New York in 100 Songs - # 40 Mott The Hoople

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 219 The Fall - Perverted By Language

 

I have friends who concern themselves with debating about what the finest Fall albums are. I'm not sure I can be bothered with all that. Isn't it a lot simpler than that. Aren't some Fall albums excellent beyond description and some slightly uninspired and repetitive. This is one of the very good ones.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,780 Caribou - Our Love

 

Utopian dancefloor vibes. Speckled with samples and orgasmic ecstasy. If that's your bag. And there are worse things. 2015's One Love  Henerally consudered top of Caribou's tree. Though from what I've heard they're all minor variations on a theme. That guy's good at what he does. Slightlynumbing after a while but after all that's what this stuff was always all about. It put me in a great mood for my breakfast and the resy of my day. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 73 Mercury Rev - Born Horses

 

Mercury Rev's Born Horses. A late career classc from a band of American dreamers. They're a band I have been able to take and leave at times but here they've truly pulled out a plum.

Poetic, dreaming and I would say Beatnik at heart. It makes a strong case for being bohemian and becoming a muician rather than letting your heart and soul be isphoned away by getting a dull nine to five and marrying the wrong person at 18.  

This gets an astonihingly low 4.5 from Pitchfork, which to the likes of me recommends Born Horses even higher. Snotty, priggish dullards.I think this is a wonderful album.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,886 Gut Health

 

Always searching for something. Gut Health's Stiletto should more than do the trick as we make our way into Tuesday morning and my 8.15 with Dussledorf Insurance people.

This is a record that pretty much ahow its stripes, sensibility and intentions on Side One Track one. Urgent, unreconstructed Post Punk pop of the kind Girls At Their Best, The Modettes and Pylon specialised in way back in the day.

This is really just preicated on fun first. Hypnotic Dance Punk from Naarm , Melbourne. They're certainly haveing all the fun down there those guys.

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New York in 100 Songs - # 41 Joni Mitchell

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 220 Au Pairs - Playing With a Different Sex

 

Au Pairs are a band that seem as elevant as thet evr were. Gender issues, assettion, stridency, drawing of lines where it's required. Nothing changes. This is as urgent and essntial to the cutticulum as ti ever was. Pay attention. You don't want to fall behind.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,781 Paul Weller - Wild Wood

 

If I'm asked to choose later period Paul Weller. Paul Weller discovering thejoys of walking in the Surrey Hills and discovering the joys of Nick Drake is robably where I'd place my chips.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 72 Seafarers - Another State

 

London's Seafarers are story tellers and I'm always eager to endorse that basic guiding principle. Latest album Another State is a dreamers paradise. 

The A Pessimst is Never Disappointed website, always an invaluable point of reference, listed the finest monebts of Florence & The Machi8ne and Elbow as  signposts. I'm happy to go with that.

The songs here take flight, which is all you can ask from music. Like that moment when a large plane leaves the runway and is airborn. Floating on banks of clouds. That happ

Song(s) of the Day # 3,885 Current Joys

 

Hey I don't mind a bit of introverted Rock earnestness. R.E.M.. as this blog attests were one of my formative and enduring joys.. They could be earnest. And weren't ashamed to be so.

Cirrent Joys work this seam on current album East My Love. They owe as much to Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire, Pearl Jam and all those other studious Rock students as Michael and the lads. 

This is rather lacking in the playfullness that made me love R.E.M. so. I'll dock a point for undue gravity and write should smile more on the termly report. But iverall, great start to the week. 

New York in 100 Songs - # 43 Jonahan Richman

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 221 Keith Richard - Talk Is Cheap

 

I mean seriously. The Stones have been washed u as a serious musical force since 1982. This is from 1988. Alright if you like old blues licks. But best to play the old records and wait to hear the old hits when you go to see them live. Going through the motions for the most point.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,782 Beirut - The Flying Club Cup

 

Forty minutes with Beiruit is always a pleasure. Particularly on a Sunday morning as I prepare myself for church. They have a unique schtick. Tap into an ancient and romantic sensibility of folk traditions and beauty that predated Ro ck & Role. Post Millenial consciousness.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 73 Fred Thomas - Window In The Rhythm

 

Good to travel. Good to be home. Odysseus. Someone like that. Waking up in Newcastle after a big adventure in Sicily. Home from the sea.

