It's a very pleasant listen but I'm a lyrics listener and it didn't really register on that level. I knew White Winter Hymnal pretty well already and it's a lovely song, but that kind of folky Christmas energy is through a lot of it. Also I love the artwork.

That this album is almost twenty years old slightly makes me want to die, but it’s nice to have a proper think about it for the first time in forever. Had forgotten how much of it is about clubbing, a thing I had never done when I first heard it in 2006. Is this kind of a concept album about the people of Sheffield and what they’re all doing one Saturday evening??????? Listening now, it’s all from a pretty young angry male perspective, which is interesting- the closest you get to a female view of the world is either View from the Afternoon or When the Sun Goes Down, and I think it’s deliberate that the first of those is a woman exhausted by her drunk boyfriend and the second is a tired prostitute. It’s women as they relate to and appear to the different kinds of men and boys across the album, with flashes of clarity that the women might have their own internal lives rather than being just archetypes. The album title comes from some kitchen sink drama I don’t remember the name of and that makes so much sense- those films were all from the 50s and 60s and about people from depressed Northern towns who grew up too fast and got married too young and were unhappy because of it, and this is what people that age in 2006 did instead. The view from the afternoon As an opener, this is a bit of a mission statement- Alex wailing “I want to see all of the things that we’ve already seen” in the middle of scenes of Hogarthian excess, finding something glorious in the mess of pub gambling and hen nights. That he knows already from the afternoon that it ends with rambling professions of love on the answerphone of a girl who’ll only roll her eyes gives you an idea of the kind of narrator he’s been for the rest of his career- able to see from above how there can be moments of tenderness and the awkwardness of internality in the most arcane and idiotic bits of everyday life. I bet that you look good on the dancefloor I don’t really think of the Arctic Monkeys as an indie sleaze band, but this is probably the indie sleaze anthem. Honestly, I never liked it much, but listening now I guess it’s quite fun that I’ve always pictured it happening on a dance floor and it obviously actually isn’t, because why would he need to bet? Choosing to believe he’s spotted her behind the till in Budgens. Fake tales of San Francisco I think the bridge to this might be my favourite bit of the album. “And yeah, I’d love to tell you all my problem/You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham” is an all time lyric, and ending with the “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” of exactly the kind of shit indie band he’s skewering is so fun. Even more than IBTYLGOTD, this is so of an era- the Arctic Monkeys were the reason landfill indie happened, but they were probably seeing shit indie bands coming up around them for years before everyone rode through on their coattails. A lot of the crit I have now for the AM is that they’re not as vicious as they were- is that album they’ve got about a phantom space base a bit rich when they got famous with songs about this stuff? Dancing Shoes This is actually a sad song and I hadn’t realised it before- it’s practically a Smiths song. Like in TVFTA it’s about someone longing for connection and not being able to make it even when they’ve gone out with the express intention of meeting someone. I like how the last verse repeats the beginning like the poor bloke’s on yet another night out, with the same inevitable ending. You probably couldn’t see for the lights I like that this comes after Dancing Shoes- he’s mocked some sad little indie kid for being desperate and awkward and unable to talk to girls, and then one track later he’s self loathing about his behaviour around a girl he likes: “But they’re not half as bad as me/ say anything and I’ll agree”. Another song with a title that helps explain the content without the words ever being said- presumably she’s a girl in a band, which is obviously 2006’s coolest girl. Still take you home Honestly this is more sexist than I remember it, particularly the middle verse. It probably speaks EXACTLY to the kind of sex Alex was having before he got famous, but it’s pretty miserable- he’s mocking the girl who’s dressed up and pretending she doesn’t remember him, even though he’s as much of a cocky little prick as she is. Musically it’s not different enough from the other, less sexist songs, to excuse its inclusion. Fuck this one. Soz. Riot Van I like how dreamy this is- after a million club songs these are young boys sneaking vodka behind a bush, and the music’s almost like an interlude. “Those silly boys in blue/ Well, they won’t catch me and you” - it all feels quite nostalgic even though it’s about getting beaten up by the police for being an idiot kid. I just googled it and 2006 was the year of “Hug a hoodie”, where Labour accused David Cameron of being soft on crime by suggesting he wasn’t sufficiently demonising bored working class kids for hanging around shopping centres being low level vandals. The boys are almost heroic in this, since the police are the bad guys and they’re taking the piss. I like this one a lot. Red light indicates doors are secured Another clubbing song. I like that the verses are a conversation but I don’t find this one that interesting. If this isn’t a concept album, they could definitely have cut some of these. Mardy Bum This makes so much more sense to me as an adult- but I don’t believe it’s from Alex’s perspective. Even though the narration’s first person, it feels like it’s sung by someone older and probably married. I like how the northern slang in it feels a bit older, as well- “Mardy” and “reight” are both words I heard here for the first time, and they sound like they come from a tired man who loves his partner but wants to hold onto the life he had out with the boys, as illustrated in 90% of the other tracks here. Is it sexist? Probably. Are those men? Almost definitely. Perhaps vampires is a bit strong but… This is THE ONLY SONG ON THE ALBUM THAT BREAKS MY CONCEPT THEORY. I’ve also never knowingly put it on. Whatever. When the sun goes down Another Sheffield night time song, and deceptively dark, considering how jaunty it sounds- not that there’s anything inherently bad about sex work, but “it don’t stop in the winter” and I’m not keen on the scummy man’s “nasty plan”. I like how the middle of the song has the narrator awkwardly standing there listening and wondering, a voyeur, because that’s another thing this album is- a profoundly voyeuristic statement about working class culture from someone fantasising about the lives of people they choose to stereotype. Alex isn’t a reliable narrator- he’s made assumptions about both the man and woman in the song, and he moralises at the end to his audience- “I hope you’re not involved at all”. From the ritz to the rubble “Secretly I think they want it all to kick off…/it’s just something to talk about/ a story to tell” There’s some actual animosity in this one, from both the narrator and the kind of throbbing mass of the nightclub queue. They’re craving violence as an antidote to boredom, but then: “This town’s a different town than what it was last night”- it makes sense this is later on in the album, because it takes us to the next morning. While the album’s about what happened one night, this song’s about what didn’t, and how things are different and clearer in the morning. Which leads to: A Certain Romance This is the only song on the album without a kind of precise temporality to it- while everything else is a vignette of a specific time and place, a certain romance is vibes only, a summation of his teenage years now he’s growing out of them and moving away. My overarching review of this album is that I sort of love the swaggering characters in it, but my favourite character of all is Alex- so many songs are about “you” or “the boys” or blow by blow accounts of the people the narrator sees, but there’s still narrative bias you can glean so much about the author from. He’s romanticising working class Sheffield life very much from the peripheries- until the end, the actual Alex character narrator only crops up in clubs shitting on posers, pulling girls’ pigtails and trying to look cool, but A Certain Romance flips that round- after 12 tracks judging absolutely everyone (men, women, children), you see what Alex’s relationship to the chavs and townies and indie kids of 2006 Sheffield really is (is it Alex’s bandmates in knackered converse?). “They’d probably like to throw a punch at me” but “What can I say, I’ve known them for a long long time”- ultimately even with the law breaking and pretentiousness and ringtones, he finally accepts the romance of his grey town and the colourful people in it. I read that Alex started writing lyrics after he read John Cooper Clarke in an English lesson, and that makes sense of this album to me- it’s short story poems about the working classes as told by the cleverest boy in the year. I think the reason it feels like there are slightly too many clubbing songs is that that isn’t the most interesting Alex narrative- a song like Dancing Shoes or From the Ritz to the Rubble is more interesting than Still Take You Home or Red Light because there’s more to be said about what happened on a night where you didn’t get what you wanted than one where you did. I really love this album BUT that’s not to say I wouldn’t have given it an edit to include Leave Before the Lights Come On off their next EP instead of one or two of the others.

