misogynistic, although I think they are mostly commenting on those attitudes rather than perpetrating it, although sometimes that line is a bit blurred. It definitely feels less problematic than Ice Cube the other day, balancing some of the horny teenager-ness with genuine empathy, like the superb Ms Jackson, or introspection like Humble Mumble, or zeitgeisty-ness with the excellent Bombs Over Baghdad.
Musically it is fantastic though, the Drum’n’bass of B.O.B., the homemade beat of I’ll Call B4 I Cum with a great synth line, the funk bass and guitars of Toilet Tisha, a the groove of Slum Beautiful, as well as the generally atypical rhythms and beats throughout.
I don’t know this as well as Speakerboxx/The Love Below outside the 3 big singles, but it grew a lot on me on repeat listens, although I think it sits a notch below that. Despite it being shorter, it could possibly still do with a bit of an edit, its wooliness isn’t quite as charming as S/TLB. Still a great album though, and a solid 4.
💣💣💣💣
Playlist submission: Ms Jackson
Alice Cooper
2/5
Billion Dollar Babies
More listenable for me than Queen in its theatricality, but it's actually not that interesting beyond that. The campy schlockiness is initially fun, but it wears thin fairly quickly, and ultimately the songs just aren’t that great, apart from No More Mr Nice Guy, which is a great mid 70s rocker.
I was probably expecting it to be more fun and enjoyable overall, but its lack of musical quality makes it a bit of an effort to get through, and I can’t really imagine coming back to it. 2.
👶👶
Playlist submission: No More Mr Nice Guy
The Slits
4/5
Cut
I’ve always liked the cover of I Heard it Through the Grapevine on here, although I never realised it was a bonus track, and Typical Girls is also a superb song, but I’ve never really given this album a proper listen.
I really like their reggae-dub post-punk, quite PIL-esque, but with more of an unpolished sound and feel and a slightly amateur/primitive/outsider-ness to the playing, although Tessa Pollitt’s bass is consistently great and is just about the only thing that stops it all falling apart.
If it was more polished and professional though, it would lose all its charm, and although the overall song quality is a little patchy in places there’s enough moments of catchiness and exuberance with some nice post punk sloganeering to carry it through.
Along with Typical Girls and I Heard it Through the Grapevine, So Tough, Shoplifting, Ping Pong Affair and Love and Romance are the standout tracks, but I find the whole thing very enjoyable. Another on the cusp of 3 and 4, but I will go with a 4 as I find the whole thing very enjoyable and will keep coming back to it for sure.
✂️✂️✂️✂️
Playlist submission: Typical Girls
Nirvana
5/5
Nevermind
You can wear them in the High Street, body contours, very discreet.
Why is this so good compared to so many of their contemporaries? Obviously they made a deliberate attempt to soften some edges and add a nice production sheen to make it more commercially acceptable, and while it doesn’t have much rawness it still sounds fantastic. And the Novoselic-Grohl rhythm section is clearly also a differentiator. The bass is melodic and propulsive with a great tone, and Grohl’s disco inflected drumming works brilliantly, combining power and groove, most notably on In Bloom and Come as You Are. And it’s interesting hearing that he was hugely influenced by Tony Thompson of Chic, as that makes sense, especially on Teen Spirit. That combined with the punky-ness and melodicism of the guitars and some of the songs is an excellent recipe.
And of course Kurt is just a great songwriter with a great voice and a superb melodic sense. And there are some monumentally great songs on here - Teen Spirit, In Bloom, Come As You Are, Breed, Lithium, Polly, Territorial Pissings, Drain You, On a Plain, Something in the Way. He’s also a great lyricist, or at the very least he has the amazing ability to write lyrics about frustration, loneliness, alienation etc without being cringeworthy or self indulgent - maybe because they feel like real thoughts and images, rather than someone trying to write angsty lyrics
Obviously a 5, influential and historically significant, while also being a fantastic album full of great songs.
💵💵💵💵💵
Playlist submission: In Bloom
Nine Inch Nails
2/5
The Downward Spiral
In the plus column:
- The keyboards, synths, electro beats and hints of glam are more interesting than other bands in this genre, there’s slight textural difference, which is nice.
- Closer, despite the cringe lyrics, is a very catchy bit of electro-alt rock
- A Warm Place has a nice, elegeic sense to it
- And of course Hurt is a great song (although the JC version is preferable)
In the minus column
- It’s quite boring
- It’s too long
- The edge-lord-ness of it all, even if it is done with genuine sincerity, makes it all feel quite hollow - when the rage and harshness becomes the point if it kind of loses its power
- I’ve no real interest in the narrative and the protagonist’s descent into hell, he sounds like a bit of a pain actually.
So while there are aspects of it I appreciate, and I found it nowhere near as execrable as much of the music in this genre, I really struggled to connect with it, and ultimately it's a bit of a slog, in huge contrast to Nevermind yesterday. Despite there being positives and certain aspects I can appreciate, I shan’t be listening again, making it a high 2.
💅💅
Playlist submission: Hurt
M.I.A.
4/5
Arular
I love Paper Planes from the album after this, but I didn’t realise she had gone full 5G conspiracy, Alex Jones, anti-vax, pro-Trump nutjob. From her leftist, pro-refugee, anti-oppression lyrics on here that does seem quite the switch, but you can also get from this that she is likely one of those anti-establishment contrarians who twist themselves in knots trying to stay at odds with the status quo. Or she’s just a grifter and sees she can make quite a bit of money from selling 5G resistant hats and ponchos to confused and angry people.
Aside from that I’ve listened to this a lot over the last couple of days. I took a few goes to get attuned to it, but I started to really like its homemade, scattershot charm. It’s very drum machine and percussion focused, you can sense each track was built from the beat up, and while there is a similarity of tempo to much of it I really liked the percussive feel of it all. She also keeps a consistent rapping style, but I like it and she has some great lines throughout. Once you’ve listened through a few times you there are also tonnes of little hooky earworms everywhere, I’ve been saying ‘You Big Dummy’ to myself quite a lot. Between the beats and the hooks and rapping there is a lot of density to the noises, keyboards, guitars and horns. It doesn’t sound particularly subtle, all piled up and moving swiftly between bongs and bangs, but, again once you get attuned to it, there’s some great stuff happening and some excellent songs. Pull Up the People, Bucky Done Gun, Sunshowers, Amazon, Hombre, 10 Dollar, U.R.A.Q.T., Galang, M.I.A. are all great, naggingly catchy tracks.
It's full of weird and wonderful beats and noises, and some great lyrics and hooks, and I love the inventive, idiosyncratic mishmash of influences and her unique background and point of view. I can see how it might be a bit marmite, but I thought it was great, a high 4 (forgetting her nutjobbery)
🇱🇰🇱🇰🇱🇰🇱🇰
Playlist submission: U.R.A.Q.T.
10cc
3/5
Sheet Music
I like a bit of 10cc, there’s some great songs in their catalogue, I like their Beatles influenced and slightly unique pop-prog approach.
On this album in particular there are plenty of shades of Supertramp, ELO and Queen. Particularly the latter on Old Wild Men and some of the harmonies elsewhere, but with a sense of humour and a playfulness you don’t necessarily get with Queen or ELO. I can easily see how that playfulness might be seen as smug and irritating, like on Clockwork Creep and the music hall section of Silly Love, which aren’t great at all, but generally I do find that aspect of them quite endearing.
However I think this does lack enough top quality songs. The first three tracks are great, I love the guitar sound on The Wall Street Shuffle, and on and on, but it's more patchy after that. Despite appreciating their schizophrenic approach it seems like many of the songs have great parts but don’t always work as a whole. Old Wild Men is a bit too Queen, Clockwork Creep isn’t good, Silly Love is mostly a good song, again with a nice guitar sound, but it is somewhat ruined by the overly whimsical music hall section, Somewhere in Hollywood has some nice moments, but feels a bit ‘mid’ as the kids might once have said. I like the Macca-esque quirkiness of The Sacro-Iliac, and, again, sections of Oh Effendi are great, the riff and the main verses are good, but the other sections are less good.
It's a fun album that has a distinctive, pleasing charm with a few great songs, but it is a bit patchy and isn't always successful. I’ll listen again, but think it stays as a high 3.
🎼🎼🎼
Playlist submission: The Wall Street Shuffle
The Darkness
4/5
Permission to Land
So many great memories of this album that justifiably colour my feelings about it, particularly Reading Festival, but even trying to listen objectively it’s clear that it is a top quality retro-glam-metal-pop-rock album, that takes the songwriting but not itself too seriously.
That’s not an easy tightrope to walk, it could easily come across as insincere parody, or self important guff, but it manages to stay upright in a spirit of over the top daft fun and enjoyment, especially over the first half - Black Shuck, Get Your Hands off My Woman, Growing on Me, I Believe in a Thing Called Love and Love is Only a Feeling is a truly excellent run of songs.
It does fade a little after that, struggling to keep the level of quality as high as the first 5 tracks, although I do like Stuck in a Rut and Love on the Rocks with No Ice
Aside from Spinal Tap, the comparison people often make is Queen, but I don’t really see that as much - they share a visual theatricality, but musically it is much more AC/DC and Guns’n’Roses style harder classic rock with some glam, and a super pop sensibility offered in a great spirit with a sense of humour.
It's still massively enjoyable, but due to it fading somewhat in the 2nd half it lands as a rock solid 4.
🛬🛬🛬🛬
Playlist submission: I Believe In a Thing Called Love is obviously a great song, but Love is Only a Feeling resonated strongly with me for some reason so I’ll go with that
The Go-Betweens
2/5
16 Lovers Lane
It’s interesting that the Antipodean jangly classic-pop-rock albums we’ve had - Crowded House, The Triffids and now this - have all triggered a similar response; nice and pleasant but not totally distinctive or memorable, particularly compared to other bands doing this sort of thing, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Smiths, REM etc. I get a little bit of Television from the vocals too, but without the New York cool.
I really like Quiet Heart though, a really lovely melody and wistful tone running through it. Love is a Sign is nice too, the motif at the end of the chorus is quite lovely, although I really don’t like the vocal tone and enunciation at all. Streets of Your Town and Clouds are very pleasant, hooky bits of jangly pop as well.
It's all very pleasant, but that’s kind of the issue, it passes by so pleasantly that, apart from Quiet Heart, it’s kind of underwhelming. It’s clearly very well crafted and considered, and I did enjoy it the more I listened, but ultimately it does feel like it has a limit on how enjoyable it is and how likely I am to listen again. It’s on the cusp of 2 and 3. Perhaps harshly, as it is so pleasant and inoffensive, I’ll go 2, as I don’t think I’ll come back to it.
🤫🩵
Playlist submission: Quiet Heart
John Lee Hooker
4/5
The Healer
Mark walked into the wine bar, newly opened, excitingly sophisticated and unmistakably the talk of Aylesbury in the summer of 1989. He conspicuously placed his copy of the Financial Times on the counter and took off his jacket. With an air of deliberate disinterest he adjusted his red braces and spoke to the barman. He ordered a glass, medium, of Chardonnay to be sent to the blonde further along the bar, her gold clip on earrings catching the light hopefully beneath her immaculately set perm. Although they didn’t yet know it, they shared a language of leveraged assets, percentages, compound interest, investments and tax efficiencies and a love of Gordon Gekko, in a way that only people who work at rival, family run chartered accountants could. The opening bars of The Healer drifted from the speakers as Janet nodded and Mark, and as Mark mouthed ‘shall I join you?’
The title track’s Santana-assisted cheesiness is actually a little bit of an outlier, signalling its late 80s production and sound a little too heavily. The rest of the collaborations are much better, although some work better than others - Baby Lee, Cuttin’ Out, Sally Mae and That’s Alright are great, the latter two’s soulful blues in particular
His voice and guitar are consistently great throughout, but the album really excels over the last 3 tracks. With no guest stars and the pared back, simpler production and arrangements it allows his fantastic, evocative and charismatic voice and his superb, characterful and expressive guitar playing to come to the fore. As fine as the collaborations are, these three tracks are utterly captivating, the dusty country blues of Rockin’ Chair, the slow, hushed, spooky ominousness of My Dream and the resigned and muted bluesy march of No Substitute.
Up to track seven it's probably a 3, perfectly enjoyable with a couple of highlights, but those excellent final three tracks elevate this to a 4. I’ll definitely come back to it, although I might skip the title track, unless I want to dream of Mark and Janet
🪝🪝🪝🪝
Playlist submission: Rockin’ Chair
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Talking Timbuktu
If you played this or Savane and asked me which one it was I don’t think I would be able to tell, apart from perhaps the occasional surfacing of Ry Cooder’s slide, like on Ai Du.
But I would also think this is a 4 (as Savane was), as I thoroughly enjoyed it - the evocative, soulful, swirling, circling guitars and vocal melodies, drifting soothingly across the rooftops and into the cool night of the desert. It’s similar in sound to Savane and similar in musical structure, but it's one of those albums that’s good-repetitive rather than bad-repetitive, the grooves and guitar lines are hypnotic rather than monotonous, and it probably helps that I don’t know what he’s singing, adding a nice mysterious edge to it.
Similar to Savane, I let it run on repeat for a few hours and similarly I was very happy for it to percolate and go round and round. Will definitely come back again, a solid 4.
💬💬💬💬
Playlist submission: Ai Du
2/5
Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
I owned this on CD.
Take A Look Around was the gateway, and doing My Generation and Rollin’ at Shidax Karaoke in Hanno with Paul, Bernie, Natsumi, Toru-sensei, Maki, Jason, Chieko, Jay, Ulf, Kim and Kim’s mum was the high that made me buy the album.
It is terrible, but I cannot bring myself to truly hate it as there are some very funny memories attached, and, as silly as they are, Take A Look Around, Rollin and My Generation I still like - for all their witless stupidity and narcissistic whinging, I cannot not enjoy them.
The remaining of the songs though are objectively lamentable, they’re more pitiful versions of those good songs, and the principal, recurring, overriding, exhausting theme of how everybody hates Fred Durst and are jealous doesn’t exactly give the album much light or shade.
If I’d never heard this before it would have been a 1, It’s wretchedness is undeniable, but as it carries some nostalgic weight and as I do like Rollin, My Generation and Take a Look Around , I’ll nudge it up to a juvenile, infantile, baggy jorted, red capped 2.
🌭🌭
Playlist submission: Take a Look Around
Giant Sand
3/5
Chore of Enchantment
I’m not entirely sure where I land with this. On first listen I really liked it, lots of Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen in the vocals, and a nice low key folk-ish, country-ish, loose, homemade vibe, with some good songs, some interesting twists and turns and nice unexpected instrumentations and sounds - the repeating snatches of Una Furtiva Lagrima, the sitar, strings and wonky keyboard on (Well) Dusted for example, or the little organ stabs, backing vocals and mangled guitar on the Temptation of Egg.
However I became slightly less enamoured on repeat listens, the arrangements and off kilter instrumentations can’t hide the dirge-like quality of many of the melodies and tempos, and the slight air of self-conscious whimsicalness and its lengthy run time meant it started to drag a little over the course of the 16 songs
I think I would have loved this if I knew about when it came out, it would have been right up my street when I was 21, but it's a slightly different proposition now. I do think it’s an interesting album, and there are some very good songs, but it does lack a bit of dynamic variance over the 16 songs, so I think it might be a bit limited for me in relistenability and sustained interest.
I had initially thought that it might be a bit of a rough diamond, but on repeat listens it slipped from a 4 to a 3 I think.
⏳⏳⏳
Playlist submission: Temptation of Egg
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Francis Albert Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim
This is rather lovely, the tone of Frank’s voice suits the low key and unhurried jazzy bossa nova very well, very well indeed. And it suits the warm weather at the moment.
Musically it’s very nice too, the muted horns and strings with the lovely guitars and gentle percussion have a graceful sway and subtlety, balancing beautifully with the understated, elegant vocals - making a very relaxed and serene 30 minutes. It never really gets out of 2nd gear, but it doesn’t really need to, its placid, laid back movement is what makes it such a pleasant and enjoyable listen.
This sort of fusion of swing, jazz, bossa nova and crooning can be tricky, it can easily slip into bland and characterless 60s easy listening, but the skill of Jobim, the delicateness of the strings and horns and Frank’s vocals make this a characterful and engaging bit of 60s easy listening. Between 3 and 4, I’ll go 4 as I liked it more each time I listened, and as I’m looking forward to coming back to it for some more relaxed, easygoing, breeziness
🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️
Playlist submission: If You Never Come to Me
The Beta Band
4/5
Hot Shots II
I haven’t thought about this album in years. I remember buying it when it came out, having been into the 3 EPs, and I must have listened to it quite a bit as it all came back pretty quickly.
I really like the quiet tone, the slightly languorous, hip hop and trip hop sounding beats and rhythms, with a nice density and sense of meticulousness to the production. His voice and melodic style are pretty distinctive, and it it takes a while for everything to percolate, but once you tune into it there are some great off balance melodies, nagging, memorable hooks and some excellent arrangements - I love the vocal melody and then the outro to Squares for example, and AI Sharp is fantastic, from the earwormy verses and the lovely, atmospheric instrumentation and shuffling rhythm. In fact, including Human Being, the first 3 songs are excellent.
Dragon is another great catchy melody with great drums and rhythm, and Broke has some great 8 bit sounding synths and yet another nagging, catchy sense to it. Quiet has a very UNKLE feel and is another great track, while Alleged mixes nice motown-esque drums with some lovely guitar and an overall dreamy atmosphere and touches on the sound of some of the 3 EPs tracks.
I got more and more into this the more I listened to it, reminding me that I must have listened a lot when it came out. It’s a great album with a distinctive sound and atmosphere, making a high 4.
🥵🥃🥵🥃
Playlist submission: Broke
The Beta Band
4/5
Heroes to Zeroes
I’ve never actually listened to this, not sure why I didn’t buy it as I liked them at the time. It’s nice listening right after Hot Shots II though.
Despite Steve Mason’s distinctive voice making it a clear Beta Band album, it has quite a different feel to HSII and The 3 EPs, particularly the first two songs. Assessment seems like an attempt to write a U2 style anthemic, moody rock song, the Edge-esque riff and tone and rumbling bass are great, but due to their singularity it ends up in a slightly different place, with the the horns and shuffling drums giving it a groove that U2 rarely achieve. And Space is great, the squelchy synth is fantastic, the melody is catchy and again it has an excellent groove and sense of movement. Easy has a great combination of strummed acoustic and funk influenced clavinet, a nice counterpoint of musical tones and styles, a common device across the album.
Wonderful highlights their ability to create vocal melodies that aren’t immediately catchy, but that you find yourself singing afterwards, the yearning ‘in time you’ll realise’ is fantastic. Space Beatle’s delicate Beach Boys style vocals and instrumentation followed by the instrumental Rhododendron is a lovely pair, and although Liquid Bird starts out unconvincingly it sheds its rock beginning, turning into a pleasingly disjointed track. Simple has a great rhythmic propulsion with another ear worm vocal, and some lovely strings, swelling and stabbing simultaneously.
Easily another high 4, perhaps a bit of patchiness but some excellent tracks, tied together with their trademark vocal style, but with a seemingly different set of influences than their preceding albums/compilations.
0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣
Playlist submission: Space
Megadeth
2/5
Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?
There are occasional moments of musicality that are interesting - the bass intro and the riff at the start of the chorus on the best song, Peace Sells, the slight shifting sections of of Wake Up Dead, the moody first minute of Bad Omen, the cover of I Ain’t Superstitious - but the remainder is the standard metal that I’m not into. Occasionally it feels like they are hitting a nice groove with an element of swing, but they can’t not go into the standard format of double time lumpen banging, palm muted riffs and guitar squiggling.
There’s really only so many ways to say this type of music isn’t for me, the more I’ve heard through the generator the less interested I’ve become in it. I’m sure this is a fun album for metalheads but it’s just not my vibe, the limited structural template, the palm muted riffs, the squiggles, the shouting, the ‘occult’ lyrics just don’t do it for me.
I didn’t dislike it totally, but I’m never going to come back - I’ll go 2 to reflect ambivalence over disfavour, and that Peace Sells, the song, is silly but fun.
💀💀
Playlist submission: Peace Sells
Hugh Masekela
5/5
Home is Where the Music Is
My liking for Jazz is definitely increasing in inverse proportion to my disinterest in metal, and I thought this was great.
The piano-flugelhorn tandem is fantastic, particularly when it's the electric piano, like on Part of a Whole, Inner Crisis or Maesha, and the drumming is absolutely fantastic, it’s definitely jazzy, but combined with South African rhythms and phrases it gives a brilliant dynamism and variation in tone and feel.
Part of a Whole is excellent, it has a great feel, hitting a lovely low key groove, reminding me a bit of Rikki Don’t Lose That Number by Steely Dan, with some great horn and piano interplay. Minawa is excellent too, a great smoky number with some great drumming and The Big Apple continues the superb run of tracks, as does Unhome, the nagging bass and forlorn piano and horns giving it a great, sad, rainy feel. I’m not familiar with Miriam Makeba's original but will check it out
Maseru goes a little too jazz-frantic, take the bass for a walk about halfway through, and it is probably the only track I wasn’t keen on, especially as Inner Crisis does a similar thing but better and with a great soul influence, quite Curtis Mayfield-esque. Blues for Huey is perhaps a little too drummy, but there are some great tones and sounds to the recording of it. Nomali is another superb track, the bass is fantastic, kind of loping and stuttering, but keeping things anchored while the piano plays around it. Maesha also has a rainy, soulful feel, the electric piano rippling away a little like Ray Manzarak, before it hits a great up tempo groove. Ingoo Pow-Pow is the most overt display of their South African origins and is great, the tom toms punctuated by the solitary snare and the percussive piano is a superb combination, another excellent track.
It was a 4 initially, but it got better and better the more I listened. Apart from Maseru and possibly Blues for Huey, every track is superb, combining piano, rhythms, horns and great production brilliantly, so much so it ends up a 5.
🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: Nomali or Part of a Whole, I’ll go with Part of a Whole
The Hives
3/5
Your New Favourite Band
Another album with great memories attached, when they seemed to be playing at every festival we went to. I must have seen them about 5 times between 2002 and 2006.
In the main it is very enjoyable garage rock revival music - stripped down to its bare bones, tempo set at 136bpm, guitars cranked up and all delivered with great gusto and conviction. However the song quality is undoubtedly uneven - for the fantastic songs like I Hate To Say I Told You So, Main Offender, Here We Go Again, Hail Hail Spit N’ Drool and The Hives are Law, You are Crime (superb title) there are songs like Untutored Youth, Outsmarted, Mad Man, A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T and Automatic Schmuck which, despite the spirit behind them, feel a bit by the numbers.
It’s interesting to think about in comparison to Permission to Land, both albums very much of their time, and both albums solidly in their specific lanes, but I think the advantage of PTL is that they can at least go from rocker to ballad, whereas The Hives can only really go from fast garage rock to slightly faster garage rock or slightly slower garage rock, and don’t quite have the pop chops of The Darkness.
Anyway I’d come back for a nice hit of thrashy nostalgia, it’s a fun album, but it's definitely of mixed quality, and sticking the best songs from here and from the next two albums would probably be a better listen. I think that makes this a solid 3.
👔👔👔
Playlist submission: Hate to Say I Told You So
The Kinks
4/5
Something Else by The Kinks
I should listen to The Kinks more often. I did have a period about 15 years ago when I was really into them, and the run from Face to Face to Muswell Hillbillies, including this one, really is fantastic. I would assume this one is possibly a bit overlooked in comparison to the three truly excellent albums that follow it, and while it’s not perfect, it is a great album, with some pleasing oddities, and a nice mix of sincerity and sardonicism, ahead of some of the bitterness and cynicism that coloured them in the 70s. And any album with Waterloo Sunset can only be good, especially supported by some excellent songs like David Watts, Death of a Clown and Love me ‘till the Sun Shines.
I like the slightly low key and whimsical tone, with obvious baroque, chamber pop and psychedelic influences, but it doesn't go in for big grandstanding musical gestures, or flower power hippie mysticism, and for all the harpsichord driven songs like Two Sisters there are little folky shuffles like No Return, and lyrically it focuses on nostalgia, sentimentality and generally empathetic and bittersweet pen portraits or characters and situations.
For an album recorded after Rubber Soul and Revolver and contemporaneously with Sgt Pepper, the production and mixing is very haphazard, sounding quite amateurish at times, and really lacking a depth and richness. Some songs sound better than others, and generally the vocals, backing vocals and harmonies are all very good, particularly on Tears of a Clown, but the drums and bass and guitars are very up and down, and the mix is a bit all over the place, the handclaps seem excessively loud on Afternoon Tea, and the bass goes from a nice bright tone on some songs, to barely audible on Love Me ‘till the Sun Shines.
It manages to overcome that because the songs are generally great, David Watts (the name of my cousin, co-incidentally), the brilliant oddness of Death of a Clown, Two Sisters and No Return, the musichall singalong of Harry Rag, the horn driven whimsy of Tin Soldier Man, the excellent Situation Vacant, the terrific soul influenced Love Me ‘till the Sun Shines, the woozy, slightly creepy psychedelic-folk of Lazy Old Sun, the classic 60s Kinks pop of the superb Afternoon Tea, the excellent Funny Face and of course the peerless Waterloo Sunset.
Despite that, I’m not quite sure it is at the same level as Village Green, Arthur or Lola. It’s a superb album, but rated against them and perhaps a little harshly it is a very high 4.
🌇🌇🌇🌇
Playlist submission: Love Me ‘till the Sun Shines is one of my favourite Kinks songs, but it has to be Waterloo Sunset really
Gene Clark
5/5
White Light
This is such a lovely listen, a superb late 60s country-folk-rock album dappled with California sunshine and the rippled shadows of a graceful resigned, understated sadness. I’m pretty familiar with it, although I haven’t listened in a while, so it was nice to reacquaint myself, and just let it roll round and round over the last few days, letting its serene and unforced charm work its magic.
It has a lot of John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline vibes, especially on things like The Virgin and White Light (and the Tears of Rage cover of course), which makes sense with all the Dylan/Byrds cross pollination, and how much they influenced each other, but I like how he adds a more plaintive sense of introspection on songs like With Tomorrow, the beautiful Because of You and Where My Love Lies Asleep.
The whole album has a sense of lightness and deftness that can make it feel lightweight, but there isn’t a bad song on here, and it’s such a beautifully well written and constructed album that it can only be a 5.
💡💡💡💡💡
Playlist submission: Because of You
Leftfield
4/5
Leftism
I remember this being quite a big deal at school when it came out, but it passed me by then, I was too busy saving my pennies for Cast and Bluetones albums. I did buy the one after this, Rhythm & Stealth though, which had a few crackers; Dusted, Phat Planet (Guiness!), Africa Shox and Swords.
Anyhow, I digress, and this is another great 90s electronic album alongside the Orbital albums we’ve had, but with a much more pronounced reggae/dub/ragga vibe, particularly on the opening track, Inspection and the typically performatively acerbic Lydon assisted Open Up.
Release the Pressure is great, in a way that a song combining Earl Sixteen’s vocals, a techno beat, ragga piano and the Macarena shouldn’t necessarily be. Similar to the ragga vibes on Release the Pressure, Afro Left uses North African influences with an almost samba beat to build another very good track, followed by the Jazzy and ambient Melt, a great bit of sequencing after the first two tracks.
Song of Life is great too, with its incorporation of the When The Levee Breaks beat as it pulses and builds. Although I like the Massive Attack feel of Original and the swarming synth sound of Black Flute and the Josh Wink-ness of Space Shanty, the middle of the album is a bit of a dip after the first four songs, and it’s nice to come back to the dubby ragga of Inspection before the excellent Open Up and then the gentle spaceyness of 21st Century Poem.
It's one of those albums where you can focus and appreciate the production, the craft and the sound, or you can zone out and appreciate the overall feel, and again it's a good one to work to. It is a bit long though, 69 minutes is a lot for most albums, but particularly for ones in the electronic genre where it can be hard to create enough dissimilitude over such a long run time, which accounts for the dip in the middle, even though it is very well sequenced.
Will definitely listen again, making it a solid 4.
⬅️🟩⬅️🟩
Playlist submission: Release the Pressure
Stereolab
4/5
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
I’ve never listened to a Stereolab album, even though I’ve always felt they’d be a band I would like.
Metronomic Underground is superb, the hypnotic groove and drone, the slight bossa nova vibes and some nicely layered sounds all constructed with a light touch, really lovely. When it hits a similar feel on Les Yper-Sound, the title track and Motoroller Scalatron and it’s great; excellent bass, nice breathy vocals, hooky keyboards, organs and guitars, kind of like Kraftwerk + a bit of Belle & Sebastian + a bit of French chanteur.
I really like their enjoyably experimental leanings and the vocals slipping between French and English, as well as their slightly atonal melodies, recalling X Ray Specs or Nico or The Slits, with a kind of nice, flat, cool detachedness.
It’s all very enjoyable with only Monstre Sacre not quite hitting the heights of the rest of it. It started off as a 4, it dipped to a 3 and then came back to a solid 4, a very good album.
🍅🍅🍅🍅
Playlist submission: Metronomic Underground
The Monks
3/5
Black Monk Time
Another one of those classic lost albums that I’ve not listened to, and also another YouTube album as it’s not on Tidal.
For the most part, it’s much as I thought it would be, sloppily energetic and raucous proto punk garage rock, with guitars, shouting and organs bandied about willy nilly. Monk Times’s repetitive bass guitar and drums create a great frantic groove and I really like the shouty singy proselytising about Vietnam.
Across much of it it’s those repeating rhythms that stand out, I can see why it was an influence on Kraftwerk and Krautrock and why people keep talking about it now, it’s simple, propulsive and minimalist, while the bass, drums and organs supplement the sound, with occasional very instrumental passages breaking out, like on Boys are Boys, Girls are Choice
It is remarkable how ahead of its time it sounds it is for 1965, if not always musically then certainly rhythmically and certainly attitudinally, before many of the West Coast acid rock bands did their garagey bluesy psychedelic shuffling in subsequent years and obviously way before punk happened in the mid 70s.
Aside from Monk Time and Boys are Boys, Girls are Choice, Higgle-dy-Piggle-Dy, I Hate You, with it’s a snaking bass line, Oh How To Do Now, We Do, Wie Du and Love Came Tumblin’ Down are the highlights
It’s a really fun listen, although the overall quality of the songs (and recording) probably rightfully takes a back seat to the attitude and feel of the whole thing, and it’s relentlessly rhythmical, naive, outsider-art, anything goes proto-punk directness and subsequent influence on loads of great bands is probably where its the majority of its value and significance lie.
It’s definitely more than a historical curio though, the crazed energy and sense of originality do give it a nice freshness, although it’s debatable how often I’ll come back to it, which puts it on the cusp of 3 and 4. It’s close to a 4 but I’ll stick with a high 3, it’s both very enjoyable and very interesting but it’s probably not going to go on regular rotation, even though I will listen again.
📿📿📿
Playlist submission: Monk Time
Lucinda Williams
3/5
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
I’ve never listened to this, despite having always been very aware of it.
It’s quite 90s sounding, particularly the space in the drums, but it's not too distracting, and you can definitely hear Steve Earle’s hand in things, it does sound like a few of his late 90s/early 00s albums.
It also has a slight Sheryl Crow feel on the less overtly country songs, sharing a similar tasteful and enjoyable atmosphere, but with a bit more earthiness and rasp to her voice - although sometimes it feels as though it needs a little more of that grit and earthiness to match the album title and the evocative artwork.
The title track is great, I love the chorus, and that little descending guitar figure on 2 Kool 2 Be-4-Gotten (such a 90s title) is rather lovely and it has a great vocal. Concrete and Barbwire is an excellent country ditty. And I love the Louisiana/creole/french sounding accordion on Lake Charles, taking it in a slightly unexpected direction. Can’t Let Go I like too, and Greenville is a nice downcast track. The slide heavy Joy is great, a nice shot of dusty bluesiness and it finishes with the excellent Jackon.
In between the songs are decent if a little forgettable, so I think this lands as a very high 3, not quite making it to 4, as its just missing a few more really good songs, despite her excellent voice and the nice atmosphere
🚗🚗🚗
Playlist submission: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Screaming Trees
3/5
Dust
I don’t think I could name a Screaming Trees song, although I know Mark Lanegan is/was well regarded, and I assumed before listening that it would be in the grunge/metal also rans section, but I was pleasantly surprised and ended up enjoying it - it’s got some groove, and some folky blues influences and I like the varied instrumentation and psychedelic vibes - the middle eastern tones on Halo of Ashes, the harpsichord on Sworn and Broken, the organ on Dying Days and Dime Western.
He is a good singer, but he does get a bit generic 90s US alt rock singer at times, and his lyrics often paddle in that same pool also. But he does harmonise well with himself and he does hit upon some nice melodies - Dying Days and Sworn and Broken are pretty catchy.
It certainly has a slight tang of 90s grungey metal, but the prominent folk influences, harmonies, shades of non typical instrumentation as well as some nice melodic lead guitar that elevates it above a lot of those bands. It's not totally my cup of tea, but I’d happily give it another listen, making it a pleasantly surprising mid to high 3.
😱🌳🌳
Playlist submission: Sworn and Broken
The 13th Floor Elevators
2/5
The Psychedelic Sound of the 13th Floor Elevators
Is there a genre that has such an outsize reputation compared to the number of actually good albums as 60s psychedelia? It is a genre I like, but I can’t think of many albums that are good from start to finish, it's much more of a compilation or playlist genre, there are a lot of gems and diamonds in the rough around and it’s far better served on something like Nuggets, rather than trudging though albums.
You’re Gonna Miss Me, with the slightly electric Dylan feel in its descending structure and acerbic off handedness, is a prime example, a classic Nuggets garage-psych-rock banger. And its similar to I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night by The Electric Prunes the other week in how it’s a great psych track amid a collection of largely forgettable and badly recorded bluesy garage psychedelia.
Don’t Fall Down, the Jagger-sounding Thru The Rhythm and Monkey Island are probably the pick of the those, but even they feel pretty inessential.
Like The Electric Prunes, it’s an appreciate the historical context but put the one good song on a playlist and forget about it album. 2.
🛗🛗
Playlist submission: You’re Gonna Miss Me
Charles Mingus
3/5
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
This didn’t quite grab me in the way that other recent jazz albums have, neither quite having the smoky flavour of Charlie Parker or eccentricity and shifting soundscapes of Miles Davis, and in places it feels like an overly clarinet-ty Pink Panther-esque, 50s Disney film soundtrack.
There are some excellent passages though, the twinkly piano and sinuous horns at the start of Track B before it all gets a bit Minnie the Moocher/Trio advert, and the Spanish guitars leading into a moody cacophony on Track C is great, and I can appreciate the technical skill across it all, the piano in particular.
But overall this didn’t speak to me the way Kind of Blue or Bitches Brew or even Hot Rats did. Despite some great moments, and apart from Track C it felt to me like it had a slightly sludgy, treacly feel to it, like wading through jazz soup with heavy legs. Even though there are a lot of changes in tempo it doesn’t, for me, quite have the fleet footed kineticism of some of the other jazz albums I’ve really liked, lacking a bit of groove and swing.
Tough one to rate, it’s between 2 and 3, but I’ll go 3 as I think I will give it another try in future and there are some excellent moments and Track C is great.
✝️✝️✝️
Playlist submission: Track C - Group Dancers
Black Sabbath
5/5
Vol. 4
Wheels of Confusion is a banger, superb sludgy riffing, it feels like it’s slightly behind the beat, giving it a great loping groove. Great sound on Iommi’s guitar too and The Straightener coda part is excellent with the mellotron adding a nice texture.
I didn’t realise that Changes was a Black Sabbath song, I thought it was just a generic song Ozzy and Kelly did. I didn’t much care for it, but I love the version here, the piano and string-sounding-mellotron is brilliantly evocative and mournful. And Laguna Sunrise is a similarly lovely, delicate piece of music and another great, atmospheric departure from their standard sound.
But their ‘standard’ sound is fantastic, Tomorrow’s Dream, Supernaut, Snowblind, Cornucopia, Under The Sun (love the booming, ominous bass) are all immensely enjoyable bits of riffy, bluesy metal, as on the other albums we’ve had the rhythm section is superb, lots of swing, groove and melody. And I really like the folky-boogie-metal of St Vitus’s Dance, close to Down Down in places but with a great hulking riff.
Even with all the riffs and heaviness, it never feels like they go down a moribund, boring, harder and faster for the sake of it, musical cul de sac, they incorporate other influences and meld the muculent brilliance of Iommi with the swinging excellent of their rhythm section to make an extremely listenable sound.
If I should have given Paranoid a 5, and Black Sabbath was a 4, this probably sits between the two. I’ve really enjoyed listening the last few days, and I’m keen to come back, so I think it just nudges to a 5.
4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣
Playlist submission: Wheel of Confusion/The Straightener
The The
3/5
Soul Mining
I was kind of expecting more of this to be along the lines of the excellent This is the Day, but despite being enjoyable I found it frustrating on occasion.
Along with This is the Day, Giant and Perfect are superb bits of new wave synth pop. The relentless rhythms of Giant with the interweaving synth lines is excellent and Perfect’s xylophone and accordion assisted melody is fantastic.
In between it’s a little bit of a mixed bag, I’ve Been Waitin’ grew a great deal on me and The Sinking Feeling and Uncertain Smile are great, but the Bowie-aping vocals get a bit much on something like The Twilight Hour, the kind of song that The Blue Nile do much much better. Soul Mining has some nice Remain in Light vibes but again the vocal is slightly off-putting, even though the circular synth riff is very nice.
I enjoyed it without really taking to it a great deal. Some great songs, some great synths, but with the occasional annoying affectation, so it lands as a solid 3.
⛏️⛏️⛏️
Playlist submission:This is the Day
Steely Dan
5/5
Aja
The smoothest of the smoothest impeccably produced jazz soft-rock, with everything carefully considered and immaculately performed, or the softest of soft, insipid and emotionally empty jazz rock boringness?
I go with the former, although I totally see how it can go either way. I had it on CD back at Uni, but I never got into it, although, along with seemingly every other mid 40s white man in the western hemisphere, I’ve really got into it and them over the past few years.
I’m not sure it’s quite at the same level as Can’t Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy or Pretzel Logic. It does have a sheen of remoteness to it, a slight sense of their quest for sonic fidelity overriding everything else, that those other albums don’t have, but it does have an overall feel and vibe I really love, not least, I think, due to how great that sound is, as warm and as enveloping as I imagine a mid 70s Californian evening would have been.
I don’t think there are any weak songs, but the opening trio of Black Cow, Aja and Deacon Blues is superb, particularly Black Cow with the jazz-soul female vocals and laid back flow. And Josie is great too, an excellent soul inflected track. But Peg really is the clear standout and not just because of De La Soul, it’s an absolutely brilliant sounding 70s jazz-pop classic with an unerringly catchy hook.
I often wonder if the recorder solo in Home at Last is a deliberate musical joke. It surely must be, it’s so out of place with the precision tooled construction of everything else. This and I Got the News are probably slightly weaker than the rest, although they’re still great.
I may slightly prefer those other albums, but this is still top notch and a fantastic example of classic mid- 70s jazz-rock-soul vibes that I could listen to repeatedly and never get bored of.
🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄
Playlist submission: Peg
Bob Dylan
5/5
Bringing it all Back Home
In Anthology I always disagreed when George says Rubber Soul and Revolver are Part 1 and Part 2 of the same album. As great as Rubber Soul is, Revolver always seemed like a significant leap forward in songwriting eclecticism, sound, scope and vision and the two are very distinct in my mind.
This however always felt like Part 1 to Highway 61’s Part 2. Even if it does nod to his previous albums with the acoustic 2nd side, it feels like they could be a double album, particularly as Highway 61 was released only 4(!) months after this.
Despite hearing the 3 ‘big’ songs that kick off the first side thousands of times they remain fantastic bits of rock’n’rolled up folk music, the caustic political allusions of SHB and Maggie’s Farm forming a great duo with the romantic and lilting She Belongs to Me squashed in between. And the the remainder of the first side are brilliant too, romantic yearning on the sublime Love Minus Zero and scratching rock’n’roll stomping on Outlaw Blues, pulsing driving bluesiness of On the Road Again and the fantastic image laden Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream.
I often think Mr Tambourine Man feels slightly out of time on this album but in a good way. It feels much more like something off The Times or Another Side, but as a collection of internal rhymes and lyrical imagery it is, obviously, superb, surely one of his best no matter how many times you’ve heard it. I think I often overlook Gates of Eden, but it’s another fantastically evocative dream-like set of lyrics, with a slightly foreboding musical feel. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue is of course a classic too, a fantastic melodic bass line and tone and a wearied but emotionally detached lyric.
It’s Alright Ma is possibly my favourite Dylan songs, almost satirically Dylan-esque lyrics, full of grim anger and resigned frustration, highlighted by the almost bluegrass-folk guitar and the proto-rapped word filled delivery. As with the version on the Live 66 album, it is amazing how he can hold your attention with just guitar and voice. Fantastic.
Of course a straightforward 5.
🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Playlist submission: It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
The Boatman’s Call
‘This useless fucker with his twinkling cunt’
I remember loving Into My Arms when it came out, I think I bought the single, and it takes me right back to A-level mocks in Jan ‘97.
I don’t think I heard the full album until much later, when I was a bit older and more open to Nick Cave. I love the piano based romantic solemnity and many if not all of the songs are brilliant; Into My Arms, the organ shuffle of Lime Tree Arbor, the atmospheric brilliance of Brompton Oratory, the lovelorn There is a Kingdom, Where Do We Go Now?, West Country Girl and the superb Idiot Prayer.
The only issue is that the relentless mournfulness of all these songs together can become a bit much, especially towards the end of the 2nd half. Taken in isolation they are great, but as collection it does tend to a feel of heaviness and unmoving stolidness.
Still it is a very fine album of anguished romantic piano balladry with some truly brilliant songs, but the unrelenting nature of the songs probably does make it a 4 rather than a 5.
🛶🛶🛶🛶
Playlist submission: Into My Arms
Röyksopp
3/5
Melody AM
Haven’t listened to this in years, but listened a lot when it came out and when it was very zeitgeisty.
Blue on Blue plus a great bass line equals the excellent So Easy, and Eple is fantastic. I’m not sure anything else quite reaches the heights of those, but there are some great euro-disco-Daft Punk-Air-funk-electro pop atmospherics throughout, and a couple of very good tracks; the downtempo Sparks, the disco-dance of Poor Leno, the dramatic Royksopp’s Night Out and
the arresting 40 Years, with what I think must be the bass from Jump into the Fire by Harry Nilsson slowed down? In between those the songs are fine, if not totally memorable.
Overall it’s a fine album with some very good tracks and some nice moments, but as a whole it never quite catches fire, neither quite hitting the Gallic charm and flair of Air or Daft Punk or the broodiness and immersive atmosphere of BoC, Bonobo, or Portishead. I would probably listen again, but likely in another 10 or 15 years, so I think it lands as a 3.
🕢🕢🕢
Playlist submission: Eple
Ice Cube
3/5
The Predator
‘There’s a new girl on my street, and Imma introduce her to my meat’
Before listening I wasn’t sure I was up for another Ice Cube album, even if it has It Was A Good Day on it, after not particularly enjoying AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. But I actually liked it, sonically I much preferred it to that album and while it does suffer from some of the same issues - the relentless rapping about sex and mention of bitches and hos - it has much better grooves and samples. Don’t Trust ‘Em is a good example of those two things, fantastic beat and groove, musically brilliant but an egregious number of bitches.
