It’s dinner party soul, but produced with restraint and based on some tasteful influences. In a way it is to Motown and Stax what Clapton is to Chicago blues, nicely done, but with the rough edges sanded off. Makes it more palatable, but also slightly blander. The quality of her voice and the songwriting is what sets it apart from the Duffys and Joss Stones of thus world. Not my bag, but not everything is for everyone, and I can appreciate how well done this is.

I land somewhere between you two on this one. What’s Going On, Mercy Mercy Me and Inner City Blues are top tier soul classics, but they’re the tent poles that hold this up when in starts to drag. The arrangements are great, and the recurring motifs do make this feel like a concept album rather than a collection of tracks, but it starts to wear thin at times, like he’s just scatting new lyrics over the same backing music. Lyrically it’s of its time (Viet Nam, ecological worries, racism) but it tips into self-parody in places. A three-star, mainly on the strength of those three classic tracks.

Some great tracks but a bit repetitive at times. Worth a listen for Rock Lobster alone, but a couple of the album tracks are almost as good

Great sound for a live album from the era. Fantastic band. Hoochie Coochie Man is the highlight, but I Got My Brand on You and I Feel So Good aren’t far behind. You can hear the influence on bands like The Stones and Them.

Almost too many ideas for one album. It’s never boring, if you don’t like one track another will be along in 30 seconds. On the downside, that means only a few tracks feel properly developed (Bus In The Street, A Fan’s Mail, Show You The Way, Tokyo, Them Changes). They are all great, so I think I’m going to make the usual double album comment that it would have made a great single, like a more jazz-soul version of Midnite Vultures. His melodies are really unusual, hardly ever goes where you expect (the product of being a great bassist and having to counterpoint the obvious choice of the main instrument?) Will definitely check out the rest of his stuff as this was too much to take in on first listen. Not an all-time great album, but an interesting thread to follow.

I’m sure this is a brilliant example of the genre, but it’s going over my head. Like Tom says, it sounds like it would make a great movie soundtrack to evoke a sense of place, it’s very listenable, but not really my bag

Although this should be up my alley, I could never get into Skynyrd. Apart from Sweet Home Alabama, their stuff always feels a bit heavy-footed. The ‘blue collar’ lyrics feel like a schtick. For example Simple Man - a song about the homespun advice of a mother, telling her son to live a modest life… all set to thunderous , legs apart bombastic rock chords. Seems contradictory. Compare that to Salt of The Earth by The Stones where a similar theme is backed a more folksy, stripped back arrangement. Freebird is similarly ponderous navel-gazing strewn with interminable distorted guitar solos. There’s no interplay, it’s just three lead guitarists taking turns to try and out-wank each other. Gimme Three Steps is reasonable because they tone it down a bit, but the lyrics are so bad (“Hey there fella with the hair coloured yella”) that even a simple boogie tune gets annoying. I pretty much hate this.

Pretty flawless.

Every time I listen to it I like it more. Macca without the perfectionism gives it a USP in his back catalogue. It almost feels like somebody has released an album without his knowledge, with tracks in various stages of completion, but I sort of like that. Every Night is a great song, Junk is lovely and Maybe I’m Amazed, Oo You, That would be something and Momma Miss America are superb. Lennon would have vetoed Teddy Boy - and I think did on earlier albums? - which would have helped, but even depressed and half engaged, McCartney is still better than 99% of his peers. Solid 4 stars for me

I land somewhere between you two on this one. What’s Going On, Mercy Mercy Me and Inner City Blues are top tier soul classics, but they’re the tent poles that hold this up when in starts to drag. The arrangements are great, and the recurring motifs do make this feel like a concept album rather than a collection of tracks, but it starts to wear thin at times, like he’s just scatting new lyrics over the same backing music. Lyrically it’s of its time (Viet Nam, ecological worries, racism) but it tips into self-parody in places. A three-star, mainly on the strength of those three classic tracks.

It’s ok. Extra star for 90s nostalgia. Sub-Lightning Seeds ditties enlivened by interesting instrumentation

Have not listened to this in years. Oddly, it reminded me a lot of the McCartney album from the other day. Scruffy production and his way with a melody lifts it above the usual 90s complaint rock. Son of Sam, Junk Bond Trader, Easy Way Out and Better Be Quiet Now all work for me, others meander a bit. I thought Waltz #2 was on here, if it was it might get a four - as it is, a very solid three.