And listening to Window In The Rhythm by Fred Thomas. An American somgwriter, producer and general audio alchemist Fred Thomas. A philosopher.

This is neat and lovingly assembled. It observes the world and crafts its reponse. A good soundtrack to watching the sun rise in the Newcastle heavens.  

Song(s) of the Day # 3,884 J W Francis

 

This will do. A good tempered and jolly album called SUNSHINE from a cuddly ball of facial hear and positive intention from the American road. Just what the doctor ordered. 

J W Francis is just what the doctor ordered as the actual sun starts its so climb in the Newcastle heavens as October works its way towards its second phase.Songs called things like Turtleneck Weather

This is good time twiddly guitar and vibes. Make ot one of your vitamin intakes this morning. Not world changing but highly likeable. 

New York in 100 Songs - # 44 Joey Bada$$

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 222 Keijo Haino - Watashi Dake

 

What d'you mean never heard of him? The ultimate go to record for cooler than thou types. Good luck with actually listening to it mind. Wear shades.

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,783 Buzzcocks - Another Music In Another Kitchen

 

Buzzcocks in 78. It didn't get much better. I was 13 and they probably described my state better than anyone else in the world that year. Jagged, articulate, confused. It still doesn't get much better and we're almost fifty years on.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 74 Horse Jumper of Love - Disaster Trick

 

HEY EVERYBODY! THERE'S A GREAT NEW HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE ALBUM OUT ! IT'S CALLED DISASTER TRICK !!! The wotld gives an incoherent shrug. Refuses to spin off it's axis. Life goes on.

But it's made It Starts With a Birthstone's day. I've just given it a listen and I think it's great. The guys who sat in the middle of class huddled in a chat and no one really notice. The Post Grunge guys. Buffalo Tom and Sebadoh's sulky nephews. Not as if Uncle Buffalo Tom and Auntie Sebadoh weren't sulky enough anyhow !

Boston Ma. half glass empty guys in ragged, hole ridden sweaters. They've been doing this for years and albums. I never tire of their schtick. It has Slowcore DNA and is distinctly Grunge lite. But they have good hearts and a way with melancholic melody I'm sure those who settle down with these guts won't regret it for a moment. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,883 Famous

 

The ludicrously hyperbolic nature of Spotify bios is an ongoing source of frustration for me when trying to write about recotds I come across.

London outfit Famous's latest Party Album is a case in point. An album on engaging youthful introversion and noise. I quite like it.

But going to their bio in search of or basic biographical information is a fool's'errand. It's all total gibberish. Oh well. The record's worth a spin even if the overriddung impression is confusion. .  

New York in 100 Songs - # 45 Black Star

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 223 Microdisney - 39 Minutes

 A repost for this: 

'(Cathal) Coughlan is that rare, arguably unique beast: a truly gifted satirist, plying his art in a rock'n'roll band.' Andrew Mueller

Mueller cheats here, for his second choice in this collection. He chooses two records. Both of them fronted and directed by Cathal Coughlan, one of the oddest and most specific figures on the Eighties and Nineties pop landscape. Mueller is fully entitled to his conceit though, because he makes an absolutely brilliantly argued case for the importance of figures such as Coughlan who do something that is essentially different from the rest of the pack regardless of the commercial endgame. Great writing like this encourages the previously neutral reader to investigate further, like me, I have one album and one single by Microdisney and nothing at all by Fatima Mansions). So, here we go...