When it’s more pointedly socially engaged like on When Will They Shoot?, The Predator, Who Got The Camera? or Integration, it’s excellent, the hooks and beats underscoring the words and samples, and it's notable how the things he raps about - racism, violence, police brutality etc - are still depressingly relevant. And when it refrains (for the most part) from racism and/or misogyny you get the truly excellent It Was a Good Day, a superb West coast sound with a kind of sad lyric - a good day is when someone you know doesn’t get shot.
I really like the production (shout out DJ Pooh!), the samples and beats are excellent throughout, there are some very good songs; When Will They Shoot, Wicked, The Predator, It Was a Good Day, Check Yo Self and Who Got the Camera, but there’s so much aimless misogyny. On balance, the good just about outweighs the bad, and I would listen again so I think it sits right in the 3s.
🧊🧊🧊
Playlist submission: It Was a Good Day
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
Loveless
Isn’t Anything had some nice moments and some good songs, but nothing as great as Only Shallow, When You Sleep, I Only Said, Come In Alone, Sometimes or Soon, all fantastic noise-shoegaze-rock, with great hooks, rhythms and fuzzy atmospheres. This definitely feels like a tightening up and improvement on the Isn’t Anything template, and for all its loose wooziness its an extremely tightly constructed record. It’s densely layered but also to the point and direct, and the overdriven fug has much less of the wooliness or meandering noise of Isn’t Anything.
Not all the songs quite reach the heights of those songs, the run of Loomer, Touched and To Here Knows When in particular miss some of the queasy magic and pop hooks of the songs above, but they do contribute to the overall hypnagogic atmosphere, alternatively adding some sharp edges and further dreamlike tones to the overall feel of the album.
A great album with moments of beauty and hypnotic grace, as well as some pleasingly abrasive textures, another one of those albums that you can let wash over you, or you can concentrate on and pick out particular sounds and movements. It’s probably the best of this type of art-shoegaze-drone-noise rock, making it an easy 4.
🩸💌🩸💌
Playlist submission: I Only Said
Hole
3/5
Live Through This
Outside Nirvana, I don’t find Grunge to be a particularly interesting genre and as this does sit squarely in that box, it ultimately has limited appeal for me.
However, Asking for It, Plump, Jennifer’s Body, Doll Parts, Credit in the Straight World and Rock Star are really good, and this is clearly a cut above most Grunge. Courtney Love’s vocals, direct, confrontational lyrics, pop nous and undoubted charisma and presence definitely set it apart, and when some of the garage-surf-pop influences come through it’s pretty enjoyable.
On first listen this was a 2, but on repeat listens those points of difference came through and I enjoyed it much more. Not sure how often I’d come back to it, but I think it has enough about it to push it to a solid if unspectacular 3
🕳️🕳️🕳️
Playlist submission: Credit in the Straight World
Tito Puente
3/5
Dance Mania
Papa loves Mambo!
Hard not to sway a little bit to the rhythms and exuberance of the songs and music. Like a lot of latin music I’m not really very familiar with the ins and outs of the varying genres and rhythmic styles. And it’s easy to associate it too closely with salsa classes and people from Buckinghamshire who make salsa dancing their entire personalities, but throwing that out the window and just concentrating on the music makes for a much more enjoyable experience.
Very glad to have listened, may not come back that often, but it’s an undeniably charming 40 odd minutes of the type of music I don’t normally listen to, so very happy to give a high 3.
🪇🪇🪇
Playlist submission: Hong Kong Mambo
Moby Grape
3/5
Moby Grape
Frustratingly there are only a handful of tracks on Tidal, I assume there are some rights issues, so it was another YT listen, which is always a bit unsatisfying.
But the album itself made up for it, mainly as I wasn’t expecting it to be such a breezy collection of country rock/folk rock songs with a bluesy psychedelic edge - I had expected it to be much more in line with the generic West Coast acid rock of other albums from 1967.
While it certainly has elements of that sound, the country and folk influences, a great melodic sense, the excellent bass playing, the superb pre-Eagles harmonies, the aversion to long drawn out jams and a lack of acid-philosophy posturing set it well apart from their psychedelic contemporaries, and feels, from 5,315 miles and 58 years distance to evoke the sunshiney Californian hippy scene of my mind far better than, say, Country Joe and the Fish.
Hey Grandma, Fall on You and Come in the Morning are the best of the rockier songs, the harmonies and Come in the Morning are particularly nice. Of the lower key tracks, 8.05 is a really lovely little folky tune, but Someday is the standout, a fantastic country-ish folk-ish track, with a lovely melancholic melody and feel
I suppose the closest touchstones would be The Byrds and The Grateful Dead. The pacier tempos, driving rhythms and bluesy rock’n’roll differentiate it from the grace of The Byrds, and it, to me at least, has a much better melodic and musical sensibility than the Grateful Dead
It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4, I think I’ll stick with a high 3 - I really enjoyed it, there are some excellent songs and I’m sure I’ll come back to it (even more so if it came fully onto Tidal), but I probably won’t seek it out all that often
🐋🍇🍇
Playlist submission: Someday
Peter Frampton
3/5
Frampton Comes Alive!
I suppose live albums only really mean something if you were there, or if you really love a particular artist and know all their songs already. And as much as I like it when songs mutate and go somewhere else when played live, I would always reach for the studio versions of most songs. And apart from Show Me The Way and Baby I Love Your Way I’m not at all familiar with Frampton's catalogue, so in isolation it's tricky to connect with, especially as it’s very long.
However, it does make me want to have a listen to his studio albums, as many of the songs seem to be in that warm and golden 70s soft rock sweet spot that I tend to like, and I’d be really keen to hear the original studio versions. And the playing also is very good, some nice guitar sounds, from solos to crunchy chords, and the band is certainly very tight - I imagine the show itself would have been very cool, if you were there.
It’s tricky to score, if I was immersed in his back catalogue and really into him I imagine I'd have already heard this and would already love it, but as it stands it currently has marginal re-listenability for me, even though it's pleasant enough. It’s long too. But I’m intrigued enough by some of the songs and want to listen to more of him, so I’ll just tip it into a 3.
❕❕❕
Playlist submission: Show Me The Way
The Black Crowes
4/5
Shake Your Money Maker
I had a Best of the Black Crowes, and although I always liked it, it never made me want to delve into their discography. Perhaps because, even though I found them enjoyable, I wasn’t always totally convinced by their Stonesy-Aerosmithy-bluesy-southern rock-soul retroism.
However, listening now I didn’t have that same sentiment - it may not be the most innovative album, but then it doesn’t need to be. As with the album title they wear their influences very clearly and unapologetically, there isn’t really the need to be innovative or original, they just need to be proficient at this type of bluesy rock’n’roll and write catchy songs, which, for the most part they do very well. They definitely benefit from Chris Robinson’s voice. Although it may not be the most nuanced it’s almost perfectly suited to this style of southern-rock, and Rich Robinson is again a fantastically well suited guitarist for this genre, and together they definitely know how to write choruses. I know they toured with Oasis, and although the musical style is different, there are clear parallels with Noel in his ability to write incredibly catchy and melodic guitar lines and riffs.
The big songs I already was aware of; Twice as Hard, Jealous Again, She Talks to Angels, the cover of Hard to Handle remain excellent, but there are other great tracks too. Sister Luck builds from a nice country-blues intro full on rock song with some excellent organ swells. Could I’ve Been So Blind has one of those catchy choruses, and their melodic skill takes what could have been a rather underwhelmingly generic song and turns it into a fun little rocker. Thick’nThin’s energy and Boogie Woogie piano again take it from generic shuffle to a great bit of energetic fun. It does tail off a little after She Talks to Angels, but Struttin’ Blues, has some more excellent southern rock organ, and it finishes on the enjoyable spooky Exile on Main Street style Mercy, Sweet Moan.
Set against the prevalence of cock rock/heavy metal and the burgeoning grunge scene it’s harking back to early 70s rock’n’roll would have stood out, and it has aged very well - it may not be the most forward thinking album, but it’s elevated bar room blues rock is very enjoyable and without pretension. It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4, but I’ll just tip into a 4, as it’s something I will come back to when I’m in the mood from some unchallengingly enjoyable boogie rock.
🐦⬛🐦⬛🐦⬛🐦⬛
Playlist submission: Twice as Hard
Dr. John
5/5
Gris Gris
I’m pretty familiar with this, I love Dr John’s New Orleans R’n’B-psychedelic-folk-funk-soul, and the late night Louisiana Bayou atmospheres with a great foreboding swampiness, and this is a very enjoyable album, even if it it’s doesn’t always maintain the heights of the first few tracks and the superlative Walk on Guilded Splinters.
Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya is a fantastic, superbly atmospheric with the harmonica riff and the loping, grooving bass line and general sense of eeriness. Danse Kalinda, expands on that eeriness, taking tribal rhythms and percussion and vocal chanting to make another superbly atmospheric track. Mama Roux is more conventionally R’n’B, grooving along on a charmingly breezy organ part.
I get Death of a Clown from the opening to Danse Fambeaux and moments of Another Day in Paradise towards the back end as it also recalls the first two tracks. The spooky nighttime ritualistic vibes return in Croker Courtbullion, the nursery rhyme melody evoking a great sense of disquiet. It gets a bit Minnie the Moocher on Jump Sturdy, a direct nod to New Orleans R’n’B, which I like even if I’m not totally a fan of it.
I Walk on Guilded Splinters is the obvious standout, a truly fantastic song, and one that has inspired some excellent cover versions. Paul Weller’s most obviously, but Cher has an excellent version and there’s a super one by Johnny Jenkins, with Duan Allman, which was sampled for Go Let It Out.
While I’m not sure everything lands totally I love that this is not really like many other albums, all the varying influences and histories of New Orleans and Louisiana all put together in a brilliantly creepy serpentine melange (if only there was a culturally relevant word for this), evoking ghostly musical sounds heard from the other side of the bayou, with lamplights glimpsed between the trees and mists, as the percussion gets louder….
For the overall atmosphere and uniqueness and for two stellar tracks in Gris Gris and Guilded Splinters I think I’ll just tip this from a high 4 to a 5.
🌉🌉🌉🌉🌉
Playlist submission: I Walk on Guilded Splinters
The Afghan Whigs
1/5
Gentlemen
This isn’t completely awful, but it is utterly boring, a tiresome, self important voice singing bad lyrics over tedious, mediocre 90s alt rock. Nothing stood out, or seemed notable in any positive way, the sense of dullness is just too powerful, and there is no reason to ever listen again.
And that really is all I can muster.
🚹
Playlist submission: Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer as thankfully it’s an instrumental.
The Residents
4/5
Duck Stab
On first listen I felt this was too deliberately daft, but there was some strange charm to it that made me look forward to listening again, and I started to enjoy and admire it.
I think it just manages to stay on the right side of studied, performative eccentricity, as its intentional oddness seems, to me, to have a point to it - in creating a disquieting, creepy atmosphere with ominous bass, discordant synth and primitive, eerie childlike melodies it make it a strangely compelling album, evoking an odd half awake, half dreaming state.
It’s not an easy listen, and not exactly the album to work to when you are trying to put a budget together, but amongst the atonality and strangeness there are some extremely effective passages and moods. The bass does great work on tracks like Sinister Exaggerator, Blue Rosebuds, Laughing Song (which reminds me very much of the score from Beverly Hills Cop II), Elvis and His Boss, Semolina, and Weight-LIfting Lulu, shifting between dubby atmospheres, rhythmic pulsing and more conventional melodic playing. Some of the synth lines and motifs are great too, Sinister Exaggerator, Bach is Dead, Lizard Lady, Birthday Boy, Krafty Cheese and The Electrocutioner, and it’s all augmented by some nice guitar parts here and there.
Coming after the sterile musical dead-endness of Afghan Whigs I really appreciate that this is so unique and singular, and its off beat appeal definitely grew with every listen, and I wanted to keep giving it one more go.
It’s on the border of 3 and 4, it’s a fascinatingly odd album that I really liked, and despite feeling like I’ll only come back to it when I’m in the right mood, I’ll be a bit generous and tip over to 4.
🦆🦆🦆🦆
Playlist submission: Laughing Song
The Sonics
3/5
Here are the Sonics
It struck me coming off the back of The Residents that The Witch is not a million miles away from some of the tracks on Duck Stab, just with more conventional rock instrumentation setting the discordant, slightly unsettling tone.
Anyhow, similar to Monks, there is a tangible sense of energy and fervor to the playing, carrying them through some rather erratic production and sound quality, but this is probably the most consistent of the 60s garage rock albums on the list, even if many of the covers are probably better performed elsewhere.
The 4 original songs, although clearly influenced by the types of songs they cover, are a lot of fun, particularly The Witch, Psycho and Strychnine. The stand out track, though, is obviously Have Love Will Travel, you can see why it’s been in a few adverts, a great tune delivered with absolute conviction. Dirty Robber, Night Time is the Right Time are also good, and Walking the Dog with it’s very early Stones vibes is decent too.
It’s a fun album, one of the best in the genre, but despite that, its historical context and influence it probably doesn’t have a huge amount of relistenability, so it lands as a mid-high 3.
🦔🦔🦔
Playlist submission: Have Love Will Travel
Bill Evans Trio
4/5
Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Lovely stuff. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the horn led Jazz recently, this piano trio sort of thing is what I thought I might like when we started the list, and so it is.
There are a few taking the bassline for a walk and keeping the cymbals splashy moments, but whereas previously they would have chafed, now I find them increasingly pleasant, and the interplay between the three instruments really is quite incredible, the lead swapping between bass and piano, and some excellent drumming peeking out from between the gaps.
It may not be as frenzied or as experimental as some other albums we’ve had, it also steers clear of the hotel lobby jazz inflection we sometimes get. To my ears there’s an unpretentious (for Jazz) sensibility to it, there’s plenty of skill and virtuosity of course, but in a tasteful and thoughtful way. The piano of My Man’s Gone Now winds its way through the song beautifully and expressively and it is a superb piece of music. Solar is a nice counterpoint, uptempo and more overtly jazzy but with some incredible piano runs and superb bass. Jade Visions is lovely too, a lovely, melancholic mellowness to it, especially as it was written by the bassist, who died shortly after this was recorded.
I liked this from the off and it got better with each listen, and similar to some of the dance albums like Leftfield or Orbital it works both in the background and as a more immersive listen, picking out little bass and piano runs and getting lost in the feel of it. I think it's a high 4, as there is a little bit of uniformity of sound and style at the start of side 2, but it’s something I’m looking forward to coming back to, to fill a laid back jazz hole that Bitches Brew doesn’t. Nice.
🎹🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: My Man’s Gone Now
U2
3/5
War
Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day are clearly great tracks, Larry Mullen’s drumming and the Irish Folk acoustic guitar and fiddles of Sunday Bloody Sunday underscore the sadness of the theme of the song, while New Year’s Day is a very evocative and atmospheric pre mega fame U2 song.
Whether it’s due to being far less familiar with the rest of tracks or whether they just aren’t as good, nothing particularly stood out or was particularly memorable, apart from the closing Surrender and ‘40’, the former escaping the shackles of the scratchy rather generic post punk on the rest of the album with a nice bit of melody and muscularity and the latter foreshadowing some of their later arms aloft crow pleasing stadium songs.
Ultimately I think this lands as a solid 3, Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day are great tracks, Surrender and ‘40’ are very good and the rest, while in no means bad, just don’t stick long in the memory in comparison. Perhaps indicative of them looking to leave their more angular post punk behind and find the pop rock bearings that would take them to mega-stardom.
🪖🪖🪖
Playlist submission: New Year’s Day
Bad Brains
2/5
I Against I
I’ve only heard of Bad Brains through the Beastie Boys. I know they are a hardcore band, so I wasn't expecting a great deal.
And despite it being more funk rock with punk/hardcore elements, I was right not to expect much as it's a pretty unremarkable album, with nothing much interesting happening either melodically, vocally, lyrically or musically.
Not woeful, and not as forcefully dull as Afghan Whigs but I cannot foresee any reason to ever listen to this again.
🧠🧠
Playlist submission: She’s Calling You
Scott Walker
5/5
Scott 4
Looking back I seem to have found Scott 2 annoying and interesting in equal measure, the baroque-cabaret-uncle vibes getting a bit much, and the whole thing not being as good as I was expecting it to be.
This, however, I really liked from start to finish. It has some of the same elements as Scott 2, but seemingly done with a slightly looser, more stripped back feel and more obvious rock-country-folk-soundtrack influences, evident with the Morricone-esque opener, the superbly dramatic The Seventh Seal. The orchestral arrangements and strings are excellent throughout actually, as are the guitars and some of the bass playing is particularly stellar. The melodies all seem easier than Scott 2 as well, way less strained and affected, much more satisfying and memorable as a result, and allowing his fantastic voice to come to the fore.
The World’s Strongest Man is excellent with a Jimmy Webb feel to it both musically and thematically, touching on loneliness and isolation. Angels of Ashes has a lovely flow against the bass and swelling strings, and Hero of the War is a great bit of uptempo catchiness. The Old Man’s Back again is fantastic, the stand out, with further Morricone vibes plus superb bass and a great lyric. Duchess is also excellent, with a nice little bluesy hint to it. I love the backing vocals and guitars on Get Behind Me, great chorus and more excellent bass. I really like the weeping guitar on Rhymes of Goodbye too, and it’s another great melody. On Your Own Again and Boy Child, while not as immediate, are very nice bits of folky baroqueness, adding a slight melancholic shade between the ‘bigger’ songs.
Along with Scott 2 this is one of those cult albums that I had never heard. While Scott 2 was vaguely underwhelming this I found truly whelming, and I can see why it’s so highly regarded, it’s a fantastic album, blending orchestral pop, John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks, folk, country, blues with opaque and wide-rangingly introspective lyrics, into a fascinating and enjoyable listen, kind of familiar but also slightly and brilliantly off kilter and odd. Started off as a 4, but I just kept wanting to listen to it, so I think it just pushes into a 5
4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣4️⃣
Playlist submission: The Old Man’s Back Again
Girls Against Boys
1/5
Venus Luxure No.1 Baby
From sublime and fascinating yesterday with Scott 4, to dreary and uninspiring with this. I’m sure it's someone’s cup of tea somewhere, but it’s really not mine at all.
The band are certainly tight, and there are some occasional interesting moments flickering among the staid one note indie post hardcore monotony, the looped string/keyboard on Go Be Delighted is nice and the restrained drumming and bass on on Get Down are good and the little piano riff on Billy’s One Stop is nice, but nothing can really make up for the fact that, ultimately, every single song is boring and the whole thing just feels utterly pointless and very tedious, with out any sense of dynamism or melodic variation to add any light and shade to all the one dimensional flatness.
While it may not be truly horrific it is dull, and subsequently irritating, and there is no reason to ever even think about listening to this again.
👶
Playlist submission: Go Be Delighted
The Gun Club
3/5
Fire of Love
With the first track it felt like the punk and American roots amalgam was a bit overstated, it’s pretty straightforward but pretty good early 80s post-punk power-pop. The rootsy bluesy punkness did start to reveal itself after that though.
Obviously Preaching the Blues is a Robert Johnson song, but it has a nice rockabilly feel to it, with some nice guitars and a nice energy, and Promise Me with its fiddle and slide guitars is very good too. She’s Like Heroin To Me is another good combination of power-pop punk-stomp and country-blues guitars. Black Train, despite some questionable lyrics, is a good bit of rockabilly thrash and I like Cool Drink of Water is another nice punk-blues arrangement of an older blues song. Ghost on the Highway and Jack on Fire I liked as well. There’s definitely an influence on the White Stripes, and it echoes some of The Clash’s rockabilly from London Calling a couple of years prior, and it reminds me a little of the Violent Femmes and The Replacements, although without the latter’s stronger songwriting skills.
Overall it’s a fun album, with a nice point of difference from many of their contemporaries, the slide guitars, fiddles, country twang with a bit of garagey punky thrash is a nice combination. Rhythmically though it does have a tendency to stay in the standard punk drumming lane, missing a bit of swing and groove that I think would make the songs pop a little better.
Still, I’m sure I’ll listen again. I don’t think it quite gets into the 4s, it doesn’t quite have enough standout songs for that , so it’s a solid 3.
🔥🔥🔥
Playlist submission: Promise Me
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
5/5
Music from the Penguin Cafe
I had no idea of what to expect from this, the only thing I knew ahead of it was that Eno was involved in its production and release. That may have pre-disposed me to liking it, which, predictably, I did.
It’s a great combination of oddness and convention, the melding of pop and classical instrumentation isn’t completely novel, but the orchestral elements are superb, moving from pretty and delicate to foreboding and unsettling with an excellent strangeness and grace.
It’s great how the cellos and strings work with the electric piano on Penguin Cafe single, recalling some of Macca/George Martin’s tea-room orchestra arrangements on the White Album, and the rest of the Zopf suite is lovely, the electric piano nicely prominent and the strings recalling more White Album and also some of Nick Drake’s string arrangements on something like Surface Tension (and Chartered Flight has a similarity to Horn also). I like how different classical elements, baroque, far eastern, string quartet, chamber music for eg, slide into each other, particularly on hose Zopf Tracks, the run from Surface Tension to Giles Farnaby’s Dream is great, before the Radiophonic Workshop spaciness of Pigtail closes out that side.
The Sound of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away and It Doesn’t Matter is really lovely, it slightly recalls Nico, but it’s a beautiful, melancholic tune on piano and guitar, with a slightly unsettling section, and the violin and cello are superb.
I thought this was fantastic from start to finish, really easy to enjoy and slightly unusual and singular, kind of childlike and naive in places, off kilter and out of place in others but also sweetly melodic and harmonic throughout, and another album I doubt I would have listened to without the list. 5. Love the cover too.
🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
Playlist submission:The Sound of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away and It Doesn’t Matter
Todd Rundgren
3/5
A Wizzard, A True Star
I gave Something/Anything? a 5, I thought it was great, a brilliant set of 70s power-pop soft rock.
I’m perhaps a little more on the ambivalent side with this one. There are some great 70s soft rock songs, scattered between and sometimes in the middle of all the other stuff going on; International Feel, parts of Tic Tic Tic, Le Feel Internacionale, the excellent Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel and then particularly right at the back end with the run of I Don’t Want to Tie You Down, Is It My Name, Just One Victory, and on the one hand I admire the kitchen sink abandon and idiosyncrasy of it, Rundgren making it all on his own and attempting to create his musical vision of a psychedelic experience happening in his mind, but it does drift a little too often into a Yes-Queen-ELP-10cc-Supertramp cul-de-sac of whimsy and wackiness with the succession of short tracks on side 1. And I don’t think the soul medley on side 2 works particularly well either.
That’s not to say it’s not worthwhile or entertaining, and I did find myself enjoying it and getting to grips with it more on repeat listens, maybe as I was able to appreciate the contrast of the snippets of fully formed, conventional pop-rock against the frantic psychedelic miasma* surrounding them.
Although sonically it’s very different from Duck Stab, I have a similar feeling of appreciation for its existence - if you are going to throw a few things at the wall you may as well throw a lot of things at the wall - and although it might be a bit too scattergun and schizophrenic to be a truly great, coherent listen. Although I also think if you took away all the whimsy and made it more focused it might lose much of its distinctive charm.
All told I think it lands as a high 3, I’ll be keen to revisit at some point in the future where it might push a bit higher.
🧙🧙🧙
Playlist submission: Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel
*I actually wrote this last week before I read Dan’s Royksop review, I’m not copying, it’s synergy.
Laura Nyro
3/5
Eli And The Thirteenth Confession
Again one of those cult albums I’ve heard a lot about but have never listened to. I think my expectations were probably a bit high, I really liked about half of it, but I was more ambivalent about the other.
You can see the influence she had, particularly on something like Tapestry, which shares some vocal mannerisms and a similar overall vibe, and there are also notes of Joni Mitchell throughout.
Luckie is one of the songs along with Lu, Sweet Blindness, Lonely Women, December’s Boudoir that I wasn’t that into. There are some nice moments and passages and some great playing, but too often the soul inflections drift into a musical cabaret/show tune/rag time vibe that I’m not as keen on
Poverty Train, Eli’s Comin’, Timer, Stoned Soul Picnic, Emmie, Once it Was Alright and The Confession I thought were great though, hitting a nice furrow of soul, bluesiness and jazzy inflections with some great melodies and choruses, avoiding too much of the showtuney-ness
I’m glad this came up, although I wasn’t totally into it, I can see why people might love it, she has a distinctive voice and point of view for the time, and her influence is clear. I’d stick it on again, but not sure how often so I’ll go for a solid 3.
🧺🧺🧺
Playlist submission: Eli’s Comin’
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
Haunted Dancehall
This was decent to work to, and it definitely got better over the last half, but I struggled a bit to engage and find much that was particularly memorable.
Compared to some of the 90s electronic music on here it felt like there were fewer interesting ideas, and I wasn’t keen on the production and overall sound. Orbital, Leftfield and something like Tricky give their music with a hypnotic sense, whereas this felt far more stolid, the dubby bits not really working in adding any atmosphere and the beats felt a bit tinny, with a slightly cold and removed sheen to it.
As I say it did pick up in the 2nd half, with some slightly more interesting atmospherics and moods. I really liked Tow Truck though, with a bit of Portishead’s cinematic feel with the guitars, drums and reverb. Theme was also decent, the bass giving it a bit of warmth and life and I liked Chapel Street Market, a nice bit of Eno-esque spaciness and noises that reminded me of some of the Tomorrow Never Knows tape loops.
Ultimately I think neither liked nor disliked it, there are a couple of songs for a playlist but I’m very unlikely to come back to it in full as I think there are other albums in this style I prefer, so I’ll go 2.
👻👻
Playlist submission: Tow Truck
Skepta
4/5
Konnichiwa
I know very little grime uk Hip Hop outside Dizzee Rascal and Stormzy, so I was interested to give this a listen. There are some great boom bap-ish beats and excellent dancey, synthy hooks, and I really like his delivery, where Britishisms and British cultural references abound. Fam.
Lyrically I’m not sure I’m totally on the right wavelength with all of it, but for all the confrontational stuff there’s a lot about family, fame, relationships with a degree of sadness, and some great wry little lines in things like the excellent That’s Not Me, Man and Text Me Back, and he has a great, sharp delivery.
Like a lot of hip hop albums, I don’t understand the point of the skits and spoken word bits, they’re hard to listen to and the disrupt the flow and feel of otherwise great tracks like Corn on the Curb and Crime Riddim’
Hook and beat wise, I love the string/synth riff on It Ain’t Safe and the gurgling squiggles on That’s Not Me. The bassy Numbers is great and there’s another great synth part on Man
I’ve listened to this a lot, I was happy to let it go round and round as it got better with each listen, so much so I think it just nudges into a 4
👋👋👋👋
Playlist submission: That’s Not Me
Soul II Soul
4/5
Club Classics Vol. One
Part dated, part ahead of its time, part still fresh sounding.
The rapping/spoken word bits, both lyrically and stylistically fall into the dated camp (Feeling Free, Dance, Jazzie’s Groove), but the excellent mix of house, hip-hop, jazz, disco and soul signposted a lot of great music (MA, Portishead, Tricky etc) that came after, and the two big songs, Keep on Movin’ and Back to Life still sound superb.
Alongside those two tracks, Holdin’ On and African Dance with their African influences are great tracks, as is Feel Free with more excellent Chic-esque strings and an excellent, soulful vocal. Happiness is a soulful, dubby track with a nice house piano line and Jazzie’s Groove’s use of samples with a great bassline.
I enjoyed this, more than I was expecting. Keep on Movin, Feel Free and Back to Life are excellent and there are some very good album tracks too. And despite some things that do date it, it’s a very good album, edging to a 4.
♣️♣️♣️♣️
Playlist submission: Back to Life
Funkadelic
5/5
Maggot Brain
Love this album, from the superb cover to the sci-fi, distorted, acid-spacey 10 minute long guitar solo title track to the fantastic, country-folk tinged singalong of Can You Get to That, to the funk-pop of Hit It and Quit It, to the distorted drums and call for harmony of You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks, the funk-rock strut of Super Stupid, the loping groove of Back in Our Minds, and the final over the top acid casualty fart-jam of Wars of Armageddon.
And it’s another one where you can hear who it influenced, particularly Primal Scream and for better or worse Red Hot Chilli Peppers, although neither of those manage to hit the same, loose and tight groove and playing, particularly Bernie Worrell’s superb keyboards and Tiki Fullwood’s drumming.
37 minutes of superb acid-blues-funk-rock-pop, simple 5 for me.
🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠
Playlist submission: Can You Get to That
The Adverts
3/5
Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts
Never heard any Adverts songs, I’m aware of them as one of those names you hear, but I thought they were a bit more early-80s post punk rather than just as or just after the punk wave crested.
Outside of The Clash and a few others a lot of punk bands and albums, both US and UK, feel very samey with similar rhythms, guitar thrashings and sneering vocals, and while this does suffer from some of that in places, it also has some very catchy power-pop/punk-pop tunes; One Chord Wonders, Bored Teenagers, On the Roof, Bombsite Boy and Safety in Numbers. On Wheels is also an interesting departure from the rest of the sound on the album, feeling much more in the Wire/Magazine vein with a great snaking bass line and some great tom toms. Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, not on the original album, is also another very enjoyable pop-punk track.
It seems to me to be a cut above many of other contemporaneous punk albums with a handful of genuinely good, catchy tracks and a nice sense of punkish urgency and earnestness. Think that makes it a solid-high 3.
🟥🟥🟥
Playlist submission: On the Roof
Genesis
4/5
Selling England by the Pound
I remember giving this a try a few years ago and not particularly vibing with it. That feeling was similar on the first go, but it definitely grew on me with repeat listens and I found it much more satisfying than the Yes or ELP albums we’ve had.
The pomposity and conceit of Dancing With the Moonlit Knight is still a little off putting (over the last 60 years or why do so many bands want to ruminate from their unique perspective of how they are the only ones who can see England is being ‘lost/sold/swallowed by America’), although musically there are some nice musical passages especially the guitar around 3 minutes, and although the Who-esque synth/keyboard part is great, and it's a good song, the ‘I’m Breaking the Legs of the Bastard that Got Me Framed’ accent and spoken word parts in Battle of Epping Forest are more than a little bit cringey.
Aside from that, though, it jumps around with a fair degree of eccentric, scattershot charm. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) balances whimsy and psychedelic Beatles inflections in a very pleasing way, a very nice track. Firth of Fifth has some lovely piano and flutes, and is really fun once the keyboard/synth part kicks in. Not sure why I don’t find this as off putting as Dancing With the Moonlit Knight, as it shares some commonalities, perhaps I just prefer it melodically and harmonically. More Fool Me has a very 70s soft rock feel, a bit of Boston, a bit of Frampton, but with a folkier dynamic, a great track. After the Ordeal is another folky track, the piano and synth behind the acoustic as it builds into a vaguely Queen-esque lead guitar part (also tonally the guitar sounds a little like the Top Gun theme). The Cinema Show I really liked, the first section’s mysticalness building into an almost Radiohead-esque musical crescendo.
I don’t get the same degree of satisfaction as I do from Gabriel’s solo records, and there is still a slight edge of po-facedness to some of it that dampens it a little, but it's right on the edge of 3 and 4. It’s pretty dense in a good way, though, and I definitely liked it the more I listened, so I think I’ll tip over to 4.
💷💷💷💷
Playlist submission: More Fool Me
KISS
2/5
Destroyer
Detroit Rock City and Beth are good, and although it’s clearly very competent the rest of it is pretty much the same song 8 times, and that song unfortunately does wear thin, there’s only so many times you can enjoy the rather imbecilic lyrics, the heavy tom-toms and similar sounding guitar riffs, even if the whole sticks to a welcomely brief 35 minutes.
It’s not awful, but I’m pretty sure I won’t remember anything about this in a week’s time and I can’t really think I’ll listen again.
💋💋
Playlist submission: Detroit Rock City
Ramones
5/5
Ramones
I don’t think I’ve actually listened to this in its entirety before, which is odd as I think the Ramones are fantastic, and I loved the double CD Anthology/Best of I had (although it had nearly half the songs from this album on it)
I don’t think I’ve noticed the amount of Beach Boys-esque harmonies on many of their tracks, like on Blitzkrieg Bop, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Chain Saw, but it's clearly a huge part of their minimalist rock’n’roll, garagey, pop, pre-punk recipe, something the Velvet Underground did, a band they obviously descended from. And a bit like Black Sabbath with metal they pretty much invented punk and influenced hundreds of bands, and then saw much of the genre disappear down musical cul-de-sacs of noise and thrash, with nothing interesting to say, forgetting the superb pop intelligence that makes these relatively simple, fast, stripped back, three-chord songs sound fresh and thrilling, even 50 years later.
It’s also interesting comparing them to Kiss from yesterday. Both albums released in 1976, both around 30 minutes, both guitar, bass and drums, and both doing variations on a particular song style, but whereas Kiss feels generic and staid, this feels exciting and infectiously great.
I don’t think there is a weak song, and even if there is it’ll be done in 2 minutes anyway, but there are a few obvious standouts; Blitzkrieg Bop, Beat on the Brat, Judy is a Punk, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement, 53rd & 3rd and their cover of Let’s Dance.
Obviously there are some questionable lyrics, which although tongue in cheek at the time, probably weren’t a million miles away from what Johnny Ramone actually thought, but that tension between the melodies, tempos, guitars, drums and lyrics is definitely part of what makes the whole thing great.
It's a glorious 29 minutes of smart-dumb, joyfully nihilistic bubblegum-garage and an easy 5.
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
Playlist submission: Ubiquitous but fantastic, Blitzkrieg Bop
Dizzee Rascal
3/5
Boy in Da Corner
Sweet like Tropicana, Mash your head up like banana
I listened to this a lot when it came out, but listening now, aside from Fix Up Look Sharp and some pleasingly dancey hooks and beats, the main thing that stood out to me is its length, or more specifically how long it feels, as the 57 minutes really do not fly by. Which is a shame, as for an album that was so undeniably fresh and exciting in 2003, it really does Bow under the weight of its running time - it would likely be a much better, tighter and punchier record if it were closer to 40 minutes.
Still, it’s a good album, he has a great, distinctive and unique voice and vocal style, and a very expressive turn of phrase. He also has a great ear for a wonky hook and catchy sample.
Sittin’ Here’s icy synth line is great, I like the child-like chorus plus fraught rhythms and bass on I Luv U. 2 Far has some excellent lines about the Queen and the Billy Squier drums and vocal samples on the standout Fix Up, Look Sharp are excellent. Cut Em Off and Hold Ya Mouf both have nicely foreboding industrial-minimal rhythms. Jus a Rascal has a nice cheeky catchiness. I like Jezebel’s garagey feel, although the lyrics might be seen as questionable.
I do like this, but probably not as much as I did 20 years ago, and the length is definitely an issue, especially when there is a frantic, chaotic element to many of the tracks it feels a bit much. Trim it down and I think it would be a solid 4, but I think that does drag it down to a high 3.
😵💫😵💫😵💫
Playlist submission: Fix Up Look Sharp
Buffalo Springfield
3/5
Buffalo Springfield Again
Mr Soul, Expecting to Fly, Bluebird and Broken Arrow are obviously superb, and it’s no surprise that 3 of those are Neil’s 3 contributions to the album. Although Mr Soul is very Satisfaction-derivative it has some great guitars and nice muscularity that is absent elsewhere on here. Expecting to Fly and Broken Arrow I’ve really come to appreciate more over time. Expecting to Fly’s vaguely sinister dreaminess really is fantastic, it kind of feels quite White Album before the White Album in that respect and there is some nice George Martin-ness to the strings. Although the transitions on Broken Arrow are on the surface a bit heavy handed, they don’t detract from it all, in fact they add to the overall psychedelic post-Sgt Pepper/A Day in the Life feel.
Outside that, while never less than pleasant, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, many of the tracks feeling a bit like demos or not fully formed. A Child’s Claim to Fame sub-Byrds country folk is unfortunately a bit grating and Everydays, while decent enough, is one of Stills’ more throwaway songs, especially compared to the great hypno-country-rock of Bluebird.
Hung Upside Down is good, enlivened by some distinctive Neil guitar playing. I don’t think I’m a fan of Richie Furray’s songwriting, although Sad Memory is a nice understated bit of country-melancholy, the pseudo sub-Otis Redding of Good Time Boy I’m not convinced by, and the sax solo is not good. Luckily Rock & Roll Woman comes along, the little acoustic riff I really like, and there are some nice harmonies.
You do get a sense of the intraband tensions (again like the White Album) in the distinct feel of each songwriter’s songs, Neil’s in particular feel like solo tracks and very different in tone from what the others were doing, Expecting to Fly and Broken Arrow feel like they are chafing at the constraints of the band, while Still’s songs, the, superb Bluebird aside, don’t quite feel fully realised, perhaps missing a bit of expected input from Neil.
It’s a tricky one to rate, the four standout tracks would grace any album, but as a whole listening experience I don’t find it holds together that well, so perhaps harshly, and despite the quality of some of it, I’ll give it a high 3.
🦬🦬🦬
Playlist submission: Broken Arrow
Primal Scream
5/5
Screamadelica
I listen to this every few years or so, and every time I wonder if it will be as good as I remember, and then, even with all the familiarity and attached nostalgia, it is always as good as I remember, just a fantastic record.
There are perhaps a few wonky moments, and occasions where the production/sound feels a little dated. But those are minor quibbles, it’s a great listen, moving from different styles and moods from song to song, but retaining a superb, blissed out, hazy, psychedelic, rock-dance atmosphere across the whole thing.
I did not realise until today that Jimmy Miller produced Movin’ on Up, although it makes total sense with its Exile era Stonseyness. Although I still like Rocks and Jailbird this is probably their most convincing Stones style track. And I did not realise until today that Slip Inside this House was a cover, it feels totally at home as a dancey, shamanistic track amongst the rest of the album. Must read CD booklets more closely.
Aside from the electronic, rock and dub as the obvious influences, there is definitely some Eno and Bowie too - Inner Flight feels very Low to me. And I’ve just read that it samples Eno! What a day of discovery for me!
Come Together and Loaded are still superb of course, timeless but also quite early 90s in a good way, with some nice sixties touches to the house/dance, that slide on Loaded is Great. Again as I learnt today Damaged was produced by Jimmy Miller, and it has more of that nice stoned-Stonsey vibe, the organ in particular is very Let it Bleed/Exile. I love the saxophone and synth keyboard outro on I’m Coming Down. The dub version of Higher than the Sun is very Vanishing Point and Xtrmntr, and I love it, a great, woozy, discombobulating feel to it.
I’d never connected the two, but it does share some commonality with the Soul II Soul album the other day, although this takes the house-soul elements in a more druggy, psychedelic, ravey direction. I’m glad Screamadelica doesn’t have rapping on it.
Of course it’s a 5, a brilliant, influential and seminal album.
😎😎😎😎😎
Playlist submission: Loaded
Stan Getz
4/5
Jazz Samba
This is a very enjoyable little album of US jazzman produced Bossa Nova, with a lovely light touch. It's not too frenetic, taking the shuffles and rhythms of samba but pairing them with a cooler jazz sensibility, it's not overplayed and the whole thing is nicely balanced.
It’s breezy, but not insubstantial, with some lovely performances, passages and moments, the bass on Deasfindo into and the outro to Baia is great, and Donald Byrd’s guitar is consistently great throughout, particularly on Samba de Uma Nota So, E Luxo So and Bahia.
It also manages to avoid too many hotel lobby vibes, or any zany, madcap, screwball comedy movie vibes, balancing deftness with sincerity really well.
I’ve liked some of the samba and bossa nova so far, and have not been as keen on others, but this is my favourite so far, and I think it shuffles nicely into a 4.
🎺🎺🎺🎺
Playlist submission: Samba de Uma Nota Só
Morrissey
2/5
Vauxhall & I
I’ve not listened to lots of solo Morrissey stuff, although I did quite like the one with him with a machine gun on the cover with Irish Blood, English Heart on it.
However, aside from his more recent political views, the thing I always struggled with his solo stuff is the actual music itself, and I feel similarly with this. His voice sounds excellent, and he deals out some excellent lines among the self pity and navel gazing, but I find the dynamic between him and the music so uninspiring that it all feels pointless.
I may be completely wrong about his process, and as as far as I’m aware he doesn’t have much musical aptitude, but I always get a huge disconnect between him and his words and what his band and collaborators do, it feels like he just does his bits and then they make some songs and never the twain shall meet etc. With The Smiths there was a sense of collaboration and tension between Marr and Morrissey, that they were equals, creating the songs and the band together, whereas this feels like session musicians filling in the blanks. Not that there is anything wrong with that way of doing things, he’s obviously worked with Alain Whyte and Boz Borer for a long time, and there are plenty of musicians I like who work in that way too, but, despite their skill, the music on here just feels really like really generic mid 90s mid tempo ‘rock’, there’s just no excitement or sense of cohesion between him and the band. Like I say, I may be completely wrong and it is in reality an intensely collaborative experience, but I really struggle to shake that feeling of hollowness to it all.
So, while this is of course fine, I do find it very hard to engage with, it all feels kind of aimless and empty, even if it’s very nicely played.
2 might be a bit harsh, but I don’t think I’ll actually come back to this.
🥀🥀
Playlist submission: Spring Heeled Jim
James Brown
3/5
James Brown Live at the Apollo
It’s great of course, but I’m not sure how much I’m into it. The band, the backing singers, his voice, they’re all great, and the energy and charisma is obvious, and I know it’s held in high esteem for all those reasons, but it feels slightly unsatisfying. Maybe because it's a live album or maybe because my expectations were too high, or perhaps it just can’t live up to the late 60s James Brown concert of my imagination.
A solid 3 feels about right, I appreciate all the good things about it, particularly the backing vocals on something like I Don’t Mind, but overall I just don’t love it.
🟤🟤🟤
Playlist submission: I Don’t Mind
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
5/5
Shaka Zulu
I listened to this A LOT last week. I had an unusually busy week at work and it was a perfect soundtrack, I was happy to let it go round and round with its lovely sense of warm, floating ambience, but it also rewarded the times I could listen more closely.
Obviously for the most part I don’t know what they are singing about, but I prefer not knowing, I just loved letting its peaceful serenity and moments of apparent melancholy slide gracefully by.
Maybe there’s an element of Heinz and Paul Simon based nostalgia, but without this list I likely wouldn’t have listened to this, and I would really have missed out.
Peaceful, joyful, otherworldly, soothing, I loved this and its an easy 5.
🧘🧘🧘🧘🧘
Playlist submission: Golgotha
Ice T
4/5
OG Original Gangster
I’m totally and completely on his dick
This is fucking long, but I actually really liked it, much more than I was expecting. The obvious comparison is Ice Cube, both for solid state of water monikers and for LA gangsta rap reasons, but despite similar themes violence, sex and posturing Ice T presents a (slightly) more nuanced and complex picture, adding a degree of humour and self awareness as well as intelligent lyrics and incisiveness around class, institutions and the complications and contradictions of the world he’s in.
And for the time there are some (relatively) progressive comments on sexuality and misogyny.
Musically it kind of reflects the sprawling and scattergun themes of the album, never quite settling down into a coherent feel, which works both for and against it. You get a sense of claustrophobia and uncertainty and unease, but it never quite nails a sound, which I presume also reflects the time it was made, somewhere between the East Coast and Public Enemy kitchen sink sound and just before The Chronic and the full West Coast G-Funk sound. And of course there’s the ‘hardcore’ Body Count stuff, which sounds relatively anodyne 30+ years later.
I’d also never really realised what a skilled MC he is, I’d always thought he traded on the notoriety and the controversy around Cop Killer, and wasn’t a particularly strong rapper, but he has a great California drawl combined with a nice, controlled intensity.