It’s more acting than singing, but it’s still fantastic. The first great discovery so far. a Similar feel to Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind or Life’ll Kill Ya by Warren Zevon, but his voice is so much better suited to this ‘man facing mortality’ theme.

Got three songs in, realised they were all the same. Stopped.

Power pop with just enough new wave weirdness to keep it interesting. Best Friend’s Girl and Just What I Needed are classics, but Don’t Cha Stop, Bye Bye Love and You’re All I’ve Got Tonight are all fun and inventive, with some great guitar hooks.

I don’t know why I don’t like this more, but it just washed over me a bit. I put it on and never felt the urge to turn it off, but nothing raised my interest enough to check the title of the song currently playing. It was a big pile of ‘meh’ with extra flute… which gets it an extra star

This and Call Me are pretty close to perfect. Don’t know why the Hi Records band don’t get the same reverence the Stax house band do, everything has such a great groove to it. The mix is bizarre - snare and hi-hat and horn stabs are really far forward, the brilliant guitar and organ are really low, bass practically hardly there - but it leaves so much space for his amazing voice. He never has to stretch to make himself heard, so it lets him be much more restrained. Then, when he does push his voice it really stands out, love the mic distortion, just sounds like a great band in a room. The songs are all strong, with two absolute classics in the title track and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. The only criticism is the truly awful cover art. Got a transcendent soul singer with a killer record? I know a brown pebble dash wall we can stand him in front of!

It has its moments, enjoyed If Only and You Would Know, but Hispanic Impressions made me think of the theme music to 1970s animated Richard Briers vehicle Rhubarb And Custard.

It’s hard to rate this one, I think it might be a real grower, so ideally I’d give it a few listens to let it sink in. A Little Soul and Sylvia are pretty immediate, but there are lines in most of the tracks that I thought were great. Predictably, I’m going to sit on the fence with a three for now.

Perfect 70s AOR. Oh Daddy is the only one I’d consider skipping and it’s stuffed with solid gold classics. Production is fantastic (the drums and bass in particular sound great). Buckingham’s guitar parts are always just the right side of the wanky/tasteful continuum and the way the layer acoustic parts with electric gives it depth. Add to that three really good songwriters and vocalists and you have an absolute classic. The previous album is my all time favourite of theirs, but the soap opera nature of this adds a little something. It’s Rumours FFS

A fun listen, not totally my thing but a welcome change of pace.

Much prefer Springsteen’s acoustic albums and this is his best. Lyrically there are none of the ‘Jimmy the Saint’, ‘Wild Billy’ or ‘Crazy Janey’ caricatures of his early stuff, the characters, seem far more realistically drawn and it’s all the more effective. Highway Patrol Man is full of great details, Used Cars is genuinely sad, State Trooper spooky with just the slap echo, minimal guitar and harmonica (plus that sudden ‘whooooo’ in the fade out is a great moment). Johnny 99 would be cheesy with the E Street Band parping all over it, but solo the desperation comes across. And that’s not to mention the title track and Atlantic City, which are both among his best. They were apparently demos for a full band album (hence re-used lyrics in places) but it was definitely the right decision to leave them untouched. Five stars all day long

The first side is brilliant, angular, funky and intelligent. Breaking Glass, Sound And Vision and Always Crashing are superb. The second side I appreciate more now that I’m older. I always found the Berlin stuff a bit too chilly and detached when I was younger, but this has grown on me over the years, now I think it’s a clever evocation of a strange time and place. It’s still not my favourite Bowie album, but it could be in a few years at this rate.

I like this fine, but I struggle to see how it ended up on this list. There are better Guthrie, Wilco and Bragg albums, so its inclusion seems a bit odd. That said, it’s a fun listen, there’s a spontaneity to it that works well on songs like California Stars and Way Over Yonder… not a bad album, just not a great one.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. It starts with Sherane and Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe - so far, so stereotypically gangsta rap. I was braced for an hour of the usual brag-rap about ‘bitches’ and guns. But then it turns into a concept album about a teenager trying to outgrow those tropes and his environment. The music is great too. Touches of jazz, smooth pop and weird Parliament/Funkadelic vibes interspersed with funny (and later on poignant) segue-ways between tracks. Admittedly, my knowledge of rap is pretty limited, but this has immediately become my favourite album in the genre.