From the cover, I understood half of what this album would be- The Night They Drove Old Dixie down and Rag Mama Rag are both slightly Gram Parsons/the Byrds, a kind of semi-psychedelic country, but I was surprised by the Motown influence. Across the Great Divide and Up On Cripple Creek are very white man Otis Redding, and I like that better, which is a bit surprising. I like the whiney organ on When You Awake, it’s nice that in a song which refers to his grandpa and growing old there’s a kind of white baptist church energy. Whispering Pines opens a bit Bee Gees, which is generally a very positive thing for me, but doesn’t go much of anywhere- it’s pleasant but not evocative enough to be a Free Bird. I liked the piano where it’s scattered in (kind of like a Chuck Berry guitar on Look Out Cleveland, which is actively fun), and I’m a sucker for harmonica, but the singing left me fairly cold. Some of the lyrics feel pretty awkward. Rhyming “Virginny” with “Ragtime Willie” in Rockin Chair sucked. I think in general I prefer Creedence Clearwater Revival.

It’s not that I’ve ever thought I don’t like Bob Dylan, but he’s just never featured that heavily in my life- I think I’ve been intimidated by his back catalogue and without having had the kind of parents who introduced me to his music, I’ve just never really sat down with a Bob album and tried to get to grips with who he is beneath the legend. I got myself into Desire because of Sara (god I wish it had an h) and I’ve listened to Blood on the Tracks a bit because I love the concept of a classic break up album, but I could barely even name another album, and I really only know the hits. But listening to Highway 61 revisited was like watching Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot or reading The Bell Jar- through cultural osmosis I already felt I knew what a Bob album was, even though I’d barely heard a note. Without sounding too grand, our culture’s built on archetypes, and Bob Dylan is the genesis of one of those- the original hipster. Even where the album surprised me in places (I was surprised by how accessible the music was, honestly) I was always acutely aware this was Bob, and I was someone listening to Bob, and where I was bemused in places I was following in the grand old tradition of being bemused by Bob- something people have done since time immemorial, or at least since he went electric (another cultural touchstone I know about without understanding why). It definitely felt like the world was easing me into this album with Like a Rolling Stone as an opener, because I’ve even sung it at karaoke (more on Bob impersonations later). Actually listening to the lyrics, I hadn’t really picked up on the fact that it’s addressed to a woman, which I found kind of interesting- I knew Bob was anti-war and generally a solid leftie, but this is pretty much an attack on preppies and the unthinking rich, which I took with me through the rest of the album. Musically, Tombstone Blues and It Takes a Lot to Laugh reminded me of a train on a track (another archetype, hobo on a freight train), complete with wailing guitar whistle, and Bob singing like a preacher, which I loved with the bible talk. The lyrics to the title track really stuck out to me- God and Abraham shooting the shit and then Highway 61 echoed throughout history with Louis Armstrong and (I think!) a Shakespeare reference- I thought about the devil and Robert Johnson on a dirt road, another American legend. The last verse of that one, with the gambler starting wars and bleachers in the sun, felt like a nod to the atom bomb, but I enjoyed that it might be literally anything else and I might have missed some minor historical reference to a fucking Italian newspaper headline from the 1830s. There are so many lyrics here (and across the album tbh) that feel a million miles over my head, which isn’t exactly off putting, but does feel intimidating- I completely understand why there are Bob scholars, and why they counted him as a writer enough to give him the Nobel. I started wondering if to really understand Bob Dylan, you have to understand all his references, or if it’s meant to pass over your head, and he’s trying to be intimidating. He didn’t turn up for the Nobel ceremony, and I wondered how he feels about all of the university courses that study his work. Is he laughing at us all? This album kind of reminded me of a good rap album, if there’s any way that makes sense- when I’m listening to Kendrick Lamar I’ll put the lyrics up, and that’s at least partially because I’m a massive