There’s obviously a lot here, but there are some great tracks, Mic Contact has an infectious hook and some Flavor Flav samples, Mind over Matter’s slower tempo rapping is interesting, New Jack Hustler’s piano and organ samples add a nice bit of jazziness, as there is on Bitches 2, a great bit of storytelling (and a nice acknowledgement that he’s not talking about women). Fly By sounds quite like Eric B or EPMD, a great bass sample. Midnight is good, another departure from some of the standard samples into something a bit more like a low budget horror film (with the standard When the Levee Breaks sample). I like the shout outs on MVPs, and I love the way he says ‘players’. The Tower has some Eminem-like storytelling to it, I like the brooding atmosphere.
I think it just tips into a 4, the length is against it, but it really is a very good early 90s gangster rap album, with some great songs and rapping, all with a bit more depth, smartness and tone to it than I expected.
🧊🫖🧊🫖
Playlist submission: Fly By
Ride
2/5
Nowhere
I really like Seagull and Vapour Trail, nice drums, bass and psychedelic guitar haze but the whole album dragged a bit thereafter, it all being a bit one note. And while that My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Stone Roses note is fine, it doesn’t really feel like there is enough there to sustain interest over the whole album. It doesn’t have the immersive wooziness of MBV at their best, or the rhythmic interest of SY, or the pop nous of the Stone Roses (and while he’s not that much worse a singer than Ian Brown, the vocals have very little character to them), so it just kind of flattens out into one monotone 8 tracks, with only Seagull and Vapour Trail really emerging from the soup
I can’t really see myself revisiting this. There’s a couple of good songs, but it's just not that interesting overall for me.
🚲🚲
Playlist submission: Vapour Trail
Love
2/5
Da Capo
This was a bit of a struggle, the whimsical psychedelia not really piquing my interest, all just feeling a bit trite.
Forever Changes I liked, and gave it a 4, but nothing on here is as good as anything on that, the only thing I really liked was the long but enjoyable Revelation, which had a nice groove and some decent guitar lines and runs.
It also doesn’t sound quite as good as I remember FC sounding, the drums feel a little insubstantial in the left channel and some of the mixing seems a bit scattergun, although there is a nice, round bass tone.
I will revisit Forever Changes, but I don’t think I’ll come back to this, the winsomeness just overpowers it for me
👨❤️💋👨👨❤️💋👨
Playlist submission: Revelation
Lana Del Rey
4/5
Chemtrails Over the Country Club
I don’t really know much about Lana Del Rey, only the name and the odd song on the telly and radio, but I really enjoyed this, bits of Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos but with a more conventional pop style with some lovely country accents, and nice polished, atmospheric sheen.
The first 5 or so songs in particular are great, White Dress builds to a lovely chorus, the title track, like many of the songs, has a nice, sombre and subdued atmosphere. Tulsa Jesus Freak is very good in a breathy, percussive way with another nice build. Let Me Love You Like a Woman is my stand out, one of those great songs that sounds like it’s always existed. Dark But Just a Game is a lovely bit of pop music with a nicely minor key shimmer to it.
I like Yosemite and Dark Till We Die in the back half, the folkiness of the former and jazziness of the latter are a nice break from the prevailing sound of the album. And the cover of For Free is very good, another downcast and subdued atmosphere.
It doesn’t always to vary much from the piano with country-ish guitar licks template, but it works well, it doesn’t seem to get out of 2nd gear, but it never feels like it needs to, there are enough little pop hooks and moments that stop it feeling dirge-like and it’s a very enjoyable album.
Despite a bit of a tail off after the first half, there’s more than enough good stuff on it to tip it to a 4
✈️✈️✈️✈️
Playlist submission: Let Me Love You Like a Woman
Everything But The Girl
1/5
Idlewild
Jesus, I thought EBTG were a kind of coolly detached dance inflected pop band with a great singer. And while Tracy Thorn’s voice is excellent on this, musically this is the worst type of insipid, soporific, bland, self satisfied, soulless, hotel lobby, hold music to the point of feeling like an utterly pointless album.
Not fun at all.
👎
Playlist submission: These Early Days
Bobby Womack
2/5
The Poet
His voice is superb, the production is very 80s, which I think would be ok if there were perhaps a few more, better songs that were worthy of his vocals and charisma, but as it is, that sound just ends up being a bit too distracting, the bass on Lay Your Love on Me, the synth wobbling away on Secrets, the bass again on Where Do We Go From Here. So Many Sides of You was surely inspired by Master Blaster (Jammin’), but it’s nowhere as good and ends up feeling rather cheesy. And even when the song is arguably the best on the album, e.g. Just My Imagination, a great, melancholic song, with nice country slide, the bass feels a bit much and slightly detracts from the overall.
The most overtly 80s funk track, Stand, conversely works really well though, as it feels like a song written for that sound rather than one embellished by the production. And although I’m not as keen on the melody of Games, its relatively pared back instrumentation sounds nice in comparison, as it does on the slightly stronger ballad, If You Think You’re Lonely Now.
Tricky one to rate, perhaps harshly I think it falls to a high 2, there just aren’t quite enough good songs to push past the production, despite his excellent voice, and, sadly, I don’t think I will come back to it.
🧀🧀
Playlist submission: Just My Imagination
Nirvana
5/5
In Utero
There are a couple of songs on here, Scentless Apprentice, Very Ape, Milk It, Tourette’s that feel a touch too much like some of the worst aspects of early 90s Grunge, US alt rock, and if they were by Alice in Chains or some other uninspiring band I probably wouldn’t be as open towards them as I am.
Whether it’s due to knowing they’re Nirvana songs or because Kurt is such a mesmeric writer and singer and the band are so great they don’t detract from the enjoyment of the album, they are good songs and in fact they actually kind of support the truly superb songs on the rest of the album, highlighting their desire to pull back from the polished sound of Nevermind, and in retrospect, indicating Kurt’s worsening state of mind at the time.
Serve the Servants has a brilliant abrasive Glam metal guitar sound, kind of wiry and chunky simultaneously. Heart Shaped Box and Rape Me are obviously superb, perhaps the closest to the style of Nevermind, but with an additional heavy, caustic sharpness. The Cello on Dumb and All Apologies is really interesting, perhaps a nod to The Beatles, but it really provides a different shade of weight to the album that more cranked up guitars, drums and bass wouldn't be able to. Along with the superb Pennyroyal Tea these are probably my favourites from the Unplugged album, showing what excellent songs they are.
I suppose it's hard to divorce this from what happened to Kurt 6 or 7 months after it was released, and there’s plenty of darkness and difficulty to it without that knowledge, but it’s the balance of heavy and lightness, with their brilliance as a band and Kurt as songwriter that makes this a super album, and in Heart Shaped Box, Rape Me, Dumb and All Apologies it has some of the best songs they ever recorded.
Straightforward 5.
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Playlist submission: All Apologies
The United States Of America
3/5
The United States of America
On the one hand I like the experimentalism of this and its early forays into electronic sounds, on the other hand it didn’t particularly grab me as a whole musical experience, which is often the case with psychedelia of this vintage - the whimsicality doesn't always age well, despite how progressive and exciting it must have been and how influential it might have been subsequently.
The opening track is the exactly the kind of track I don’t enjoy, psychedelia plus circus music is not my favourite combo, and a fair few tracks do pass by in a bit of a nondescript blur. But Hard Coming Love is good for the most part, a nice bass sound and groove and I like her vocals. Cloud Song has a decent dreamlike atmosphere. I’m aware of I Wouldn't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar from a psychedelia compilation I nicked off my parents, but it’s not necessarily my favourite of the genre. Coming Down is probably my favourite track, some great bass and a nice contrast between the music and her vocals, and in parts it sounds a bit like those early 2000s Nouvelle Vague albums. The closing suite is another of those types of songs I’m not keen on, especially as I don’t like the male vocals as much as the female vocals, and there is a bit too much circus clown stuff happening.
A bit of a mixed bag, and even if I didn’t enjoy it all, it is at least an interesting album with a few nice highlights and a degree of charm to it, and it probably sits a little above some other albums in this field. I’d probably give it another listen in the right mood, so I think it sneaks a 3.
🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
Playlist submission: Coming Down
Quicksilver Messenger Service
3/5
Happy Trails
It’s hard to fuck up a song as great as Who Do You Love, and when they are working with the rhythm and melody on the 27 minute version it’s good, with a nice punchiness to it. But when they veer off into extended solo sections its far less interesting and more aimless, becoming the kind of wank fest that’s only really fun if you are in the band, you are off your tits in the audience or if you are a late 60s rock critic jizzing lyrical about it in order to justify that rock journalism is actually like, you know, an art form, man.
Mona is a much better, the bass and drums are nicely locked in to the Bo Diddley rhythm, the tremolo guitar shimmers and the lead guitar tone is great, with some excellently interwoven lines and runs, even if there is still a fair amount of the more standard acid-blues rock fret tossery.
There’s a touch of Black Sabbath before Black Sabbath to Maiden of the Cancer Moon in some passages, hinting at a kind of ominousness, but as a whole thing it doesn’t seem to go anywhere, feeling very much like the jam that it is. Calvary also has a little Black Sabbath and a little Led Zeppelin over the first few minutes, again prior to either band having released any music, before it moves into a kind of combination of Moricione/Spaghetti Western and blues rock, which I really liked, giving it a cinematic kind of atmosphere. And Happy Trails feels quite throwaway, which I guess was intentional, but it doesn’t really add much.
I wasn’t particularly enamoured on first listen, and I’m not really into the Who Do You Love suite, and there is a fair amount of acid rock self indulgence throughout, but I really like the version of Mona and found myself being won over by Calvary, the Morricone, film sound track feel being very effective if it does lean a little towards pomposity at times. That’s enough to give it a 3, I liked it more than some of the other late 60s blues rock albums, and I’d certainly come back and give side 2 another listen.
🐎🐎🐎
Playlist submission: Mona
Sonic Youth
3/5
Goo
This is the only SY album I had heard before doing this, and its my favourite of the ones we have had, perhaps due to a bit of familiarity, perhaps due to Kool Thing being excellent, but perhaps because it is just better than the others, with the artisness, noise rock and drones being better corralled into more succinct and enjoyable songs.
Dirty Boots and Tunic are a great opening pair, Dirty Boots off kilter catchy melody is nice, and I like Kim Deal’s dispassionate vocals on Tunic are excellent. Mary-Christ sounds similar to songs from other SY albums and it’s fine, but I enjoy how it signposts its riff at the end before the excellent Kool Thing, the standout track.
I like My Friend Goo as well, another oddly catchy melody, and another slightly distant Kim Gordon vocal. Disappear is nice, that riff is great and Titanium Expose I like too - a bit of controlled noise-chaos with some excellent riffing.
Despite this being my favourite SY album I don’t think it's quite a 4, more like a 3.8 or 3.9, i.e. a high 3.
And cherish this one, really savour it, there’s only one more Sonic Youth album after this.
🦔🦔🦔
Playlist submission: Kool Thing
Mariah Carey
3/5
Butterfly
Honey is a superb hip hop influenced R’n’B track, the synth bass and piano hook are excellently bolted on to a winning chorus, even if it does tail off in a classic Diva preponderance of vocal run oversaturation. I wasn’t aware Q-Tip was involved.
Butterfly feels like the inspirational song at the end of a hundred Disney movies, and while the lyrics are undoubtedly cliched and trite, and the melody incredibly overwrought, I can’t help being won around,perhaps against my better judgement, by the undeniably earnest and sincere yet powerful vocal performance.
It never really reaches those heights again, while never being bad and her voice, despite the relentless glissandos, is always great, but many of the songs struggle melodically, and are only really kept alive by her voice, with The Beautiful Ones standing out with Dru-Hill (who formed in a fudge factory I believe)
Despite not having so many great songs I quite liked it and found it all quite enjoyable, despite the cliched diva-mannerisms her voice is excellent, her tone really is fantastic, and it was actually very pleasant to work to, so much so I think I might well listen again, which I think nudges it to a low 3.
🦋🦋🦋
Playlist submission: Honey
Dirty Projectors
3/5
Bitte Orca
This really takes me back to circa 2009, a guy I worked with loved this album and was always putting it on in the office. I wasn’t massively into it back then but it’s definitely a bit more interesting than I recall, even if I’m still not totally into it.
It very much feels like late 00s indie, a bit of Vampire Weekend, a bit of Bloc Party, a touch of math rock and experimental guitar-noise squiggles, which is not my favourite type of music, and despite some good stuff it is a bit patchy, not all of it working, Fluorescent Half Dome being the least successful probably.
Cannibal Resource is a good opener though, and Temecula Sunrise takes a western sounding intro and makes it into a pleasantly wonky bit of indie. I really like Stillness is the Move, the female vocals work a bit better than the male vocals, the guitar line is nice, as is the bass and No Intention is good too, a similar type of track with the guitar and bass doing the same sort of thing as Stillness is the Move. And Remade the Horizon is decent, particularly the outro section.
I’ll go 3, I’d listen again, even if it isn't that satisfying overall.
🐋🐋🐋
Playlist submission: Stillness is the Move
The Pretty Things
4/5
S.F. Sorrow
Musically there's a lot to like on here. S.F Sorrow is Born is a great song in it’s own right, excellent riff, I love the strings acoustic lead with the bass carrying the riff and some very nice Beatles-esque horns. She Says Good Morning has some great guitar with a Kinks feel to it. Private Sorrow is excellent, that flute riff is superb, surely that’s been sampled somewhere? If not it should be, I feel like I can hear someone like J5 rapping around it. I like the driving rhythm of Balloon Burning, again some interesting guitars for 1968. Death has a nicely sinister feel, Baron Saturday is nice and I like the Cream-esque I See You, with its lightly sprinkled psychedelia (and distracting panning). Old Man Going is great, with a real Black Sabbath feel to the guitars and toms. And Loneliest person is a really nice folk-ish ditty with a nicely caustic edge to it.
Conceptually however, why are these sorts of things always so wonky? Not necessarily in the bones of the overall story, but in how they actually tell it? I know they are not playwrights and are working within the world of free wheeling psychedelia, but it always seems gets so wooly and silly and ends up in a sequence of things that happen to the main character, always with one more ludicrous thing that happens, and all tied up with some rather obvious and trite message.
As well as the Beatles (and specifically Sgt Pepper), clearly a huge influence, (see the ‘awaaay’ intonation on Bracelets of Fingers) and the Kinks, the obvious comparison is Tommy. That has similarities of an overall story that kind of makes sense, but told in a way that is a bit lumpen and confusing, but musically Tommy is much better as a suite of music, with passages and phrases coming in and out across the tracks, making it feel like a coherent musical piece. While the music on SF Sorrow as individual tracks is good, it only occasionally hints at the SF Sorrow is born riff and it doesn’t feel like a musical suite to match the overall story.
Having said all that I liked this, production-wise it is a bit ropey, but the songs are good and the story doesn’t really matter as much as the fact that it is a concept album that sticks to its themes, and it does feel superior to a lot of the blues-psychedelic music from the same period as well as some other conceptual stuff like Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake. I think it gets into the 4s.
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Playlist submission: Private Sorrow
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
At Mister Kelly’s
Although on occasion her vocal style feels very of its time, she does of course have a lovely, relaxed warmth to her tone and its truly great voice. And it's nicely mirrored in the understated and thoughtful playing, the piano moving delicately around her voice and the bass and drums never getting too showy or splashy.
Although there are some great songs by some great songwriters on here, I think it works a bit better as an overall feeling and atmosphere rather than as focus on individual songs - there are occasional missteps, and it doesn’t feel as tightly improvised as other albums we’ve had, but the relaxed, undemanding spirit makes it a charming listen, even if it never really gets out of 3rd gear.
I’d certainly listen again if in the right mood, and her voice is lovely, but I think it tops out at a high 3.
👒👒👒
Playlist submission: Stairway to the Stars
Daft Punk
4/5
Homework
As a fantastically constructed set of songs this is great, and has some great memories and nostalgia attached. But I’m not sure it totally works as a whole album, especially over the course of nearly 74 minutes. It definitely feels like a series of tracks, and I don’t think it's quite at the same level as Discovery, Random Access Memories or perhaps even the Tron soundtrack.
There’s no doubt though that they are absolute masters at assembling tracks through layers upon layers of kicks, snares and keyboards, building up the anticipation and excitement through the kick drums - it’s amazing how often they manage to make repetitive, relatively simple phrases and hooks sound thrilling and addictive, most obviously on Da Funk and Around the World. But there are other excellent tracks too, the Kraftwerk influenced Daftebdirekt, the sunshiney Phoenix, Fresh, Rock’n’Roll, the superb disco bass of Burnin’, Alive.
It’s actually slightly tricky to rate, taken individually each track is very good, and in its field it's excellent and of course hugely influential, but as an album as an entire listening experience I don’t find it as fulfilling as each track on it’s own, and it does feel very long by the time we get to Oh Yeah or Burnin’. Because of that I think it lands as a mid-high 4.
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Playlist submission: Da Funk
Khaled
3/5
Kenza
He’s sold 80 million albums! Shows how anglo-centric my music knowledge is.
I’m not sure what to make of it. I know nothing of Raï, but reading about it apparently this is an ‘accessible’ album with elements of western pop, reggae, funk etc. Without knowing his back catalogue or the context I don’t know how accurate that is, but it does feel like those western elements are pretty generic and with the production and playing feeling very very professional polished session musician the whole thing feels like it has been pulled in a very MOR direction - the wah on Trigue Lycee, the bad funk of E’dir E’sseba, the salsa of Gouloulha-Dji - and feels much the worse for it. And let’s not speak of the cover of Imagine (although it's certainly not the worst version I’ve heard)
I assume the intention was to make a crossover album and it may not be a reflection of Raï and his other records, but that polished, cheesy sound does take away from the best bits; the vocal melodies, the North African strings and the traditional instruments, as on Aâlach Tioumini or Ya Aâchkou, that sneak their way in amongst the 5 string basses and keyboards. And it works best for me on what I assume is the most traditional sounding song, Mele H’bibti.
I’m glad this came up as it's a genre I’d never heard of and I’m interested in finding out a bit more about it and Khaled too, but I’m uncertain how to rate it. I’m reluctant to give it a 2 due to ignorance of him and the genre, but the cheesiness of the western elements, and its length does put it in that area. However I think there’s enough in the good bits to make me think about listening again, so I think I’ll just sneak it to a low 3.
💎💎💎
Playlist submission: Mele H’bibti
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Led Zeppelin IV
Hobbit me up, bitch.
Definitely my favourite Led Zep album, their best synthesis of blues-rock and elves and goblins, with one of my favourite ever Led Zep songs in The Battle of Evermore.
But then there isn’t a weak song on here - I suppose if you are only putting 8 songs on the album they all have to be bangers, and they are. Black Dog for lascivious blues rock, Rock’n’Roll for breakneck rock’n’roll, The Battle of Evermore for wailing Sandy Denny and folky mystical Hobbitry. Stairway is of course overfamiliar, but listening objectively it is a stupendously great song. I love the electric piano on Misty Mountain Hop. I’ve never really thought about it until today, but Four Sticks, particularly the guitar, sounds quite like Bodysnatchers from In Rainbows to me? Going to California has that lovely folky lilt and When the Levee Breaks with its oft-sampled powerhouse drumming.
There’s not a bad song or weak moment, it’s a masterpiece in 70s blues-folk-rock. Simple 5.
🔣🔣🔣🔣🔣
Playlist submission: The Battle of Evermore
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
Very
I preferred this to Behaviour, but it’s not as good as Actually, so I think it lands as a solid 4.
As always he has a real knack for very affecting and slightly unexpected melodies, and his distinctive vocal tone sounds fantastic on here. And the base level of songs is high, but it feels like it’s really missing a top notch PSB banger or two, there’s no equivalent of West End Girls, Opportunities, It’s A Sin, What Have I Done, Left to my Own Devices etc.
Can You Forgive Her and I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing perhaps get closest to those songs, Can You Forgive Her in particular touches on the heightened everydayness of their best songs. And Go West is of course good fun.
It does suffer a bit from some slightly dated production, the pulsey beat on I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, the wah wah on the nicely tender Liberation, the synth orchestra stabs on A Different Point of View slightly distracts from a great chorus melody, the bouncing-around synths and sequenced backing vocals on One and One Make Five, the sax on To Speak is a Sin.
Overall though it’s a very enjoyable listen, some very good songs and melodies and no obviously weak moments, but it doesn’t quite reach their best stuff.
🐕🐕🐕🐕
Playlist submission: Can You Forgive Her
Brian Eno
5/5
Before & After Science
I’ve not listened to this one before, and before I saw it on the list I’m not sure I was really aware of it.
It has some of the feel of his earlier albums like Here Come the Warm Jets or Taking Tiger Mountain, and the later ambient albums, like Airports, with some of the mood of the Low stuff he was doing with Bowie at the time, as well as foreshadowing some of the elements of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts a few years later. And that David Byrne/Talking Heads connection is quite striking, No One Receiving, Kurt's Rejoinder and King’s Lead Hat (all excellent) feel a lot like TH songs from the album he later did with them, Fear of Music and Remain in Light in particular share that scratchiness and groove. And if you didn’t know it was Eno you might presume it was David Byrne singing on King’s Lead Hat, which was surely intentional with the song being an anagram of TH etc.
As well as those, Backwater is also excellent, it has some of the wonky pop of Here Come the Warm Jets and a great set of lyrics with canoes, sausages, Peru and Turkish Guru’s making appearances. Energy Fools the Magician is very second side of Low, with its disquieting and pleasantly sinister atmosphere. Here He Comes is great, wistful and melodic.
Julie With recalls Another Green World, I love the arpeggio and synth build, with the gentle release of the bass and keyboard part. By this River, although rather slight, is another lovely, gentle proto-Airports track. I love the delicateness of the synth and keyboard parts in Through Hollow Lands, and I find the whole track rather moving. There’s more Low vibes with Spider and I in the synth and it’s another one with a lovely gentle flow to it.
I was a fan of Eno before we started the list, but my appreciation has definitely increased over the course of it. While not everything he’s involved with is successful, it's nearly always interesting and thought provoking, and when it’s good it’s fantastic, and this falls in that category, a superb combination of arty pop and arty ambient.
🔬🔬🔬🔬
Playlist submission: King’s Lead Hat
Nirvana
5/5
MTV Unplugged in New York
I had it on official cassette, but not sure why I bought it, as I don’t know if I was really into them, it was kind of in that funny period before I got fully into British bands when I had some cherry red Doc Martins. Anyhow I do remember liking it at the time, listening on my walkman in the car on the way to my grandparents, and it is of course still excellent today.
Although it stretches the definition of unplugged, it does show how great Kurt’s songwriting was that the original songs all work brilliantly in stripped back form, carried by superb vocals and excellent almost jazz like softness to Grohl’s drumming. And the choice of covers is superb too, the three Meat Puppets songs, in particular Lake of Fire and Plateau are excellent and I love Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam, the accordion is superb, giving the song a lovely swell.
It’s hard to pick a favourite song, and there is not a weak track at all, but All Apologies and Dumb are both particularly mesmeric to me, as on In Utero the plaintiveness of the cello is so good.
Easy 5.
🔌🔌🔌🔌🔌
Playlist submission: All Apologies
The Young Rascals
3/5
Groovin’
I was slightly, and nicely, surprised by the early 70s soft-rock blue-eyed-soul yacht-rock feel to the A Girl Like You, having assumed it would be more psychedelia, less Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Some of that psychedelia surfaces on Find Somebody, but I like the acid-Byrds feel to the riff and the chorus has a fun garage rock feel, it definitely grew on me. I’m So Happy Now is quite Turtles-esque, another nice blue eyed soul feel with some Sgt Pepperiness. Sueno is a bit Love and a bit Mariachi and does feel a little flimsy. I wasn’t that keen How Can I Be Sure, again it’s a bit Love, although the horn line is nice.
Groovin’ is great, I didn’t know it wasn’t a Booker T original, it has some lovely almost samba/bossa nova sway to it. If You Knew seems to hit a similar seam as A Girl Like You and I’m So Happy, a nice bit of soul inflected pop. I Don’t Love You Anymore feels a bit of a retread of Groovin, albeit quite a successful one. You Better Run is good, it has a fun, rough-edged garage rock feel to it, recalling Find Somebody. A Place In The Sun has a nice little melody and groove even if the whole thing feels a little slight. It’s Love again has elements of Love, although I like that it feels like there is a bit more weight to it than some of Love’s more winsome and fey stuff.
I enjoyed this, more than I was expecting, even if it feels like they have 3 types of song they do variations upon, either blue eyed soul, latin groove or garage-rock, all influenced by Love and The Beatles. But enjoyable enough to be a solid to high 3.
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Playlist submission: A Girl Like You
Kanye West
2/5
Yeezus
‘I’d rather be a dick than a swallower’. Dreams can come true! You are a dick!
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this, but musically, over the first half at least I thought this was excellent, a kind of turbo charged Kraftwerk-Afrika Bambataa, with oversaturated sounds and noises, squelchy synths and galloping, thumping rhythms.
Lyrically though, it is pretty much uniformly crass, stupid and wholly without any wit or humour, especially compared to something like The College Dropout. Makes me sick how far we done fell. It doesn’t really make me sick, the man's just a narcissistic Nazi (Nazissist?).
I gave TCD a 4 and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a 2 and I think this falls somewhere between them, although it’s probably closer to MBDTW, as it shares much of the same ludicrous self obsession as that album. But musically, at least before it runs out of steam in the 2nd half, it’s much closer to TCD. I think it is a high 2 - I would listen again, if I didn’t have to listen to him rap. And of course he’s still a massive cunt dick.
💽💽
Playlist submission: On Sight
George Jones
3/5
The Grand Tour
This is his 50th album! And he released 5 albums in a 4 month period in 1965, and released 6 albums in 1962. He seems to have settled into a more sedate rhythm by the time this was released, putting out just the 2 albums a year for most of the 70s. I imagine they are all interchangeable, but I think I’d probably enjoy them all interchangeably too, as he has a great, warm crooner-country voice, all backed up by skilled and sympathetic playing, and overall it hits a nice vein of cosy wistfulness, and it's done and dusted in under 30 minutes.
It’s not hugely remarkable, and the songs don’t stray too far from the template, but it is very pleasant, and if I’m in the mood for some easy listening country I’d definitely reach for this, making it a solid to high 3.
🪽🪽🪽
Playlist submission: Borrowed Angel
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Blood & Chocolate
I don’t think I’ve heard this album before, I think I’ve tended to check out after Get Happy!!/Trust.
It’s much more energetic than I expected and much more akin to the early albums with its wiriness, caustic attitudes and surprisingly catchy melodies, which makes sense with it being a reunion with the Attractions.
Uncomplicated, I Hope You’re Happy Now and Tokyo Storm Warning are a great first 3 songs. The direct simplicity of Uncomplicated with its organ line is excellent, I Hope You’re Happy Now develops into an extremely catchy melody and some superb bass, and Tokyo Storm Warning is another catchy, lively rocker, with some impressively petty and mean spirited lyrics.
It feels a bit uneven after that. I know I Want You is highly regarded by fans, but it doesn’t do a great deal for me, and the lyrics venture past mean spirited into just nasty and Honey, Are You Straight or Are You Blind while energetic feels a bit lumpen. Blue Chair is good, although its closeness to Manic Monday with hints of Oliver’s Army is a bit distracting. Battered Old Bird feels like a cousin to Blue Chair in some ways, but I find it a bit of a slog to get through, and, despite them being decent enough, I feel similarly about Crimes of Paris and Poor Napoleon. Next Time Around is a return to the form and the energy of the first side, with a great melody, excellent bass and keys and backing vocals. It also feels like it might have inspired Stand by REM
The playing is excellent throughout, and his vocals are great, and despite some very good songs it does sag a bit and feels a level or two below his first 3 albums, so I’ll go for a high 3.
🍫🍫🍫
Playlist submission: Tokyo Storm Warning
Underworld
5/5
Second Toughest in the Infants
Never listened to this before, despite liking Underworld and it being from peak Trainspotting/Born Slippy times.
It feels like it shares a lineage with Orbital, taking Kraftwerk, Eno, House, Techno and Electronica and making something that feels like an album with suites and passages and movements. It is long, but it doesn’t feel like it, using the full 74 minutes fully, flowing though moods and feelings at its own pace, never hurried, but never treading water or getting stuck. House, Jungle, Drum’n’bass, Ambient all rub shoulders, sometimes forcefully, sometimes subtly, all with a meticulous sense of detail and consideration, and layered with a sense of pop craft.
There’s some great instrumentation and little hooks scattered, the synth/organ part in Confusion The Waitress, the slide guitars in Banstyle/Sappys Curry and Blueski, the sequenced piano on Juanita: Kiteless: To Dream, the synth part on Air Towel, the thumping dance of Rowla. I
I think this is fantastic, maybe the best dance/electronic album I’ve heard, combining great hooks and moody atmospheres with complexity and thoughtfulness. Easy 5.
👶👶👶👶👶
Playlist submission: Confusion The Waitress
Femi Kuti
3/5
Femi Kuti
This very much feels like 10 tracks stretched over 73 minutes, the length and similarity of each track kind of merging into one long track, even if it always sounds nice.
But it hasn’t really grabbed me in the way other albums adjacent to this have. Partially that’s due to the length of each track and how little the sound varies, but I think it’s also to do with how busy it all is. There’s a lot going on, and the jazzy sax and horns in particular don’t quite do it for me, edging it from exuberant and fun into slightly too much. It feels like it could do with a couple of sparser tracks or passages or moments to create a bit more light and shade and allow some of the instruments and songs to breathe a little.
Still it’s a pleasant enough album, 3.
📯📯📯
Playlist submission: Wonder Wonder
Grizzly Bear
2/5
Veckatemest
The amazing new album from The National Grizzly Beasts Collective On Drugs.
I enjoyed the first few songs, the influences of The Beach Boys, Love and 60s psychedelia combining to make some very pleasant psych-folk, Southern Point in particular has an excellent folky pulse and groove, and the harmonies and wonky piano combo on Two Weeks is great. I quite like All We Ask to, it has a nice sense of charm to it. But after that it feels like it takes a nosedive into a very generic, very twee and wet late 00s indie sound and feel, and it's a bit of a drag, feeling very long, with nothing as good as the first two songs to perk things up. Even something like Cheerleader, which starts promisingly enough fades into a kind of forgettable vagary of a song, the interest in the initial riff just getting lost.
Like a lot of that late 00s stuff it’s well made and nicely considered, and not unpleasant, but ultimately I’m just not that into the genre and style. I doubt I would come back to it so I’ll go 2.
🐻🐻
Playlist submission: Southern Point
SAULT
4/5
Untitled (Black Is)
I’m familiar with some of this as they play Sault a lot on 6 Music, and the bits I do know, like Wildfires, I really like.
The drumming/rhythms/percussion throughout is fantastic, and I love the instrumental touches throughout like the synths on something like Eternal Life or Only Synth in Church, the piano on the Sly Stone-esque Pray Up, Stay Up. It makes sense that Kiwanuka is involved in parts of it, as it shares the same vintage soul feel, but combined with more modern r’n’b sound, as well as soul, funk, pop, rock and with some psychedelic strokes here and there.
Wildfires shares some of the same feel as The Smoke by The Smile, in its slinky bass groove and jazzy drums, and that combination of bass and percussion stands out on multiple tracks, like the excellent Bow with it’s fantastic 60s-ish guitars, the sad and mournful Why We Cry Why We Die and the organny Monsters. Miracles is a great track, with slightly doo-wop, very early 60s Motown feel with some lovely guitar. Stop Dem is another interesting track, with it’s slightly discordant feel, and there’s elements of The Doors in the 5 to 1-esque sections of Hard Life. Sorry Ain’t Enough has a nice 90s soul feel, a bit Lauryn Hill, with some more excellent drumming.
It perhaps is a few too many tracks for its 56 minutes, but it is a great album, and I’ve listened to it a lot over the last day or so. Easily a high 4, keen to revisit.
🖤🖤🖤🖤
Playlist submission: Bow
Red Snapper
2/5
Our Aim Is To Satisfy
I was kind of curious about this. I’d never heard of them but I saw that they were on Warp, so I thought they might be interesting, while also looking at the name and cover made me think they might be another one of those late 90s early 2000s electro also rans.
It ultimately lands somewhere in the middle though. I really like the live drum sounds, particularly on Keeping Pigs Together, Don’t Go Nowhere and The RakeXXXXX, and I very much enjoyed the clit’n’thigh song, coming out of nowhere with no warning or subtlety. And there is some nice bass playing and some nice atmospherics, Bussing has some great gentle, downtempo passages and Alaska Street has a nicely unsettling late night in the city feel.
But it's hard to shake the feeling of aimlessness to much of it, and that it’s not quite as good as the music it’s influenced by. Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead are all much better at conjuring atmospheres of dread and urban unease and are rhythmically more interesting, and Primal Scream on things like Vanishing Point are much better at the louche, bass driven electro-rock.
If I had been aware of this when it came out I think I would have really liked it, but now I’m not so sure. It’s fine, but ultimately a little forgettable, apart perhaps from the enjoyable fruity The Rough and the Quick. It’s on the edge of 2 and 3, but I’m not sure I’ll come back to it and there are albums in the style I put well above it. Out of 10 this would be a nailed on 5, but perhaps a bit harshly I’ll round down to a high 2.
🐟🐟
Playlist submission: Keeping Pigs Together
Calexico
4/5
Feast of Wire
I absolutely LOVED this album when it came out, but I’m not sure I’ve really revisited it that much over the last 22 or so years.
Listening now it very specifically takes me back to 2003, and I’m also glad to say, nostalgia aside, that I think it still holds up as a very fine album of Western-Americana-Indie-Folk-Rock-Pop. The country twangs, Tex Mex horns and overall deserty feel are all deployed skillfully, never feeling gimmicky and giving the whole thing a lovely, dusty, lived in ambience.
The songs I remember most clearly are Sunken Waltz, Quattro, Black Heart and Not Even Stevie Nicks, and those still remain the stand outs, bearing lovely melodies and atmospherics, but there are other great tracks too, Across the Wire is lovely and of the many instrumentals Pepita and Close Behind are nicely evocative and Attack! El Robot! Attack! And Crumble add a great bit of jazziness.
I’m glad I still liked this, and happy to give it a high 4.
🤠🤠🤠🤠
Playlist submission: Not Even Stevie Nicks
808 State
3/5
90
Pacific, in its many remixes, is a superb track, probably the strongest one on here, although I enjoyed the overall late 80s synthy house and techno vibes. It’s a fun listen and you can hear a lot of what came after this, like the Chemical Brothers and the other mid 90s dance bands and acts.
Magical Dream has a very Italia 90 highlight video feel, which is a good thing, there’s a bit of New Order to it and some fun squelches. Ancodia carries on the upbeat vibe, maybe taking some of Soul II Soul and adding a bit more house, as well as a nice synth hook. I like how Cobra Bora ups the tempo, although some of the orchestra synth hits sound a bit dated with modern ears. Pacific really is fantastic, the wailing sax pairs brilliantly with the propulsive bass and rhythm pattern.
It slightly tails off in the 2nd half, although I like the riff in the middle of Donkey Doctor, and 808080808 has a nicely manic Mario Bros feel to it. Sunrise feels like an attempt at another Pacific without quite getting there and The Fat Shadow also feels like a bit of a retread of what’s come before.
Still, it’s a fun album with some great rhythms and hooks, and it doesn’t outstay its welcome with its 39 minute run time, and it has clearly been influential on a lot of bands I like. Not sure it’s quite a 4, so a high 3 it is.
🌊🌊🌊
Playlist submission: Pacific 202
Marvin Gaye
3/5
Here, My Dear
Taken individually, there are some excellent tracks on here. More overtly late 70s than, say, What’s Going On, with disco and funk elements added to the string laden soul, creating a very smooth overall sound. And his vocals, as you would expect, really are superb - sweet and mellifluous, but with a hint of bite (and a large dollop of self pity) that reflects the subject matter and circumstances of the album.
But taken as a whole, the lack of real variation in tempo, melodic style and instrumentation, does make it kind of merge into one sound, especially as there are a couple of repeating tracks and motifs, and then the fact that it's also 14 songs pretty much moping on about the same thing over and over makes it feel like harder work than it should.
A little bit conflicted in how to rate it. I do like it musically, but I would prefer some variance, the overall sound is smooth and sweet, and his voice never disappoints, there are some excellent harmonies and doo-wop monents, but it is long and quite one note melodically and thematically. I think I’ll settle for a solid 3.
🗿🗿🗿
Playlist submission: When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You
Donovan
3/5
Sunshine Superman
FYI I listened to the original US release.
I always enjoyed the Donovan Best Of I used to have, but have never really delved into any of his albums. This is an interesting listen, if a little uneven. The psychedelic and folkish-mystical whimsy occasionally pushing things off course for me, Legend of a Girl Child Linda, Guinevere and Celeste being the most culpable in that regard. I think it fairs better when it marries Indian Instruments to folk-ish guitars or is more folk-bluesy.
The double bass harpsichord combo on Sunshine Superman is excellent, it's obviously a great song, even if the recording sounds very very wobbly and the fade out is amateurishly abrupt. Three Kingfishers I really like, the folk guitars and Indian instrumentation work really well together. And it’s also the drinks order at an Indian restaurant, which nicely completes the yin and yang of time being a flat circle. I really like Ferris Wheel too, particularly the chorus. ert’s Blues probably edges too far into whimsy for me, the clarinet and harpsichord feeling a little too on the nose. Season of the Witch is the other obviously well known track and it is a brilliant bit of folky-bluesy- mid 60s British psychedelia, with some excellently toned bass. I like The Trip, powered by a nice bassline and some echoey guitars. I like the bass and sitars on The Fat Angel and the ‘far out’ lyrics man.
It’s interesting how it is held up as companion to Pet Sounds and Revolver, having been recorded before Revolver, and while it has its moments, and is far more interesting than a lot of contemporaries self consciously dabbling in psychedelic music, it just doesn’t have the consistency of songwriting and song quality as the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and sonically it sounds very rough in comparison.
I think that adds up to a high 3, it’s not quite something I will return to that often
🦸🦸🦸
Playlist submission: Season of the Witch
Mekons
4/5
Fear & Whisky
This feels a bit like Sandinista-era Clash, with an added dose of Don’t Stand Me Down era Dexy’s and a bit of Adam Ant, all filtered through a punk-country sensibility, and I like it.
I love the fiddle and percussion, there are some excellent guitar parts and runs and some nice harmonies and backing vocals, but I really like the bass playing, with its great tone and melodic rhythms. Chivalry is a great upbeat opener, Trouble Down South has a lovely offbeat sensibility, Hard To Be Human Again displays their scratchy post punk roots. Darkness and Doubt brings the fiddle back with some slightly atonal melodies, and some oddness carries on with Psycho Cupid, with it’s kitchen sink drama style narration and wailing backing. Country is great, it reminds me a bit of Big Audio Dynamite or Aztec Camera. Last Dance is great, I love the fiddle, chorus and guitars in particular. And the cover of Lost Highway is pleasingly charming, a bit punky, a bit ramshackle, capturing the wandering spirit of the song.
It's interesting reading about The Mekons that they, Delta 5 and Gang of Four all came from the same group of students
I’m very much into their loping, drunken take on country, echoing with punk, reggae and post-punk, and the sense that I wasn’t sure whether they are serious or taking the piss. Maybe that they fall somewhere between the two is why I like it so much. Solid 4.
🥃🥃🥃🥃
Playlist submission: Chivalry
The Undertones
4/5
Hypnotised
Quite partial to The Undertones and I’ve always liked Fergal Sharkey’s voice, and like him more now that he campaigns to try and get chicken shit out of our rivers.
My Perfect Cousin and Wednesday Week are really the only songs I was aware of prior listening, but there are some gems on here. I presume the title of More Songs About Chocolate and Girls is a reference to More Songs about Buildings and Food, and it’s a great track, and a perfect example of them hitting that sweet spot of pop-punk that captures the yearnings and feelings and frustrations of adolescence, but with a smart, knowing viewpoint. It carries on much in that vein, There Goes Norman feels like it shares a kinship with My Perfect Cousin, and What’s With Terry, as a nicely drawn character sketch, See That Girl has Kinksy pre Britpop stomp, Whizz Kids is another great slice of power-pop-punk.
The Way Girls Talk and Wednesday Week add a lovely dose of lower tempo melancholy, but allied with their knack for melody, hooks and memorable choruses. My Perfect Cousin is of course a brilliant, brilliant song, I just love the way he pronounces University Challenge. Girls That Don’t Talk is another lovely power pop track with a great riff.
The only real misstep is the cover of Under The Boardwalk, which while fine, with its punkish reggae lilt, feels a bit superfluous, but it doesn’t detract from a great, fun album of fine. knowing punk pop. Solid 4.
😵💫😵💫😵💫😵💫
Playlist submission: My Perfect Cousin
Kings of Leon
3/5
Youth & Young Manhood
I remember really liking this when it came out, right after the Strokes and White Stripes, with the same garage punk sensibility, but with a more bluesy, southern rock feel, which very much appealed to me back then.
Listening now, it definitely still has a very appealing energy and directness, and the Stonesy riffs and licks still carry some charm, but overall it feels like it's missing some weight and substance. Whether it’s because we know what they kind of developed into, but it does feel a little insubstantial, the style is more of a veneer that something more profound
Still there are some enjoyable songs if you don’t really think too much about it; Red Morning Light, Wasted Time, Joe’s Head (love the Allman Brothers guitars on this one), California Waiting, Molly’s Chambers, Dusty are all fun.
I think this falls right in the middle of the 3s - some fun riffs and songs, a nice bit of nostalgic fluff but a confection that isn't all that satisfying.
👑👑👑
Playlist submission: Wasted Time
The Byrds
4/5
Fifth Dimension
I love the loping drums on 5D, as well as the organ, they feel rhythmically and sonically like a confident step forward from Turn, Turn, Turn, adding a shade of psychedelia without passing into whimsy or silliness.
It seems to oscillate thereafter between reaching further into psychedelic infused folk rock and their more standard sound of previous albums, perhaps reflecting a bit of indecision following the loss of a songwriter as great as Gene Clark. When it all comes together, as on 5D and as on the fantastic 8 Miles High it is great, but it is undoubtedly a slightly uneven album in terms of overall song quality, and it certainly tails off after 8 Miles High with the version of Hey Joe, the throwaway Captain Soul and the slightly aimless 2-4-2 Fox Trot. Only John Riley really seems to work amongst these, the strings and bass are excellent.
Up to Eight Miles High there are some gems though, the version of Wild Mountain Thyme is lovely, the strings feel a bit overwrought at first, but they are lovely against the typical Byrdsian harmonies. Mr Spaceman is a great bit of catchy country-rock. I See You is an interesting combination of their ‘traditional’ sound with some psychedelic 12 string and a repeating Rain like chords in the verses - it’s a great track and a real grower, maybe aided in this instance by the slight feel of being caught between two stools. I quite like Crosby’s What’s Happening, although I think he did this sort of thing better on the solo album of his we had a while back. I like I Come and Stand at Every Door too, it’s a bit of a grower, the droning feel and thumped snare give it a mournful feel, and again it feels slightly caught between different ideas.
It’s obviously not their greatest album, but it’s probably one of their most interesting, and I think its a solid 4. It’s notable how early they were to sounds that would become more prevalent through 1966 and 1967, and you can really feel the influence of Rubber Soul - it’s funny how some tracks recall Rain, which was actually released between them finishing recording and then releasing the album. Maybe George slipped them an acetate or something.