I’d agree with most of that. Souvenir is the highlight for me but generally solid throughout. Will be one of the ones I go back to to let it soak in a bit more. I fall just the other side of the three/four star fence.

It definitely suffers from over-familiarity, but it got played so much because it’s awesome. Everything from Off The Wall buffed to a high shine. It’s produced to within an inch of its life and still sounds spontaneous. Machine-tooled brilliance. Wanna Be Starting something is a guaranteed wedding floor-filler. The breakdown at the end with the chanted backing vocals is perfect. Baby Be Mine is the template for his sister’s entire career. The Macca duet? Cheesy as fuck and I don’t care for all the reasons Paul mentioned. Melodic bickering of the highest quality. A frothy palette cleanser with PYT, and then that run of all-time greats - after burying the mid album clunker that is Lady In My Life. Thriller: Great song, great video, Vincent Price… what’s not to like? Beat it is My Sharona on steroids, Billie Jean - if you heard it again for the first time - would blow your fucking mind. Did I mention I bloody love Human Nature too? Granted, it all tails off at the end, but it’s like the warm down after a Messi man of the match performance. You’ve already won, don’t humiliate the opposition. So all in all, quite good.

I struggled with this one a bit. I think I mentioned in the Low review that it’s only in the last few years that I’ve started to appreciate the Berlin era stuff more. It always felt a bit too cold and disengaged, but Low in particular has grown on me. This one, not so much. It’s interesting doing it after Thriller. We talked about that album feeling like the honing of one particular idea or formula, whereas this feels like someone trying lots of different ideas. As a result it’s one I admire rather than love. The exception is the title track, perhaps because it’s the one song with genuine emotion to it, whereas the others have a detached quality. That said, Joe the Lion, Beauty and The Beast and Neukoln are all interesting. It would be a three, but Heroes is wonderful and bumps it up.

Most of it sounds like Herman’s Hermits covering The Doors. In a Gadda Da Vida is the standout, and that’s a Poundland Sunshine of Your Love. Not sure how this made the list.

Guero: Another great discovery. I’d heard E-Pro before and enjoyed it but never gave this album a listen. It’s consistently strong from top to bottom, a more focussed, less bizarre Midnite Vultures (probably my favourite Beck album). Missing even sounds a lot like Broken Train off that record. Girl is a great piece of twisted pop, Black Tambourine and Go It Alone are minimalist geeky funk. Earthquake Weather reminds me of 3+3 era Isley Bros. The title of Hell Yes is also a fitting review. Reminds me of Talking Heads. The fact that Christina Ricci provides vocals just makes it even better. Scarecrow sounds like him trying to cover Billie Jean and failing wonderfully. Broken Drum (apparently about Elliot Smith) points the way towards the more introspective stuff on Sea Change and Morning Phase. It’s lovely stuff, a tribute that’s sad without being mawkish. It’s amazing how much mileage he can get out of fairly limited ingredients. Crunchy drums, minimalist guitar riff, distorted mics and the odd weird sample - yet it never gets dull. A hair’s breadth from being a five. Right up there with Odelay and Midnite Vultures

Another Green World. Not his best, but some gems in there. Becalmed and the title track are very nice. Everything Merges With Night is also decent, as is In Dark Trees. The rest is relatively forgettable.

I think if I’d have discovered The Cure in my teenage years I’d be a big fan, as it is, I lack the angst to get really into this at 44 years of age. That said, I agree with most of what you say Tom. Good songs, but there’s a bit of a formula. Production is very 80s, but I can dig it. Who doesn’t love chorus pedals? Plainsong is a decent scene-setter, Pictures of You gets things off to a promising start. It’s so very 80s - fairly sure this must play over a Molly Ringwald montage somewhere in John Hughes’ back catalogue. Then Closedown comes on, and it’s the same song but a few bpm slower. Lovesong is pretty straightforward pop. Pretty enough if slightly twee. It hits its stride again with Lullaby and Fascination Street, but after those two only the title track sticks out. It’s another I’d happily listen to again without being bowled over

They passed me by as a teenager. To be honest, I’m relieved. Really didn’t like this. The Kim Gordon songs in particular gave me really bad Courtney Love energy. Occasional nice guitar interplay, but generally a bit of a dirge

Not totally my thing, although I - and everyone else in the world - love Unfinished Sympathy. One Love and Blue Lines threatened to change my mind, but then it pretty much fulfilled my expectations. In the context of when it came out, I can see why this was influential.