nerd, but without them I feel like I’m missing the point, and this gave me the same urge. On the other hand, I know that Kendrick probably wants us to be doing that- he actually turned up for his Pulitzer award. When Bob does Desolation Row with 26 verses you’ve never heard before at a gig, is that because there’s so much meaning he needs to get out into the world, or is it because he doesn’t want you to sing along? Does he want his audience confused? On my rap point, Ballad of a Thin Man particularly sounds like a diss track. The whole way through I was wondering to myself who is Mr Jones? I wondered whether it was Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones especially since Like a Rolling Stone is at the start but then I wondered whether he WANTED ME TO BE WRONG. When I’m doing my impression of Bob at karaoke, it doesn’t sound like an impression of anyone else. There’s no voice like his and outside of karaoke nobody even tries- if anyone came out sincerely impersonating Bob these days, it would be the most embarrassing thing- you just can’t ape that and be taken seriously. But of course the point is, however embarrassing it is, on some level everyone is doing Bob. I might say Ballad of a Thin Man sounds a bit like Tom Waits, or I might say that “And he says “How does it feel/ To be such a freak?”/ And you say “Impossible”/ As he hands you a bone” sounds like Leonard Cohen- but pre-Bob they were both basically crooners. It’s impossible to imagine a world where Greenwich Village didn’t happen- that movement made Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment worth $22k/month and it’s the reason Essex lads wear skinny jeans. Again, without sounding insanely vague and highfalutin, listening to this album felt like reading Shakespeare- there’s absolutely no arguing it’s anything other than a foundational text, and objectively important. There’s absolutely nothing hipper than your cultural references being impenetrable, and I think Bob might be why.

First off, I think the music in this absolutely slaps. I only really know Kraftwerk from Autobahn, and this isn’t exactly different, but I loved the whole aesthetic alongside it. As well as being hilariously space age and synthy, it also plays at being totally serious about its content and I just love that. I love a German accent and a Russian language breakdown. I love the idea of music made by robots. I love that the cover is clearly trying to make you think about old Russian propaganda posters, and the sense that this is sort of about the Cold War, but also sort of a big joke about a dystopian world from a silent film. I particularly liked Spacelab for being quite haunting- I think that’s a theremin in there, and the drum machine reminds me of a zoetrope spinning different photographs round. I thought The Model was super fun too, particularly for its stilted English- interesting also that this one sort of adds to the world while not being explicitly about, like, technology: “she’s posing for consumer products now and then” feels like it’s sung by the robots from the opening track. I think I might have heard Neon Lights before, but it’s possibly the one I connected with least- it felt the simplest and most romantic, which wasn’t really what I was in the mood for after single word tracks with heavy beats and beeps. Great beefy breakdown though, which made me think about twinkly lights in the city. The Man Machine is obviously a great closing track, and kind of felt like the most influential track, maybe- if someone released this now it would sound like a lot of electronica, and I think that’s because everyone cites Kraftwerk. When you think about music that sounds like the future, it sounds like Kraftwerk, and even though The Man Machine is from the 70s, our ideas about the future don’t seem to have moved on that much. Here’s my lofty conclusion, because you know you wanted one, Fi: is the reason “futuristic music” hasn’t moved on because we no longer imagine ourselves to have a future? Arguably we’ve met Kraftwerk’s fantasy already- robots and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis realised in countries that even in the 70s were largely desert. Have we lost all optimism about the future in the face of climate change? Was the technology they’re imagining, which I’m calling dystopian, once seen as a move forward, and in the age of AI it’s lost its shine? Anyway I loved this and will put it on in the car and while drunk. Four and a half for being short (and sort of because of Neon Lights), rounded to a five.