🦆🦅🦉🦜
Playlist submission: 8 Miles High
The Pogues
5/5
If I Should Fall From Grace With God
I loved Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, and really enjoyed this, carrying the same sense of ramshackle, charming and exuberant celtic-punk energy, although the playing is perhaps a bit tighter on this one. I think his vocals are slightly better on this than RS&L too, they still have the idiosyncratic and characteristic slur, but they seem fuller and brighter, with a better sense of melody
Stylistically it's a bit more all over the shop, but in a nice way, even though whichever way they kick off a song, whether with middle eastern sounds on Turkish Song of the Damned or Jazz and Salsa on Fiesta it often just turns into a full-bore Irish stomp.
As on RS&L they manage to pull the same trick of putting heartfelt tracks next to the ebullient jigs and reels, eg Bottle of Smoke moving into the sourly tender Fairytale of New York, or Metropolis transitioning into the empathetic and brilliant Thousands Are Sailing, or Streets of Sorrow and Lullaby of London following Fiesta and the medley of The Recruiting Sergeant, etc.
I don’t think it's because of the presence of Fairytale of New York, but this feels like a wintery album, all hot, rammed, sweaty pubs and stumbling out into the cold and wet street.
I gave RS&L 5, so I think it’s fair to give this a 5 too. Although I think I might just about prefer RS&L this feels like a progression, while still maintaining the charm and excitement of that one.
✝️✝️✝️✝️✝️
Playlist submission: It’s Fairytale of New York, even if it is now only really tied to Christmas.
Soft Cell
4/5
Non Stop Erotic Cabaret
Sex Dwarf!
I really didn’t like Tainted Love in my childhood and teens, but now I love it. Obviously it’s a great song to begin with, but the synth pads and the hand claps at the end of each line are a remarkable work of earworming, taking the hint of them in the original, and turning them into a hook on their own. And there are hooks and earworms all over this, the bassline on Seedy Films, the pitch shifting on Sex Dwarf, the synth line on Entertain Me, the HI NRG pulse and chorus of Chips on My Shoulder, the synth bass again on Bedsitter. And I only really became aware of Say Hello Wave Goodbye after David Gray’s version, but it is a great track, with a naive but affecting melodramatic charm.
I love the palpable Punk/DYI ethos being put into synth music. It’s definitely a bit wonky in places, especially the vocals, belying the budget and time period, but a lot of it still feels very modern. You can definitely hear the commonalities with their contemporaries, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, PSB, the Human League et al, but I like how this has an almost comical amount of seediness, playing around with glitz, squalor, escape and being trapped all wrapped up in melodramatic adolescent emotions. I don’t know how much is tongue in cheek, but there seems to be a bit of deliberate provocation, perhaps poking at moral panic, especially on things like Seedy Films and Sex Dwarf
It’s right on the edge of 3 and 4. It’s very catchy with a seedy, wonky, naive charm. Think it just about edges a 4.
💦💦💦💦
Playlist submission: Sex Dwarf!
Mike Oldfield
4/5
Tubular Bells
I’m sure I’ve listened to this in the past, but I can’t recall it a great deal, apart from the opening of Part 1, obviously. I do remember I had a period a while back where I was quite into Hergest Ridge, the album after this, but I’m not sure why.
Listening now, I can see why it was so popular, it is a great two pieces of music. Slightly pompous in a prog rock way of course, but with lovely passages and melodies. Apart from the piano intro (and recurring motif throughout) on Part 1, I love the bass riff that kicks in around 17.30, and the subsequent build of instruments and voices to the end with the delicate voices and acoustic.
Part 2 I’m not quite as keen on as Part 1, while there are some excellent moments, I’m not a fan of the yelling and howling, and it gets a little too prog, missing some of the subtlety and grace of Part 1.
I very much enjoyed this, it lands as solid 4.
🔔🔔🔔🔔
Playlist submission: Tubular Bells (Pt I)
The Modern Lovers
4/5
The Modern Lovers
Roadrunner is a classic, an absolute banger. I didn’t realise it was actually recorded in 1972, I always thought it originated in the early punk and garage rock period when it was released. Although 1972 does make sense, as you can see the connection with the Velvet Underground with its two chord driving rhythm and detached, stream of consciousness delivery.
That undoubtedly sets the formula for much of the rest of it, but it's a winning template for me - organs, driving, vaguely motorik drums, pulsing bass, drawling vocals and non-linear lyrics. While none of the songs quite match Roadrunner there are some excellent songs. Astral Planes has a nice bluesy boogie, Old World is very akin to Roadrunner but establishes a nice hypnotic sense, and the organ is excellent. Pablo Picasso adds a bit of The Doors to the Velvet Underground, and again has a great, insistent beat. She Cracked might be the most post punk sounding track, despite preceding punk by 5 years, with its scratchy guitars and drum pattern. Alongside Girl Friend, Hospital adds a slightly different shade, breaking the overriding rhythmic pattern, with Someone I Care About bringing back normal service in between, as does the fine closer Modern World, with its echoes of I Heard It Through The Grapevine.
I very much enjoyed this, a great 35 minutes of proto post-punk garage rock’n’roll, that was well ahead of its time. Solid 4.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Roadrunner
Genesis
2/5
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
I enjoyed Selling England by the Pound, this one, not so much.
It feels all so very long and plodding, and despite there being some excellent musical moments and playing, and despite admiring the surrealistic ambition of it, I find the story itself rather self important and silly and not very interesting, and ultimately I think that just drags the whole album down.
Some bits that did stand out were title track, Fly on the Windshield, Cuckoo Cocoon, the synthiness of Back in NYC, The Chamber of 32 Doors and Lilywhite Lilith and The Lamia (where Rael bangs some snake ladies), but they are so wedded to the overall concept I’m not sure they really stand up as individual songs.
Maybe its me and I just don’t get it, but I don’t think this is for me.
🐑🐑
Playlist submission: Lilywhite Lilith
TLC
3/5
Crazysexycool
It’s a bit dated in places, and the r’n’b cheese works its way through the surface a little too often, the guitar on Red Light Special, the male rapping on Kick Your Game or Take Our Time for example, but for most part I enjoyed this.
The polished r’n’b production allied to some harder edged hip hop rhythms and percussion works really well, and there’s no doubt they are excellent performers, with some great harmonies and rapping and in Creep and Jason Waterfalls there are two absolute belters on here. Those are the two standout tracks, but they are supported by some solid r’n’b-hip-hop-pop like Diggin’ On You, the rhythmically interesting take on If I Was Your Girlfriend, Switch and the very good Sumthin’ This Way Comes.
But it’s not without low points, the aforementioned Kick Your Game, the skits (apart perhaps from the Busta Rhymes one, and I’m in two minds about the one where she shits in a bucket), the anodyne Let’s Do It Again and the rather cheesy Take Our Time.
I think that adds up to a solid 3, some undoubted high points, and even when it’s not great there are often interesting things happening rhythmically that make it something I would come back to.
😜😉😎
Playlist submission: Waterfalls
Carole King
5/5
Tapestry
I love this album, and as familiar as I am with it, and as globally popular and lauded as it is, it is genuinely remarkable just how many absolutely classic songs there are on here; I Feel The Earth Move, So Far Away, It’s Too Late, You’ve Got A Friend, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, (You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman.
Whether they were new for this album or had previously been released by other artists that's a crazy hit rate, but even the ‘lesser’ known songs outside those are superb. Home Again’s careworn wistfulness and Beautiful’s optimism fit perfectly in the middle of side 1, and Way Over Yonder is yet another superb song, the loping piano and guitar fills are excellent.
I’ve always loved Where You Lead, yet again a great song. Smackwater Jack feels a bit of an outlier in its Dylan-esque story telling, rather than the personal more confessional subjects elsewhere. I like it’s shuffly feel, but it’s possibly the only misstep. And Tapestry is another beautiful track, and I love the electric piano hummering under the piano.
It’s one of those albums that really lives up to its critical standing. I love its simultaneously West Coast Sunshine and East Coast autumnal ambience, with the warmth of the piano and the overall inviting feel of the songs and lyrics.
🪡🪡🪡🪡🪡
Playlist submission: I Feel The Earth Move
Kate Bush
5/5
Hounds of Love
I’ve not listened to this nearly enough, it really is a fantastic album.
It's got to be up there for one of the best opening triptychs to any album, Running Up That Hill, Hounds of Love and The Big Sky are absolute bangers with brilliantly layered synths, percussion and rhythms, simultaneously expansive and intimate. Mother Stands for Comfort is also great, a slight change of pace and mood before the equally brilliant Cloudbusting.
The second suite isn’t as immediate as the first side, its more ethereal and dreamlike, and more of a musical journey, but it's also excellent, definitely rewarding repeat listens, and again it opens with three superb songs, And Dream of Sheep’s piano is lovely, the stabbing strings of Under Ice and creepily cool, before the pointed rhythms of Waking the Witch. Watching You Watching Me has slight echoes of Remain in Light, particularly the synth bass. Apart from the drums The Jig of Life seems to be all live instruments, which is a nice contrast to the songs before and after, and I love how The Morning Fog ends things on a sunshiney, optimistic, folk inflected feel.
Easy 5.
🐕🦺🐕🦺🐕🦺🐕🦺🐕🦺
Playlist submission: The Big Sky
Suede
3/5
Suede
I’ve never really jived with Suede, I do like a few of their songs but have never really found Brett Anderson a particularly interesting singer or lyricist, he’s always bit too Morrisey cos-play for me, and clearly in thrall to Bowie, but possessing none of his elan, panache or pizazz - viz the later rhyme of ‘Filmstar, driving in your car’.
Despite those reservations I enjoyed a lot of this and found myself warming to him, especially on something as affecting as She’s Not Dead or Sleeping Pills. And the big singles are very good songs, Animal Nitrate and Metal Mickey, and there is an overall, slowed down melancholic feel to much of it. But then for great stuff like that there is always something like Moving, where I find his vocal affectations a bit much.
I think the main reason though, that I enjoyed it is due to Bernard Butler’s stellar guitar playing. Whether knocking out chunky riffs or Ronson-esque lead lines or Stones Roses-esque shimmers or Byrdsian jangles, or a whole other host of sounds, it is a fantastic showcase of his skills.
On the edge of 3 and 4, I think I’ll go for a high 3, as I’m still not totally sure about Anderson, but I did enjoy it and I’m interested to revisit it in future.
🐄🐄🐄
Playlist submission: She’s Not Dead
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
Trout Mask Replica
(YT listen)
I have given this a few listens over the years. I’ve never really got into it in the way I have with Safe as Milk, but equally I’ve never really disliked it.
It is of course deliberately idiosyncratic, and the polytonality and abrasiveness of the sound is certainly grating on occasion, but I always felt it had a sense of sincerity to it, that the obtuseness isn’t performative and the music is a genuine artistic expression. Even if it can sometimes feel like they are all playing different songs at the same time in different sensory deprivation chambers.
Obviously it's not an album to kick back and listen to on a busy commute or after a stressful day, but it definitely has its own unique charm, even if as a full 80 minute listening experience it does feel pretty long and uneven. And it’s tricky to pick out individual songs listening on YT, apart from Moonlight in Vermont and maybe Hobo Chang Ba or Veteran’s Day Poppy, and there isn’t always a recognisable difference to many of the tracks, but I do like the bass tone, and there some excellent guitar parts strewn about, when at times they pick up a memorable hook (before invariably hammering it into submission with clarinets that sound like pigs). There are loads of great ideas too, although they are often followed up by things that sound like bad ideas too, but I think that is part of the singular, unpretentious charm.
Overall I’m very glad this exists as a distillation of someone’s musical vision, and there is some high class playing. I’ll definitely come back if I’m in the right mood, so I think it is a 3.
🎣🎣🎣
Playlist submission: Moonlight on Vermont
Stereo MC's
3/5
Connected
One of my favourite ever festival memories is Stereo MCs playing the dance tent at about 3am at Fuji Rock Festival back in 2001. They were excellent, picking things up after James Lavelle had played a terrible DJ set, or had, more accurately, played a DJ set terribly.
With that, and with the presence of Connected and Step it Up, I went into this expecting to enjoy it, which I did. It definitely has a dated streak running through it, a very early 90s, hip-hop and electronica influenced jazzy sound, with strong notes of Soul II Soul, and his 90s rapping style, which can best be described as very white and very evocative of canal boats and those thick woven hoody things. While there’s nothing quite as good as the two big songs, and they seem to very much favour one particular drum pattern, the songs are pleasant enough, with a nice bass sound and laid back vibe, with some nice flourishes, the strings on Chicken Shake were very nice I thought
It's a fun, nostalgic listen, although there’s nothing quite as good as Connected and Step it Up. I think that makes it a solid 3.
🚗📱🏭
Playlist submission: Connected
MC Solaar
4/5
Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo
I liked this quite a bit, beyond just the fact that it's French Hip Hop and therefore comes from a slightly different angle, as musically it sits more conventionally and rather nicely in the jazz-funk, non-gangster lane, clearly inspired by Tribe. There are some great samples (Marvin on Armand est Mort), some excellent live sounding drums, beats and percussion and his flow is impressively articulate and speedy.
My French isn’t what it was, I could occasionally follow the gist, but I did get lost quite a bit. But that didn’t really affect my enjoyment, I like his slightly spiky enunciation mixed with some lovely smooth passages.
Occasionally it sails a bit close to acid Jazz dinner party music, A Temps Partial and Caroline for example, but there’s some great tracks elsewhere, like L’histoire de l’art, Armand est Mort, Quartier Nord, La musique adoucit les mœurs, the two Bouge de làs and La Devise.
I’ll say this just crosses into a 4, it is a little long, but there is some great music, and it's nice to hear any type of music in a different language.
☀️☀️☀️☀️
Playlist submission: Armand est Mort
Q-Tip
4/5
The Renaissance
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this, I thought it might be a slightly dated post-career peak album, but I thought it was great. You can really feel the live atmosphere in the music, it's nicely augmented by some superb samples and interpolations and production touches, and it has a lovely, loose feel combining a 70s blue eyed soul jazz feel with an airy late 00s sound. And his voice is great too, still smooth and laid back, but with a nice older edge to it.
I don’t think there are any bad songs, but the first four songs and the three in the middle in particular are great. Johnny is Dead is an excellent opener, great organ stabs and bass and a nice, catchy chorus/hook. I really like the vocal hook on Won’t Trade and Gettin’ Up is superb, with excellent bass and piano. I love the groove of Official, with its sound effects and smooth feel.
We Fight/We Love has Steely Dan echoes in its feel, Manwomanboogie uses the Can bass and drums superbly, an irresistible groove, and J-Dilla brings his brilliant sampling and production skills to Move. And Norah Jones is really good on Life is Better, sounding a bit like Erykah Badu, with a lovely soulfulness, eschewing her normal blandness. Believe is great too, love the guitar and D’Angelo (RIP) is great on it. Shaka finishes it off nicely, with a reference to Stevie Wonder.
I think this ends up as a solid 4, I’ll definitely come back to it for some smooth, soulful, jazzy grown up hip hop.
🍡🍡🍡🍡
Playlist submission: Manwomanboogie
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Court and Spark
Although I know some of the songs in here, I've not listened to this album before. The opening bars of the title track, although I don’t think I’ve heard it before, are immediately warm and enveloping and comforting, she really does have the knack of making songs feel immediately familiar, as you’ve always known them. I do already know Help Me, but it also has that same feeling of always having existed, and being immediately comforting, like a kind of nostalgic warmth for something I’ve never experienced, even if the lyrics are more emotionally ambivalent by the end of the song.
The brilliance of those two songs continues on the rest of side 1, with the excellent Free Man in Paris, the pen portrait People’s Parties and brilliant piano-led The Same Situation with some lovely steel guitar sounds.
The 2nd side very slightly doesn’t quite match the quality of side 1, purely because the cover of Twisted doesn’t really do it for me, it has just a little too much forced jazz hands showtune energy for my taste. Outside that though the rest of the songs are again excellent. The soft rock adjacent Car on a Hill, with its spacey middle section, is great and Down To You is a fantastic song, the meandering piano line evoking the weariness in the words. Just Like This Train is another lovely track and although I wasn’t initially as keen on Raised on Robbery I came to very much like its shot of bluesy pop-rock. And Trouble Child is great, it has a nice Steely Dan-ness to it, and I presume the title and opening riff is an evocation of Trouble Man by Marvin Gaye?
Even with Twisted, it’s hard not to give this a 5. It's a brilliant album, combining her characteristic shuffling jazzy folkiness, with her idiosyncratic rhyme schemes and uniquely brilliant voice.
🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨
Playlist submission: Down to You
The Smiths
5/5
The Queen is Dead
Listening to the Smiths albums properly via this list, I’m constantly struck by how great Rourke and Joyce are, something I don’t think ever really registered when I listened to my Best Of back in the day.
And I can see why this is considered their best album, it is great from start to finish, whether they're the songs I already know, Frankly, Mr Shankly, Bigmouth Strikes Again, The Boy With the Thorn in His Side, There is a Light That Never Goes out and Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, or the rest, which I don’t (know).
It feels more joined up in tone than some of the other albums, even if it does vary musically from high tempo like The Queen is Dead, and Irish flecked folk-rock like Bigmouth, to the more whimsical music hallery of Frankly, Mr Shankly, to the rockabilly silliness of Vicar in a Tutu, to the moving and stately There is a Light, to more classically maudlin songs like I Know It's Over or I Never Had No One Ever.
They probably have better individual songs throughout their catalogue, but there’s not a weak track on here really, and melodically and vocally it's probably the most consistent of their albums we’ve had. Easy 5.
⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️
Playlist submission: Bigmouth Strikes Again
The Flaming Lips
2/5
The Soft Bulletin
I feel broadly similar about this as I did with Yoshimi, although I think Yoshimi is definitely a better album. I do still like the hazy psychedelia and there are some good songs but overall it doesn’t quite land for me, passing me by in a fug of similar sounds and feels, with only Race for the Prize, Suddenly Something Has Changed and Feeling Yourself Disintegrate really standing out.
Yoshimi was a solid 3, and while fine, this is certainly a rung below that, and realistically I can’t see myself listening again, so I’ll go with a perhaps slightly harsh high 2.
🍦🍦
Playlist submission: Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
ABBA
5/5
Arrival
When I Kissed the Teacher, in many ways is a suitable bedfellow for Does Your Mother Know, and amusingly and slightly ickily kicks off 30 odd minutes of pop melody brilliance.
Dancing Queen is of course a truly fantastic song, the piano, the strings, the synths, the number of hooks, the catchiness, the joyousness. It's easy to think it's been ruined by ubiquity and hen parties, but that doesn't matter, it's a brilliant bit of popular song designed to be enjoyed by as many people as possible.
My Love, My Life is one of many songs on here that feels a bit Christmassy, or at least Christmas adjacent, with the bells at the end. When I Kissed the Teacher also some bells going and Why Did It Have to Be Me has some Wizard Christmas song energy. And Arrival feels very Christmas Special TV show with its bagpipes-ness and ah ah ahhs.
That’s Me and Tiger I hadn’t heard before, but they are both fantastic, That’s Me has a bit of a Waterloo feel with its boogie pop sound, and it has another brilliant hook after the chorus, and Tiger is superb, full of hooks and a great dramatic sense to it.
Occasionally it flirts with sugary sickliness, eg My Love, My Life, but some of the cello strings doing interesting things just about pull it back. And something like Dum Dum Diddle is pretty throwaway, but it's still a great bit of catchy pop.
It’s taken me a while to warm to Money, Money, Money but now I think it’s great, a rolicking euro-drinking disco stomper. And Knowing Me, Knowing You is up there with SOS and The Visitors as my favourite Abba songs, doing that characteristic Abba trick of marrying sad, despondent words after divorce with fantastically catchy and brilliantly structured uptempo pop-rock music.
Despite flirting with some cheese and some throwaway moments, it is an incredibly joyful 33 minutes of brilliant music. 5.
🚁🚁🚁🚁🚁
Playlist submission: Knowing Me, Knowing You
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Rings Around the World
Gosh, another blast from the early 2000s, another CD I bought and listened to heavily but then kind of forgot all about.
I’ve always liked SFA, and their eccentric and wonky pop-rock-electro-psychedelic noodling, and this album is full of it, from whimsy to seriousness and from dance to metal, often all in one song.
The lazy flow of the opener is great, as is the Supertramp electro-rock of Sidewalk Serfer Girl, and (Drawing) Rings Around the World is a fuzzed up belter. But Receptacle for the Respectable is a great example of their leftfield approach, starting off as a great strum along before the horns kick in and after the middle 8 extends into a heavy metal-esque jam, and I love how they get Macca to make an appearance and get him to just eat some vegetables - I presume this is a nod to the Beach Boys, as there are definite Brian Wilson influences scattered throughout.
No Sympathy is a similarly brilliant track, the folk-bluesy first part is superb as it builds to a frantic electronic conclusion. And Juxtapozed with U is a fantastic off kilter vaguely lounge/cinematic influenced pop song with a great melody. Run Christian Run is yet another great lazily flowing melody, again building to a schizophrenic crescendo.
There’s a lot of density to the album, with a lot going on, and not everything works fully, with some songs, despite having some great moments and touches, dragging a little, like Shoot Doris Day and Fragile Happiness, but overall its a great mashed up album.
🪐🪐🪐🪐
Playlist submission: No Sympathy
The Rolling Stones
3/5
The Rolling Stones
It’s not brilliantly recorded, the covers are (from today’s perspective) pretty routine, it doesn’t stand up that well to the Beatles, the Who and even in parts the Kink’s debuts, and if you didn’t know what they would become you might struggle to differentiate this from many of the other also rans in the blues boom.
However it does have charm. You can hear them all feeling their way and finding their feet, and you can see that the elements so integral to success are there; Charlie’s drumming, Mick’s louche vocal delivery and charisma, and the interplay of two guitars. And their reverence for the blues singers (and Chuck Berry) they cover is clearly apparent.
I love Tell Me, and as the one proper original it hints at their songwriting to come, eschewing the blues on the rest of the album for some loose pop-folk-rock with a sinister hint to it, and I love the backing vocals in the chorus, a bit all over the shop but they offer a peek at the woozy dishevellement to come in later years.
As an historical document it's interesting, as 30 minutes of music it is definitely patchy, some of the covers are great, but some are a little forgettable, but it all slides by with a nice, naive charm, with some interesting things happening around the edges. I think that all leads to it being a solid 3 .
🪨🪨🪨
Playlist submission: Tell Me
Dr. Dre
4/5
The Chronic
I love the sound of this, the production is so good, the G-Funk laid back bass and whining noises are all fantastic, and there are superbly memorable hooks all over it, mainly Snoop Dogg’s viz the Bow Wow Wows on Fuck wit Dre Day
Lyrically it’s interesting how often they refer to their dicks, and you have to come to the conclusion that they either have massive dongs, or very very small dongs to justify the obsession, and for Dre to record himself pretending to be shagging.
There is also a lot of focus on Ice Cube, Eazy-E and Jerry Heller, obviously fresh off the rancorous end of NWA, which is fine, but I think they make their points well enough and early enough that I’m not sure there’s much more to be drawn from that well. But by golly they give it a good go.
Outside of that there’s the other usual focus on gangsta rap tropes, and although they do labour the point somewhat, Snoop’s delivery and ear for a vocal hook helps carry it through. And I do genuinely like Deez Nuts.
Despite much of the lyrical content, I do think this is a great record. I love the polished west coast sound, and there are some excellent samples and interpolations, I particularly like using Donny Hathaway on Ghetto Boy, and there’s the obligatory When the Levee Breaks on, and I like the Funkadelic of XXX.
I think that all adds up to a 4.
🪴🪴🪴🪴
Playlist submission: Let Me Ride
Arcade Fire
3/5
Neon Bible
I never really caught the Arcade Fire hype train back when this came out, and have never really given them a proper listen.
Although I’m not totally enthused by it, I think I’ve missed out a little, as I definitely liked it. It is definitely of an ilk with that late 00s US indie sound I’m not keen on, but it certainly has more melodic and instrumental flair than a lot of that music, although there is still a distinct tang of the self importance and self seriousness that informs a lot of that music.
I like Black Mirror as a melodramatic opener, the piano riff strings are great. A few songs reminded me of Echo and the Bunnymen, Keep the Car Running and The Well and the Lighthouse in particular. There’s definite echoes of Bowie here and there too. And I very much liked the Springsteen feel to Intervention and (Antichrist Television Blues), and I enjoyed Ocean of Noise and No Cars Go with its little video game synth.
Ultimately I think this is a solid 3, there’s a fair bit that drags and feels a bit pedestrian, but there’s also just about enough intriguing stuff happening to make me want to come back further down the line and re-evaluate.
📕📕📕
Playlist submission: (Antichrist Television Blues)
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
If You’re Feeling Sinister
I feel similarly about this as I did Tigermilk, although I think I prefer that album, as it had a little more variation than this, which does stick to a quite narrow template musically.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I do find their whimsical strumminess with bite beneath the sweetness very enjoyable. As with Tigermilk there are large dollops of Nick Drake in his vocal tone and style, and there seems to be quite a bit of Nico in there too.
It perhaps lacks a real stand out song, but there is some great stuff; Stars of Track and Field, Me and the Major with its harmonica, the Victoria sounding Like Dylan in the Movies, the stately and pretty The Fox in the Snow, the title track, punctuated by some lovely country touches and a great melody, the vaguely forlorn The Boy Done Wrong and it’s nicely toned descending bass, and Judy and the Dream of Horses balance of sunny melody and bittersweet lyrics.
Although I think it's probably a touch below Tigermilk, it's still a 4, it’s a lovely album.
👈👈👈👈
Playlist submission: The Fox in the Snow
Björk
4/5
Debut
There are times on this when the early 90’s house influences pushes it into dated territory, like There’s More To Life Than This or the synth bass on Crying, but outside that there are some excellent left of centre dance inflected art-pop songs on here.
The more well known songs I was aware of before listening to this remain great, namely Venus as a Boy, Big Time Sensuality and Violently Happy. Big Time Sensuality in particular is an absolute banger.
Human Behaviour is also excellent, catchy but tense, with a slight Industrial Zone feel to it, and a brilliant vocal. Like Someone In Love feels a bit like a foreshadowing of something off Vespertine, and its iciness is a nice change from the electronic beats preceding it. One Day is superb, a great pulsing track that feels a bit like Tricky or Massive Attack. Aeroplane is also great, with the Latin feel to the percussion and the slightly discordant horns, which have a feel of Optmistic by Radiohead. The Anchor Song has a similar later Radiohead feel and I love it’s sparseness and poignancy, a great track.
It’s definitely more accessible than some of Bjork’s other albums, but it still has that experimental, off kilter sense to it, especially with songs like One Day and The Anchor Song. It is a little dated in places and a couple of songs I wasn’t as keen on, but its a solid to high 4.
🇮🇸🇮🇸🇮🇸🇮🇸
Playlist submission: Big Time Sensuality
Common
3/5
Be
I didn’t know Kanye produced this until after I’d listened for the first time, even though his voice is prominent throughout. Listening through again, though, it’s clear that it's his production. It's very mid-2000s Kanye a la The College Dropout but with a greater jazz and soul touch. Samples and interpolations are skillfully deployed, and the glossy, polished sheen is great, exemplified by the superb sound and feel of Be (Intro)
However I find Common to be a slightly dichotic presence, on the one hand I like his restrained and calm delivery, echoing the thoughtfulness of the words and themes (even though does slip into rather trite earnestness at times), but on the other hand I don’t find him particularly compelling, it often seems a bit flat, missing a bit of flair and zip.
The production and those two sides to him combine to make a very listenable album that I will likely listen to again, even though I never quite felt like I fully engaged with it, and there are better examples of this type of album. All that together makes it a 3
🌳🌳🌳
Playlist submission: Testify
The Kinks
5/5
The Village Green Preservation Society
I fully jumped on the wagon when this became a rediscovered hidden gem 10 or 20 years ago, and I still think it’s superb, and fully deserving of its critical reappraisal.
While sounding very Kinks-ian, it's stylistically very eclectic, taking in rock, psychedelic, musichall, pop, folk, baroque and blues, and using some interesting instrumentation to wrap it up with a classical/rock opera feel.
Among the harpsichords, strings, brass and mellotrons there is some characteristic Dave Davies guitar playing, but Pete Quaife’s bass playing is noticeably good, with some very Macca-esque melodic playing, particularly as he uses the same device of plugging his Rick directly in to the mixing desk.
Song wise it’s uniformly great too, with some fantastic melodies and tunes. Animal Farm in particular I love, the pastoral tinge to it is just lovely, and the title track is great of course. I love Do You Remember Walter with its distant horns in the left channel, and Johnny Thunder carries a great energetic wistfulness. Big Sky is also superb, combining some great Dave Davies playing with some ethereal Sgt Pepper-esque passages and more musichall sections. Village Green’s baroque pop with a sinister feel, married to the pastoral, melancholic description of a fictionalised past is a great combination. Wicked Annabella has more great guitar and bass, and I love the creepiness of the riff, echoing the witchy theme.
In fact I don’t think there’s a dud on the album, Phenomenal Cat might be a little throwaway but its is still interesting with a great organ coda, and the Calypso-isms of Monica might invoke Mr Moonlight too closely but I like the Ayay Ayay part, and thematically and lyrically they more than make up for any shortcomings.
And thematically of course is where it also excels, and you can easily see why it's such a touchstone for later bands, particularly and obviously Blur, with its mix of pen portraits and laments for ideas of Englishness. While a lot of the album focuses on nostalgia, I don’t necessarily feel it’s welded to the past he describes, it feels more like Ray Davies wants to find a way to move forward without throwing away the past, but without getting weighed down and stuck in a retrospective cul de sac. And the recurring reference to taking pictures is a really interesting and cleverly used motif, playing with the idea of wanting to record a moment, but what you actually get isn’t real, and is just as easily forgotten and disposed of.
It does sound a little rough round the edges production wise, like a lot of their albums. Often that works for them and the spiky tension between the brothers, but in the hands of a more technically skilled producer it feels like on this album sound could have married even more cohesively with the overall concept.
But that is a minor gripe really, it’s a superb album, and completely deserving of its reputation.
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢
Playlist submission: Animal Farm
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
This is undoubtedly a superb album, and an excellent contrast to the smooth edged and polished sound of The Chronic. On here the sound is gritty with deliberate rough edges and distortion in the sampling and production, suiting the whole group's harsh and jagged delivery, as well as the overall foreboding tone to it, the whole feeling like an unsettling, eerie film.
Although it covers some of the same street violence as many early 90s hip hop albums, their imaginative eye for humour, absurdity and crassness means they seem to come at it from a completely different angle, their jokes and nightmarish observations all being filtered through comics, cartoons and kung fu movies to make something that sounds and feels unique.
And there are just a lot of great songs on the album; Bring da Ruckus, Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber, Can It All Be So Simple (that bass sound), Da Mystery of Chessboxin’, Wu-Tang Ain’ Nothing ta F’ Wit, C.R.E.A.M. Method Man, Protect ya Neck and Tearz. That’s a great hit rate.
Of the group, Method Man, with his smoky, instantly recognisable tone really stands out, his knack for interpolating melody into his rapping is superb, exemplified by the song Method Man, with its references to Hall and Oates, Come Together and the Stones making a brilliantly hooky track, even with the amusingly OTT and tongue in cheek torture intro.
ODB of course stands out too with his unique voice, I love his verses on Shame on a N**** and Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ but they are all distinctive in their own way. I’ve always enjoyed GZA’s focus on non standard hip hop themes, and the combination of Ghostface Killah’s forcefulness and Raekwon’s stories.
But if Method Man’s rapping stands out then, of course, so does The RZA’s production. Sparse, harsh, heavy, but with a light touch, particularly with the judicious use of mainly jazz and soul samples, particularly piano and strings as hooks and embellishments. You can hear the influence of his sound on Illmatic the following year, often using the same hook of repeating loops of 2 or 3 notes. I like how he also brings in some of the piano sample from C.R.E.A.M. in and out throughout and also uses samples of two different versions of The Way We Were on Tearz and Can It All Be So Simple. And he gives the whole thing a strain eerie cinematic weirdness, running just beneath the surface.
It's right up there with Illmatic as my favourite hip hop album, a stone cold 5.
🥋🥋🥋🥋🥋
Playlist submission: Method Man
Syd Barrett
2/5
The Madcap Laughs
This is one of those albums and artists where it's tricky to separate the music from the myth and legacy, but on a pure musical level I struggled to get into this beyond a few songs.
Terrapin is great, the funereal tempo and slide are lovely, and I quite liked the off kilterness of Dark Globe, No Good Trying is a nice bit of droning psych and the organ on Long Gone is excellent. But outside that it all kind of merged into a pot of similarly tempoed, similarly strummed songs, with similar melodies.
A bit of a shame as I was quite looking forward to hearing it, but ultimately I didn’t really connect with it, and I can’t think I’ll revisit, so I’ll go with a 2.
🧢🧢
Playlist submission: Terrapin
Bert Jansch
5/5
Bert Jansch
I’ve never listened to this, and I only really know Angie and maybe Needle of Death.
But it is as much as I expected, i.e. superb. Occasionally, but charmingly, it's a little rough around the edges, but over the course of 40 minutes it's a brilliant, moving and hypnotic album of stellar blues and jazz tinged folk guitar playing.
The fact it was recorded in the producer’s house only really adds to its appeal, giving it an intimate, but loose feel, as though he is actually performing just for you.
Angie of course stands out, as do many of the instrumentals, Smokey River, Veronica, Alice’s Wonderland and Casbah in particular, where his superlative guitar playing really shines, but there are also fantastic songs throughout; Oh How Your Love is Strong, Needle of Death, Rambling’s Gonna Be the Death of Me, Running From Home.
Although he doesn’t necessarily have the greatest voice, it is very characterful with a lovely folky-hushed intimate timbre to it, and it complements the guitar playing and dark tinged lyrics extremely well.
Glad the list finally prompted me to listen to this. It may not be the greatest album, but his playing and the charm of the whole thing pushes it to a 5.
🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌
Playlist submission: Angie is superb, but for some reason I’ve heard it many times, so I’ll go with Oh How Your Love is Strong
Fairport Convention
5/5
Unhalfbricking
Fairport Convention are a bit of a gap in my musical knowledge, so I was looking forward to this.
I enjoyed it upon first listen, but then I found myself absolutely loving it on the second listen, and on subsequent goes.
Genesis Hall has a brilliant, slightly discordant, folk-psych guitar intro before Sandy Denny’s fantastic voice comes in. Definitely a grower but an excellent song. Si Tu Dois Partir unlocks a hitherto gypsy-french quality to the original, and is all the better for it.
Autopsy is a lovely jazzy, folky, bluesy number and Cajun Women carries a fair degree of Dylanism, no surprise considering the Dylan covers on the album (and the expanded edition), like Million Dollar Bash, which although not necessarily my favourite Basement Tapes song, has a nice degree of roughshod barroom charm and Percy’s Song, which suits them brilliantly with its Gaelic folk lilt, a great track.
But the two best songs are A Sailor’s Life, a superbly hypnotic version of the song, combining 1969 superior psych-blues-rock with some old fashioned folky creepiness and atmosphere, and the fantastic Who Knows Where The Time Goes, a beautiful melody sung beautifully, ruminative and contemplative as it leisurely flows by, augmented by some lovely guitar and bass playing.
It’s no doubt a little uneven in places, but it’s completely charming, the rough around the edges feel giving it real character and moments of beauty, and it has Who Knows Where The Time Goes so it makes it to 5.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Playlist submission: Who Knows Where The Time Goes
Marvin Gaye
3/5
Lets Get It On
This is sex music, these are sex people.
I’ve oscillated between 3 and 4 on this quite a bit. The title track is brilliant of course, I like how the theme re-emerges throughout, his voice is expectedly superb and there are some nice rhythmic, percussive elements, particularly on the very good Please Don’t Stay and on Come Get To This and Distant Lover.
But on the other hand, while the overall quality is pretty high, some songs feel a little too meandering in comparison to the stronger songs - If I Should Die Tonight, the aforementioned Distant Lover, You Sure Love to Ball all have a tendency to slip by and not stick as well in the memory. And like Here, My Dear was thematically quite one note, this also rather labours the point that Marvin is very very horny.
I’ll stay with a high 3 - some great highs, its nicely brief and I like it, but it doesn’t quite get to a 4.
💦💦💦
Playlist submission: Let’s Get it On
The Yardbirds
2/5
Roger the Engineer
In general I liked the garage rock, rough and abrasive guitar sound to this, feeling a bit ahead of its time for 1966, and that proto punk-ish energy helps push through what is in truth a rather mixed bag of songs, rather messily recorded.
I’ve never found Jeff Beck to be a particularly compelling guitar player, even though I can appreciate his skill, but some of the playing on here is the most interesting of his of his I’ve heard I think, when he eschews bluesiness and boogies for a more discordant and psych sound, particularly on the non original bonus song Happening Ten Years Time Ago and Under Over Sideways Down.
Alongside Under Over Sideways Down, I liked the folksy I Can’t Make Your Way, the groovily mid 60s Hot House of Omagarashid, the psychedelic drone of Turn into Earth and the Kinksian Ever Since The World Began, but the remainder tend to fall into rather generic mid 60s blues boogies, despite the garagey guitars and the occasional interesting bass line or instrumental passages, like Lost Women.
I enjoyed it, but there’s probably not a great deal to return to so I’ll go for a high 2.
🚂🚂
Playlist submission: Under Over Sideways Down
Buck Owens
4/5
I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail
I really like Buck Owen’s voice - it’s very country, but it has a pleasingly laconic drawl to it. And I really like this album as 30 minutes at the zenith of the mid 60s Bakersfield sound, with the twanging Tele, shuffling rockabilly/rock’n’roll beat and a lot of very catchy songs that would become standards, oscillating between toe tappers and maudlin country sadness. I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail, Let the Sad Times Roll On, If You Fall Out of Love With Me, Fallin’ for You, We’re Gonna Let the Good Times Roll, Streets of Laredo, Cryin’ Time and the cover of Memphis are all great songs, but I actually liked all of it.
It's hard to beat this an example of this particular type of music at a particular time, so I think it just edges into a 4, and I’ll definitely comeback
🐅🐅🐅🐅
Playlist submission: Streets of Laredo
Thelonious Monk
3/5
Brilliant Corners
Not my favourite jazz album we’ve had, but far from my least favourite.
When the sax and trumpets drop out around 3 minutes in on Brilliant Corners and it’s a passage of his brilliant piano playing shifting tempo and harmony it’s superb. And while the quality of the horn playing is obviously great, there’s a tone to how it’s recorded on this record, like it’s slightly distorted and tinny and scratchy, that I find a bit distracting at best and rather irritating at worst.
It mainly follows that similar pattern; some great passages, excellent piano playing, particularly when the horns drop out and it’s just piano, bass and drums (eg around 9 mins on Bar-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are), skilled but distracting horns and slight sense of meandering around a composition.
The Celesta on Pannonical varies this slightly, but again the horns end up taking away from the whole a little and Bemsha Swing has a great groove at least, but I Surrender, Dear is my favourite track, eschewing horns and focussing on the piano.
I think it's a solid 3 - I didn’t connect with it as much as others, but I’d be happy giving it more listens.
🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: I Surrender, Dear
Eminem
3/5
The Marshall Mathers LP
It’s easy to forget what an impact Eminem had, and listening to this it definitely captures that specific late 90s MTV-Shock-Reality-Celebrity cultural moment in a way other hip hop stars didn’t - for the very obvious skin coloured reason.
Often his comedic instincts are sharp, and when aligned with his dark horror influenced OTT style, his obvious technical skill and Dr Dre’s production and ear for a hook it’s very good. Kill You, Stan, The Way I Am, The Real Slim Shady, I’m Back, Marshall Mathers are all very strong. And in particular the triumvirate of Stan, The Way I Am and The Real Slim Shady are superb; excellent storytelling, hooks, production and delivery wrapped up in an OTT mix of melodramatic fun and emotional, confessional earnestness, baiting parental and media led hypocrisy, and studded with brilliant lines.
But too often the humour slips into boring crassness, and his reliance on shock value, especially the casual homophobia that threads through several tracks, has aged poorly, reading today as more mean-spirited edge lordery than subversion. And the problem is that the album's high points are surrounded by a considerable amount of filler. At 18 tracks, with too many skits, the runtime stretches the concept thin, diluting the emotional and artistic punch of the good songs.
Ultimately it feels like a mix of brilliance and a lack of editing. Undeniable peaks, but with a decent amount of flaws. Think it ends up at a high 3.
⚪⚪⚪
Playlist submission: The Real Slim Shady
Crosby, Stills & Nash
5/5
Crosby, Stills & Nash
I was relatively little late to this album, but as a sunshine dappled, Laurel Canyon, beautifully harmonised, country-flecked, melodic LA folk-rock it's hard to beat.
The start of the album is particularly good, with the superb Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, the joyful Marrakesh Express and the hymnal, hushed Guinnevere. You Don’t Have to Cry is also great, it might be relatively slight compared to some of the songs, but it's a lovely harmony rich ditty, and Pre-Road Downs is the sort of effortless mid temp folk rock they excel at.
The second side also starts with a cracker, Wooden Ships, probably my favorite song of theirs, taking in some Down By The River vibes (although these were released at similar times) and marrying it to some kind of psychedelic space story. Lady of the Island might be my only dip on the album, it feels like Graham Nash has a mood but is searching for a melody and it never quite satisfies, but luckily its followed by the superb Helplessly Hoping and the moody Long Time Gone and enjoyably bouncy 49 Byes, a typically Stephen Stills song.
It’s a 5 - it may not be the most groundbreaking album, but for sunshiney late 60s hippie folk rock it's one of the best.
🛶🛶🛶🛶🛶
Playlist submission: Wooden Ships
Joni Mitchell
5/5
The Hissing of Summer Lawns
In France They Kiss on Main Street carries on the vibes of Court and Spark, a brilliant, classic bit of Joni storytelling, melody and rhyming meter, but with the addition of a more obviously busy, jazzy bass, a hint at the more overtly jazz-pop sound and more experimental tone of the album.
Which is overtly displayed in The Jungle Line, with its Moog and sampled percussion. It’s a great track that puts me in mind of some of McCartney II, and although it doesn’t sound typical of her, it really suits her. Edith and the Kingpin continues the feel of the first track, adding more shuffling jazziness and some great guitars and noises and Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow is classic Folk-Jazz-Joni, with superb bass and some great guitar. And Shades of Scarlett Conquering rounds out a superb 1st side with a vaguely Blue-esque piano track.
I love the chorus melody of the title track, and the little guitar/organ motif directly after it, even if it does teeter close to a vaguely anodyne feel at times. The Boho Dance is perhaps the only dip for me, never quite catching my attention fully, but it picks back up on the final three tracks with the superb Harry’s House into the jazz cover of Centrepiece, the transition from jazz-folk to jazz expertly managed, and with a superb vocal, the beautifully folkish Sweet Bird and the atmospheric ARP drenched Shadows and Light.
In some ways it’s a shame it was generated so quickly after the superb Court and Spark. I hadn’t ever listened to this one before, and while it builds on extends the jazzy artness of Court and Spark, it isn't as immediately satisfying, especially listening so soon after.
However this one is a real grower and the 1st half in particular is fantastic, and I ended up listening to it around 10 times, so I think this is also a 5, even if a bit more distance might have made it initially easier to judge it on its own merits.
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Playlist submission: Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow
Ministry
2/5
KE*A*H** (Psalm 69)
Surprisingly I didn’t truly dislike this, even if it's not really my sort of thing, and whatever charm it does have struggles to outlast 2 or 3 tracks, the rest just kind of drifting by unnoticed.