My opinion of Clapton - and this album - has shifted over the years. He was my idol in the mid-90s, but preferred the Cream/ Derek and The Dominos eras. After kicking heroin, it all seems a little half-arsed. But he clearly still had good taste. Early to the the party on the likes of Bob Marley and JJ Cale, nicked Joe Cocker and Leon Russell’s bands and spent the next 7 or 8 years ripping them off. The band kind of make this work though, the drummer and bass player in particular keep it laid back and funky, which suits his narcoleptic vocals. Motherless Children is a decent starter, kind of like Give Me Strength and Willie and the Hand Jive is passable pub rock. Get Ready I like, (again, the drumming makes it) but it feels like a less authentic JJ Cale track. After that it slips into dross, before finally rallying with Let It Grow. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not wonderful, but it feels very different to the rest of the album. The Lyrics are the worst kind of hippie shit, but love the guitar figure and the way it builds repetitively in the outro, like the weaker cousin of The Beatles’ She’s So Heavy. The last two are him playing to his strengths. They could be off -cuts from Layla (which I still think is a fucking awesome album). To sum up, a talented bloke who has largely shot his bolt, covering his tasteful record collection with a top notch band

It’s dinner party soul, but produced with restraint and based on some tasteful influences. In a way it is to Motown and Stax what Clapton is to Chicago blues, nicely done, but with the rough edges sanded off. Makes it more palatable, but also slightly blander. The quality of her voice and the songwriting is what sets it apart from the Duffys and Joss Stones of thus world. Not my bag, but not everything is for everyone, and I can appreciate how well done this is.

I enjoyed this without feeling that I’ll return to it. One or two might find their way onto a streaming playlist - Love Interruption, Weep Themselves To Sleep - but it feels like someone flipping through musical styles with varying degrees of success. If I want to hear rockabilly, riff rock or country blues there are other places I’d go first. That said, you have to admire the way he can turn his hand to anything he likes and the willingness to experiment. It means it’s rarely dull, but the overall impression is Jack of All trades, master of none ⭐️⭐️👍🏼

The harmonies are killer, and Tom’s right about the production/instrumentation being understated for the 80s. I like Linda Ronstadt’s early to mid-70s stuff, think Dolly is a legend, but Emmylou Harris is one of my favourite singers of all time, and she seems a bit buried in this. The other two were bigger mainstream stars at the time and Emmylou didn’t have a great 80s, so I suppose that makes sense. Making Plans, Wildflowers, I’ve Had Enough and Farther Along are all high points, but nothing lives up to Harris’s early 70s albums with Gram Parsons or Elite Hotel, which have a similar vibe but with a rougher, more rock-influenced band. She hits her peak later on when her voice starts to break in and she works with Daniel Lanois. Wrecking Ball better be on this list, and if Tragedy and the Title track off Red Dirt Girl don’t make you tear up, you’re made of stone. It’s not fair to judge this against those albums, but it’s hard to go above 3 stars when they show how much better she can be alone.

It’s the Wish version of The Beatles. The influences are so clear that you almost feel embarrassed for him - mostly a shit tonne of Macca and some 50s doo wop. You can imagine him listening to the playback and thinking to himself, ‘I’ve crammed it with harmonies, double tracked the shit out of the vocals and layered on the strings but it still doesn’t sound like Sgt Pepper?!!’ His voice is very ordinary and you suspect he’s covering it up as best he can. To be fair, he does a reasonable job, which is probably why he became a go to producer for vocally challenged artists like George. I was getting increasingly annoyed, but then on comes Mr Blue Sky and all is forgiven for a couple of minutes. before normal service is resumed. I don’t think he’s totally without talent as a producer, Full Moon Fever is a great album, but Mr Blue Sky aside, he’s a very average writer and even he can’t polish these turds.

This was a nice surprise. I knew nothing about them, but it was nicely off-kilter. Unlike Paul, I quite enjoyed the ‘rapping’ on the opener and Genius of Love. The weird delivery and subject matter fits the music. It sounds like The Waitresses backed by Grandmaster Flash. Tom Tom Theme I could take or leave, but L Elephant is some of the catchiest art rock I’ve heard. The quality and interest remains consistent after that. Booming and Zooming ends on another high. I found yesterday’s hard going, but this flew by. It’s a shade under a four, and with repeated listens could well up its grade.