Really enjoyed a few tracks on this- Squares is a great opener and I enjoyed wallowing in the woe of Gone. Maybe it’s because I only know the Beta Band from the High Fidelity soundtrack that I imagined a lot of this soundtracking an indie movie. Possibly that meant it washed over me a little? It’s pretty ambient, but there were some interesting lyrics once I tuned in properly. It felt surprisingly groovy for an indie record, kind of like a cross between a guitar band and Moby- very 2001, and quite a dance sensibility for something so low key (it felt very hooky). Alleged particularly reminded me of Spiritualized, who I love- the little moment of silence in the middle before coming back with a breakdown is straight out of the Jason Pearce playbook. I’ve put Squares on my December playlist and I’d listen to Dragon again, and Broke was fun.

This was so much more interesting than The Osbournes made me think it would be- super gothy and Victorian in places, and really great blues throughout. Another album that I had preconceived ideas about, which I thought I wouldn’t enjoy. I loved the blues elements mixed with really crunchy rock guitar- if Black Sabbath is the origin of metal that doesn’t necessarily make me think I’d like to listen to more metal, but I definitely need to take a look back at blues. I really enjoyed the fantasy songs and lyrics on The Wizard, and even in N.I.B., which sounds at first like a love song and then abstracts into something cultish and fantastical- he’s the devil! Evil Woman was funky but felt a bit like it was telling a story from a Thomas Hardy novel in context with the rest of the album. Musically, I loved the weird sproinging noises on Sleeping Village, and I loved the album opening with a rainy village soundscape, then falling into clangy guitars and bells tolling doom. It felt like the album could quite easily be stripped of guitars to something simpler and folky/bluesy, but they definitely add a lot- squealing and grime. So many of the riffs were really memorable and felt totally epic. Cannot believe how much I liked this. I put it on several times just while I was pottering about the house and felt like a powerful witch. So fun.

It is not (completely) Sigur Ros’s fault that they are advert music. I think I’ve heard every one of these tracks in adverts for banks or insurance companies trying to convince their prospective victims they’re folksy and authentic, and I’m too much of a cynic to not feel pandered to by that. I knew that Sigur Ros has released tracks in a made up language that isn’t Icelandic, which I always thought was quite funny (especially for people who do speak Icelandic) but a quick google said only Olsen Olsen and the end of the title track are the only two not in Icelandic. I did actually like Olsen Olsen for being a little bit different, but the language is essentially indistinguishable to me- I wonder if they manage to sing the “correct” lyrics to the jibberish songs live. Overall I basically can’t draw individual songs out of this- I guess what’s nice about it is the ambient experience, and that’s what makes it so good for advertising too- the lyrics are non specific if you’re non Icelandic (and even sometimes if you are) and the music sounds fundamentally quite hopeful and calming, like something about the eternality of the soul or something I dunno. I can imagine myself putting this on only to ironically soundtrack bits of life that seem like they’d appear in a montage- slow motion footage of holding a baby or something. It’s probably sad for Sigur Ros that people sort of can’t take their music seriously anymore, or maybe that’s just me? Not bad, but for something which tries to be so heavily imbued in meaning it’s quite sad it basically means capitalism to me now.

Speed of Sound is my favourite Wings album, but Band on the Run isn’t far behind. Let Me Roll It isn’t quite Silly Love Songs to me, but I think this might be the coolest Paul ever was- I used to think being John and Yoko was the coolest, but really why wouldn’t you want to be Paul and Linda running away to Scotland together to form a band, smoke weed and be in love. Lots of the guitar on the album sounds kind of lazy and lethargic in a way I love, and I really like Linda’s backing vocals against Paul’s too early old man voice, particularly in love songs- she’s lovely on Bluebird, another song about running away, like the title track. I love Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five ending with “band on the run” and Picasso’s Last Words ending with Jet- I don’t know if it means much but it feels arty and deliberate and it’s fun. Paul wasn’t the best Beatles lyricist, but I like how many Paul McCartney songs say the words “I love you”, and No Words does it beautifully. “The next time you see rain it ain’t bad/ it rains for you” is gorgeous. I could listen to almost nothing but Wings and be happy with that. This is basically my easy listening. Paul and Linda forever.