The religious mockery of the songs and the album title seem patronisingly quaint 32 years later, so I don’t think it’s the thematic and lyrical content that made me not mind it, I think it's more that there is a house-like groove and feel to NOW, with the ‘siren’ sound feeling slightly Chemical Brothers-esque and Jesus Built My Hot Rod is a fun, catchy thrash with some knowing silliness.
But that’s really about it, apart from perhaps Scarecrow, which creates a feeling of a foreboding atmosphere more successfully than the more thrashy tracks.
Obviously not going to listen again, but it isn’t the worst of the worst.
⛪⛪
Playlist submission: NOW
Manic Street Preachers
5/5
The Holy Bible
From asinine allusions to religion and suffering with Ministry to something far more real and moving, and a truly excellent album.
I haven’t listened to this in a while, and it’s been great revisiting and remembering how great it is. I like Generation Terrorists’ and Gold Against The Soul’s more GnR inspired sound, but I really like the return to their more British, punk and new wave roots on this. The terseness, scratchiness and immediacy of the music powerfully complements the lyrical and thematic despair, making a simultaneously great to listen to and hard to listen to album.
The lyrical content is of course notable, and without labouring the point, puts the lyrics of so many (US) edgelord heavy bands into a cocked hat, covering suicide, self harm, US cultural imperialism, racism, fascism, disordered eating, and the cheery subject of the holocaust. But it never feels exploitative and despite the bleakness I’ve never found it depressing, it being much more expressive and an expression of Richey’s mental state and obsessions.
I don’t want to necessarily go song by song, but I always loved Yes, Of Walking Abortion, Revol, 4st 7lb, Faster and This is Yesterday (although I never noticed the Jam influence until today), but it struck me how there’s not really a weak song, and James’s guitar playing is as always superb, whether going fully overdriven or doing more sparse riffs and new-wave grooves.
Easily a 5, fantastically earnest and brilliantly put together, there’s not really anything else like this that I like.
✝️✝️✝️✝️✝️
Playlist submission: Revol
Erykah Badu
4/5
Mama’s Gun
I was surprised by how catchy and melodic this was. I do have a general liking of Neo-Soul, but too often for me it relies on more horizontal melodic and harmonic structures, and despite the quality of musicianship and singing on a lot of albums, musically it can feel like it’s very professionally delivered but relatively uninspiring drums and bass and little variation in melodic style.
The fact that ?uestlove drums on the majority of it and has a hand in the production, as well as the rest of the Soulquarians immediately elevates it, and it definitely has more kick and life to it, evident in the first two tracks: Penitentiary Philosophy has a great funk-rock groove and slight Hendix feel, with a catchy melody and her superb vocals and Didn’t Cha Know at a slower tempo has a great bass hook and weeping guitar sound, with another catchy chorus melody and more sweet and supple vocals. There’s a nicely balanced amount of jazz and soul-jazz throughout, with Roy Ayers adding vocals and J-Dilla assisting the production of the excellent Cleva, and the jazzy flutes on Hey Sugah are very nice. & On is also a nice part 2 to the excellent On & On from her first album.
It is a bit long at 70-odd minutes though and it does have a few spots where it dips and flirts with the less interesting, more aimless side of Neo-Soul; AD 2000, Orange Moon and In Love With You all feel a step or two below the rest. Bag Lady & Green Eyes are the strongest part of the 2nd half, although there is a little fatigue at this point from the overall length.
Still, this is an excellent neo-soul album, surely up there as one of the best of the genre, with some great songs, great vocals and excellent, confessional lyrics. Think that all collides and makes it a 4.
🔫🔫🔫🔫
Playlist submission: Didn’t Cha Know
Pink Floyd
5/5
The Wall
As with DSOTM and WYWH it’s nice to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Pink Floyd.
Of all the prog concept and concept adjacent albums we’ve had this is by far the best story, in that it makes a degree of sense narratively and with the wall being the physical manifestation of Pink’s psychological shut down.
It’s definitely overblown and long, and there is a large dose of po-faced self importance, but it’s undeniably a brilliant album, and a large part of what makes it so great is the pompous bombast of it all, alongside a number of superb songs, from the ones I do know, like the recurring themes of Another Brick in the Wall, Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2 and Comfortably Numb, to things like In the Flesh? The Thin Ice, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Mother, Hey You, The Show Must Go On, In The Flesh, Outside the Wall.
Again as I’m not familiar with their catalogue I like how for much of it it seems a marriage of the atmospheric space rock of DSOTM with a leaner, more funk-rock sound, with of course some superbly evocative David Gilmour guitar.
I probably need more time to let it percolate, but, again, I can see what the fuss is about. 5.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Playlist submission: Comfortably Numb
John Cale
4/5
Paris 1919
I liked this a lot, its a very enjoyable, orchestral singer songwriter pop album with a nice sardonic edge and just enough John Cale idiosyncrasy and avant garde pretensions to make it more interesting and varied than other people doing similar things
A Child’s Christmas in Wales is a lovely opener, with a warm, friendly embrace to it and Hanky Panky Nohow really grew on me with its foklishness and slightly melancholy feel to the strings.
It might be at its strongest when it's at its most orchestral; the brass, strings and sweep of The Endless Plain of Fortune is superb, allied to the lyrics about early 20th century European history, the oompah/Sgt Pepper of the excellently catchy title track, the bluesiness and strings of Half Past France, with its moving and thoughtful lyric, I think, about a WW2 soldier fighting in France, and the stateliness of Antarctica Starts Here. But even outside that there are some great tracks and moments, Andalucia is a sweet little ditty, Graham Greene is a nicely off balance Kinksian bit of whimsical pop with a great reference to Chipping Sodbury. Macbeth channels a bit of Ronson/Bowie without being fully successful however.
Overall I really liked this, and it really grew on me. There are some great tunes and some excellent lyrics, alternating between archness and playfulness, and more earnest thoughts on modern European history. Tempted to go 5, but I think I’ll stick at a high 4 and come back to it to ruminate further, and it's a great discovery nonetheless.
🥐🥐🥐🥐
Playlist submission: The Endless Plain of Fortune
The Waterboys
3/5
Fisherman’s Blues
I liked this, combining the drums and bass of their expansive 80s rock with traditional British folk songs and sounds, making an enjoyable celtic-rock album, albeit one that doesn’t stick really too long in the memory.
It’s a bit like The Pogues but with all the edge and chaos sanded off into smooth child-safe corners, and even with the cover of Sweet Thing it also eschews any pretence at cosmic Irish mysticism, falling safely in the middle, existing on its own plane of pleasantness.
I’ll go 3, it's perfectly fine and I’d be happy to listen again, even if I’m not completely enthused by it and it does drag a little by the end.
🎣🎣🎣
Playlist submission: We Will Not Be Lovers
The White Stripes
5/5
Elephant
I’ve not listened to this in a while, so it’s nice to revisit and remember how much I liked it back when it came out. It definitely still stands up, and I forgot that there are some absolute gems on here, alongside 7 Nation Army, which remains a fantastic track with a thrilling slide solo, despite being sport-chanted to death.
I haven’t listened to White Blood Cells in a while, but I feel like this is a bigger, more expansive and slightly more caustic step on from that album, with a more powerful punk-blues feel than a blues-folk-garage feel, and with additional instruments like the bass/not actually bass, organ and piano peeking through.
But it maintains the elemental simplicity that makes them great, and I can’t really think there’s a weak track. The run from 7 Nation Army to the superb In the Cold, Cold Night in particular is excellent, but it doesn’t really dip. I love the piano and slide of I Want to Be the Boy, and on repeat listens this became one of my standouts. Ball and Biscuit is a fantastic, as is the bassy The Hardest Button to Button, and The Air Near My Fingers, similar to I Want to Be the Boy really stood out on repeat listens, the organ giving it a great atmosphere.
You could argue its 10 minutes too long, with a few songs, like Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine, while being very good, feeling a little like retreads of other songs. However that’s nitpicking really, it’s a great album, so it gets into the 5s.
🟥⬜🟥⬜🟥
Playlist submission: I Want to Be the Boy That Warms Your Mother’s Heart
Skunk Anansie
2/5
Post Orgasmic Chill
Never got into Skunk Anansie, although I always liked Skin, and she has a great voice and presence and always seemed cool. And I like some of the singles from the previous album
Listening to this album though I can see why I wouldn’t get into them as it isn’t really my sort of thing. Some of the grunge and punk elements I appreciate, but much of it feels rather too metal/US alternative influenced for my tastes, even if it never quite plumbs the moribund depths of a lot of that music.
It’s not a bad album, and there are songs and passages that I liked; the Soundgarden-ish verses on We Don’t Need Who You Think You Are, the stately Tracy’s Flaw, Lately is a decent track and Secretly is probably the real high point, but much of it does seem to drift by rather unmemorably.
I think it ends up as a high 2, I appreciate some of it, and they are likeable, but I don’t think I’ll come back to it.
🦨🦨
Playlist submission: Secretly
Deep Purple
2/5
Made in Japan
I found a few versions with varying tracklists, but I ended up listening to what I think is the original 7 track release.
I kind of wish I’d stuck to the 4 track version, and maybe just stuck to Highway Star and Smoke on the Water, as they contain all you need from this really. Obviously they are very tight, the organ, drums, bass and guitars are all excellent, but it’s so long and unless you are a big fan of Deep Purple it all feels very inessential, especially as each song is unnecessarily long.
Not terrible, but not that interesting to me, and I don’t think I’d come back to it. 2.
🎌🎌
Playlist submission: Smoke on the Water
R.E.M.
4/5
Document
This is probably the only one of the pre mega fame R.E.M. albums I was familiar with before doing the generator, mainly as The One I Love is one of my favourite of their songs.
Compared to Murmur and Green and to some of the later albums this one stands out as being more tense and terse, with more angularity and edge to it, particularly in the guitar playing, with a harsher tone and spikier riffs. However they can't completely get away from the jangliness - even if it’s more distorted many of the guitar harmonics are still very jangly and Brydsian in spirit.
That slight change in sound also suits the songs, they feel more confident and forceful and nicely move between playful like End of the World and more sincere like The One I Love, also touching on the political with things like Exhuming McCarthy and Welcome to the Occupation. Disturbance at the Heron House and King of Birds are also excellent, the former one of those effortlessly great R.E.M. tracks and the latter with the dulcimer and a clean, dusty elegance.
There’s a couple of tracks I’m not as keen on. Although its a different sound for them I’m not keen on the sax on Fireplace, it feels a touch out of place, and I’m not sure the scratchy, seemingly funk influenced Lightnin’ Hopkins is that successful.
I’m slightly stuck between 4 and 5 - it is great, but I’m not sure it’s quite up there with their best albums. I’ll stick on a high 4.
📄📄📄📄
Playlist submission: Could be King of Birds, but I’ll stick with The One I Love
The Beau Brummels
2/5
Triangle
While this isn’t the worst example of whimsical West Coast psychedelic folk rock, it’s also not the most memorable or interesting, although there are a couple of decent tracks; Are You Happy, Magic Hollow and Triangle all all good, not quite reaching the heights of Forever Changes, but ploughing an enjoyable furrow nonetheless.
Much of the rest of it passes by rather unremarkably, only his aping of Dylan’s intonation and sardonic half laughs, the occasional over preponderance of accordion and the fact that it's well recorded really standing out. I’m unlikely to come back, but I was glad to give it a spin. I think that makes it a high 2.
🔺🔻
Playlist submission: Magic Hollow
James Taylor
4/5
Sweet Baby James
He still has one of my favourite voices, soft and honeyed, suiting his soft-folk guitar playing, and giving his music a warm, soothing, friendly ambiance.
I’ve always tended to listen to his greatest hits, but I am vaguely familiar with this, and of course it contains a few classics in Sweet Baby James, Sunny Skies, Country Road and the still superlative Fire and Rain. I’m not always convinced by the more bluesy songs in his catalogue, like Steamroller. I don’t actually mind it, but there is no doubt that it carries an anaemic quality that makes you think he isn’t actually a truly hot and bothered lover about to mow you down. Oh Baby works slightly better musically, but I still don’t believe in ‘old lovin’ man JT’.
Outside that some of the songs I knew less well I really liked: Lo & Behold is a very nice country-folk bluesy number, Blossom and Anywhere are both similarly lilting, enjoyable soft pop rock tracks
But Fire & Rain really is a superb song, a sad and melancholic song about suicide that is able to balance the specific and universal with a brilliant melody and arrangement, particularly the long low double bass throughout.
I’m not quite sure it makes it to a 5 as there is a feeling of slightness, but this is a solid 4 star singer songwriter country-folk-soft-rock delight - loosen your turtle neck, light the fire, turn down the lights, pour a glass of red wine, put this on and lie luxuriantly on your sheepskin rug.
👶👶👶👶
Playlist submission: Fire and Rain
Baaba Maal
4/5
Lam Toro
I can reproduce much of the review for Djam Leeli here, as I feel very similarly about this as I did that record:
‘It’s hard to describe this other than just a lovely series of hypnotic, beautifully woven acoustic and electric guitar lines and vocals….Those excellent, circular, fantastic-sounding guitars wash over brilliantly, evoking sunsets and sunrises…The songs broadly follow the same template and do sound quite similar, but I didn’t find that a bad thing at all, the sound is so expressive and the feeling they elicit so lovely I could (and did) listen on repeat all day’
I think there is perhaps a bit more variation on this one, Toro has a bit more rhythmic pulse, Daande Lenol has some lovely flute, Hamady Boiro has a bit of funk-rock to it and Minuit goes a bit too cheese rock with the guitar.
Similar to Djam Leeli I think it does also suffer from being a bit long for only 11 tracks overall, but also similar to Djam Leeli its a 4 - some great tracks, a couple of dips, but overall a great listen.
🐑🐑🐑🐑
Playlist submission: Daande Lenol
Joy Division
5/5
Closer
I don’t listen to this as much as Unknown Pleasures, but I should as it really is an excellent, if not always fun, listen.
Obviously the cloud of his death hangs over it and colours much of it - atmospherically and lyrically it is slate grey and relentless. And while musically it echoes that greyness, it definitely feels more dancey than UP, and you can definitely hear much early New Order in it, particularly the synths and drums, although it still has the austere and vaguely oppressive feel of JD.
The tom-toms are immediately noticeable on Atrocity Exhibition (a Holy Bible song title if there ever was one) and recur throughout, and are also great on Colony, an excellent track and the the equally superb Twenty Four Hours. A Means to an End is the template for a lot of mid 00’s indie dance, a brilliant bass and drum groove. The Eternal is very Bowie (both Low and Black Star) and Decades is particularly New Order-esque. And Isolation is surely one of their best tracks, a superb song.
It’s a simple 5, a great album.
🗿🗿🗿🗿🗿
Playlist submission: Isolation
Shack
3/5
HMS Fable
I wasn’t kind of interested in hearing this for the first time in 25 years. I’m not totally sure what prompted me to buy this out of nowhere when it came out, but I guess it was something to do with Noel Gallagher liking them.
I liked it a decent amount then, and I enjoyed it well enough now. There’s no doubt he can write good melodies in the vein of cosmic classic rock scousers in the vein of The Las, Cast, The Zutons etc and lots of Beatles and Love and a dollop of REM make it a very pleasant listen, even if it does start to run out of the steam by the end of the 47 minutes.
Still it starts nicely with Natalie’s party, Pull Together and Beautiful, all nice Sgt Pepper/60s influenced indie pop, before peaking somewhat with the suitably seaborne Captain’s Table and the Irish inflected Streets of Kenny.
I’ll go 3, I’d revisit if I’m in the right mood for some nostalgic easy listening
🚢🚢🚢
Playlist submission: Captain’s Table
Frank Black
3/5
Teenager of the Year
I wasn’t really digging the first couple of tracks, they felt quite generic alt rock, missing some of the melodic skill of the Pixies, but Abstract Plain is great, an excellent melody and nice strings and piano, and thereafter it settles into a nice groove.
Although not every song is a winner, he is clearly a great songwriter, always doing something interesting for the genre and there are some great tracks on here; Calistan, the pop-punky Speedy Marie, Headache, the superb guitars and organ of Sir Rockaby, the dense and heavy footed Two Reelers, the Velvet Underground/Lou Reed-ish Ole Mulholland, the excellent surf-bubblegum pop of I Could Stay Here Forever, the bouncy Superabound, the late West Coast late 60s-ish vibe of Big Red, White Noise Maker, the rockabilly Pure Denizen of the Citizen.
However it is a lot of information at an hour and 22 tracks, and although none of the songs hang around too long, it does feel a bit like overkill by the time we hit the track 12 and 13 mark, with another 10 or so to come. Perhaps a bit reductive but at 10-12 tracks this could have been a real corker, rather than a slightly boated very good album.
I enjoyed this a lot, although I’m not quite sure it gets into the fours, so I’ll go high 3 - I like it, I’ll come back to it, but the mood might not strike that often.
⚫⚫⚫
Playlist submission: Abstract Plain
Def Leppard
2/5
Pyromania
Photograph and Rock of Ages are dumb, but great fun 80s glam-metal-pop dumb. The rest of it is mostly just not very good dumb. A bit like Dre and the proliferation of dick sucking, they sing about rock and rock’n’roll constantly, to the point where you wonder about their insecurities.
I do have a soft spot for Mutt Lange’s production on this sort of thing, he really does know how to make this 80s rock sound spacious and stadium filling, it’s just there aren’t really many good songs on here, with nothing outside of Photograph and Rock of Ages and possibly Action! Not Words eliciting much of a response, so it all feels a bit wasted.
Definitely not the worst album, so it’s not a 1, but I can’t imagine coming back to it, ergo a 2.
🔥🔥
Magazine
5/5
Real Life
I had a period a few years back when I was quite into this album, maybe off the back of Howard Devoto’s appearance in 24 Hour Party People. I think I may even have it on vinyl somewhere in the loft.
But it’s been a while since I’ve listened to it, although Shot by Both Sides is a playlist staple, and it’s nice to be reminded what an interesting album it is, a great intersection of punk and post punk with 70s art rock influenced synths and keyboards - there’s obviously a bit of Buzzcocks to it, but also a nice bit of Bowie and Roxy Music amid the scratchy, abrasive guitars and rhythms.
Definitive Gaze is a great opener, some Dancing Queen-esque piano, some Eno-esque synth, some chugging guitars, melodic bass and a sneerful vocal all make it a brilliant track. Shot By Both Sides is of course a classic post punk track, a great, urgent riff with an excellent bass and organ underpinning. Burst is great too with elements of Low, elements of Bowie in general and elements of early 70s classic rock. I love The Light Pours Out of Me, particularly the big bass sound and that guitar hook. And Parade is probably the most overt nod to For Your Pleasure era Roxy Music, a great wonky bit of arty synth-post punk, with some middle eastern atmospheres.
I like how it’s clearly a post punk album in attitude and spirit, but it pulls on loads of elements of pre-punk and pop music - the vocal melodies may not always be that catchy but the organ, synths, bass and guitars add lots of great, memorable hooks.
It’s right in my sweetspot, so it's a 5 for me.
📔📔📔📔📔
Playlist submission: It’s Shot By Both Sides really, although I was particularly struck by Definitive Gaze on this occasion.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
American Dream
I’m not always that into complaining about the list, but I think this is a bit of an odd inclusion. LCD Soundsystem are a favourite band of mine, and I think this is a fine album, but it’s the weakest of their 4 proper albums, and if there are going to be two LCD Soundsystem albums on the list then the debut album, or for me, This Is Happening are more deserving of a place.
Anyhow, like I say I do like this album, but I haven’t listened in a while, and it’s notable how much of a Berlin era Bowie inspired album this is. They’ve always had a significant amount of Bowie influence, but mixed in with a diverse range of other artists, and I think this probably suffers in comparison to their other albums from that focus on Bowier, especially combined with the slightly dour, downbeat feel it has. Obviously the last track, Black Screen is a direct homage, but I’m sure Bowie’s death, combined with the sense of aging and tiredness, and a similar tempo to a lot of the songs gives it that slightly burnt out feel (as does the slightly unnecessary length of most of the songs)
Still, they are a great band even if it’s not their strongest record and there are some excellent songs - Oh Baby, Other Voices, the Uber-Bowie Change Yr Mind, Tonite, Call the Police, Emotional Haircut and the moodily great Black Screen. And the songs outside that, even if they aren’t as strong are still very good art-rock-dance tracks, and the whole record does have a great sound.
I think this just about gets to a 4, it's too well made with too much quality to go below that, but it’s definitely not their best album.
🇻🇮🇻🇮🇻🇮🇻🇮
Playlist submission: Tonite
Aerosmith
2/5
Toys in the Attic
I LOVE Sweet Emotion, and Walk This Way is a great riff (although I probably prefer the Run DMC version) but this suffers from the same issue as Rocks in it being largely a collection of rather pedestrian to not very good songs enlivened only by some occasionally decent if derivative riffing, and in the context of knowing Steven Tyler, some horribly dirty, grubby lyrics. And it has Big 10 inch Record which might be one of the worst songs in the history of recorded music.
It’s not a good album but despite Big 10 Record it’s not completely awful, and Sweet Emotion is superb, so I’ll go 2.
🧸🧸
Playlist submission: Sweet Emotion
Tom Waits
3/5
Nighthawks at the Diner
The recreation of a smoky jazz blues bar is spot on, but I can’t quite work out whether it’s in earnest or tongue in cheek, and either way I didn’t really care for it that much, I found it a slightly irritating affectation, and it really reminded me of the scene from Weird Science when Anthony Michael Hall is drunk in a bar pretending to be a blues man.
Still, the band are great, particularly the double bass and as it’s Tom Waits, it has a degree idiosyncratically brilliant charm, and some of the songs are very good, particularly On a Foggy Night, Eggs and Sausage, Nighthawk Postcards, Spare Parts I and Big Joe and Phantom 309, all of them evoking the Edward Hopper feel he’s going for.
But ultimately it's not my favourite of his, I think the other albums on this list are a bit more interesting, and the gimmick of the jazz club atmosphere is tiring, so I’ll go 3.
🌃🌃🌃
Playlist submission: Big Joe and Phantom 309
5/5
XTC
3/5
Skylarking
I really thought I would like this more than I actually did. I had high hopes based on reputation and particularly after really enjoying Apple Venus Vol 1, but it never quite landed for me.
I think a major part of it is the combination of the production and Andy Partridge’s voice. Despite being a Rundgren fan it just feels the wrong side of mid 80s pop-rock, feeling a bit too spacious and lightweight and plasticy, it never quite soars who you expect it might, and the nasal tone and intonation to his voice kind of detracts from the melodies and overall feel.
Which is a shame, as often the songwriting and arrangements are very good, with nicely Beatles-esque touches, like the strings on 1000 Umbrellas and the Macca-esque backing vocals throughout, particularly on Ballet for a Rainy Day, and some nice, slightly leftfield synthy quirkiness, as on Mermaid Smiled or That’s Really Super, Supergirl. Dying and Superficial Bonfire are also a nice songs.
But, ultimately I struggled to engage with it, it didn’t strike me in the same way Apple Venus did, and it all feels a bit crusty and Levelers-y, especially when compared to something like Drums and Wires.
I’d like to give it another go in future, so I’ll go low 3. There is too much songwriting quality to be lower than that but I didn’t really enjoy it that much
🪺🪺🪺
Playlist submission: 1000 Umbrellas
Christina Aguilera
2/5
Stripped
This is much better and much more interesting than I expected it to be, and is probably better than it was meant to be, but it is not without a few issues, and I’m not sure it means it is actually a good album.
In the plus column:
Dirrty is a banger
Beautiful, despite being quite cheesy and lyrically platitudinous is a great tune, and I do actually believe the sincerity and earnestness
Can’t Hold us Down is a good bit of r’n’b hip-hop pop
Fighter has a catchy chorus
I quite like Cruz, it has a pleasing 80s power ballad vibe
Although not always convincing, particularly the rock ones, there are a few different genres
In the minus column:
It's a severe victim of CD bloat, why is it 1 hour and 20 minutes long?
That length means there’s quite a bit of aimless chaff that should have been binned
There is a slight monotony of message, most of the songs return to the same theme of power/affirmation/underappreciation/defiance. Not a bad thing but the message is pretty diluted by the end.
The signature wailing, woooah vocal runs get a bit much after 20 minutes
Infatuation is annoying
Makeover is essentially Overload by Sugababes
It’s much better than Back to Basics (although that was pretty wretched), and it is a decent if significantly flawed album, with some highlights and quite a few lowlights. I’m unlikely to listen so I’ll go high 2, not yet a 3 (sorry wrong singer)
🦓🦓
Playlist submission: Dirrty
Living Colour
2/5
Booker T. & The MG's
4/5
Green Onions
The title track is, obviously, fantastic, a classic bit of 60s 12 bar soul-cool, the irresistible combination of the organ line surging and swelling, Steve Cropper’s guitar stabbing and biting and Al Jackson’s excellent drumming and the steady, metronomic bass.
It’s so good it naturally casts a large shadow over everything else, not least the This Guitar Can’t Keep From Crying of Mo’ Onions to the While My Guitar Gently Weeps of Green Onions.
Occasionally the organ/keys verge into Take Hart territory, especially on Rinky Dink and Stranger on the Shore, belying the early 60s-ness of it, but it's still an incredibly enjoyable album, I like to imagine people dancing along to it in an early 60s house party in a small flat in Marylebone in 1963.
Despite the odd dated element, I think it still endures, probably due to the rock solid quality of the rhythm section and Steve Cropper’s super playing on his Tele, with strong elements of country and blues added to the r’n’b feel of it all.
I’ll go 4, it’s a great listen and I’ll definitely be back for mo’
🧅🧅🧅🧅
Playlist submission: Green Onions
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Crocodiles
I’m not sure what prompted me into it, but I bought the Bed Bugs and Ballyhoo best of around A-Levels and I remember being very keen to see them at V97. It was before (How Does it Feel to Be) On Top of the World, so it can’t have been that, it was most likely their Evergreen album from that time.
Despite really liking them I think I’ve only really listened to Ocean Rain, so it's great to listen to this properly. It has all of the elements of what makes them great, and there are some excellent songs in their melodic post-punk moody style, and it’s notable how much of a 60s influence runs through it despite that post punk mood, much like many Liverpool bands from the 80s onwards.
Guitar and bass-wise there are obvious comparisons to The Smiths, in the jangliness and disco-influence, and although this is a little bit before The Smiths, I think Will Sergeant is probably a bit overshadowed by Marr and other contemporaries, but he really is an excellent guitarist
Going Up, Monkeys, Crocodiles, the excellent Rescue, Villiers Terrace and All that Jazz are the real standouts, and I quite like the Doorsian Happy Death Men, but it does dip in a few places, Stars Are Stars, Pride and Pictures on My Wall not quite catching light for me. But it is a very good album by a great band, which I think adds up to a 4.
🐰🐰🐰🐰
The Who
3/5
The Who Sell Out
I really like the Art-School conceit of this and I’ve always read it as very 60s and very Pete Townshend in its interesting if slightly simplistic comment on pop music and commercialisation. And it does actually work as a concept, and notably the jingles and ads feel very much like a free version of a streaming account, or listening to an album on Youtube.
However, those ads and jingles simultaneously disrupt the flow of things but also hide the slightly ragtag and inconsistent collection of actual songs, with I Can See for Miles and Tattoo probably being the only truly great Who songs on here. I do like Armenia City in the Sky, Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand, Our Love Was and I Can’t Reach You, but they aren’t at the same level and it feels like a lot of it sits a bit uneasily between their r’n’b/mod pop period and their more cohesive period from Tommy onwards, with an added dash of slightly ill fitting psychedelia.
And as with all their stuff pre Tommy it’s not helped by the tinny and unsatisfying production, lacking punch and weight, with only I Can See for Miles actually sounding good, and it very noticeable stands out among the rest of it.
It’s a bit unrepresentative of my feelings about them as a band in general but this is a 3 for me - it’s fine enough as a mid 60s album, and the concept is good, as is the cover, but there isn’t quite enough to it to come back to regularly
🫘🫘🫘
Playlist submission: I Can See for Miles
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Fuzzy Logic
Looking back at this in the context of Britpop it's notable what a great ear they had for melody and musical interestingness, and how apart they were from their peers in their off kilterness and comportably worn quirkiness. They feel close to Supergrass for me, but with rougher edges and less cheeky chappy personas, and you wonder how big they could have been if they weren't such an introverted and slightly awkward bunch..
Also it's notable how this doesn't really sound that dated to the mid 90s, like many of those albums do now, possibly due to the production which is less trebly and also to their eclectic selection of influences and the jam packed nature of the songs, with vocal, melodic and musical references and oddities everywhere, eg the Elvis-isms on Bad Behavior (which is very Life on Other Planets Supergras), the sunshiney 60s backing vocals throughout, the Sgt Pepper horns, the swelling organs and the harder, rockier guitars.
There are some cracking songs on here too, amongst all that; God! Show Me Magic, Something 4 the Weekend, the very Britpop Frisbee, Hometown Unicorn, the excellent If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You, the woozy fairgroundness of Gathering Moss and Bad Behavior. It does tail off after Bad Behaviour, only picking up with For Now and Ever, although this has slight dirgey, dragging quality, despite some Kinksian spoken word.
It’s a great, fun album full of interesting moments and some great songs, but because of that drop off I don’t think it’s a 5, so I’ll go with a solid 4.
🧑🦱🧑🦱🧑🦱🧑🦱
Playlist submission: God! Show Me Magic
Arcade Fire
2/5
Funeral
After enjoying Neon Bible I was looking forward to this, but I didn’t really get on board with it, it felt a lot like the same song over and over, and the same song going on and on.
And coming after the enjoyable eclecticism of SFA, the slightly po-faced seriousness of this doesn’t land that well, falling into that morass of late 00s US indie rock that I struggle with, the similar tempos and drum patterns, the similar melodies and the similar sense of self importance.
I’ll definitely listen to Neon Bible again, but I don’t think I’ll come back to this, so it's a stingy 2 for me.
⛪⛪
Playlist submission: Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
The Black Keys
3/5
Brothers
I never got into this as much as the albums either side of it, and Everlasting Light and Next Girl kick things off with a lethargic, hazy quality that isn’t particularly immediate, reminding me why I wasn’t that into it when it came out.
But it’s worth persevering with, as the it’s a bit of grower, the wooziness of Attack and Release, the bluesiness of Magic Potion and the popiness of El Camino coming together as blooziness in the excellent Tighten Up and the catchy Howlin’ For You. It treads that path of slightly dislocated hazy bluesiness with moments of melodic catchiness for the remainder. It never quite soars or picks up from that template, but I found myself enjoying it more and more on repeat listens.
However it does feel a bit too long for that style at 55 minutes, a tighter 45 minutes would definitely make for a better album, and push it into the 4s, but although it's still a very good psychedelic-woozy-bluesy listen I think it lands ultimately as a high 3.
🎹🎹🎹
Playlist submission: Tighten Up
Ray Charles
4/5
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
I’ve heard plenty about this album, but have never listened to it before. I wish I had, as it's pretty great.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the skillful pop-r’n’b-pop-big band-easy listening take on Country is excellent, tracing the common, pre-WW2 American musical roots of those genres.
His voice is excellent as you would expect, as is his choice of songs and interpretation. Occasionally the strings can get a bit syrupy, as on You Win Again, but his voice never does, there’s tenderness and rasp and an overall sense of sincerity and appreciation of the songs coursing through all of it.
The arrangements are generally great as well, outside the occasional syrupyness or boominess of the percussion, as on Bye Bye Love, but it has a nice sense of space and restraint
The lower tempo, more introspective, sadder songs are my favourites, You Don’t Know Me, I Love You So Much it Hurts, Worried Mind and I Can’t Stop Loving you. Half as Much is also great.
I really enjoyed this, and enjoyed reading about it too, and it has a case as an early concept album, or at least an early thematically cohesive album along with those Sinatra albums we’ve had. I’ll go high 4.
🕶️🕶️🕶️🕶️
Playlist submission: Worried Mind
Eurythmics
4/5
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
There are a fair few bangers on here - Love is a Stranger, I’ve Got an Angel, I Could Give You (A Mirror), The Walk, Sweet Dreams, This is the House but there are a few tracks that don’t quite work as well; the cover of Wrap it Up feels slightly monotonous and the last two tracks feel like the meander slightly toward the finish line, neither capturing the spirit of Bowie or the pop hooks they are aiming for.
But when it's good, particularly on the classics, Love is a Stranger and Sweet Dreams, it's pretty much synth pop perfection. Love is a Stranger is a favourite of mine, and Sweet Dreams, despite being played to death, still sounds superb, all 80s computer chip synth drama with loads of hooks, for what is actually a relatively restrained arrangement
Arranging definitely seems to be a strength of Dave Stewart’s, alongside the production, which sounds great for how and where it was recorded, despite there being some great hooks, nothing is overegged, there’s always space for a synth line or bit of percussion, there’s never too much happening at once.
But that doesn’t detract from it being a great album - and the beautiful blond man’s lovely voice and the chilly, cool synths is of course a winning marriage. Not sure it’s quite a 5, so it’s a high 4 from me.
🌜🌜🌜🌜
Playlist submission: Love is Stranger
Fatboy Slim
3/5
Better Living Through Chemistry
Although it doesn’t have the pop excellence of the big singles from the next album, or the complexity, eclecticism and depth of Dig Your Own Hole from the following year, this is a completely fine mid to late 90s dance album, with all that entails - some highlights, some dated parts and some songs that are a bit long.
I really liked the feel of The Weekend Starts here with the organ, melodica and claviolline giving it a loungey, snaking, louche 70s New York soundtrack feel, a little like a David Holmes track. And the riff from Yvonne Ellison’s version of Can’t Explain works really well with The Crunge in Going out of My Head, a great big-beat track. Everybody Needs a 303 is a similarly fun track, completing a nice triptych with the previous two tracks. I enjoyed Punk to Funk too, that has nice synth line and more of a breakbeat drum pattern.
Not much outside those that particularly stands out, although it's all decent big beat/dance fun, with bits of rave and house, although I did really dislike First Down - electroswing is definitely one of my least favourite types of music.
It’s a decent dance album that delivers exactly what you’d expect, without ever ascending to the pop heights of his next album, or the more interesting albums some of his contemporaries were doing. I’ll go 3.
🧪🧪🧪
Playlist submission: Going Out of My Head
Radiohead
5/5
Amnesiac
I sometimes forget about this one, coming so soon after Kid A. And it being a product of the same sessions as Kid A I think I’m guilty of occasionally seeing it as an album of cast offs, which is unfair, as when I do remember to listen to it I’m reminded that it is a superb album, with some excellent songs.
I love the clanginess of Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box’s opening mutating into a serpentine synth groove and the excellent ‘I’m a reasonable man, get off my case’ refrain. Pyramid Song is of course absolutely superb, the slow climb of the piano and middle eastern string embellishments, giving it a heavy footed sense of drama. You and Whose Army is another great, dramatic, song, I love the piano and organ doubling up in the run out. I loved the I Might Be Wrong riff when I first bought the album, and it's still a great track, and I love the drum pattern. Knives Out is one of their classic post Kid A songs built around arpeggios, a great song.
Morning Bell is one of the songs that always lingers and I find myself singing, it’s not immediately catchy, with it’s dirge-like feel but the ‘release me’ part is superb, a delicate vocal melody that lifts you above the music. Hunting Bears is a great little interlude before the excellent final two tracks, Like Spinning Plates unsettlingness is fantastic, giving a dizzying, woozy feel, and with a melody that unwittingly lodges itself in your brain. The slow march of Life in a Glasshouse, with the Humphrey Lyttleton Band is a bit of left turn after the previous songs, but is fantastic. And it really reminds of the tune New Orleans funeral band are playing at the beginning of LIve and Let Die before they kill the agent and put him in the coffin and before they start dancing around.
It is a truly great album, one I overlook too often I think, standing in its own right apart from its connection to Kid A. 5.
📻📻📻📻📻
Playlist submission: Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box
The Byrds
3/5
Younger than Yesterday
This definitely suffers from a bit of patchiness and a bit of drift - there are some great tracks, but also a few that don’t register fully
In the good column, So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star is superb, with great groove, harmonies and melody, but the real star is Hugh Masekela’s jazzy mariachi trumpet playing. Have You Seen Her Face is also fantastic, a Revolver-Macca-esque bass line, some excellent scratchy guitar, and a lovely drop into the harmony-rich chorus. I really like the country-12 string-medieval riff of Renaissance Fair with another great Macca-esque bassline - the Revolver influence is pretty clear again. Time Between is a lovely little country rock song, Thoughts and Words’ chorus is good (with added backmasking), and The Girl with No Name is another great country rock ditty, showing how many good Chris Hillman compositions there are on here. My Back Pages is another of their great Dylan covers, the harmonies and jangles adding to it considerably.
CTA-102 doesn’t quite work as a bit of studio trickery, where the influence of Revolver goes against them. Everybody’s Been Buried is pretty forgettable and the pretty poor Mind Gardens show this is not Crosby’s finest hour, only really redeeming himself with Why.
I think I prefer 5th Dimension to this a little, although that was also patchy it felt more exciting than this one. I still enjoyed it though, and it has two Byrds classics in So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star and Have You Seen Her Face, but I think it ends up as a high 3.
🕊️🕊️🕊️
Playlist submission: Have You Seen Her Face
Klaxons
3/5
Myths of the Near Future
Another one of those 2000s bands that passed me by, although I do know Golden Skans, which I’ve always liked.
It definitely locates itself to that mid-late 00s period, with a skittish, dancey, ravey rhythms with scratchy, new wave, punk-funk guitars and shouty vocals, the whole thing has a frantic, ADHD-energy, particularly on Two Receivers and Atlantis to Interzone. On Golden Skans they hit catchy melodic gold amongst the freneticism, and it's a great track.
And there are other great little hooks and melodies amongst the busyness, almost to the point where you feel they’ve stumbled across them accidentally, and they often come and go without warning, but it does add to the slightly confused but enigmatic charm, eg. the ooh aahs towards the end of Totem on the Timeline, the stop start feel of Isle of Her. Gravity’s Rainbow is a fun track too, with a similar feel of the first few tracks and Forgotten Works has an excellent, loping bass to it, a bit PiL, a bit like The Rapture, and it's a great track.
Not all of it works though, on songs like Magick or It’s Not Over or much of Totem on the Timeline where they seem to get stuck in a bit of a musical cupboard full of noise and the only answer is to dial up the panic.
It’s also great that, hidden track aside, it clocks in at under 40 minutes - anymore and it would undoubtedly outstay its welcome.
I can’t help feeling that I would have absolutely loved it if it had come out when I was a teenager, but as it is I missed it when I was in my late 20s and I’m a bit late to it now. Still, I enjoyed it and it's a rock solid 3 for me.
📯📯📯
Playlist submission: Golden Skans
The Kinks
4/5
Face to Face
I’ve always thought that the Kinks best period started from Something Else and I’ve always tended to lump this one in with the earlier, patchier albums.
Listening now that's unfair as this is a very good album, you can hear the roots of the next few albums on here, the focus on vignettes in a more observational lyrical style and a softer style, with more baroque, music hall and contemporary influences, such as the droning, Indian feel on Fancy.
Like most Kinks albums around this time the production isn’t great, with the same tinniness, but like those other Kinks albums the quality of the songs transcend it. Party Line is a great bit of jauntiness, and a nice opener and Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home is a very affecting bittersweet tale, perhaps an influence on She’s Leaving Home, but with a slightly sharper edge. Too Much on my MInd is rather lovely, the keening riff mutating into an excellent, melancholic, introspective harpsichord-driven track. I’m not always that keen on mid-60s psychedelic harpsichords, but I think they’re great here, they work well with the style of compositions and also with Ray’s voice for some reason. They reappear on Session Man, which I really like, especially the rhyming scheme and subject matter. Rainy Day in June has a Lola vs Powerman feel, particularly the drums and is a superb, mournful track. It could probably do without the sound effects though. House in the Country is a nice rocker, with a hint of Spencer Davis group to it.
Holiday in Waikiki definitely carries a hint of 19th Nervous Breakdown, but I really like the lead guitar sound. The aforementioned Fancy is great, and a real highlight. Little Miss Queen of Darkness is interesting, I like the picked guitar and the drums halfway through - I’m not sure if the volume fading up and down is deliberate, but it does feel akin to some of the production shoddyness they suffer from. I’ll Remember I really like too, a great chorus and a nice rocking bounce to it.
And of course Sunny Afternoon is rightly a classic, and one of those songs it's easy to gloss over from hearing it so many times, but it is absolutely superb, music hall verses matched with the brilliant descending riff before the excellent refrain.
It’s a much better album than I remembered, with a slightly sad, melancholic feel running through much of it, which makes sense, post nervous breakdown, and it sets up many of the themes they would look at in coming albums.
Having said that I don’t think it’s quite a 5, I wouldn't put it on the same level as Village Green, Arthur, Lola, Muswell Hillbillies or even Something Else, so it's a high 4.
🦋🦋🦋🦋
Playlist submission: Sunny Afternoon is of course fantastic, but I’ll go Rainy Day in June
The Crusaders
3/5
Streetlife
I know the title track from the Jackie Brown soundtrack, although this is the slower version. Either way it's a great soulful-jazz track, the keys rolling it along with great string and horn arrangements and a nagging guitar riff.
Although it’s consummately played and produced and there’s nothing quite as good as that song, the rest of the songs flows by in a perfectly enjoyable miasma of unthreatening jazz-funk-soul smoothness, the perfect soundtrack to cruising the quiet city roads at night, or walking in slow motion into a bar in the 70s, or regrouting the kitchen tiles on a Saturday morning.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, it does carry a faint tang of smoothness over direction, the quality playing and the sound is undeniable, and apart from the title track it can feel a bit aimless. Night Faces starts out with some slightly ominous chords and that feeling returns now and again, but it always settles back into the smoothness pocket, somewhat blending in with the rest of the tracks.
Still its an enjoyable laid back easy listen, something I think I’ll return to in the right mood, so I’ll go for a high 3
🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Street Life
My Bloody Valentine
2/5
FKA twigs
4/5
LP1
Even though it's not totally my thing I really rather enjoyed this, and found it to be a real grower, its frosty edges softening and the whole thing becoming more engaging on repeat listens.
The vocal melodies aren’t necessarily the most immediate or memorable, they seem to fulfill more of a rhythmic, ethereal role amongst the sharpness of the synths and percussion, and its their choppy coldness I really started to like, particularly on the run of Lights On, Two Weeks and Hours. On repeat listens the jazz touches of Lights On really came to the fore, the double bass and muffled synth-horns are great.
Clearly Bjork is a big influence on the overall sound and feel, and I thought I detected hints of Enya too, and in parts it reminded me of the Solange album. But it manages, for the most part, to avoid the deliberate obtuseness that Bjork sometimes indulges in, and with its pretty singular atmosphere it feels nicely coherent as well.
That’s not to say everything lands fully, on occasion some tracks feel more like they are exercises in sound rather than actual songs, although I think they will probably emerge more clearly with more listens. But when it works it’s great; Lights On, Two Weeks, Hours, Video Girl and Closer are great, but the final two tracks, Give Up and Kicks are really quite stunning, pulling the disparate threads of pop, R’n’B, classical, dance, synth and experimental into two fascinating and unique songs.
I’m very tempted to go 5 as the more I listen the greater it gets, but I’ll go 4 for now and will definitely be listening again. I’m really glad it's on the list, otherwise I may not have bothered to listen to it
🪵🪵🪵🪵
Playlist submission: Give Up
Iggy Pop
5/5
The Idiot
This kicks off with the instantly recognisable sound of Bowie/Alomar with the excellent Sister Midnight, with a tight, threatening groove and then continues with the also excellent Nightclubbing and Funtime. Looking back I was a little ambivalent about Lust for Life, whereas after these first three songs I was well into this one.