Like Paul, I’ve been strangely ambivalent about Nick Cave. I’ve heard a few songs, I liked and bought No More Shall We Part on a whim. I loved that, but then never followed up the initial interest. But the gothic thing that put me off is starting to appeal more nowadays - a bit like the Leonard Cohen album we did. This is very strong. Get Ready For love is a twisted 20th century boy. Cannibal’s hymn continues to set the unhinged mood, but Hiding all Away is where it switches gears. Great lyrics, playing up his creepy persona, and the - ‘There is a war comin’ climax is great. Nature Boy shows off the Bad Seeds as a great ramshackle band, like the Stones in black nail polish, but with the kind of dark lyrics Jagger hasn’t written since Undercover of The Night. The chord progression is a bit too close to Come Up And See Me, as Paul says, but it still works. Abattoir piles on the manic energy, with Drake as a spooky ringmaster but then Let Them Bells Ring backs things off to a simmer (The whole album is brilliantly sequences, essential on a double), just great doomy pop. The Fable of the Brown Ape makes sure the weirdness quotient remains high, strong Tom Waits, Mule Variations vibes. And that’s just the first side. It’s my favourite, but not by much. The surprisingly sweet and catchy Breathless, Babe you turn me on and the superb Supernaturally (Neil Diamond gone rogue?) it ends with O Children a song so good it survives that cringe-worthy Harry Potter scene. funereal, stately. A hair under five, and a great find.

I can’t really add much to Tom’s review. I think it might have been you that introduced it to me and I love it for the same reasons you do. It’s almost more of a well-being tool than a record, but it’s precisely the fact that it has musical value that lifts it above the kind of ambient pap you hear in any spa or masseuse’s office. It’s genuinely moving and hugely influential. The simple repetitive melodic figures are wonderful, but the beds he creates underneath them are amazing, there’s always a bass note drone or harmony note swell coming in or out, but it never feels cluttered and the mix is perfect. Doing this with the technology of the time is so impressive. You can tell how influential it’s been too - I imagine every member of Radiohead, Kate Bush, Daniel Lanois and Peter Gabriel have well worn copies. People go on about the healing power of music, but this is one of the few albums I could point to as evidence of it.

I found this a slog. I have a slight nostalgic affection for early Green Day, Dookie’s singles were all over MTV in the late 90s and although it wasn’t my thing, it was fine because they didn’t seem to take themselves too seriously and some of the songs were ear worms (Basket Case, Longview, When I Come Around). This, by comparison seems dreadful. They lost the sense of humour and upped the production gloss. The very idea of a concept album seems the least punk thing imaginable. American Idiot is ok, mainly because it’s a slightly bloated version of their early style, a little bit Buzzcocks maybe, but the attempts to branch out fail badly. They’re too polite to be punk, and not catchy enough to be power pop. Oddly, they remind me of the dreadful bands they helped inspire - that wave of god awful emo-punk dross like Funeral For A Friend and My Chemical Romance. Whatsername is Fountains Of Wayne without the hooks or wit. At their very worst (Wake Me Up When September Ends) they sound like Snow Patrol. Turgid. Adding one star for nostalgia.

A fantastic voice raising a fantastically uneven batch of songs. Starts well with I Love your Lovin Ways: Surprisingly bluesy and straightforward, but works really well with the rasp in her voice. Four Women seems a bit of an oddity out of context, but after reading it’s inspired by her play about black female archetypes, it makes more sense. Feels like a song from a musical trying to introduce the characters in a ham-fisted way, (‘I’m awfully bitter these days, because my parents were slaves’ is a bit on the nose) but the performance is great. To be honest, she could read the phone book with that voice and it would still be great. What More Can I Say is fine, a bit Nina by numbers, but Lilac Wine in fubulous. I always loved the Jeff Buckley version, and it appears he’s lifted his reading almost wholesale from this. It’s such a great song and needs a great voice like hers to do it justice. Perfect tipsy yearning. That’s All I ask: her voice is almost like the trumpet among that brass, the words are pretty incidental. Break Down And Let it All Out: Fairly forgettable song, alchemised by her singing. Shows the huge range of her voice when the next track - Why Keep on Breaking My Heart - comes on, venomous one minute, then smooth the next. It almost sounds like a different person. The latter is not a wonderful song, sounds like Dean Martin should be performing it in a cheesy 50s romcom. Wild Is The Wind: This is more like it. That tinkling piano wrapping itself round her voice. Not many people do the mournful thing better. It seems the more stripped back the arrangement, the better it showcases her. The same thing is true of Black is the Colour. A great singer, but not a great album