Reading about it, and listening to it, it’s clear the hand of Bowie lies heavier on this than on LFL, and it shows itself in the energy, atmosphere and quality. As a lot of critics seem to note, and as he said himself, this is clearly a Bowie project, and definitely feels like a bridge between the sinister art rock-funk-r’n’b of Station to Station and the ominous atmospherics of Low. Truthfully I’ve never found Iggy Pop to actually be that interesting or compelling as an artist, and although his excellent gravelly tones suit the music, this probably appeals to me more because of the innate Bowieness, in a way that LFL, with his lighter hand on the tiller, doesn’t.
China Girl here is also excellent, obviously a muddier, darker sound than the shiny disco-pop of the Let’s Dance version, and although I really like that version, I probably prefer this one. Dum Dum Boys is great as well, I love the sludginess of the overall sound, with excellent guitars, bass and drums. Mass Production is superb too, dark and unsettling and discordant, a brilliant combination of the feel of Station to Station and Low. They are good songs, but I felt Baby and Tiny Girls to be a bit of a dip relative to the rest. The descending fuzz bass and piano of Baby is great, but as a whole I’m not quite sure.
Although I don’t think it's at the same level as Station to Station or Low I think this is still a 5. I actually think you could replace Iggy with someone else and this would still be a 5, as it’s probably more interesting due to Bowie masterminding it with his band and in the context of his career at the time. But either way it's a great album
🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
Playlist submission: Nightclubbing
Liz Phair
4/5
Exit in Guyville
This reminded me a little of Teenager of the Year, perhaps not as scuzzy, but with some of the same lo-fi alt indie rock feel, the sense of a singular person behind it, and in the number of tracks.
Although Frank Black is possibly a better tunesmith, I think this feels more successful to me than Teenager of the Year. She’s an excellent lyricist, and the varied viewpoints and attitudes, ranging from sneering, to heartfelt, to angry, to caustic, to funny around the connected themes of sexual politics and relationships is great (and blow jobs). That’s not to say there’s nothing catchy on here - 6’1”, Never Said, Mesmerising, Fuck and Run, Flower, Johnny Sunshine are all great melodies, from classic lo fi pop to slightly odd and off kilter.
It’s also an album that gets better on repeat listens, when you can digest everything, and there are songs like Glory, Soap Star Joe, Canary, Shatter or Gunshy that I didn’t really notice the first time around. Occasionally it does drift into standard-ish alt-rock, but even when it does like on Dance of the Seven Veils, there’s always a great line or two; I only ask because I’m a real cunt in Spring.
I haven’t listened to Exile on Main Street side by side with it, but I like the idea of it, although I would presume its more of a feels and vibes match up, as lyrically and musically they don’t seem like they are direct responses.
I’m keen to give this more listens, as I think it will improve further, but for the moment I’ll go with a solid 4.
🚶🚶🚶🚶
Playlist submission: Fuck and Run
Dagmar Krause
2/5
Tank Battles
I’m sure that there is an audience for 1930s German Marxist Cabaret songs that aren’t by Kurt Weil, sung with lyrics in English by a strident German musical theatre lady, but I don’t quite think I'm it. It obviously doesn’t help that it's a YouTube listen, but even if it was easier to access I’m still not sure I’d fall in love with it.
Having said that, I do admire its uniqueness, and I appreciate the artistic endeavour of showcasing a forgotten songwriter. Lyrically it is very interesting too, it makes a nice change of pace to hear songs about wheat harvests and welfare states, and something like Song of a German Mother is in fact very moving.
It's also for the most part very well recorded, the tone of the horns in particular is lovely and warm, and it feels like it is genuinely evocative of what I imagine Weimar Republic cabarets sounded like. Although occasionally it does belie the time period it was recorded, with the guitar at the start of The Rat Men (although it could have been The Perhaps Song, as its hard to know ithe YT sometimes)
However it boils down to a style of music I’m just not that keen on, a bit too oompah, a bit too musical theatre and it kind of puts me on edge, Bettellied in particular bothered me on that front.
Happy to file this under ‘Glad I listened but it's not really my cup of gluwein’. 2.
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Playlist submission: Song of a German Mother
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
The Rising
I bought this when it came out and I remember being really into it at the time, but I can’t have listened to it since then, although I still dig the title track
It’s kind of odd thinking back then that people were very keen to hear his thoughts post 9/11, and obviously that colours the whole album. Although thankfully for the most part he manages to allude to it indirectly with the odd line and some of the music, rather than literally and specifically reference it. Into the Fire is probably the most direct song lyrically, but it manages to avoid too much heavy handedness and it is a moving song.
Elsewhere it’s mainly standard later era Springsteen/E Street Band classic rock - earnest, heartfelt, country twingedanthemic, sweetly played, but lacking some of the edge and excitement of classic 70s and 80s Bruce, with a slightly anodyne production/sound and in many cases it can be hard to distinguish some of them. To be fair though, he does occasionally venture into more unusual avenues - World’s Apart’s middle eastern sound and Qawwali singers is excellent, whereas The Fuse’s attempt at smouldering sexiness with modern sampled beats feels very middle aged. And The Rising is great, it’s sense of urgency and Bruce-collectiveness clearly standing out against everything else.
It’s also very long, with a CD bloat runtime of 72 mins, and you do question the need for many of the songs to exceed 5 or 6 minutes. And even if they do clock in around the 4 minute mark, the general tempo of everything means they feel longer.
It's a solid elder statesman album, with some great tracks - Lonesome Day, Into the Fire, Empty Sky, Worlds Apart, The Rising, My City of Ruins - but also a lot of somewhat stolid, stodgy ‘classic’ rock. Not his best, and not necessarily essential, and a bit of a slog to get through, but still decent enough for a 3.
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Playlist submission: The Rising
The Boo Radleys
3/5
Giant Steps
Looking at their list of albums on Tidal it jogged a memory that I had C’MON KIDS, the album after the one with Wake Up Boo, on as I really liked the title track.
That’s nothing to do with this album, as I’ve never listened to Giant Steps before. It's hard to get a handle on it as a whole album experience I think. Some albums are varied and disparate and all over the shop in a charming way, eg SFA, and some just feel a bit of a mess. I think this falls somewhere in between, and boils down not to the stylistic variance but the quality of the songs. There are a handful of very good songs, and it certainly has a degree of scattershot charm, but there are also a few clunkers and it falls back on their shoegazey instincts a little too often, meaning it feels like it gets a bit stuck in places, especially when it runs to over an hour over 17 tracks.
But I do like a lot of the country touches, and a lot of the brass is excellent. The obvious Belle & Sebastian influence on Wish I Was Skinny and the Cure-esque Barney (...and Me) are both great, as is that brass and the woodwind of the lovely Thinking of Ways. Some of the dubbiness is fun too, particularly in the intro to the probable stand out Lazarus, a track that moves nicely to a fuzz guitar mariachi horned conclusion. Some of the shoegaze and Pavement-esque moments are where I get a bit lost.
I do like their eclectic approach, and they do hit some little seams of indie-pop quality, but in comparison to someone like their labelmates Super Furry Animals, it doesn’t feel like they are quite at the same songwriting level, or don’t have quite the same self editing skills, so I think this settles as a solid 3.
👻👻👻
Playlist submission: Lazarus
Pere Ubu
5/5
Dub Housing
Looking back I gave The Modern Dance a high 3, I wasn’t fully sold, but I liked it and was intrigued to listen further and investigate more of their albums. That was May 2024, and I haven’t actually listened to again, or listened to anything else by them, and I can’t actually recall that much about it.
So after listening through to this I felt I needed to go back to The Modern Dance. Although it feels a bit reductive to compare the two, I needed a bit of context and a reference point.
So being reductive and comparing the two, Dub Housing feels a bit tighter than The Modern Dance. It still maintains similar avant garde new wave-isms, but The Modern Dance felt slightly more wilful and deliberate, with a notable sense of drift in the second half, whereas Dub Housing feels slightly more comfortable in its own skin, slightly more melodic and maintains its quality to the end, and as a result is probably more enjoyable.
Navvy is a great opener, the ‘that sounds swell’ recalling early Talking Heads and Television, and it has an infectious jittery energy. On the Surface is also excellent, the recurring organ riff is a superb, nagging hook and the whole thing comes together brilliantly. The title track feels to me like their take on smooth AOR early 70s rock with the sax refrain, but obviously it comes out all weird through their filter. Caligari’s Mirror recalls Talking Heads again in the driving bass of the refrain, but also recalls PIL in the spacey verses. Thriller! almost reminds me of the breakdown in Whole Lotta Love, and also reminds me of Kraftwerk a little, and Radiohead, and is probably the closest to The Modern Dance in spirit. I Will Wait has a B-52s feel to it, and is a great example of how they manage to make what sounds like 3 different songs come together to sound discordant but also great. Further evinced by the pulsing, off centre, slightly menacing groove of Drinking Wine Spodyody (great title). I love (Pa) Ubu Dance Party, another excellent and disconcertingly hypnotic groove, with some catchy, poppy Na Na Nas, which feel like something they wouldn’t have included on The Modern Dance. Blow Daddy-O also has a Kid A/Amenesiac feel and Codex is excellent, a kind of 70s horror soundtrack feel, with ominous chanting and lyrics.
It's notable how many other bands, both contemporaneous and subsequent, that it put me in mind of, showing how influential this is, or at least how influential it has been on other bands who are perhaps more influential.
The bass really is the thing that holds it together, groovy and melodic, and often the first thing your ear to latches on to, while the sax wails, or the organ tweeps, the drums skitter around and the vocals bark around all over the shop.
I probably should have given The Modern Dance a 4, and I think this is a step on from that, getting better with each listen. And as I haven’t got carried away too much recently I’ll chuck out a 5 for this.
🏘️🏘️🏘️🏘️🏘️
Playlist submission: (Pa) Ubu Dance Party
Brian Eno
5/5
Here Come the Warm Jets
This doesn’t feel a million miles away from Pere Ubu, it’s less obtuse, and experiments with a greater range of styles, but it shares a similar feel of putting pop and rock through a filter and coming up with something non conformist, off balance and rather brilliant.
It may be more immediate than some of his subsequent albums, but it's no less dense, and similarly rewards repeat listens as little lines, melodies and production touches reveal themselves; a song like Driving Me Backwards becomes a fantastic slow burning build, reminiscent of Radiohead in some ways, and Needles in the Camel’s Eye and Baby’s on Fire start to feel like pop classics.
Some songs do feel like a continuation of Roxy Music, which makes sense with members of the band appearing, and some elements feel like nods to music of the past, Cindy Tells Me has an 50s, do-wop quality to itwhereas some feel way ahead of their time, laying the groundwork for Berlin-era Bowie and lots of New Wave and post punk bands, as well as coining some innovative approaches to production and arrangements. On Some Faraway Beach is a lovely song, hinting at the atmospheric and ambient sounds to come and The Paw Paw Blowtorch and Blank Frank have the scratchy energy of Talking Heads (or Pere Ubu), but 4 or 5 years before they emerged. Dead Finks Don’t Talk feels very akin to what Bowie was doing. The Title Track is a brilliantly odd track, mixed strangely and giving a hazed dislocated end to the album
I may prefer some of his later albums, but this is rightly a classic, a slow burn in places, more immediate in others, and indicating how fascinating and influential Eno is, particularly in regards to the artists I love that were inspired by him.
✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️
Playlist submission: Dead Finks Don’t Talk
Killing Joke
3/5
Killing Joke
I don’t think I’ve heard a Killing Joke song before, and I’ve never quite been sure what they’re like, I kind of assumed they were a metally-grunge band, but based on this album and a bit of reading they are much more of a post-punk proto industrial band, and you can hear the antecedent of NIN in the synth-guitar-drums and the sludgy rhythms.
Requiem is a great opener, a little Bowie, a little punk-ish with a great electronic throb. Wardance feels more post punk with its driving bass and plenty of toms, again throwing forward to an industrial sound - the guitar/synth stabs feel very Marilyn Manson, but its relentless groove is excellent. Tomorrow’s World maintains that same tempo tempo, this time with a Cure feel, and that little keyboard riff is naggingly brilliant.
It struggles to keep up with that great start thereafter, losing me somewhat with Bloodsport and The Wait. While they aren’t bad, they do feel like inferior variations on those first 3 songs, and that sameness of feeling continues to the end, with only perhaps Complications and S.O.36 standing out from the prevailing style. I suppose if you’ve come up with something pretty unique and exciting then why wouldn’t you hammer that template. It’s a shame that the B-side Change wasn’t on the original track listing as that is a great, Gang of Four style bit of heavy new wave.
Despite the tail off it’s nicely concise at 35 mins. And after the excellent first three tracks I thought this was a nailed on 4, but I think it ultimately settles at a high 3.
🃏🃏🃏
Playlist submission: Wardance (but could be any of the first 3)
Pixies
3/5
Surfer Rosa
I really liked Doolittle, and I enjoyed Bossanova, although I didn’t find it as engaging as Doolittle. This probably falls a bit closer to Bossanova, although I think it benefits from being their first proper album, with all the rawness and rough edges that come with that, suiting the raw and rough edged music, and allowing their characteristic oddities and little moments of melodic gold to stand out.
It also benefits from being a short, sharp 33 minutes, alternating shorter songs with longer ones, and their quiet-loud template works really well on Bone Machine, the uber-catchy Gigantic, River Euphrates, Oh Golly and Bick is Red. Combined with their alt-rock groove on songs like Cactus or Tony’s theme and the excellent Where is my Mind it makes it a decent listen.
It's not as good as Doolittle but is a bit more interesting than Bossanova, so I think it lands as another solid 3.
🏄🏄🏄
Playlist submission: Where is my Mind
Peter Gabriel
4/5
Peter Gabriel (Car)
There are of course vestiges of Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, particularly on the opening and closing tracks, but whereas with Genesis there was a sense of po-faced prog rock ponderous pretension, Moribund the Burgermeister is winningly charming and Here Comes the Flood has a pleasing Grandeur.
Solsbury Hill is rightly a classic, where the words and music work beautifully in tandem, evoking a sense of timelessness and a sense of place. Solsbury Hill is also just round the corner from me and Ben. Modern Love feels a little rote in comparison, but the chorus really lifts it. Humdrum returns to proginness, but has a nice delicate weight to it and works really well. Slowburn is a bit of banger too, with a great sense of urgency. And Down the Dolce Vita channels Survivor for a bit of funk rock that simultaneously seems to work and not work.
Its stylistic diversity is fascinating, but it can feel a little scattershot and not everything works; the diversion into Randy Newman territory on Excuse Me isn’t my favourite, and while it might be a parody, it is a bit annoying. Waiting for the Big One’s solemn, staid blues-rock feels anachronistic amongst all the diversions into interesting places elsewhere on the album.
But you can see why Gabriel and Eno would eventually converge, there is a similar spirit of curiosity and diversity, and some parts do feel like Here Come the Warm Jets, particularly Modern Love.
So, a bit of wandering focus stops this from being a 5, and it doesn't feel as strong as subsequent albums, even with a song as great as Solsbury Hill, so it's a very good 4.
🚘🚘🚘🚘
Playlist submission: Solsbury Hill
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
Ragged Glory
This does feel a little unnecessary as one of Neil’s entries on the list. It’s an enjoyable enough album in Crazy Horse's signature style, and I know people saw it, along with Freedom, as a comeback from his poorly regarded period in the 80s, but from 2026’s perspective I don’t think it has too much that makes it stand out from the 3,000 albums NY has released in the last 10 days.
Having said that I do like it, even though it is loooong, and does get quite samey outside of a few tracks. Country Home and White Line are great, and carry additional interest as originating in the 70s. Fuckin’ Up is excellent, an angry rumble of admonishment and classic Neil guitar. The cover of Farmer John’s odd rhythm and style is a nice point of difference, and I like Mansion on the Hill a lot. And although it's quite heavy handed in both its lyrics and tribute to Hendrix I like the hippy-sincerity of Mother Earth (Natural Anthem).
Ultimately, though, it’s not his strongest set of songs and not the most interesting from this period (Harvest Moon from 2 years later is among his best albums for), and definitely not compared to some of his genuinely great albums not on the list, so I think this settles as a 3.
🐴🐴🐴
Playlist submission: Fuckin’ Up
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
I loved I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor when it came out, but for some reason that never translated into getting into them, so this is the first time I’ve properly listened to this.
There’s no doubt they are an excellent band in the field of post britpop garagey punkish post-punk inspired mid 2000s indie, and are set well apart from many their peers by Alex Turner’s great, observational lyrics that belie his teenage years. Taking in teenage nights out and stories of people you might genuinely meet, with his wry, northern sense of humour (the band were fucking wank and I’m not having a nice time) and uber-Sheffield delivery, it's great in combination with the charge of the music, especially the bass and drums, resulting in some great songs in I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, Fake Tales of San Francisco, Red Light Inidcates Doors are Secured, When the Sun Goes Down and A Certain Romance
However, despite that, I do struggle to get excited by them - I think had I been a bit younger when it came out, or it had managed to catch me at the time I would be well into it, but as it is it just seems to me like a solid album overall, even if its a superior example of that particular genre/time. 3.
🤖🤖🤖
Playlist submission: I loved I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Exile on Main Street
It doesn’t matter how many times I listen to this its always superb, for all the reasons everyones talked about for
What really struck me about it was the dynamic of Charlie and Bill (and Mick Taylor on some tracks). Despite most of the songs being firmly in the the soul inflected rock’n’roll, country and blues milieu, Charlie’s jazz background is prominent, the songs are swinging as fuck, and often feel on the verge of breaking down, particularly on something Tumblin’ Dice. That swing in combination with Bill’s (and Mick T’s) melodic but efficiently and economically brilliant bass playing gives the songs such a fantastic push and pull that even after 1,000 listens the songs have a rhythmic freshness that never seems to fade away.
And I suppose that allows Mick, Keith and Mick (and Nicky, Bobby, Ian and Billy), to play between the two, giving the whole album its famed, dishevelled, decadent, gunslinger looseness and loucheness, and it really is the apogee of their incredible run from Beggar’s Banquet.
I can’t think there’s a weak track or a track I don’t love, apart perhaps from Turd on the Run, but that's a minor quibble, and it's unusual for a double album to feel like it doesn’t need any editing (although obviously its shorter than many CD era single albums), the 67 minutes absolutely fly by and its sequenced brilliantly, the first side mainly composed of rock’n’roll boogie, culminating in Tumbling Dice, the second side delving more into country folk blues, side 3 going from my favourite Keith song in Happy through to the blues-groove of Ventilator Blues, the spookily brilliant voodoo-soul of I Just Want to See Her Face to the gospel-rock of Let it Loose, which continues on the final side with Shine a Light and Soul Survivor, via the brilliant cover of Stop Breaking Down and All Down the Line
Obviously a 5, I’ve loved listening to this over the last few days, especially taking the van out for a spin in the sun the other day. 5.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Incredibly hard to choose - over the years I’ve variously been very into Sweet Virginia, Torn & Frayed, Sweet Black Angel, Loving Cup, Happy, Ventilator Blues, I Just Want to See His Face, All Down the Line, Shine a Light and Soul Survivor. Its between I Just Want to See His Face and Soul Survivor. So in the style of Gianni Infantino, today I feel gay, today I feel Soul Survivor
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
Axis: Bold as Love
When I was more into Hendrix around Uni times I don’t think I was aware this was a proper album, bI think I thought it was one of the myriad posthumous Hendrix estate releases.
It probably does get lost between Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland generally, despite If 6 was 9 and Little Wing being two of his more famous songs, being released only a few months after Are You Experienced.
It’s not quite as good as either of those, it lacks the number of great songs on Are You Experienced and doesn’t have the drugged out cosmic expansiveness of Electric Landlady, and also suffers from him leaving the masters of side one in a taxi, but it is still a better psychedelic 60s rock album than many of his peers, and there are a few indications of the more funk-rock direction he’d go in with Band of Gypsys a few years later.
Spanish Castles Magic, Little Wing, If 6 was 9, Castles Made of Sand, One Rainy Wish and Bold as Love are probably the strongest tracks, with the superb Little Wing, the funk rock of If 6 Was 9 and Castles Made of Sand being the standouts. While there’s nothing awful, the rest feel largely either unfocused or less strong retreads in the style of the first album
It’s right on the border of 3 and 4, but I think it settles as a high 3. There’s a couple of great tracks, some decent tracks and some more forgettable tracks, and it probably rightly sits in the shadow of the albums either side.
🪽🪽🪽
Playlist submission: Little Wing
Sonic Youth
3/5
Sister
And with this album we say goodbye to Sonic Youth.
I could say this sounds more accessible and immediate than their other albums, but apart from Goo I can’t really remember much about any of them. It's interesting looking back at my previous SY reviews to note that in most of them I mention looking back at my previous SY reviews to see what I thought on my previous SY, and that I gave them all 3s.
I think this is the same, I like it but I don’t love it, and it ultimately cements my feeling that they are a band I like the idea of and the spirit of more that I actually like listening to. Noise, abrasion, droning, female-male vocals, surf pop haze and a deliberate outsider obtuseness are all things I like about them, but I’m much more neutral about the actual music that produces. I did like Schizophrenia, Tuff Gnarl, Hot Wire My Heart and Cotton Crown on here though.
So, yeah, a 3.
🔊🔊🔊
Playlist submission: Schizophrenia
Beck
5/5
Badly Drawn Boy
4/5
Hour of Bewliderbeast
I listened to this a lot when it came out, but I can’t have heard it in 20-odd years, so I was quite intrigued to revisit it.
It's a very pleasant and nostalgic listen, with a gentle strain of self-effacing humorous melancholy running through it. There are some lovely melodies, some great instrumental touches and arrangements, particularly the horn and string lines.
It does get off to a great start - I love the cello and horn on The Shining, locating immediately as being very British and quite northern, hitting a great mournful tone, before the lightly grunge toasted feel of Everybody’s Stalking and the great little instrumental, Bewilder.
From there is skips lightly across lo-fi folky baroquey pop rock; Camping Next to Water, the bouncy and catchy Once Around the Block, the Tsunami-esque Bewilderbeast, the mildly acerbic Pissing in the Wind, the soft rock and catchy Disillusion and Say it Again all great songs.
It is a bit long though, with too many tracks, and although there are great passages and songs throughout, it does feel tonally and thematically very much in one furrow. Knock about 15 minutes off and this would solidly be a 4, but as it is it's right on the edge. It's a very nice, very agreeable listen, and it feels like it's been forgotten about over the last 20 years, so with that in mind and the added dollop of nostalgia I think I’ll go for a low 4.
🧌🧌🧌🧌
Playlist submission: The Shining
Dead Kennedys
3/5
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
I know California Uber Alles and Holiday in Cambodia and I’m aware of Dead Kennedy’s influence and reputation in US punk and hardcore, and this album is exactly what I expected it to be:
Politically charged lyrics that manage to avoid triteness and cliche, while still maintaining a righteous anger.
High tempo punk-thrash
A couple of catchy, shouty choruses.
Being British we look back at seminal punk albums like Never Mind the Bollocks or The Clash and can see their place in the musical landscape, whereas with US punk it’s trickier for me to see that context and how it must have sounded back in 1980. And if I am going to compare them, I think those two albums are musically more interesting than this. Alongside California Uber Alles and the excellent Holiday in Cambodia, Kill the Poor and the cover of Viva Las Vegas are great, and there are the odd nods to surf rock, but the rest, apart from perhaps Drug Me, while solid enough examples of thrash-punk, don’t do a great deal for me, I think mainly due to the rhythmic monotony, I really miss a bit of swing or syncopation that someone like Topper Headon gives (despite that bit in Chemical Warfare).
So, musically It's a solid punk/hardcore album with a couple of great tracks in California Uber Alles and Holiday in Cambodia, and those combined with its lyrical content means I think it deserves its status as a seminal album, and nudges this to a 3, even if I probably won’t revisit very often.
🍏🍌🍍
Playlist submission: Holiday in Cambodia
The Zombies
4/5
Odessey & Oracle
740-odd albums in and I had to check if we’ve had a Zombies album before, or if I’m thinking of The Pretty Things, The Electric Prunes, The Sonics or The Beau Brummels. We haven’t had a Zombies album, and this is another album in that general field, although after a few listens I think it's definitely one of the better ones, and is a great little album.
I knew a few tracks, Time of the Season obviously, A Rose for Emily and This Will Be Our Year, all of them great songs. A Rose for Emily’s classical piano and charm is undeniable, a really lovely pop song, This Will Be Our Year is fantastic, I love it when his voice gets a bit bluesy and raspy, and the horn arrangement is superb, with echoes of Penny Lane. Time of the Season is also of course a corker, a brilliant bit of psychedelia edged jazzy soul-pop, rightly an enduring classic.
Outside of that there is some great stuff, some more in the Baroque-Chamber pop vein, like Brief Candles, the opener, Care of Cell 44, Changes, some in more classic mid 60s pop style, the folkish-to-pop Maybe After He’s Gone, Hung Up in Dream, Friend of Mine, or more psychedelic tinged like the atmospheric Beechwood Park. Occasionally the baroque tips over into theatricality, I Want Her, She Wants me gets a bit too close to Queen for me, and there are more hints of that in Friends of Mine and Care of Cell 44.
I like how among the baroque and 60s pop it has a pleasing jazziness and there are some very nice harmonies, their voices all blend nicely, often with a West Coast/Beach Boys feel, all tied together with a slight sense of otherness across the whole album.
And considering they funded and produced it themselves it sounds really good, there’s a nice spaciousness and clarity to it, especially when you compare it to some of their contemporaries.
It’s been a real grower, my favourite of these types of album we’ve had, and something I’ll definitely come back to.
🧟🧟🧟🧟
Playlist submission: This Will Be our Year
Ps, my streaming version didn’t have Butcher’s Tale on it.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Exodus
Although I really liked Natty Dread and Catch a Fire, this feels like a different pr.You can also see how this birthed the student stereotype of Marley Legend and Take Me to your Dealer posters, badly rolled cheap weed and 6 cans of red stripe for £3 from the offie.
Natural Mystic, So Much Things To Say, Exodus, Jamming, Waiting in Vain, Three Little Birds and One Love are all fantastic songs, irrespective of genre, and the tracks I wasn’t aware of, Guiltiness, The Heathen, Turn Your Lights Down Low are great too. It's also brilliantly sequenced, the loping groove of Natural Mystic draws you in, before skipping through politics, spiritualism, love via uptempo and slower jams, and then its backloaded with Three Little Birds and One Love, ending on an upbeat, mood altering note.
Can’t think of much else to say apart from its just a fantastic album, some great individual tracks, but as a whole it is a superlative listening experience. 5.
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Playlist submission: Three Little Birds
Billy Joel
5/5
The Stranger
It’s hard to quibble with anything on here. Even if The Way You Are and Always A Woman have been pummelled to death under the feet of 100,000 first dances, the screech of 1,000,000 karaoke performances and the weight of 100 rom-coms, it is undeniably a great album.
Movin’ Out is a soft rock banger, a brilliant bit of upbeat catchiness, commenting on ‘makin’ it’, before the disco-funk inflected The Stranger, with its lovely, wistful piano motif at the start and end. And whether you think it’s cheesy or not ( I don’t) Just The Way You Are, with its Stevie Wonder feel and Macca-esque melodic facility is just a brilliant bit of romantic songwriting. Scenes From an Italian Restaurant is the centrepiece of the album, and is also Macca-esque, in its shifting sections, and typically Joel in its bittersweet, observational, New York based narrative, and it's a fantastic song.
Vienna feels very Madman era Elton John, particularly in the vocal intonations, and it's another cracker, with a wistful lyric observing the passing of time and growing older. Only the Good Die Young has a great 50s throwback feel, rocking along with a great chorus and, on balance, a dodgy lyric about taking catholic virginity. Again, Always a Woman’s ubiquity hides what a great song it is, a mellow, folky feel with a sincere, heartfelt lyric and a fantastic melody. Get it Right the First Time might not be the strongest song, but its upbeat Elton John-esque soft rock nature works as a break between Always a Woman and the slow burning, blue-eyed gospel soul of Everybody Has a Dream, a suitably big conclusion to the album.
The sense of honed craft is everywhere; the precision tooled songwriting, the superb arrangements and sequencing, the smooth, warm 70s production and the economical 9 song 40 minute run time, all in all a superb album and a straightforward 5 stars.
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Playlist submission: Scenes from and Italian Restaurant
Kacey Musgraves
4/5
Golden Hour
I’m charmed, this album charmed me, particularly over the first half and towards the end, being a nice mix of country with pop accents and pop with country accents.
Slow Burn is superb, my stand out, a lovely country-folk track with a keening atmosphere. Lonely Weekend adds some poppier percussion and is a really nice track. Butterflies is really nice too, the parping synth giving a spacey feel combined with the pedal steel. Oh, What A World continues with the spacey country vibes, the pedal steel giving it a great ethereal atmosphere.
Mother and Love, Wild Thing, Happy & Sad aren’t as strong for me, although Mother is a solid enough ballad. Space Cowboy returns to the ethereal space country vibe and I like it, and it has a nice nod to Neil Young in the lyrics. Velvet Elvis, Wonder Woman and High Horse, successfully move into a more pop and disco feel, without losing the country fully, High Horse treading the line of Katy Perry and Jessie Ware. Golden Hour returns to the vibe of the opening songs and is another lovely track, and Rainbow ends things on a very pretty ballad with a nice progressive lyric.
Although the more deliberately pop songs in the middle are good, I do find the spacey countrified songs more satisfying, and Slow Burn in particular I absolutely love, and overall is it has lovely shimmery, warm evening of a sound, blissed out, and drowsy in places, with the disco pop of High Horse as a pick me up. I’ll go for a 4, I’ve listened about 5 or 6 times and found more to enjoy each time, and another one I wouldn’t have listened to without the list.
🌄🌄🌄🌄
Playlist submission: Slow Burn
LL Cool J
2/5
Mama Said Knock You Out
The title track is genuinely great, but he is a rather pedestrian rapper, and not in a laid back tempos and drawling delivery way. On The Boomin’ System it feels like he’s trudging monotonously through lyrical mud, indicative of the general feeling of characterlessness across the whole album.
Along with his delivery the beats and samples all feel a bit lacklustre and it all just feels uninspiring, particularly when you look at what else was going on elsewhere in Hip-Hop; 3 Feet High and Rising and Done by the Forces of Nature the year before, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and Fear of a Black Planet the same year, Step in the Arena the year after, EPMD releasing albums in the same period. In comparison, and even though he namechecks some of those people, this all feels rather generic and stuck in 1986, while everyone else has moved on.
Although Mama Said Knock You Out is really the only track with noticeable energy and dynamism, there are a couple of good tracks - Mr Good Bar, aside from the Dennis reynolds-esque ‘I sure wouldn’t rape you’, Milky Cereal, and the nice jazziness of 6 Minutes of Pleasure. But that’s slim pickings in an album over 60 minutes long.
It’s not worthy of 1 star, but I can’t imagine listening again. 2.
🥊🥊
Playlist submission: Mama Said Knock You Out
Suicide
5/5
Suicide
Minimalistic pulsing synths and drums, oddly enunciated vocals, 50s rock’n’roll influences, atmospheric moodiness? Yes please!
I’d not heard of this, and I assumed it was more in the style of thrashy US punk, but it's way, way more interesting than that, a kind of nihilistic, brilliant mash up of Gene Vincent, Kraftwerk and Velvet Underground, feeling well ahead of its time for 1977. I feel its remiss of me not to have heard of it, reading about how influential it has been - Radiohead, New Order, Depeche Mode, Human League, Soft Cell, LCD Soundsystem and loads of others, and you can certainly hear the mood of Bruce’s State Trooper.
Ghost Rider is a superb opener, the relentless pulse is great, carrying on with the nagging Rocket USA, with the farfisa giving an oxymoronic homeliness against the foreboding, reminding me a bit of Public Service Broadcasting. Cheree has a feel of If I Gave You a Party.
Johnny is another great track, the 50s bassline against the drum machine and the drawled vocals an excellent combination. Girl shows their knack for a minimal instrumental hook with the bass and the organ riff, and is another great song. Frankie Teardrop is obviously the centrepiece at 10 minutes long, and definitely has a kinship with State Trooper, and is an epic, slowly, drawn out bit of droning dissonance, a spookily excellent song. Che has an element of Low/Eno to it in its more ambient synth style, and throws in a nicely discordant final not
I was thinking a 4, but I gave Per Ubu a 5, and this feels just as influential an interesting, and it is a fantastic album, so 5.
As a side note, of the last 5 albums we’ve had from 1977 I’ve given four 5s and one 4s - The Idiot, Exodus, The Stranger, this and Peter Gabriel with the 4. Looking back through the list, 1977 might be the strongest year for albums
☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
Playlist submission: Ghost Rider
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Blue
Whatever you think of them, Fly By II is a great tun…oh wait, wrong album.
I have two memories I associate with this album; buying it at one of those CD fairs in Dunelm and it having one of those yellow exclamation mark stickers, and Simon le Bon performatively saying California was one of his favourite songs on the Jo Whiley Show episode 2.3 broadcast on channel 4 on Wednesday 28th of September 1998, alongside Mel B and Shaznay Lewis. He is right though, it is a _fantastic_ song.
They don’t have a great deal to do with the actual music, which is of course stellar from start to end, and as great as some of her subsequent albums are, this is my no1 of hers, and its possibly the peak of the laurel canyon confessional singer songwriter genre.
I love the simple and pared back arrangements, with only a few songs accented by drums or bass or additional guitars, giving an hushed, personal feel to the intimacy of the songs, both melodically and lyrically, and it’s pretty much a perfect, not an extraneous song or moment - it's delicate, upbeat, sad, wondering, wandering, hopeful and resigned all at once.
The dulcimer and piano of All I Want is such a lovely sound, an upbeat tempo with a sad lyric, followed by the superb My Old Man, the piano shifting around hopefully and then mournfully into the ‘and when he’s gone’ part. Little Green is a beautiful song, one I’ve always liked, but that has really emerged as my favourite listening now, particularly understanding its origin and significance, and the move into the chorus is just fantastic. It needs the skippier and brighter Carey to balance the heartbreak, with its peripatetic tale of cave dwelling hippies. Blue is another beautiful song, mournful and sad to close side 1.
California is a fantastic combination of dulcimer, voice and guitar and pedal steel, similar to All I Want, but with a fantastic lyric of longing for the creative freedom California represents. This Flight Tonight carries on the theme of travel and longing, although this time not wanting to go home. There’s probably a reason River doesn’t make onto that many Christmas song playlists, but its interpolation of Jingle Bells and mournful tone strikes a chord with the sadness that sometimes appears at Christmas. A Case of You is yet another great song, and another great combination of her dulcimer and James Taylor’s guitar, and the whole thing ends on a disillusioned and poignant note with The Last Time I Saw Richard, although the tone is sad it seems that her life without him is far better than the depiction of Richard’s.
Beautiful album. 5.
💙💙💙💙💙
Playlist submission: Little Green
Bob Dylan
5/5
Highway 61 Revisited
It’s mad that this was released 4 just months after Bringing It All Back Home, and was recorded in about 6 or 7 days, and although it does sometimes merge with that album in my mind (I often get mixed up about which songs are on which album), it's equally fantastic of course.
While BIABH had a side of more acoustic numbers, apart from Desolation Row this album eschews that for a kind of amped up, bluesed up 50s rock and roll with a spiky, abrasive, amphetamine intensity, particularly on the first side, the tempo only letting up for the easy feel of It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry until it gets to the doom laden and acidically brilliant Ballad of a Thin Man. I’ve always loved the ‘tax deductible charity organisations’ line.
The two sides' openers share a similar subject matter, but whereas on Like A Rolling Stones the distaste has calcified into disdain, on Queen Jane Approximately he still maintains a sense of compassion, echoed in the slightly softer melody and sound. There’s not much to say about Like a Rolling Stone, other than I tend to zone out when it comes on as I’ve heard it so often, but occasionally I zone in, and listening closely I’m reminded what an incredible dsong it truly is.
I’ve always loved the siren sound and the weird wobble on the vocals in the title track. On the surface it has all the hallmarks of a Dylan lyric, with shoe strings and biblical sacrifices, but it all ties together with the solution being escaping somewhere else. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues has an echo of It Takes a Lot to Laugh, and I love the loping feel, especially the piano and the picaresque lyrics, another song around travel and moving around and escape. But Desolation Row is the high point for me, perhaps a cousin of It’s Alright Ma and Mr Tambourine Man, and one of my favourite Dylan songs. It never feels like 11 minutes, the kind of cowboy-country feel keeping musical momentum as the disparate images move in and out of focus, it really is a stunning song.
I might marginally prefer Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks, but it's a brilliant album both musically for its bluesy rock n roll charge and its lyrical imagery. 5.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Desolation Row
Terence Trent D'Arby
2/5
Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Aarby
This is definitely a bit of a mixed bag, he’s got a great voice of course, capable of both soulful tenderness and soulful grittiness, but the song quality is a bit patchy and it loses its way a bit in the middle.
Sign my Name is a great late 80s soulful pop song, and the retro soul of the excellent If You Let Me Stay (love the organ) and the quirky synth of the great Wishing Well are very enjoyable. If You All Get to Heaven also has a nice drama to it. As Yet Untitled’s solemn acapella is great as well.
Those more upbeat retro-soul-pop-driven tracks do seem to work better, when it is more funk driven, like I’ll Never Turn My Back on You, and when he goes OTT with the James Brownisms on Dance Little Sister, or gets a bit overwrought on the cover of Who’s Loving You it feels less successful. And in between it’s mainly pleasant if largely generic late 80s soul - Seven More Days, Let’s Go Forward and Rain are nice enough, but hard to recall.
Granted the piano can often sound uber 80s, particularly on I’ll Never Turn My Back, but I think the 80s-ness of the production, particularly the songs Martyn Ware is involved with, is actually a plus point here, especially on Wishing Well and If You Let Me Stay, the latter fitting right alongside Aretha & George and Annie Lennox & Al Green in that nice little genre of 80sified retro soul.
Although I enjoyed the good tracks I’m not sure there’s enough to come back to, so I’ll go a high 2.
📉📉
Playlist submission: If You Let Me Stay
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
Murder Ballads
This has a cartoonish malevolency that is extremely enjoyable. Obviously there is a degree of seriousness to an album of songs about death and murder, but running through that is a darkly comic tone, not played for laughs exactly, more that humour is the other side of the coin to the morbidity. And there’s many very catchy la la la las.
It takes a few listens to warm up. Despite some excellent piano and spooky backing vocals Song of Joy is quite a slow burn, but it starts hitting its straps in the brilliantly filthy Stagger Lee, and then taking off with Polly Jean on Henry Lee, their gloomy, gothic voices are fantastic in tandem. Lovely Creature has that great galloping rhythm and catchy la la las, evoking the Wild West.
Where the Wild Roses Grow is superb, Kylie doesn’t have the strongest voice, but it is distinctive and characterful, and her hushed, delicate tones work perfectly here, and it’s hard not to think this is an old, old folk song in the vein of Long Black Veil or the House Carpenter. The Curse of Millhaven, with its swirling organ and violin, brings a circus like vaudevillian feel, with a frantic, creepy edge, whereas The Kindness of Strangers' more mellow music hides another murder drenched lyric. I love the twangy, 50s ghost town vibes of Crow Jane, a great evocation of mood and menace. Having recently listened to Highway 61, O’Malley’s Bar has a Dylan-esque feel in its length and the free-ranging narrative of the verses, even if Dylan doesn’t normally mention his dick and murdering loads of people, the pulsing, portentous groove is superb, tracking the protagonist as he works his way around the bar. And then of course it ends on the ironic joke of Dylan’s Death is Not the End, a great cover.
This is right on the border of 4 and 5, it’s a great album, every track consistent with the overall theme, with a pretty unique sensibility, and there aren’t really any weak moments, so I think it probably has to be a 5.
⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️
Playlist submission: O’Malley’s Bar
Rufus Wainwright
1/5
Want One
I had this when it came out and I think I convinced myself I liked it then, and I tried hard with Want Two, and gave it a three, but after listening twice through I realise that I actually hate this album.
I started off thinking this wasn’t without merit, appreciating the size and lushness of the sound as well as the excellent guest list, but that it just wasn’t for me, but that feeling hardened and metastasized into genuine annoyance.
His melodic style is not to my taste, and I’m not a fan of his voice, but those two things in combination are a super charged kind of awful; flat, lacking personality, jarring against the grandiosity of the music and creating an atmosphere of tedious, droning, moaning, solipsistic self-importance.
It felt like I had been listening for about 2 hours but I had only got to track 8, and it was a relief when it finally finished, but that was soon replaced with a sense of dread at having to listen again. It did not improve on second listen, and I ultimately came to the conclusion that this album is some bullshit Emperor’s New Clothes wankfest. Want One = 1.
🛞
Emmylou Harris
4/5
Pieces of the Sky
I bought this on CD about 20 years ago off the back of hearing Bluebird Wine, which I still absolutely love. But I remember being a little underwhelmed by the rest of it, I thought it would be more along the lines of Bluebird Wine, and I don’t think I was open to it being more of a wistful, mournful collection of country ballads.
Listening now, it's of course great, although it does have a slight feeling of one pacedness about it, despite If I Could Only Win Your Love, The Bottle Let Me down to some extent, and Bluebird Wine and Queen of the Silver Dollar’s more ebullient tempos. But if you are going to listen to a string of down-tempo and weepy country songs then you can’t really get better than Emmylou and her sensational voice. Too Far Gone, Before Believing are really lovely and Boulder to Birmingham is absolutely superb, a beautiful song and vocal. I like her version of Coat of Many Colors, although I don’t think you can beat Dolly’s original, as the lyric is so personal to her. The cover of For No One is interesting too - I like the idea of slowing it down and turning it into a longing, keening country torch song, but it doesn’t quite work, I think the resigned tone of the lyrics work better with the baroque pop jauntiness of the original, and in losing that contrast it also loses some of the melody.
The playing is fantastic, there’s lovely piano but Ben Keith’s pedal steel is noticeably fantastic, the weeping sounds echoing the sadness of many of the lyrics.
Not quite sure it’s a 5, but its an excellent album, and I’ll go with a high 4.
🌫️🌫️🌫️🌫️
Playlist submission: Boulder to Birmingham
The Saints
4/5
Eternally Yours
Never heard of the Saints, looking at the cover and year I assumed that they were a US punk band. But it turns out they are an _Aussie_ punk band.
And it turns out that although they are a punk band, they are a more interesting proposition than that. Like The Mekons incorporating country into punk they incorporate a bit of soul into punk, and it works well, the horns on Know Your Product and Orstralia, the organ on No, Your Product, the harmonica on Run Down. They also explore some moody acousticy post punk 80s pop-miserablism, rather akin to REM, Echo and the Bunnymen or the Cure; Memories Are Made of This and A Minor Aversion are excellent and Untitled is great too.
The more standard punk fayre of things like Lost and Found, Private Affair (although I like the sardonic lyric on this one), This Perfect Day and I’m Misunderstood, despite perhaps being a little less interesting than the others, are still fun, with some good punky choruses, hooks and nice guitar playing. I also like the robo-babble on International Robots and the humorous lyric.
On first listen I thought three, but I liked it more each time, and in particular Memories Are Made of This and A Minor Aversion I thought were great so I’ll tip it into a 4.
😇😇😇😇
Playlist submission: Memories Are Made of This
George Michael
3/5
Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1.
The duality of George Michael - a writer of songs like the classic Freedom, the slow burning Praying for Time, the ‘co-write’ of Waiting for That Day, early Wings-esque Heal the Pain and Something to Save with the very George Martin cello strings, but also a writer of some of the dullest, most pointless dirges like They Won’t Go When I Go (made all the poorer for following the effervescent Freedom) and Mothers Pride, or the soulless wine bar jazz of Cowboys and Angels or the uninspiring ‘funky’ adult dance-pop panpipe nonsense of Soul Free.
It’s interesting that aside from Freedom those more enjoyable songs are all built around mid tempo acoustic strumming. Not a sound I’d normally associate with him, but there is something about that acoustic sound that suits his voice, the introspective lyrics and the overall thoughtful, mature feel to it all.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that it is punctuated by those other songs, which unfortunately colour the album for me - and rather than give a sophisticated adult sheen, they serve more to dull it with their colourlessness
All told though I think that lands it at a 3 - when it’s good it's very good, but when it’s bad it drags things down, and you can’t help feeling that that in trying for a more sincere tone and to be taken seriously he has eschewed many of the things that make him great, in particular hooks and melodies, leaving a slightly soporific taste in the mouth.
👂👂👂
Playlist submission: Freedom ‘90.
The Byrds
4/5
Mr Tambourine Man
The Byrds are undoubtedly a great band, and of course are a hugely influential reference point, but do they have a truly great album? I really like 5th Dimension and you could easily argue Sweetheart of the Rodeo is their best album, although it's not necessarily representative of the ‘classic’ Byrdsian sound. But I’m not sure from this until SOTR that they released a coherently excellent album.
That’s not to say this isn’t a great listen, even if it is a little patchy, with a couple of song choices like Don’t Doubt Yourself, Babe and We’ll Meet Again not adding a great deal. However their mesmerising template of jangly, countrified, warmly harmonised folk rock is sweetly laid out over its fair share of classics, Mr Tambourine Man, I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better, The Bells of Rhymney, All I Really Want to Do and Chimes of Freedom, and I can only imagine how fresh and exciting this would have sounded in 1965. As well as those there are a couple great supporting songs in Here Without You and I Knew I’d Want You, Gene Clark showing what a good songwriter he is.
Jim/Roger McGuinn’s lead guitar is of course fantastic, but Chris Hillman’s bass is excellent too, bouncing along nicely and he gets a great tone on Spanish Harlem Incident and Here Without You. I also never noticed until today that the intro to The Bells of Rhymney must have been a huge influence on If I Needed Someone.
In the end, I think it’s a 4 for me. It’s a great album of course, but I don’t think it’s transcendently excellent compared to their peers and in the context of their outsized influence and the greatness of so many of the songs in their oeuvre.
🪺🪺🪺🪺
Playlist submission: I love I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, but it has to be Mr Tambourine Man
The Who
5/5
Tommy
There’s much to like about The Who up to this point, but this is where they really take off, the difference in concept, sound, execution and coherence compared to The Who Sell Out 18 months earlier is very noticeable.
Storywise you do need the liner notes, or explanations from Townshend, in addition to listening to it to get the whole story, even though it’s not actually that complicated. But understanding the whole narrative and its context in the late 60s search for spiritual enlightenment as well as Townshend’s own childhood trauma makes it much more compelling.
Musically it is fantastic, an actual rock opera in the sense of rock music played in the format of an opera or long form piece of music, with elements and themes recurring, notably the See Me, Feel Me, Pinball Wizard and Listening to You motifs, and as laid out in the excellent Overture.
There are great songs throughout, most obviously Pinball Wizard, but I’ve always loved the run of Overture, 1921, Amazing Journey and Sparks as well as Acid Queen, Sensation and I’m Free, but it definitely works best as the whole thing, dipping into country, rock and music hall silliness.
It's also noticeable how much seems to be based around the acoustic guitar and that despite the opera they opted for some relatively restrained horn embellishments rather than it being saturated by strings or too many instruments, perhaps as a reaction to the era of psychedelic overload and to give it an earthy solidness. It also sounds much, much better than their previous albums, the tinniness has gone, replaced by a much richer, fuller sound, even if the music is less frenetic.
I hadn’t listened to this for a while, it’s been great re-visiting it and remembering what a great album it is. 5.
🧙🧙🧙🧙🧙
Playlist submission: Overture
Tom Waits
4/5
Rain Dogs
I’m not sure if I have listened to this before, I think I might be getting it mixed up with Swordfishtrombones, although I’ve definitely heard Downtown Train.
Anyhow, of the TW albums we’ve had on the list and the ones I’d heard previously this is probably my favourite. It’s almost satirical in its level’s of Tom Waitness, tales of sailors, pirates, sad people, urban degradation, dwarves and people losing legs etc, but atmospherically it captures an odd, intimate, late night in a bar vibe in a way the confected Nighthawks at the Diner didn’t.
It gets off to a great start with Singapore and Clap Hands, the latter reminding me of the music from the subterranean levels in Super Mario World. Jockey Full Of Bourbon is more conventional, but also has a kind of swaying discomfort to it, while Tango Till They’re Sore is more conventionally Tom Waits with its New Orleans jazz feel. Some of the guitar on Big Black Mariah is distinctively Keith and its a great bluesy track. Hang Down Your Head is less idiosyncratic and more direct, a great forlorn careworn track, the pump organ giving a nice bit of softness against the jaggedness of his voice. Time ends the first side on a great note, a lovely track.
I’m not as keen on the start of the second side, I don’t find the instrumental Midtown and Spoken Words 9th and Hennepin that compelling, but Gun Street Girl is excellent, some clanging and some back porch bluesy guitar make a great combination. Keith’s second appearance on Union Square is a Tom Wait’s version of Chuck Berry, followed by the country-esque Blind Love, which puts me in mind of Odelay. Downtown Train alongside Hang Your Head is a more conventionally structured song, with a more direct melody and it's a great song. Anywhere I Lay My Head has possibly his most exaggerated vocal, but it's a pleasingly odd track, moving from funereal to bar room stomp, and definitely feels like an influence on Radiohead’s Life in a Glasshouse.
It’s not perfect, it does feel like a few tracks too many, with a couple of lulls, but it is a great album, and I’ll go for a high 4.
🌧️🐕🦺🐕🦺🐕🦺
Playlist submission: Gun Street Girl
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Darkness on the Edge of Town
I generally prefer either sombre, dusty Bruce a la Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad or bombastic 80s Bruce to his mid 70s period, even though of course there are great songs in that period, including a few on this album.
Badlands is up there for me as one of his best songs for me, a great rollicking tune and an excellent opener. Adam Raised a Cain has a nice moody feel, a slight Station to Station feel to the guitar. The Promised Land is great as well, and the final run of Streets of Fire, Prove it All Night and Darkness On the Edge of Town is excellent, hitting that signature strain of strained, anthemic, gritty passion combined with the stories of hardship and perseverance, culminating in the excellent Title Track. Despite the singalong and ebullient nature of some of the music, the themes of the album tend to the small and the sad, everyday people up against the vicitudes of life, with not much chance at escape or happiness.
But there are also a couple of songs that I’m not as keen on and, to use an appropriate car metaphor, stall things a little. Something in the Night and Racing in the Street as slowed down piano ballads have a dirge-like quality, the melody being a bit hard work. I like Candy’s Room and Factory, but they probably sit at the level between those two songs and the others.
It’s not my favourite of his, and I had been erring between 3 and 4. But there are some great songs on here, and although the air of despondency isn’t initially that appealing it is a very good album, so I’ll go 4.
🌆🌆🌆🌆
Playlist submission: Badlands
Django Django
4/5
Django Django
I was very enamoured with Default when it came out, and I remember liking this album at the time, but it has completely dropped off my radar in subsequent years.
Hail Bop is a banger, starting off with a kind of 80s action movie synth line, like some of the incidental music from Beverly Hills Cop, before moving into synthy art-pop. Default remains excellent, a great stomping bit of electro-pop-rock, and Firewater nicely combines a dusty cowboy country feel with electronic rhythms. That combination of more organic electric/acoustic guitars with synths and layered electric rhythms is a recurring feature and is what makes it an interesting album, and I like how it feels as though in many cases it’s built from the rhythm up, with guitars and keys adding hooks and melody, with the vocals augmenting it, occasionally providing melody, like on Hand of Man, but more often adding more rhythm with a pleasing air of flattened detachment.
I like the womp womp on Waveforms and the Hot Chip-esque feel to Zumm Zumm, nice little quirky song. The percussion on Love’s Dart is interesting, a kind of pulsing clippity clop, and it has a feel of Kid A era Radiohead, but with less impenetrable vocals. Wor’s twangy rockabilly-surf guitar and tom-tom heavy drums are great, the twangy guitar reappearing on another great track, Life’s a Beach, with its churchly organ breakdown. I’m in two minds about Skies over Cairo, the north African melody feels a little generic, but I really like the galloping percussion. Silver Rays ends things on a great synth pop note, with more great percussion and a nice synth line.
It’s a very high 4. There are a couple of dips, but it’s a great album, I love the rhythms, guitars, synths and vocals, and it’s been really fun listening after forgetting all about it.
☄️☄️☄️☄️
Playlist submission: Could be Hail Bop, Firewater or Life’s a Beach, but I’ll go with Default
The Magnetic Fields
4/5
The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing
Dexys Midnight Runners
5/5
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
As much as I like Don’t Stand Me Down this is my favourite Dexy’s album, a brilliant example of their early combination of joyous Brummified soul music with an exuberant, intense punk spirit.
Burn it Down (formerly Dance Stance) kicks off with radio static and snippets of Deep Purple, Sex Pistols and The Specials before hitting a great motown soul groove and Kevin Rowland's distinctive strained, impassioned wailing, listing numerous Irish playwrights, a nice reference to late 70s early 80s anit-Irish sentiments. Tell Me When the Light Turns Green carries on the Staxian/Motown/Northern Soul groove with a great horn line, as does the instrumental The Teams That Meet in Caffs, before the slow burning, jazzy Just Looking. Geno is of course an absolute corker, a superb horn riff and a brilliant, loping, swinging bass line.
Seven Days is great, I always liked playing the original when I used to ‘dj’, but I love the slight workingman’s club feel of their version, it feels like you are hearing it in a pub somewhere in the late 70s. I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried, returns to the slowed down soul of Just Looking, with some excellent bass playing. Thankfully Living in Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply is a great song title and another upbeat Northern Soul style track with a great ooh ooh chorus. Love Pt 1 is the kind of spoken word Kevin Rowland track that is a bit marmite, but I kind of like its oddness before the excellent There, There My Dear, another great horn driven track.
Listening now has reminded me what a great album this is, it has a few rough edges, but there are some great tracks and it has a soulful punkish singularity to it, and a matching aesthetic that I love, so it's a five for me.
💊💊💊💊💊
Playlist submission: Geno
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Henry’s Dream
I’ve found this the least engaging of the Nick Cave albums on the list. It starts off brilliantly with Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, and ends strongly with John Finn’s Wife and Jack the Ripper but it definitely tails off in the middle, a lot of the songs passing me by, and unlike their other albums it hasn’t really grown much on me on repeat listens.
It still has a decent base level as it is a Nick Cave album, but I feel a bit ambivalent about it really. I’ll go 3 as I might try again in future
💭💭💭
Playlist submission: Papa Won’t Leave You Henry
Missy Elliott
4/5
Under Construction
‘Bill Gates and Donald Trump got better shit to do’
That's aged well.
I liked Supa Dupa Fly a lot, I like Missy and Timbaland in tandem, and I feel similarly about this. The spoken word bit aside the bendy synth line and percussion of Go To The Floor is excellent. Bring the Pain is a superb song, and although this version isn't my favourite, it’s still great, and Work It is a banger, a great rhythm and a flipside viewpoint on gender tropes.
Back in the Day is also a banger, the clav and percussion giving it a 70s feel to match the nostalgic lyric, with Jay Z’s great guest appearance. Nothing out There for Me is a catchy tune, despite a slightly OTT vocal from Beyonce. Slide is excellent, a slight hint at a North African sound with the hook, and a great groove. I really like Play that Beat’s string driven treatise on beating up your partner’s ex girlfriends. Ain’t That Funny is a great bit of Missy/Timbaland, an excellent sound with a shiny, 2000s-futuristic synth hook.
There are a couple of tracks I’m not as keen on, particularly, Pussycat and the Lonely Island-esque Can You Hear Me, although the stacked vocals sound excellent on this.
All round it's a great early-mid 2000s hip hop album. I love Timbaland’s sound, but on here it also feels like there are some softer edges among the usual bendy synths and skittering snares. Although Lauryn Hill gets more critical praise, perhaps as she is more perceived as being more serious, Missy is probably a better rapper, and although she's not as good a singer, she’s great at little hooks and earworms, and in partnership with Timbaland she’s got a great overall sound. Similar to Supa Dupa Fly I’ll put this in the low 4s.
🏗️🏗️🏗️🏗️
Playlist submission: Work It
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
4/5
Will the Circle Be Unbroken
This is a great little discovery. I’d not heard of The Nitty Gritty Band or this album before, but I really enjoyed it. Even though it feels more like a historical record of great music and musicians, so that songs and voices aren’t lost, rather than an actual LP _record_ [1]. Although the number of times Lost Highway has come up on albums on the list that song certainly isn't in any danger.
It feels a little akin to Lomax’s field recordings, but perhaps less folk-blues and more country-folk, particularly with the Appalachian music, and there’s a great verve and atmosphere across the whole thing, the pre-song chatter feeling genuine and giving the whole thing a sense of very appealing intimacy. I don’t know if this was an inspiration or influence on the soundtrack for Brother Where Art Thou, but there are a few songs on here that are on that soundtrack.
It is obviously pretty long, and I can see how two hours of rinky tinky banjo and fiddle might get a bit much, but for me the two hours passed extremely pleasantly - the quality of playing can’t be faulted, there are numerous excellent songs; Keep on the Sunny Side, Dark as a Dungeon, Tennessee Stud, Wreck on the Highway, I Saw the Light, Orange Blossom Special, Lost Highway, Honky Tonk Blues, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and the delicate instrumental cover of Both Sides Now. And overall it has an unpretentious, straightforward charm to it, easily passing into the 4s.
⭕⭕⭕⭕
Playlist submission: Keep on the Sunny Side
[1] wordplay
Hot Chip
4/5
In Our Heads
This is strongly tied to memories of living in Mile End and the summer of 2012 Olympics, I listened to this a lot back then, but not as much recently. It's still great though.
It starts off brilliantly - Motion Sickness, How Do You Do, Don’t Deny Your Heart are all superb. Motion Sickness builds brilliantly, a great opener. How Do You Do is great synth-disco-pop and Don’t Deny Your Heart is just a joyously infectious bit of 80s flecked pop, with hints of early Whitney.
Those three songs are my standouts, but it maintains a great base level of quality, even if it doesn’t necessarily reach the heights of that opening triptych. These Chains has a great nagging propulsion and a great synth bass line, Night and Day is a bit of a banger, Flutes’ pulsing, cascading feel is fantastic, and Always Been Your Love is a lovely bit of keening synth pop.
It’s interesting, they obviously have a degree of 2010s hipsterness about them, but they are very grounded in traditional pop structures - even though they are electronic and synth based, their songs often feel like a transposition of the structures of traditional 4 piece band with bass, rhythm and lead all played on synth (with actual guitars on top too)
Despite this being a great album, I don’t quite think it’s a 5, it has a couple of moments of relative drag to it, so I’ll go for a high 4.
🍟🍟🍟🍟
Playlist submission: Don’t Deny Your Heart
5/5
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo
All the times I’ve listened to this album I don’t think I registered until today that Eno produced it - yet again his hand is across so much of the music I love. Reading further, although they were seemingly resistant to Eno, Bowie was also involved, and I’d be fascinated to hear what the Devo-Eno-Bowie-Holger Czukay-Dieter Moebius jam session sounded like.
Anyhow to this, a brilliantly offbeat new wave pop album. I love that as deliberately odd and idiosyncratic as Devo are, it never feels forced, the absurdism is playful and humorous, and beneath all the art-rock situationism I think there is genuine sincerity and meaning, as veiled as it is in jerky oddballism.
Although none of that would work if they weren’t such a great band with a great ear for a hook, wrapped up in tense, jumpy songs, like a kind of ADHD younger brother to Talking Heads. The whole thing is excellent, but the first side is particularly strong with Uncontrollable Urge, Satisfaction, Mongoloid and Jocko Homo.
Uncontrollable Urge is a great distillation of the album, a jerky groove, shouty vocals and an odd kind of catchiness. Their take on Satisfaction is superb, turning it into a kind of robotic groove and the frenetic vocals capturing the same sense of frustration and alienation as the original but transposed to the late 70s. Praying Hands starts with a bit of pre-B-52s retro-futurism before yanking it sideways with some synthy business and Space Junk is a great bit of throwaway art-punk. Mongoloid is fantastic, a motorik beat and synth line and catchy chorus, and Jocko Homo is a brilliant bit of jumpy mechanicalism, with a humorous art pop sensibility.
The second side perhaps feels more traditional in the sense the synths are less prominent, but it's an excellent set of nervy and scratchy post punk songs, the edgy feel of Too Much Paranoias, the galloping Come Back Jonee, the jittery Sloppy before the squelchy and science lab rockabilly of Shrivel-Up. But Gut Feeling is the standout on the second side, a relatively conventional rock song, but with a catchy, relentless energy and an excellent synth line.
Its a great album, one of my favourites. 5.
👶👶👶👶👶
Playlist submission: Could be many, I’ll go Jocko Homo
Michael Jackson
5/5
Off the Wall
Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough is undeniable, an ecstatic, joyous swirl of strings, woos, drums, guitars and sex. It sounds fantastic at the hand of Quincy Jones, and its arranged brilliantly, the guitar running through, the breakdowns, the horns, the strings, a genius song. I certainly can’t get enough of it.
Rock with You, Workin’ Day and Night and Get on the Floor follow and they are fantastic disco-funk-soul too, all brilliant tracks, even if they don’t quite have the same infectious jubilance of Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. The title track makes it 5 bangers from 5 songs, Rod Temperton borrowing his own bass hook from Boogie Nights to make a great slinky disco-funk track.
There’s a bit of lull between Off the Wall and It’s the Falling in Love, or at least Girlfriend, She’s Out of My Life and I Can’t Help It struggle to match the level of the previous 5 songs. Girlfriend is probably the best of these, although the signature Macca jauntiness feels slightly out of step with the rest of the disco-funk. I’m not generally a fan of MJ’s ballads, but She’s Out of My Life is probably his best, and although it's very nice, I can somewhat take it or leave it. I Can’t Help It is fine also, but lacks the dynamism of the first side, recalling Stevie’s dip post Songs in the Key of Life. It’s The Falling in Love picks things back up with a great bit of soul-pop and Burn This Disco Out closes with another disco-funk banger.
I think I have always preferred this over Thriller, but looking back I think I understarred Thriller. Although I maintain Baby Be Mine, Human Nature and The Lady in My Life aren’t that great, the stone cold classics on there should outweigh them, and similarly I think the superb disco-funk of 2/3rds of this album outweigh the little second side lull, so this, as should Thriller be, is a 5.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Playlist submission: Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough
Morrissey
2/5
You are the Quarry
I know English Blood, Irish Heart and that it is an excellent track, but I was expecting to feel similarly about this album as I did Vauxhall and I, in that I can’t shake the feeling of disconnect between Morrissey and his words with the rather generic music.
While I still feel that way about this and the propensity for relatively staid mid tempo guitar rock, I didn’t feel it quite as strongly on this album, America is not the World has a great slinking bassline, Irish Blood, English Heart is great, I’m Not Sorry has a lovely feel to it and First of the Gang to Die has a great brightness to it, and there are some nice glam touches here and there. But it still has a tang of plodding mundanity to it musically.
Irish Blood, English Heart and First of the Gang to Die are probably the best songs lyrically, with humour and a sense of drama, and while some other lyrics feel a little out of date (I imagine the anti-American sentiment of the opening track is no longer applicable to his current worldview), there seems to be A LOT more moaning than Vauxhall and I. You can’t help thinking the reason that he’s got no one to love him in I Have Forgiven Jesus is that he’s not actually that likeable, and things like The World is Full of Crashing Bores and How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel re-enforce that tiresomeness lack of self awareness. Although he has always had that strain running through his lyrics, in the Smiths he was a little more oblique and imaginative, using humour and irony, whereas on here it feels more like straightforward and lumpen whining.
I probably liked it more than Vauxhall and I, but equally I’m not really enthused by it. It’s been an interesting listen, but really I can’t imagine that I’ll listen again, so I’ll go 2.
🪨🪨
Playlist submission: First of the Gang to Die
Rod Stewart
4/5
Gasoline Alley
I’m pleased Rod’s early solo period, when he made his best music, is well represented on the list, with this and Every Picture Tells A Story. EPTAS is probably my favourite, but all of his first four albums are great, when he was making his best music, before his mega stardom arrived.
It’s obviously similar to the music he was making at the same time with the Faces, with Ronnie on every track and the others making significant contributions. But it has a more subdued and melancholic edge, which is when I think his voice works best, and is built around acoustic guitars with noticeable folk and country accents, rather than the laddish, more raucous sound of the Faces.
Gasoline Alley is a lovely opener and his take on Its All Over Now is great, although it is a song I’ve heard so often that I have fallen out of love with it. Only a Hobo shows that Dylan is a touchstone for the country-folk feel of the album, and it's a superb vocal. My Way of Giving is a great song, and this is probably the best version, and the take on Country Comfort suits the down home feel of the album,
I absolutely love his take on Cut Across Shorty, amplifying the country feel in the original with the fiddle and giving it a great groove. Lady Day is a lovely tender little tune, although with a slightly odd mix, and Jo’s Lament carries on with that feel and is another great tune. You’re My Girls ends things on an uptempo note, a great bluesy-funk track.
It’s a little loose around the edges, but that’s part of its unpretentious charm, and although of course it's not an absolute top drawer album, it's still a fantastically warm and easy going listen, with great vocals and playing, landing comfortably in the mid to high 4s.
⛽⛽⛽⛽
Playlist submission: Cut Across Shorty
Slipknot
1/5
All Hope is Gone
I’m reluctant to say this is worthless, as obviously it resonates with a lot of people, but it does virtually nothing for me, to the point where, like with much of this type of music, it just all feels pointless, this time with added Linkin Park-esque emo nu-metal accents, although it seems about 8 years too late (and about half an hour too long)
Also, reading about it, it's interesting how snobbishness pervades every genre. It seems many metalheads think they are frauds and plastic metallers, I guess because they achieved a somewhat mainstream degree of success, and that they aren’t hard or heavy enough, especially on this one where the deign to deploy some actual singalong choruses, as on Psychosocial.
While I don’t think this is truly execrable, and it certainly has moments when a melodic sensibility pokes through, it’s more that 770-odd albums any post-70s metal now just feels like a cul de sac of ever diminishing returns, if indeed there was ever any return in the first place, and there are only so many times you can take someone saying they don’t believe in anything. I’m probably never even going to think about this album again, let alone listen again. 1.
🪢
Playlist submission: Dead Memories
Pink Floyd
3/5
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
I can appreciate the experimentalism and how this must have sounded for 1967 (although the extreme stereo panning hasn’t aged brilliantly), a combination of acid enhanced childish whimsy and droning space rock, while also finding it a not particularly engaging listen.
I wasn’t hugely into The Madcap Laughs, and I think I struggle to attune myself to Syd Barret’s songwriting and melodic style, which makes up the majority of this. And I think you can see the Gilmour shaped hole, missing his brooding, introspective bluesiness. Clearly they were a very different band at this point, and when they do hint at the atmospheric music they would go on to make on things like Astronomy Domine, Pow R Tc H and Interstellar Overdrive I like it, but elsewhere the green frog in bog, cat in house, hats for a queen and bells for a king whimsy doesn’t really resonate for me.
I think this is probably more contextually interesting than musically interesting, although I know lots of people absolutely love 60s psych, and I appreciate the influence it has had and the sense of novelty for the time. But musically I’m not as appreciative, so I think this settles as a low 3. I may come back and try again, but I would probably head toward their later music, once Gilmour is onboard.
🪈🪈🪈
Playlist submission: Interstellar Overdrive
Tracy Chapman
4/5
Tracy Chapman
I’ve never actually listened to this.
Although it's not completely overwhelming, it’s a bit of a shame the late 80s production (hello panpipes!) and slight sheen of anodyne uber-competency session musicianship gives it such a strong scent of unthreatening coffee shop background music, as underneath that its an album full of very good songs and at turns bittersweet, angry, sad, resigned, personal and socially pointed lyrics.
Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, Fast Car, Baby Can I Hold You Tonight and Mountains o’ Things show what a great songwriter she is. Probably the only song that doesn’t work for me is She’s Got Her Ticket, with its slightly lifeless reggae, and perhaps the bluesiness of For My Lover doesn’t quite cath fire, although it is still good, especially lyrically.
But Baby Can I Hold You Tonight in particular really is a superb song, a fantastic melody, one of those you could easily assume has been around since the 70s, with its echoes of Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell and the singer songwriter, Laurel Canyon scene. I think that scene does reverberate across the album, there are quite a few parallels, even if it is missing the sun dappled analogue warmth of that sound.
It’s a great album of great songs, with only the occasional dip, but the production doesn’t serve it brilliantly, suffusing it with a slightly soporific miasma, which does sometimes undercut the potency, but despite that its a rock solid 4.
🏎️🏎️🏎️🏎️
Playlist submission: Baby Can I Hold You
Beth Orton
4/5
Central Reservation
Trailer Park is irriguous with memories of Grey, She Cries Your Name in particular, but I’m not sure I’ve listened to this, which feels a bit strange considering how much I listened to TP.
This feels very long at nearly an hour, and the ‘folktronica’ of it is so redolent of late 90s dinner party music, and although it sounds and feels different from Tracy Chapman it does share a similar unthreatening placidity to it, a slightly horizontal sense of somniferousness, so much so that I kept finding myself losing interest at points, and particularly over the last 10 or 20 minutes.
It starts off brilliantly though with Stolen Car, an excellent track, a great melody and the guitar that sounds like a cello and morse code is fantastic. Sweetest Decline has a nice jazziness to it, even if it does carry the slight flatus of the cocktail bar, but Couldn’t Cause Me Harm is really good, more excellent guitar and another great melody.
So Much More is one of the lulls, passing me by on each listen. However the next two songs don’t pass me by; Pass in Time is a lovely duet with a superb string arrangement and the title track is excellent, the pizzicato sounds, strings and guitars supporting the song beautifully.
Stars All Seem to Weep is another dip, the whole sound of it feels spiritless and dated, its colourlessness is eye-catchingly mundane, and it’s not surprising that Ben Watt from EBTG produced it, as that is their stock in trade. However, a little like So Much More, it's followed up by a great song, in this case Love Like Laughter, which has a lovely flowing melody and organ line. I think Blood Red River and Devil Song suffer a little from being side by side, they seem to be thematically and sonically commutual, and although they are both good songs, they do contribute to that sense of drift over the back half. I wasn’t keen on the lo-fi sound of Feel to Believe on the first few listens, but it grew on me, the slightly raw and unpolished feel is welcome after the slumberousness of the preceding few tracks. Ben Watt then returns to spray some of his trademark hebetude all over the final track, and although this one fares better than Stars All Seem to Weep, it isn’t a patch on the original version earlier on the album.
10 or 15 minutes shorter (and without the Ben Watt produced tracks) I think it would be an easy 4, even pushing a 5, but at an hour the somnifacient sense of drift does creep in and vaguely diminishes the whole, perhaps even putting it on the threshold of 3 and 4. But, ultimately, there is too much great music on here, particularly in the first half, and her superbly charismatic, agreeably distinctive voice and songwriting skill makes it a 4.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Central Reservation
The Teardrop Explodes
3/5
Kilimanjaro
I really enjoyed Peggy Suicide, but I’m only a little familiar Teardrop Explodes, so I was keen to give this a listen.
I do know Reward of course, although it was only added to this after it was a successful single, but you can immediately tell they are contemporaries of Echo and the Bunnymen and that 80s Liverpool cosmic speckled post-punk scene - it's full of rhythmic urgency and throbbing, driving, melodic bass. However, unlike E&TB they don’t have a guitarist to match Will Sargeant, and although the organ and horns are great, it does feel like it's missing an ingredient like him to really elevate or differentiate the songs.
But it is a fine album in that style, and none of the songs are bad at all, but there are a couple of songs that I really liked; Ha Ha I’m Drowning, Treason, Poppies in the Field and When I’m Dreaming.
On balance I think this ends up a high 3, would happily stick it on again, even if I would probably head to E&TB first.
💧💧💧
Playlist submission: Poppies in the Field
Miles Davis
5/5
In A Silent Way
I was into this from the first note, finding it just the right amount of jazz, just the right amount of rock and just the right amount of fusion, making it a brilliantly undulating and expressive 40 minutes of music.
Shh/Peaceful evokes a lovely, graceful, shifting mood, circling around the main theme, repetitive but never boring. It's a superb piece of music, reminding me a little of Lalo Schiffrin’s soundtracks in places, particularly Dirty Harry.
In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time is equally fantastic, surely a huge influence on Music for Airports, but it also reminded me of Talk Talk’s final two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, in the way the music gently unfurls over the opening passage and gently winds down of the closing passage, and John McLaughlin’s superb guitar playing brings Shuggie Otis to mind too.
More proof, if proof be need be, that the Overton Jazz Window (Overton Window of Jazz? Jazz Overton Window?) has shifted significantly for me since starting the list, and this is definitely one of the top discoveries, I absolutely loved it. 5.
🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇
Playlist submission: Could be either piece, but I’ll go with In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time.
Fiona Apple
3/5
Tidal
Based on already loving Criminal and how much I enjoyed Fetch the Boltcutters, I really wanted to like this more than I actually ended up, finding some of it great and, unfortunately, quite a chunk of it musically and melodically pretty flat.
Sleep to Dream, Shadow Boxer and Carrion are excellent, musically and thematically dramatic, and Criminal is superb, a brilliant song. Lyrically the rest is good, but musically I really struggled to connect with it, everything feeling pretty horizontal and lacklustre, none of the melodies or piano parts really grabbing me.
The good bits are still great though, and maybe it will click if I come back to it later, so I think I’ll give it a 3, even if I was, sadly, underwhelmed by it on this occasion.
🌊🌊🌊
Playlist submission: Criminal
Creedence Clearwater Revival
5/5
Cosmo’s Factory
I do love the choogly shuffle of CCR, exemplified by the excellent opener Ramble Tamble, although I can also see how it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
It is mine though, and I am happy to drink in this draught of swampy-bluesy-countrified rock’n’roll, and imagine myself out in the bayou, feet tapping away in the humid evening, not drinking cans of beer, but cups of tea of the music I’m listening to whilst imagining being there. It really is a hall of mirrors.
The hit rate of great songs on here is quite remarkable, 8 of the 11 tracks - Ramble Tamble, Travelin’ Band, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Run Through the Jungle, Up Around the Bend, Who’ll Stop the Rain, I Heard it Through the Grapevine and Long as I Can See the Light - are all on pretty much every CCR best of. Of the three remaining tracks Ooby Dooby is probably the weakest, and although they aren’t at the same level as the rest of the songs the bluesy r’n’b of Before You Accuse Me and My Baby Left Me are decent.
It may not be the most inventive album, and it’s kind of interesting how self consciously retro they were for the rock’n’roll that was only 10 or fifteen years old, but it’s a great album, and the number of classics in it pushes it to a five for me.
🏭🏭🏭🏭🏭
Playlist submission: Ramble Tamble or Long as I Can See the Light…Long as I Can See the Light
Merle Haggard
3/5
I’m a Lonesome Fugitive
I found this to be a perfectly pleasant 30 minutes of late 60s country, with hints at the Outlaw country of the early 70s, but with strong roots in the late 50s/early 60s sound. Indeed, if you told me it was released in 1960 I would believe you, and that sense of conservatism slightly undercuts the Outlaw-ism.
He’s got a lovely, expressive voice, the playing is skilled, there are some really nice songs, and he is a very good country storyteller, those classic country lyrics being one of the best parts of it. But, for me, it does struggle to rise above pleasantness - in the main it's an enjoyable but not hugely memorable listen, with only My Rough and Rowdy Ways really standing out.
I would happily listen again, but I think there are other albums in this field I would go to over this first, not least the next album on the list, so I’ll go for a 3.
🚂🚂🚂
Playlist submission: My Rough and Rowdy Ways
Waylon Jennings
4/5
Honky Tonk Heroes
It’s hard not to reference Merle yesterday, and this feels like a significant evolution from I’m a Lonesome Fugitive. The sound is far, far better; richer, deeper and warmer (exemplified by the superb bass - in tone and playing and in its place in the mix), giving the whole thing a loose, easy going charm, and it's a great listen
I also prefer Waylon’s voice (not least as he sang the Dukes of Hazzard theme tune) - he has a much less stylised country timbre than Merle and is much more appealing, especially in combination with the excellent, vaguely rock’n’roll tinged music.
Although things like the guitar on the title track carry those rock’n’roll influences, it’s still a recognisably country album, with some excellent melodies and lyrics and some great songs; the title track, the melancholic Old Five and Dimers, the superb, loping and fiddling Willy the Wandering Gypsy (despite the mad fade out), Omaha, the excellent Ride Me Down Easy, the skipping, picaresque Ain’t No God in Mexico and the Elvis-ish gospel of We Had it All.
Overall it’s a great combination of Waylon’s charisma and Billy Joe Shaver’s songs, and is an excellent album, a clear step past a lot of 50s and 60s country albums. And it's only 27 minutes long.
Not sure if it’s a 4 or a 5. It perhaps does feel a little lightweight in places so I think I’ll settle on a high 4.
🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
Playlist submission: Between Willy the Wandering Gypsy, Ride Me Down Easy and We Had it All…I’ll go Ride Me Down Easy
Elvis Presley
2/5
Elvis is Back!
This sounds great for 1960, the difference in clarity and depth from his debut in 1956 is really noticeable, and his voice is superb, smoother and more resonant and much more mature.
However it clearly lacks the punch and thrill of his debut, or the lived in r'n'b of his end of the 60s albums, or his enjoyably OTT Vegas period. There’s obviously nothing wrong with aiming for mass appeal, but stylistically and in song choice the edges have been filed down so much it feels denuded of any kind personality, let alone excitement or sexiness, and if you hadn’t heard anything else by him you might wonder why he’s so revered.
It’s never bad though, even if it is a bit cloying in places, it’s mainly just completely fine if forgettable, with perhaps only It Feels So Right standing out for its genuine bluesy feel and earthy vocal, with the similar Like a Baby not far behind. The Girl of My Best Friend is also a nice song of course.
I think it's between a 2 and a 3, probably closer to 2 - while not bad it doesn’t feel historically significant or musically interesting enough to come back two. My mind is telling me 2, but my body, my body is telling me threeeeeeeeee. I think I’ll go 2 as realistically I won’t come back and I was very happy to not have to listen again after my 3rd or 4th go round.
🔙🔙
Playlist submission: It Feels So Right
Bauhaus
3/5
Mask
I was looking forward to this as I’ve enjoyed most of the late 70s and early 80s gothicy post-punky albums we’ve had - it's very often a little sweet spot of interesting ideas and nice bass.
However, aside from a couple of songs, I did find this a little underwhelming, it has all the elements I should like - drums, bass, scratchy guitars and portentous singing, but apart from Hair of the Dog, Dancing, In Fear of Fear and the truly excellent and stand out Kick in the Eye it never quite seems to gel for me, and it feels like he leans too much into Bowie-isms and it lacks the grooves or rhythmic interest of a Killing Joke or Suicide, or the melodic quality of The Cure or Bowie himself.
Still I did like it enough to think I will come back to it in future, so I’ll go 3.
👺👺👺
Playlist submission: Kick in the Eye
The Vines
3/5
Highly Evolved
A very nice blast from the past, the songs I liked at the time I still like, the Grunge-Britpop-Garage derivations of Highly Evolved, Outtathaway and Get Free, and the Verve-esque moody rock of 1969.
Of the rest of it, while some is fairly pedestrian post grunge alt-rock, some of it is far more interesting and varied than I remember, even if not always totally successful. The psychedelic spaciness of Autumn Shade, the squelching synthy pulse of Sunhinin’, the harmony laden Country Yard, the very Supergrass-punk hybrid of Ain’t No Room.
Despite some undoubted highlights and a nice line in eclectic influences, it does occasionally get weighed down by grunginess, and I am left with a slight feeling of bratty inessentialness for some reason. However it’s still a good nostalgic listen that I could easily return to if the mood strikes. 3.
🍇🍇🍇
Playlist submission: Highly Evolved
Tom Waits
4/5
Swordfishtrombones
This almost feels like it should have come after Rain Dogs, sounding much more like a ruminative and melancholic hangover to Rain Dogs’ more ebullient night before. But Rain Dogs is actually the night after, and this is the morning before.
Like RD this ticks off the checklist of midgets and drunkards, but rather than some of the bluesy raucousness of that album, this maintains a more slippery jazziness, creating more oddly compelling atmospheres and moods, with more elements of sadness and regret, Johnsburg, Illinois or Town with no Cheer or Soldier’s Things or the rather beautiful Rainbirds for example, as well as some New Orleans-yness, as on In the Neighbourhood and Just Another Sucker on the Vine. It doesn’t completely eschew some of the RD spirit though, - Underground, Down, Down, Down and particularly 16 Shells from a 30.6 have a great stomping weight to them.
Also the more I listen to TW the more I think he must have been the inspiration for the underground level music on Super Mario World, something like Shore Leave or the title tracks’ rhythm and organ parts share a feeling I think.
Whichever way round they go this does feel like a companion piece to Rain Dogs and I enjoyed them equally I think, so I’ll go for the same rating, a high 4
⚔️🐟🎺🎺
Playlist submission: Johnsburg, Illinois
Gang Of Four
5/5
Entertainment!
One of the good things for me about that 2000s indie-garage era, and Franz Ferdinand in particular, was finding out about this album. I loved it as soon as I heard it back then and I still do - it’s right up my angular, post punk shithole, all scratchy guitars, thumping drums, driving bass and student-tinged situationist sloganeering.
They weren’t necessarily the first to mix funk or dub with punk, but it’s such a great combination of the three, but with added disco (At Home He’s a Tourist’s bass intro is basically Chic), that it still feels fresh and exciting 47 years later.
It’s great throughout, but the opening 4 songs are particularly strong. Ether’s broken drum pattern, bass hook, slashing guitars and lyrics poking at superficiality set the tone and is followed by the excellent Natural’s Not It, I love the riff, but the bass and drums are superb, especially when the they drop out and come back in around the 2.15 mark. Not Great Men’s icily propulsive funk groove and oddly catchy chorus are fantastic before the frantic, driving, sweat stained grubby lust of Damaged Goods. There’s more excellent Bernard Edwards-esque bass to Return the Gift and more cold punkish funk on Guns Before Butter before another galloping punk-ish track in I Found that Essence Rare. Glass carries echoes of Television and Contract has a great, discordant feel, and I love the chorus lyrics, but, despite liking them these two songs are probably the closest to a lull, before the superb At Home He’s A Tourist, a fantastic disco-punk-funk song (essentially the template for The Rapture if you remember them). 5.45 carries more echoes of Television, and is interestingly prescient with its lyrics about watching mayhem and bloodshed on 18” screens. And Love Like Anthrax is a super closer, full of punk-psychedelic guitars and a superb, insistent bass line, a fantastically cold and dysfunctional view of love as a deadly infection.
A superb album, combining fraught, taut, frantic, aggressive funk, disco, punk and student-adjacent politics with some excellent songs. Easy 5.
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥
Playlist submission: Could be nearly any song, Natural’s Not In It is an enduring favourite, but I’ll go At Home He’s a Tourist
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
3/5
Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury
You could say this is very prescient, that the social and political themes Franti (V ‘03!) raps about are very apposite today, or you could say same as it ever was - the inequities of 1991 aren’t just the same as they are in 2026, they are the same as 1977 or 1968 or 1951 or whichever year you might choose. Or you could say, like the album cover, it's all very obvious and simplistic - tv bad, government bad, inequality bad etc etc.
Musically it does feel caught between a kind of Public Enemy-lite and a more Jazzy golden age of hip hop sound, and it’s definitely more successful when it leans on the latter - the piano and flute parts of Famous and Dandy are much better than its siren laden intro. Television the Drug of the Nation is of course well known and it is great, if a little heavy handed in places, again leaning more on that golden age jazziness rather than the more frenetic Bomb Squad sound.
Language of Violence, The Winter of the Long Hot Summer, California Uber Alles and Water Pistol Man are all good too, variously low key and jazzy or in the case of California Uber Alles tracing the line of social protest and DIY from punk to hip hop. There are a few dips, Socio Genetic Experiment is strangely annoying and Music and Politics has the earnest discomfort of attending a slam poetry night.
It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4 - a lot of it is great, but for me it doesn’t quite seem to come together as a whole, so I’ll go with the highest of 3s.
📺📺📺
Playlist submission: Television, the Drug of the Nation
D'Angelo
3/5
Brown Sugar
The title track is superb, and there are some great moments throughout, the jazzy accents, rather than relying purely on a 70s soul pastiche, gives it lightness and groove, the production has a warm polish to it, and the overall buttery smoothness makes it an easy listen.
However it is thematically and tempo-wise pretty one note, and no matter how sweet his voice is and how easily it slips by, it does suffer from a sense of repeating itself, making the full 53 minutes drag a little.
Alongside Brown Sugar, I like Smooth, the cover of Cruisin’ is good, Shit Damn Motherfucker is strangely catchy. I like Lady, although it carries quite a few neo-soul tropes, its minimalist funk groove is solid, and Higher is nice, even if it is fairly rote.
I don’t mind neo soul in general, and this, as one of the progenitors, is one of the better examples, but it still does butt up against the structural restrictions of the genre so it struggles to really elevate itself to more than an easy listening, solid to high 3.
🤎🤎🤎
Playlist submission: Brown Sugar
Mercury Rev
2/5
Deserter Songs
I was interested to listen to this having not heard it since it had its moment in the sun back in 1998/99.
Goddess on a Hiway is still an excellent track, I still like the intonation and lyrics of the chorus in Holes and Opus 40 is good, but overall I don’t think it holds up that well and it’s hard not see its popularity as a music critic driven campaign that somehow catches a moment, but ultimately doesn’t endure as it is really a fairly middling album. It’s also striking how much it sounds like the Flaming Lips (which makes sense as it was made side by side with the Soft Bulletin), who in turn had the critical spotlight shone on them a few years later with Yoshimi, a far better record, and perhaps is the album the media wanted this to be.
Anyway, while it has moments that transcend the prevalence of mid tempo sludge and winsomeness, and I don’t think it’s bad, I don’t find its overall tone of mawkish psychedelia particularly interesting either, so for me it sits somewhere around 2 or 3. In reality I don’t think I’ll listen again so I’ll go with a high 2.
🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Goddess on a Hiway
Black Flag
2/5
Damaged
I’m not into Hardcore, although I kind of like that it exists in the musical landscape, so even though this was probably never really going to fully land for me, it was interesting to give it a spin.
It’s funny reading about how controversial it was at the time, and although it obviously still has a punk rock viscerality and weight to it, with 45 years of music between now and then it doesn’t sound madly different or particularly threatening at all.
Rise Above, Six Pack, TV Party, Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie and Damaged 1 were probably the stand outs, either through more memorable melodies or in the case of Damaged 1 through it’s slightly fractured, gloopy rhythm.
I’m glad I listened, it’s interesting to hear some early Henry Rollins, and it did grow on me a bit on repeat listens, some of the guitar playing is good in a kind of Stooges plus punky thrash way, and some of the riffs and songs kind of burrow their way in.