This is a really difficult one to rate. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. Towards the end of The Beatles, I get the feeling John became pretty insufferable and it frequently comes across in his songs. He was still a musical genius, but I find a lot of his lyrics 1968- petulant or self-obsessed to a boring degree. I also think, without Macca, he lost the ability to craft his less inspired stuff into something worthy of the standards they set together. That said, there are songs on here, mostly front-loaded on the first side, that are pretty amazing, it’s just that they’re rubbing shoulders with some mean spirited, or pretentious filler. The beginning is strong, the tolling bell and smash-cut to the opening line of Mother is definitely an attention-grabber. I love the super-dry drum sound and heavy reverb on the piano. It’s by far the most effective of his parent-fixated songs on the album, it’s a beautiful melody, brilliantly sung, the build to the emotional climax is gripping. This would have done me. Subject covered. 10/10. Move on… And he does. For a bit. Hold On is a necessary chill out after the rawness of the opener. Love the fast tremolo on the guitar. It’s pretty - a clever almost pastiche of a traditional Japanese melody. I Found Out is where things start to get complicated. I like the scuzzy feel of it, the bass dominating the mix. It feels almost punk it’s so lo-fi, but the lyrics really annoy me, it’s all a bit petulant and childish. Working Class Hero is better, but there’s an undercurrent of smugness to it that I really dislike. I, the great John Lennon, have figured out the class system, why are you ‘fucking peasants’ playing along with it? Because we’re not all mega-rich, genius rock stars John, and we need to keep a roof over our heads. Isolation on the other hand is in my top 5 John songs. Thoughtful lyric, great climbing piano chords in the verses, just brilliant. Remember feels like two different song ideas welded together, so it doesn’t really go anywhere, and the explosion ending is a bit of a gimmick. Love, a bit like Hold On, is simple but gorgeous in a dream-like way, but then we’re back to more dull psychodrama with Well, Well, Well. Again, I like the production (echoey drums, Revolution guitar tone) but it’s basically just a jam in search of a decent lyric and the screaming histrionics feel like a schtick second time around. There’s more filler in the shape of Look at Me - aka Julia with less interesting lyrics - before another flash of absolute genius. God’s lyric is what the rest of the album should be. A mature rejection of, and farewell to, the false idols of the last decade that doesn’t feel sneering or bitter. It’s properly cathartic. It should close the album. But it doesn’t. First we have to suffer My Mummy’s Dead, the nadir of Lennon’s musical navel-gazing. This is basically an early midlife crisis set to music. It’s almost schizophrenic in terms of tone, and swings wildly between the insightful and empathetic and the childishly arrogant. Thankfully, the invention of the skip button means I can just ignore the preachy, self-indulgent shit and focus on the moments of inspiration. A four, mainly on the strength of Mother, Isolation and God.

This was fine. Inoffensive. If you’d told me it was the soundtrack to a B+ early Noughties thriller, I’d have believed you. It passed the time while I did a bit of work admin. Gritty Shaker, Rodney Yates and Don’t Die Just Yet, mainly because they draw on music I like for influences, 70s soul, funk and lounge music. This feels like his version of the weird deep cuts he curated on Come Get It… but watered down. It occasionally wanders into bland or shamelessly derivative territory, but Radio 7 gave me proximity mines in the complex nostalgia, so I largely forgave it. Reading about it, though well received at the time, it didn’t top any polls in dance music magazines, I don’t feel like it’s grown in stature, so why is it here? An odd choice, but not one that annoyed me.

Pretty underwhelming, which is a shame because I’d heard it talked about as a great modern soul album. I was hoping to discover another gem like Good Kid Maad City. It shares the same hyper-active production as that record and To Pimp A Butterfly, which I also really enjoyed (thanks Paul), but while those albums feel inventive, this just felt gimmicky. Hip hop maybe lends itself better to a magpie approach as it’s always relied heavily on samples and mixing up genres. This just felt confused.