But it's another one hovering between 2 and 3. I can see its importance to the genre and its place in the musical map, but realistically I’m unlikely to come back to it, even with that contextual value. 2
🏴🏴
Playlist submission: TV Party
Haircut 100
4/5
Pelican West
I very much enjoyed this, an extremely agreeable album of relatively undemanding early 80s slick jazzy disco pop funk, with a great, breezy sound and feel, showcasing what a good songwriter Nick Heyward is.
Favourite Shirts and Love Plus One are an excellent opening pair, Fantastic Day is another great track, I really like Snow Girl and Calling Captain Autumn too, and although it occasionally meanders into some aimless slap bass jam cul de sacs, it’s never less than enjoyable, maintaining a great frothy, bouncy charm. And when the bass isn’t slapping the playing is exemplary, showing the clear influence of Berneard Edwards and the grooves of disco in general.
As good as Favourite Shirts, Love Plus One and Fantastic Day are, it does however feel like it's missing one or two more killer tracks to really elevate it to a solid 4, and his vocals aren’t always the strongest. But as snapshot of sleek, effervescent early 80s disco-funk-pop it is excellent, evoking Jacuzzis, babycham and other bubbly things, so much so it lands as a 4 for me.
💇💇💇💇
Playlist submission: Favourite Shirts (Girl meets Boy)
The Divine Comedy
3/5
A Short Album About Love
I’m not averse to a bit of The Divine Comedy, and I didn’t mind this at all. In someone else’s hands it could have been much worse (or if he had invited Ute Lemper along), he just about manages to stay the right side of musical theatre (apart from the cloying and annoying If) - whether that’s because he gives it a slight air of ironic detachment, or that it has a sense of humour, or that he is able to bring a sense of pop craft to it I’m not sure. And Everybody Knows is an excellent bit of chamber pop, a nice melody and a lovely arrangement without going too much into lounge pastiche.
Overall, it’s a decent baroque pop album, and I might give it a spin again, but I am certainly glad it was actually short. I’ll go 3.
💏💏💏
Playlist submission: Everybody Knows
Siouxsie And The Banshees
5/5
Juju
It took a few listens for this to land with me properly. Initially, outside Spellbound, I felt underwhelmed, similar to Mask, but whereas the debt to Bowie on that album felt overbearing, this has a much more singular and interesting feel to it, with a genuinely dark and agoraphobic atmosphere, compounded by the relentless rhythmic density.
The guitars are also excellent, combining a hard, cutting sound with a swirling, almost psychedelic feel, and Siouxie’s at turns sweet and scratchy vocals and ominous, fractured lyrics add to the unsettling, brooding atmosphere.
The first half is particularly strong, Spellbound is a superbly implacable post-punk/gothic groove followed by Into the Light, a relatively immediate and open feeling song, but musically mirroring the lyrics brilliantly. I love the bass that carries Arabian Knights along with the tom toms and circling guitars, it's a great track. Halloween is also fantastic, elements of Joy Division and a great catchy refrain. You can hear both Station to Station-era Bowie and future industrial sounds in Monitor, completing side one with another great track.
I don’t find side two quite as powerful as side one, but there are still 4 great songs, the unrelenting throb of Night Shift, the nagging beat Sin in my Heart, the excellent guitars of Head Cut and the brilliant, moody, oddly shifting and unsettling Voodoo Dolly.
After initially struggling, this grew on me with each listen, the intricacies and portentous, sorcerous atmosphere getting under my skin, and it's a truly excellent album. 5
🎎🎎🎎🎎🎎
Playlist submission: Could be many, I’ll go with Halloween.
Blue Cheer
2/5
Roni Size
4/5
New Forms
Although rhythmic repetitiveness is the nature of the beast (actually nature of the _beats_, amirite?!), I like how there’s a lot of jazz and hip-hop influence weaved throughout this, particularly with the use of upright bass, most effectively on Brown Paper Bag.
I listened to the full 2 disc version a couple of times, which of course is very long. Too long really, as although it’s extremely well made and thought out, the virtually identical tempos and drum patterns do start to wane significantly over the course of the full 2hrs 20minutes (although Jazz on the 2nd disc is great). If I was a dnb aficionado I’m sure I would be better able to discern the small differences and nuances, although in general I think can appreciate there are subtleties across it, even if I might sometimes be oblivious to them
But the single CD version, from Railing to Destination, although also long, is much more easily digestible, and is in its own right a great album I think. There’s a couple of stand out tracks in Brown Paper Bag, New Forms, Digital and Heroes, and I like the more hip-hop fractured beat of Watching Windows and it’s great to work to, the rhythms and unfussy arrangements giving it a considered feel. And those jazzy accents also give a very appealing late night atmosphere, not really of a frantic dnb club night, but more of a staying up late to write an essay or play Championship Manager 97/98.
This really grew on me, especially when I just listened to just disc one a few more times, it has a sense of serenity, but is always interesting, full of little details, but also one of those albums that can drift past pleasantly, and a much better proposition with a greater sense of craft than say LTJ Bukem. As a 2 disc set it is flawed by it’s length, but as a single album I think it’s great, and it gets to a 4, as I’m definitely coming back to it.
🥁🥁🥁🥁
Playlist submission: Brown Paper Bag
Kid Rock
2/5
Devil Without a Cause
Big ‘You wouldn’t know all the girls I’ve had sex with, they go to a different school.’ vibes with this.
This is currently the 4th worst ranked album on the list, and I’m trying not to let that fact colour my judgement (although if it did it would be a poo-brown colour).
It’s not necessarily that he’s a poor rapper, which is undoubtedly true, or that this album is pretty bad, which it definitely is, it’s more that the whole thing is just a bit lame and embarrassing, giving off divorced dad in the garage energy, spending all his redundancy money on his rapping.
Having said that, some elements of it as dumb party music aren’t actually that bad, on Cowboy the harmonica and initial groove are fine. Roving Gangster isn’t actually that bad compared to a lot of contemporaneous metal, Wasting Time isn’t necessarily that far from Give Out But Don’t Give Out era Primal Scream and Only God Knows Why is a comparable to most modern country. But the problem is that as soon as he opens his mouth on each song it descends quite rapidly, through terrible lyrics, terrible vocals or terrible autotune (or all 3).
But in between that it's pretty uniformly bad. Bawitdaba, I Am the Bullgod, Somebody’s Gotta Feel This, Fists of Rage and Fuck Off in particular, full of empty posturing and embarrassing lyrics.
I didn’t really want to listen twice, as I wasn’t keen on him getting another 14 pence from me in streaming royalties, so I skipped through each track a few times, in case I missed something. But I don’t think I did. It’s definitely a bad album, but I don’t think it's as execrable as other albums we’ve had so I’m not sure it's a 1. I’m not sure what I mean but maybe its stupidity is it’s saving grace, it at least isn’t as interminably self important as say Slipknot, so I think it just, _just_ scrapes a 2. But I wouldn’t be sad if I gave it a 1.
🤠🤠
Playlist submission: Cowboy
PJ Harvey
4/5
Dry
I sort of put off listening to this for a while. Let England Shake is one of my favourite albums from the list and I loved Stories From the City when it came out, and although I liked Rid of Me, I feel like I’m less interested in her early period, just as I’m not really into that early 90s grunge US alt rock sound in general.
However I really enjoyed this, particularly over the first half where it’s very strong. Oh My Lover’s sludgy tempo is great, feeling like a deliberate feint before the unequivocally direct O Stella and the fantastic Dress, with its chugging rhythm and string coda. Victory is excellent too, its caustic slide matching the tenor of the lyrics, and Happy and Bleeding is brilliant too, a kind of grunge-country track with an brilliantly oppressive bass sound. Sheela-N-Gig caps the belting first half with another excellent, scratchy, biting track.
Hair doesn’t feel as strong, sounding a little more rote in comparison, but Joe is great, rhythmically dense and frantic, with a faint air of disco and funk, and Plants and Rags is great too - portentous strings and a creepy western-horro feel. Fountain and Water feel similar to Hair to me, not as strong as the songs around it, feeling slightly less inspired than much of the album.
I think I prefer this to Rid of Me, but I wouldn’t put it on the same level as Let England Shake or Stories from the city, so I’ll stick with a high 4.
🚱🚱🚱🚱
Playlist submission: Happy and Bleeding
The Avalanches
4/5
Since I Left You
I was aware of this at the time, but somehow it passed me by, even though it feels like something I would have liked circa 2000-2001.
Although structurally it is cut from similar cloth to Endtroducing, it doesn’t quite carry the same sense of gravity or depth. That’s not necessarily a criticism, as Entroducing feels so much like its own unique, singular world that it’s not really a fair comparison. But where Endtroducing immerses you in its intricacies and solemnity, Since I Left You has a flittier sense, skipping around more lightly, feeling more horizontal than vertical, leaning more into Daft Punk style house rather than low-key hip hop.
It is an excellent album in its own right though, and it is a great achievement to make something so good from 3,500 samples, what a labour of love. And although there are some standout tracks - the title track, Flight Tonight, Electricity, Frontier Psychiatrist, Etoh, Little Journey, Live at Dominoes and Extra Kings are all great - I think it’s better as a whole piece of music, moving between tracks and upbeat and downbeat excellently.
I’m glad the list made me finally listen to it. I'm not sure it’s at the top tier, but it's a great album, and I’ll definitely be revisiting, so a high 4.
🌊🌊🌊🌊
Playlist submission: Frontier Psychiatrist
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
Tanto Tempo
Is there any other way than breezy to describe this sort of album? I don’t think there is, because it is breezy - gently swaying bossa nova rhythms and instrumentation with hushed and laid back vocals, evoking evenings strolling along beaches with pastel v necks slung nonchalantly across shoulders, the gentle lapping of the waves getting your rolled up linen trousers wet.
I’m not so into bossa nova that I can differentiate it greatly from other albums in the genre, but I do like it. However I don’t find the tracks where it combines electronic elements with the core sound that interesting as on Alguem or the bonus track No Return, or when it deviates into insipid funk on Bananeira or when it lands on something like the uncomfortably upbeat Close Your Eyes. The more straightforward songs like the opening 4 songs of Samba de Bencao, August Day Song, the title track and Sem Contecao or Son Nice or Samba e Amor I find are far more engaging.
For an album and genre that trades on lightness of touch, it is also a bit long at 45 mins. 30 minutes would probably feel like the right length for something like this to skip along amiably and end before it gets too cloying.
It is very easy going, and very listenable, if not the most heavyweight of albums - making it the most three-est of threes.
🕰️🕰️🕰️
Playlist submission: Tanto Tempo
Kate Bush
5/5
The Sensual World
‘I turn to my computer
And spend my evenings with it
Like a friend’
And we thought Michael Franti was prescient.
This is probably a 5 solely due to the phenomenal This Woman’s Work, but the rest of the album is excellent too, a fantastic continuation from Hounds of Love, with a few elements of The Dreaming.
According to the same thing we are all going to read, she was apparently influenced by James Joyce, and recorded part of it in Dublin, which you can hear throughout the album, but in particular in the way the fiddle weaves through the superb title track. There are more Irish echoes in the rhythms of Love and Anger, alongside David Gilmour’s guitar, and in the creepy, moving The Fog, making an excellent opening 3 songs. I love how Reaching Out musically echoes the lyrics, and you get a sense of grasping for something. Heads We’re Dancing reminds me a little of Marianne Faithful’s Broken English in its synth line and rhythms, and it’s another great track.
Deeper Understanding really describes the excitement and descent into co-dependence when getting deep into a Goldeneye session. Never Be Mine is perhaps the only lull, but only in contrast to the rest of it, and the excellent Never Be Mine which follows. Rocket’s Tail has elements of something from The Dreaming, and I love Gilmour's guitar and the Bulgarian choir. And then it ends with the unsurpassably good This Woman’s Work.
I think this rewards repeat listening, although I was into it pretty much straight away, which I probably wouldn’t have been before doing the list and having given The Dreaming and Hounds of Love proper listens. In any case this is great and an easy 5, not just for This Woman’s Work, but for the excellent music on the whole album.
🧹🧹🧹🧹🧹
Playlist submission: This Woman’s Work
Cocteau Twins
4/5
Treasure
Cocteau Twins are another one of those bands I think I would like based on the odd song (and Teardrop) that I’ve heard, but have never got around to listening to properly.
The opening two tracks in particular are superb, with the ethereal ambiance and idiosyncratic vocal melodies that one might expect from Liz Fraser. Aside from Aloysius and the brilliant closing Domino I don’t think anything else quite reaches those heights but it is still a great album of evocative reverb and echo atmospheres and sounds. You can definitely hear some cross pollination with The Smiths in that big echoey sound - Perseophone and Amelia share some DNA with Last Night I Dream Somebody Loved Me - but on occasion it does feel too echoey, losing a bit of intimacy and feeling like some of the atmosphere is escaping, like helium escaping a party balloon.
Still it's a great album with some great tracks and a lovely feeling of otherness, so it’s deserving of a 4, and I’m looking forward to getting Heaven or Las Vegas.
💰💰💰💰
Playlist submission: Ivo
Barry Adamson
4/5
Oedipus Schmoedipus
I’ve not heard of this or Barry Adamson, although reading about him he has a great background, which resonates across this album. It's a bit of a curate’s egg, not everything quite lands but it's often interesting and it has some absolutely super parts and moments across its imaginary movie soundtrack sprawl - although it feels more like each track is a soundtrack to its own movie, rather than a connected, joined whole.
Set Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis is superb, surely an influence on My Star, the Motown/70’s rock beat underpinning a vaguely eastern sounding string arrangement. The presence of Massive Attack and Tricky is clear on Something Wicked this Way Comes, although it does slide a little towards the end into a kind of kitschy pastiche of loungey film scores. The Vibes Ain’t Nothin’ but the Vibes feels like it flirts with that same feeling, although the string arrangement behind the jazzy keyboard and Nighthawks at the Diner style atmosphere keeps it just about on the right side of it. It’s Business as Usual has a great unsettling sense to it, an answer phone horror film.
Miles trips a bit close to that loungey pastiche, becoming very close to being the soundtrack to some b roll footage on Holiday ‘97. Dirty Barry is great though, the discordant jazzy horns and overall sense of Bernard Herman disquiet is excellent, balanced by the similarly jazzy, but more restrained In a Moment of Clarity, which nice evokes a 60s kitchen sink drama (or Ringo on the riverbank in A A Hard Day’s Night). It’s very very 90s, but I like Achieved on the Valley of the Dolls, Billy Mackenzie’s diacritic vocals and the twangy guitar giving it an unusual feel. The Big Bamboozle is obviously a Bondian/60’s spy inspired track, and although it hits the right marks, I think it also falls into that same trap of being a kitschy pastiche. The Sweetest Embrace is great though, Nick Cave giving it a typically vaudevillian quality.
There is another Barry Adamson album on the list, which I’m intrigued to hear after this, but I’m not sure where to score this. For its uniqueness, sense of fun and exploration and ability to distinctly evoke different cinematic genres it’s in the 4s, but on the other hand not everything lands fully and I’m not sure how frequently I will come back to it. On balance the former outweighs the latter I think, so I think it scrapes into the 4s.
📽️📽️📽️📽️
Playlist submission: Set Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis
Grant Lee Buffalo
2/5
Fuzzy
On paper I think I should like this, but apart from Wish You Well it really didn’t leave much impression on me. I wasn’t keen on his voice, and although there is nice slide and overall playing is fine, it sounds too roomy and distant, making it feel musically quite flat and cold. It also really reminded me of Calenture by the Triffids, which was not a plus.
It’s not a terrible album, I’m just terribly indifferent to it. I can’t think I’ll listen again so I’ll go 2.
🦬🦬
Playlist submission: Wish You Well
Neu!
5/5
Neu! 75
I absolutely love the first side of this, where Klaus Dinger’s more ambient focus predominates, particularly on the superb Seeland and Leb Wohl. Isi is also excellent though, a fantastic combination of their characteristic motorik drumming with that dreamy ambience, harking back to Hallogallo and Fuer Immer, I think.
It’s taken me a while to appreciate the second side, having always preferred the mood of the first side, but over time I’ve come around to it. Hero is clearly hugely influential, you can hear the early forming of punk in its sneering vocals and abrasive noise. After Eight similarly combines their galloping motorik rhythms with a harsher guitar sound than they previously used. E-Music sits in the middle, somewhere between the proto-punk sound, the experimental noise of their previous 2 albums and some of the ambient of side 1.
Put both sides together and it's an excellent album, influencing both ambient and punk, as well as Bowie, an easy 5.
🆕🆕🆕🆕🆕
Playlist submission: Seeland
Rahul Dev Burman
4/5
Shalimar
The guy released 331 soundtracks!
I may have missed it, but it feels like this would have been ripe to have been rediscovered in the 90s, as a kitsch, ironic listen. But I think that would be an unfair way to look at it, as I thought this was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it, finding it a very appealing and enigmatic mash up of 50 and 60s cinema and TV music tropes, with a psychedelic-funk 70s vibe, all through the filter of a Bollywood soundtrack.
Title Music is an excellent opener, bits of spy film and Blaxsploitation combining, and One Two Cha Cha Cha is brilliantly catchy, interpolating That’s The Way and incorporating Latin rhythms. Countess’ Caper / Shalimar is emblematic of what I like so much about this - a jazzy opening, giving way to a polka/waltz but, a move into a John Barry-esque horn part, then a Spaghetti Western section before a Sci-Fi/Star Wars ending. None of it feels forced or daft, you get the sense after so many soundtracks he’s just decided to do whatever he wants, and it works, a great track. Baby Let’s Dance Together and Romantic Theme I love too, and Hum Bewafa Hargiz Na Thay is a great closing track. In between there are some great, more ‘straightforward’ Bollywood tracks and I particularly liked Naag Devta, Aina Wohi Rehta Hai and the very catchy Mera Pyar Shalimar.
I really enjoyed this, it’s got a very likeable eccentric charm and some very catchy melodies and hooks, and I will definitely come back, so I’ll go for a 4.
🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️
Playlist submission: Countess’ Caper / Shalima
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Songs of Love and Hate
This feels very much like a continuation of his first two albums, and upon the first couple of listens I wasn’t really sure if it really added much, feeling a little like diminishing returns of just doing the same thing over and over.
However it really grew on me on further listens, with the string and horn arrangements coming more to the foreground, as well as the more band style performance of Diamonds in the Mine, as well as realising just how fantastic Avalanche, Love Calls You by Your Name, Famous Blue Raincoat and Joan of Arc are. I’m still not totally sold on the relatively flat and overly dreary Last Year’s Man and Dress Rehearsal Rag or the slightly ropey and not brilliantly recorded Sing Another Song Boys.
I don’t think it's as good as his debut, which is the peak acoustic poetry period for me, but those three tracks aside it is undoubtedly a very good album, deserving of a lo-mid 4.
💘🧢💘🧢
Playlist submission: Love Calls You by Your Name
Beyoncé
2/5
Beyoncé
Beyoncé makes a lot of fantastic music, and I was expecting to like this, but I found it to be pretty turgid - the self-serious, brooding, introspective lyrics themes translating into uninspiring music, feeling like a series of horizontal melodies either mumbled or belted out over flat, synthy beats that all feel a bit sub Kanye and, only 13 years on, pretty dated.
There are a couple of good songs - I like Blow a lot, the nagging guitar and 80s synth bass are great, Jealous manages to deliver on its grandiose intentions and has a great vocal hook, XO is good - but they’re not enough to make a dent in the overall sense of flatness, or in the case of Drunk in Love some strong R Kelly Trapped in the Closet vibes.
Haunted feels indicative of much of the album, it starts off promisingly, but starts to feel quite aimless quite quickly, discarding any moments of melodic interest for a more beat’n’vocals sledgehammer. Or there is something like Heaven, one of those beiger than beige songs that never seems to end.
I wouldn’t profess to know her catalogue that well, but I have listened to a few of her albums on occasion and I think there are far better ones that this, particularly Lemonade, which I remember being very good, so it's a shame this Beyonce’s only entry on the list, as it doesn’t feel representative of her impact or quality at all. I’ll go 2.
éé
Playlist submission: Blow
Michael Jackson
5/5
Bad
I had this on official cassette, I must have asked for it for a present as I was only about 8 when it came out and I don’t think I was really into music at that age, unless it was the Spitting Image chicken song or the Fraggle Rock theme (which I had on vinyl single), or Boney M songs recorded onto cassette for me. So when I see the album cover I immediately think of the cassette cover in portrait orientation, and also that the tape itself was clear plastic, which was _very_ exciting. I can also clearly see the Epic records logo printed in white on the cassette itself.
Listening to it, it surely has to be one of the most evocatively late 80s albums in existence - It’s Big Trouble in Little China, it’s Coca Cola, Sprite and Fanta yo-yos, it’s Going Live, it’s the Challenger disaster, it’s Max Headroom, it’s renting Three Men and a Baby for the 10th time from Ritz video, it’s the Pizza Hut salad bar, it’s birthday cake wrapped in a paper napkin to take home after a party, it’s Andy Crane’s cast iron hair, it’s the Smooth Criminal video where the coin magically changes orientation before going into the slot on the jukebox, it’s the great Storm of 87, it’s the Blue Peter York Minster bosses appeal. It’s not Noel Edmond’s Telly Addicts though.
Divorcing it from all those Proustian feelings, it is a genuinely excellent mid-late 80s funk-pop-soul album, with nearly every track a banger, and with barely a lull. It's arguably more consistent than Thriller and Off the Wall, even if nothing quite touches the stellar heights of Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, Billie Jean or Thriller. Although Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Man in the Mirror, I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, Dirty Diana and Smooth Criminal are all of course superb, and could all vie for a place in his top 10 songs. It’s notable how many of the songs are built around relatively simple, rhythmic, repeating synth hooks, and nearly all of them are incredibly catchy.
Lyrically it is interesting too. Man in the Mirror is a bit of an outlier in its more mature and thoughtful outlook, but much of the remainder feels very much the words of an adolescent talking about love and rebellion - ‘I’m bad, I’m really, really bad’, ‘I’m heading for the border’, the concept of a Smooth Criminal and nearly all of I Just Can’t Stop Loving You - which makes sense for someone so clearly in arrested development (the concept, not the rap group).
It’s been a lot of fun revisiting, remembering and realising what a great album this is, even with a big dollop of nostalgia. 5.
_Nakupenda pia Nakutaka pia_
🧤🧤🧤🧤🧤
Playlist submission: Could be many, but today, for the it’s sense of joy, I’ll say The Way You Make Me Feel.
Raekwon
4/5
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
For an album cut from similar cloth to Liquid Swords, this didn’t immediately land with me in the same way that album did, but it’s still a great RZA produced WTC adjacent album, and is definitely a bit of a slow burner.
I do love Raekwon’s distinctive delivery, part drawl, part exaggerated plosives, and it’s great when the rest of WTC turn up, in particular Ghostface Killah on Criminology, Guillotine and Heaven & Hell, and with Method Man on the excellent Ice Cream.
I really like the loose cinematic concept tying it all together, informing RZAs production - a great combination of murky filmicness and dusty beats. Apart from the remix of Can It All Be So Simple, there probably isn’t anything as immediate as Liquid Swords or Hell’s Wind, but the more you listen, the more tracks burrow their way in; the looped piano hook on Knuckleheadz, the stabbed strings and piano of Knowledge God, the odd little hook and shivering strings of Guillotine, the harpsichord sample on Glaciers of Ice, the tense, highly strung piano and vocal sample on Ice Cream and the flowing, laid back groove of Heaven & Hell.
It’s a pretty dense album, musically and lyrically, at times feeling slightly impenetrable, but it is an excellent listen. I wouldn’t put it on the same level as Liquid Swords or Enter the 36 Chambers so I’ll go with a very high 4.
🔗🔗🔗🔗
Playlist submission: Ice Cream
Goldfrapp
4/5
Seventh Tree
I was really surprised by how great this was. I wasn’t keen on Felt Mountain at all, and although I like the synth pop of their previous two albums I wasn’t necessarily expecting such a low key, pared back album of folk and downtempo electronica.
The golden hour light of the album cover is reflected in the analogue warmth of the sound, with strings, bass and guitars interlaced with subtle, atmospheric synths and sampled drums and percussion, creating a dreamy, hazy soundscape.
Clowns is rather lovely for a song about fake tits, with a superb string arrangement, and I love the burbly, bubbling synth on Little Bird, as it builds into a superb psychedelic-dance conclusion, recalling Strawberry Fields with the drums and bass. Happiness feels like it could have been an electro-synth pop banger on Black Cherry or Supernature, but here it feels more whimsical and baroque, and it works really well. Road to Somewhere has another great string arrangement, and is a nice track, if maybe not as compelling as some of the others. Eat Yourself feels a bit Pepper/MMT/White Album in its slightly creepy childlike atmosphere, and I love the swelling strings of Some People, even if it does feel slightly Radio 2 in places. A&E is another great folktronica track, picked guitars, strings and synths working brilliantly together as it builds. Cologne Cerrone Houdini, along with Little Bird is probably the stand out track, yet more superb strings and an ethereal vocal melody, carried along by some lovely bass and guitar, feeling like slightly more sophisticated Morcheeba. Caravan is rare uptempo moment, with a nice Belle and Sebastian feel, and a rhythmic, gurgling synth. Monster Love closes things on a suitably low key and sun dappled bit of vaguely creepy folk.
This is right on the border of 4 and 5, a great album of shimmering, hazy folk-synth-psychedelic-electronica, but I think I’ll settle on the highest of 4s, and will look forward to listening again.
🌳🌳🌳🌳
Playlist submission: Cologne Cerrone Houdini
The Specials
3/5
More Specials
There are some great tracks on here; Man at C&A, Stereotype, Do Nothing, I Can’t Stand It, International Jet Set, the ebullient cover of Sock it to ‘em JB and the push of new influences and sounds on the music is estimable, if imperfect, ut it does feel a bit disjointed and the apparent exhaustion they were feeling definitely gives it a curious sense, a slightly flat, jaded feeling. The energy and focus of the first album has definitely dissipated, and you can feel the tension of the different members wanting to pull in different directions.
It is an enjoyable album, but even with those highlights it’s clearly a notch or two below their debut, so I think it settles as a high 3.
🏁🏁🏁
Playlist submission: Stereotype
Cypress Hill
3/5
Cypress Hill
I didn’t have many particular expectations either way going into this.
Pigs is a great opener, the hook sample is excellent and that overall funk/soul vibe continues with How Could I Just Kill a Man’s using Tramp, and throughout the rest there are further great samples including Muddy Waters on Ultraviolet Dreams, giving the whole thing a pleasing sound. Rhythmically, however, and despite the great soul samples, I found it curiously un-groovy, feeling a bit leaden footed in places, with the exception of the insistent Latin Lingo
Vocally I like their Latin American tone, giving them a distinctive sound and also a slightly different point of view from their contemporaries, however I don’t find their lyrics to always be that interesting or that convincing, I don’t get the same sense I get from Nas or Wu Tang Clan about the violence and inequality around them - although I do believe they aren’t fans of the police.
But overall I enjoyed it, the extensive soul sampling pointing to the West Coast sounds to come and giving it a very listenable quality, even if rhythmically and lyrically it left less of an impression. I’ll go for a high 3.
🇨🇾🇨🇾🇨🇾
Playlist submission: Pigs
The xx
2/5
I See You
Compared to xx this is pretty boring. Although xx is a bit one trick, it was a very well done one trick, with a reverby, atmospheric elegance and legerdemain.
That well very much feels like it has run dry here, there’s a real lack of artfulness and interest, missing the enigmatic character of xx, and it all feels pretty rote and uninspired. The only song that really stood out was I Dare You, the only song hinting at the quality of xx.
A bit of a disappointment, and I don’t think I’ll revisit, so a 2 for me.
❌❌
Playlist submission: I Dare You
Pavement
4/5
Slanted and Enchanted
I’ve never got into Pavement, not because I don’t think I’d like them, but because I’ve never really tried. I used to like Shady Lane, I remember that being played a fair bit on Radio 1 around A-Levels.
I liked this, although it took a few listens to get into the swing of it, and there were bits I liked more than others. But the lo-fi-ness, their calling card, is definitely charming in a ramshackle way, and underneath the sense of laissez faire intelligence is a slightly caustic undercurrent and of course a skill at off kilter melody and catchiness
I get quite a bit of Jonathan Richman, as well as Sonic Youth and MBV and a little bit of glam in the tone of the lead guitar, particularly on the very good Summer Babe, Trigger Cut and No Life Singed Her. There’s a bit of Pixies/surf to the sound of In The Mouth of the Desert and the excellent Conduit for Sale, with its catchy backing vocals. Zurich is Stained is great too, a great lo-fi melancholic track.
It continues much in that vein, some noisier and bouncier like Two States, some more low key, like the lovely Here, some more sludgy like Fame Throwa, and some somewhere in the middle like the hypnotic Jackals.
Although it’s not totally my sort of thing, it grew on me with repeat listens, its slightly skewed lo fi alt rock is much more playful and interesting than many of the other bands in this period, and I’m keen to listen to more of their albums, and I think it just tips into a 4.
🧱🧱🧱🧱
Playlist submission: Conduit for Sale!
k.d. lang
2/5
Ingénue
There are some songs and some moments when this is either very good or very pleasant, i.e. the low key and rather lovely country shuffle of Save Me, Outside Myself, or the undeniably excellent Constant Craving, or when it leans closer to country, but they are too often outweighed by the overwhelming sense of ho hum musical theatre jazziness that pervades much of the rest of it, a result of the Marlene Dietrich inspiration I suppose.
Musically it’s all very skilfully and tastefully performed, but that extreme competency only adds to that lacklustre ambiance, and although she clearly has a very, very good voice I do find it a bit characterless, and I struggle to engage with it fully, again adding to the slightly bland experience and the sense that it just drifts by between the very good opening and closing songs.
It’s between a 2 and 3 on relistenability - for competency and execution it’s easily 3, but I just can’t imagine listening again, so I’ll go 2.
🧒🧒
Playlist submission: Save Me
Big Star
3/5
Third
*_The version I listened to on Tidal is the 1992 Rykodisc edition, but I ignored the bonus tracks_.
This is a bit of a funny one. Without context it all feels rather ramshackle, slipshod and slapdash, and not really like an album at all, more a collection of demos and sketches. Whereas if you are a fan of Big Star and if you like their first two albums it makes much more sense in light of their disintegration and Alex Chilton’s declining mental state.
With that in mind it certainly does achieve moments of genuine transcendent brilliance, and it clearly has all the ingredients and circumstances to be a cult record, but as its own listening experience I’m not convinced it stands up _that_ well - if it wasn’t by Big Star I doubt it would be remembered, and it would be unlikely that you would have to hear it before your die.
Its influence on 90s lo-fi is very palpable though, not least on two recent albums we’ve had, Pavement and Mercury Rev, and the cover of Femme Fatale traces a neat line from the late 60s through the 70s and then through that influence on to the 90s.
For a hit of Big Star I would nearly always reach for #1 Record or Radio City, but this definitely an interesting album, although I do think the ratio of context to quality is a little out of balance, so I’ll go 3.
🌠🌠🌠
Playlist submission: You Can’t Have Me
Talk Talk
5/5
The Colour of Spring
Although I would likely gravitate more towards the fantastic Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, this is still an excellent album and an interesting meeting point between their synthpop origins and the strange, austere magic of those next two albums.
There’s a bit of jazz, a bit of psychedelia, a bit of Eno-ness in places and a kind of icy dreaminess to it, almost like being held at arms length. Despite the warmth of the bass (both electric and stand up) and the organ, it feels like the drums and piano have an algid quality to them.
You can almost hear moments, eg on Life is What You Make It or Time It’s Time, where it feels like It’s My Life is going to break out, and Living in Another World has some of the poppy exuberance of their first couple of albums, but around those moments it’s full of considered, meticulous layers of instrumentation, with songs slowly unfolding themselves, especially on repeat listens - although Happiness is Easy is pretty catchy, it is brilliantly arranged, languidly building piece by piece. I Don’t Believe You is a grower too, I love the George Martin-esque horns over the last half. April 5th, a song surely about the last day of the tax year, has some of that iciness and distance to it, a superb downcast song that never quite resolves, with a little touch of Astral Weeks. Give It Up has a great soulful swirl to it, I think the first song where you get close to the emotions of the narrator, before the maudlin, solemnity of the superb Chameleon.
It’s a superb album in its own right, but also as the sole Talk Talk album on the list its easily a 5.
🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸
Playlist submission: Give It Up
The Chemical Brothers
5/5
Dig Your Own Hole
This is pure 1997, right between A-Level mocks and the actual exams, when I passed my driving test and listened to this on my discman on a gimbal in my car, with one of those cassette to mini-jack adapters.
I haven’t really revisited this as often as I should have, there’s clearly a huge amount of nostalgia baked in, but it is a superb album. The 4 or 5 singles - Block Rockin’ Beats, Setting Sun, Elektrobank, Where Do I Begin and The Private Psychedelic Reel - are all fantastic, but the rest of the album is great too, a characteristic mix of rave, house, psychedelia and hip hop with some excellent, catchy hooks and samples.
I bought the Setting Sun single, and although I marginally prefer Let Forever Be of the two collaborations with Noel, it is still an absolute banger, a brilliant mash up of rave, Tomorrow Never Knows drums and Noel’s melodic skill and lyrical daftness. Much has been made of the influence of Tomorrow Never Knows, and maybe I’m looking for it too much, but I think there’s quite a bit of Ringo elsewhere too - the Ticket to Ride/Rain/TNK broken drum patterns and are scattered throughout, and there are some very swinging fills too, not least on the fantastic Private Psychedelic Reel.
You could argue there is a bit of a dip from It Doesn’t Matter to Get Up On It Like This, and although I like each of those songs I think there is a bit of a similarity of feel in this section and you probably could lose Get Up On It Like This and not miss a great deal, before the excellent bass driven Lost in the K-Hole (for when you eat too much Special K), Where Do I Begin’s superb electro-folk and the excellence of The Private Psychedelic Reel.
Nostalgia aside, and while it may be one song too long, those big songs are enough for a 5, even more so when the rest of the songs are great as well
🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️
Playlist submission: It’s Setting Sun really, but I do love The Private Psychedelic Reel.
Sam Cooke
3/5
Live at the Harlem Square Club
Obviously he has one of the greatest voices of all time, and it is excellent here, with a worn-in rasp that really accentuates both his tenderness and ruggedness across some of his best songs - Chain Gang, Cupid, Twistin’ the Night Away and Bring it on Home (although his stage patter could do with some work). The band are great too, tight and efficient, backing him without ever threatening to upstage him, although they aren’t as well recorded as his voice.
It definitely does feel raw and raucous, especially for 1963, but, I can’t help the nagging sense of him kind of rushing through his set, like he can’t wait to be somewhere else and that he’s not fully engaged. The vocal ad libs sound a bit practiced, and as the medley of It’s Alright and For Sentimental Reasons transitions it sounds a bit autopilot-y to me.
It’s tricky to rate. Even if (to me) he is phoning it in a little, his voice is superb, and the songs are very good. But it isn’t recorded well, so it’s not really a particularly easy listen. I think that all balances out as a 3.
🍪🍪🍪
Playlist submission: Twistin’ The Night Away
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Porcupine
Two of their best songs, Back of Love and The Cutter front load this, and while there’s nothing as immediate and as great as those, it’s worth persevering with as there are some excellent songs that take their time to warm up, and ultimately its a solid to very good album, if clearly not at the same level as Ocean Rain.
It carries some of the darkness of their new wave/proto goth contemporaries, particularly on My White Devil with it’s excellent bass hook and the title track, although I don’t think it has quite the same density or mass to it as, say, Juju, with a slight sense of that gloominess being slightly ill fitting.
It has a few relative dips in Clay, Heads Will Roll and Gods Will Be Gods, but it does finish very strongly with Ripeness, Higher Hell and the excellent In Bluer Skies. It’s between a 3 and a 4, but as I am a fan of the band and as alongside The Cutter and Back of Love there are some great slow burning tracks, I’ll just nudge it to a 4.
🦔🦔🦔🦔
Playlist submission: The Cutter
Dire Straits
5/5
Dire Straits
It’s amazing how self assured this sounds for a debut, their harking back to a bluesy folksy early 70s sound in stark contrast to new wave, post punk and disco around them elsewhere in 1978. But then Knopfler’s stock in trade has always been in tasteful, considered and accomplished songwriting, so it feels like it makes sense it sounds so fully formed.
Sultans of Swing is of course superb, the most immediate and direct stand out, but the rest of the album around it is excellent as well, for all the same reasons: Dylan-esque imagery, a hushed but spiky conversational singing style, tight arrangements and graceful, elegant guitar playing.
The first side is great, particularly the opening pair of Down to the Waterline and the brilliant Water of Love, as well as Six Blade Knife and Southbound Again, and side two is equally as good, I love In the Gallery and Wild West End.
It’s a brilliantly satisfying listen, and 5 for me.
☪️☪️☪️☪️☪️
Playlist submission: It probably has to be Sultans of Swing
Culture Club
3/5
Colour by Numbers
I really love Church of the Poisoned Mind, and despite Karma Chameleon being school discoed / 80s playlisted to the point of background music, it’s clearly an excellently and skillfully tooled reggae lilted new-wave banger. It’s a Miracle continues in that reggae-pop vein and is also incredibly catchy and also very school disco.
But I wasn’t expecting so much of the rest of it to be so soul influenced, which, bearing in mind COTPM is heavily inspired by Uptight, I probably should have. Black Money, Changing Every Day, That’s the Way and Victims all stand out in this regard.
It also feels a lot like Wham!/George Michael in places, particularly the 2nd side run from Miss Me Blind of Victimes. George and George both share similar vocal tones, and if you heard Miss Me Blind on the radio it could quite easily be mistaken for either artist.
It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4. It’s a far more interesting album than the ubiquity of Karma Chameleon would suggest, and there are some excellent tracks in KC, COTPM, Black Money, and Miss Me Blind. But despite it’s soulfulness I do think it drifts a little at the back end after Miss Me Blind, Mister Man and Stormkeeper feeling like they get a bit lost. I’ll definitely come back, but I’m not sure I’ll come back enough for it to be a 4, so I’ll go with a very high 3.
🎨🔢🦎
Playlist submission: Church of the Poisoned Mind
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Are You Experienced
This is a brilliant album, and one that particularly reminds me of the summer of 1998 between the 1st and 2nd years at Uni for some reason. I had the UK CD version, which at the time I didn’t realise wasn’t the original track listing - I always just assumed it was an hour long and had Hey Joe and Purple Haze on it.
You could easily argue that the original US release is a stronger album, with those two tracks and the excellent The Wind Cries Mary, but as the UK version was released a few months before the US version, and as it's the CD I had, I’ll stick to it for this.
As much as I love Electric Ladyland, and as much as this was sporadically recorded and put together, it feels like his most focused and consistent album, or at least the most immediate and direct, and it drips with the weight of everything it subsequently influenced, for good and for bad.
Against the output of many of his contemporaries, his synthesis of blues, psychedelia, jazz and rock and roll is fantastic, Mitch Mitchell’s superlative drumming gives it groove and swing alongside the guitar, and stops it from getting bogged down in leaden footed blues rock orotundity.
It's interesting that he never liked his voice, I think it’s great, his laconic, sometimes spoken delivery complements his guitar playing brilliantly, I really don’t think the songs would work without that voice. It’s a great set of songs too; Foxy Lady, Love or Confusion, I Don’t Love Today, the brilliant Fleetwood Mac-esque May This Be Love, Fire, the Doorsy 3rd Stone From the Sun and the fantastic Are You Experienced, are all bangers.
Sometimes those classic 5 star albums aren’t actually great, but this is. 5.
🦊🦊🦊🦊🦊
Playlist submission: Are You Experienced?
Ash
4/5
1977
If Dig Your Own Hole was spring of 1997 A-Levels, this is pure summer of 1996 A-Levels. I haven’t listened to it in years but it still feels like a summer album, particularly Goldfinger, Girl from Mars and of course Oh Yeah, with its evocation of summer holidays from school.
I absolutely loved this when it came out, but listening now it’s striking how American, particularly grunge and US punk sounding it is, something I don’t think I realised back in 1996. I’m not massively into those genres, but I think their sense of pop melody really differentiates them, and particularly Tim Wheeler's voice. It's very slight and teenage sounding, but that lightness and naivety combined with some excellent melodies gives their best songs a great dynamic.
Those singles remain superb; Goldfinger, Girl from Mars, Kung Fu, Angel Interceptor and Oh Yeah in particular, and I still really like Lose Control and Let it Flow and Darkside Lightside is decent, but I’m not sure the rest stand up particularly well, not least as I had no rush of memory hearing them again now, and many of them do feel quite underdeveloped.
Ultimately it's a bit of a mixed bag of some truly excellent songs, a massive heap of teenage nostalgia and some rather forgettable songs, putting it on the cusp of 3 and 4. I’ll let Oh Yeah and the nostalgia carry the day and give it a 4.
⚱️⚱️⚱️⚱️
Playlist submission: Oh Yeah
The Monkees
3/5
Headquarters
The context of this is perhaps more interesting than the actual album, even if the self penned tracks are generally among the strongest, and it does drag a little for an album that is only 30 minutes long. I do love the combination of their voices though, their harmonies and vocal sound are distinctly mid 60s in a very pleasing way.
It starts off well with the excellent You Told Me, but the less said about Band 6 the better. You Just May Be the One is good, with a great bassline and tone. For Pete’s Sake is a nice Byrds/Buffalo Springfield country rock track, as is Sunny Girlfriend. I’ve never liked Randy Scouse Git. I’ll Spend My Life With You, Early Morning Blues and Greens and Shades of Grey are probably the best of the rest.
The story of the Monkees and their desire for creative input into what was a quite insane output of content in their name is fascinating. As part of that story this is a nice historical curio, containing a handful of enjoyable mid 60s songs. But it’s also notable that this was released 4 days before Sgt Pepper, and in that light it feels like it already sounded anachronistic as soon as it came out.
Still I did enjoy it, both musically and contextually, so I think it makes the 3s.
🙉🙉🙉
Playlist submission: You Told Me
Bad Company
3/5
Bad Company
Can’t Get Enough is a cracker, a great bit of catchy bluesy pubby classic 70s rock, with a superb drum sound. And despite a slight tang of glibness and undoubted lyrical cliche I’ve always liked Paul Rodgers’ voice, his tone fitting this style of music perfectly.
I like Don’t Let Down and Bad Company (despite some terrible lyrics), Movin’ On is good and Seagull is probably the strongest song behind Can’t Get Enough, a lovely tilt at folky introspection, especially in contrast to much of the album, which although never awful, is ultimately a bit of a 70s blues-rock plod. Free and Mott the Hoople are both great, so you might expect more from a supergroup of those two, and although they are probably closest to Free spiritually, they haven’t carried through the same litheness and groove and then there is very little of the glam fun of MTH.
It’s never unlistenable though, and although I’d rather listen to Free, I would probably come back to this in the right mood, so I’ll go 3.
👎👎👎
Playlist submission: Can’t Get Enough
Joan Baez
3/5
Joan Baez
There is nothing bad about this album at all, it’s very good. I love the tone and timbre of her voice, the playing has a sweet and delicate poise, and the song selection and arrangements are excellent.
But I do struggle a little to get past the sedulousness that pervades this. I love the opening three tracks, but there is an earnestness and seriousness in this period of folk music that can at times undercut the quality of the music, and I think that's the case on much of this, particularly over the last half where she dials up the tremulousness.
It’s a very pleasant listen, but I wish it was more than that - it is beautifully sung and played but it feels like it’s lacking something to make it truly stand out, so I’ll go for a high 3
😁😁😁
Playlist submission: East Virginia