Not a huge fan of punk. This did not change that. One-dimensional in the extreme. I think anyone with a basic knowledge of power chords could knock this out. No stand out tracks or low points. It was all the same bland wall of noise, similar to the Slayer album we did.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Like the opening, suitably grand, cool dissolve into Elvis/Willie classic Come together: the SCU fi primal scream, fun enough, this is rockier than I assumed I think I’m in love: Slightly less substantial, but a nice enough album track, nice brass All of my thoughts: Stay with me: Lullaby sleepy, works great Elrectricity: fine Home of the Brave: lyricall a bit of a trope, I’m so drugged up, production and soundscape is fine but nothing too substantial Broken Heart has Mercury Rev vibes, sad stately strings, fragile vocal No God Only Religion: it’s fine, an above average psyche freak out, but as A Day in the life is the only one of those I genuinely love, not saying much Cop Shoot Cop: I like this, but just nicks John Prine lyrics.

Girls & Boys: Great bassline, dissonant guitars, witty lyric. Just an excellent pop song. Tracy Jacks: one of my favourites. The guitars sound so good, first of the character sketches. The pre-chorus in particular( Everyday he felt closer…) is great. You could imagine this sitting comfortably next to She’s Leaving Home or When I’m 64 on Sgt Pepper, it’s that good. End of a century is more pop brilliance. The backing harmonies and Coxon’s guitar lift a fairly simple song with another perfect middle 8. Parklife: The ultimate 90s pub sing-along, another unusual but perfect Coxon riff. The spoken word verses could easily be cringeworthy, but for some reason it all works. Bank Holiday: Suddenly they they turn into the Undertones. I’m not a punk fan, but it’s pop adjacent and I don’t mind it. Bad head is another simple gem that I always forget about and then enjoy when I play the album. For blokes their age at the time of writing this, they have a knack for writing ennui-laden songs from an older perspective. Despite being ridiculously catchy and the presence of Parklife and Girls And Boys, it’s quite a melancholy album. The Debt Collector, a pretty enough piece of music which I like for the oddness. It does come off like a poor relation of for the benefit of Mr Kite The Debt Collector and Far Out act like diveider’s between the sides and then the quality hardly wavers. To The End is Serge Gainsbourg-like. Not sure if the couple in the song are breaking up or celebrating staying together, and don’t really care because it’s so good. The rest is a succession of excellent twisted pop - London Loves, Magic America, Jubilee (so Bowie/Ronson). The only clunker is Trouble In The Message Centre, it’s the kind of subject matter you’d think would inspire a great song from them, it’s not dreadful but it suffers amongst the company it’s in. Ends with This is A Low, which is one of the best songs and guitar solos of the 90s. It’s a massively impressive album. The 90s was largely built in nostalgia for British pop’s high watermark in the 60s, but this stands up to anything that decade produced.

No A bit Blue Nile goes cabaret. Quite like it though, think the word is evocative. Ba de la Bap Someone’s a Bowie fan. Not a bad knock off though Gloomy Sunday Very camp, but I kind of like it Nude Spoons Sigue Sigue Sputnik bit mad Skipping Too frantic, needs a better melody to hold interest Party Feats Two Prof that it takes more than a mannered vocal to do what Bowie does. Club Contry I like this, a bit ABC Nothinginsomethin.., Quite a nice tune, although it s Does make me think of Come Dancing by the Kinks, which I infinitely prefer Love Hangover Decent campy pop 18 carat.. They really like that Kinks riff And then I read a book Some of these are a bit impenetrable. I don’t dislike them, but think it would take quite a few listens to him along with this

Shining star Very Stevie. That’s the way of the world, better Isley Bros Happy world All About Love, welcome to jazz club… nice! Yearnin’ Learnin: this is decent party music, but it lack the depth of a Stevie Reasons: That 70s soul falsetto never really works for me. Understand you have to give everyone a go songing lead, but stay on the harmonies mate

Great, great broad, not very pc intro Combination of the 2: Starts psyche, but quite quickly soul pop a la early Dead. Some pitchy moments, bloke singing lead but even on backing vox she drowns him I need a man t love Aretha would destroy this. Dreadful lead tone. But the rest are decent. Feels like a bit of a Piece Of My Heart rewrite, possibly because that works well for them. Summertime: Making this raucous misses the point. It’s fine, and it’s a physically impressive if not emotionally