In order to 'get' Microdisney, you have to listen and really listen to the lyrics. Otherwise the records often actually seem to veer towards the middle of the road and wouldn't sound completely out of place on Radio 2. But dig deeper and it becomes obvious that Coughlan's only real rivals for caustic sugaring of the pop pill are Elvis Costello and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. He's more abstruse than any of them. And unlike them, he never had any proper hits.

He's a contrary character, that's for sure. As Mueller writes of him: ( Coughlan ) 'has eluded the recognition that has long been his due with a cunning blend of intransigence, bloody-mindedness, ill luck , an uncanny instinct for making the music at the wrong time, a perhaps unhelpful surfeit of intelligence and a rarefied sense of mischief often mistake for gratuitous belligerence.' I'd concur but add a small caveat. His true achilles heel was his failure to ever nail down the real killer tune which would take him from his existence as a cult hero to being a genuine chart contender. I'd say the same about his foil in Microdisney, Sean O'Hagen who went on to make loads of really great music with Stereolab and High Llamas, ( his own project), without ever grazing the significant areas of the char either. Probably also on account that neither of them ever cared overmuch.

39 Minutes is a perfectly acceptable record without ever threatening to be a great one to my ears. Mueller rates it so highly largely because of the sour cynicism of its lyrics which he suggests holds a pulse to the corrupt tenor of the times it was made during the late Eighties. I'm insufficiently able to decode more cryptically acute lyrics so I'm unfit to judge. The comparison with Costello holds up again. Compare 39 Minutes with Armed Forces for example. Which record has the cleverer set of lyrics. Hard to judge. Which has the better tunes? Armed Forces, hands down. Anyhow I'd take the one Microdisney album I do own, The Clock Comes Down the Stairs,over this. My couple of listens hasn't inspired me to go back very often in future 

So, to Fatima Mansions and a truly horrible album cover. They were the project Coughlan moved onto when Microdisney folded and he and O'Hagen parted directions. He chose at this point to shift towards a sound that reflected the generally unrelenting bile of his lyrics. I never really went for it apart from a couple of songs and I'm gritting my teeth as I listen it to this while writing. It verges on hardcore. The kind of thing Black Flag used to specialise in. Regardless of its lyrical merits, I doubt I'll get through it. I can't multitask and type and think while listening. I don't have the slightest urge to take up stage diving any moment soon.

That's probably because this is certainly not my kind of music as a cursory glance down this blog will vouch. I just find it mindless. I much prefer the Scott Walker records in Coughlan's collection to the Anthrax ones that this suggests he may have nestled alongside them. I just want it to stop. I've posted the quietest song on the record because I wouldn't want to inflict the pain I've experienced on others. Inevitably this turns into a thrash interspersed with the quieter bits. Seriously, don't bother.

As with 39 Minutes and Microdisney, this was Fatima Mansions last throw of the dice. It flopped both critically and commercially and judging by my personal listening terror deserved to. I will agree with Mueller's judgement that Coughlan is a definite if misdirected talent. Read his article if you can track it down. It's an object lesson in how to write music criticism. Meanwhile Fatima Mansions, R.I.P. but don't reform.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,784 Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

 

Soul love. Bill Callahan is one of those artists who taps in to a hudden miraculous world of beauty and truth. He taps into it, opens a seam and it releases anima...

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 75 dog eyes - holy friends

 

There are records that I immediately think of as Juno Culture as soon as I hear them.A couple of gloopy teenagers sat out on the porch strumming acoustic guitars like Juno and Paulie Bleeker in that movie. Staring into each others eyes and sharing orange tic tacs between kisses. Listening to Belle & Sebastian and Velvet Underground albums together. 

That's a conforting film and records that remind me of its sensibility are immediately comforting albums which I find myself clinging to. Like Linus and his blanket. Juno soundtrack for this year seems to be dog eyes holy friends.

It seems to tick all the requisite checklist boxes with astonishing efficiency given that a stand out quality of albums such as these is  lazy DNA. The songs here though are alert and keen even if they also project that contended snug lethargy.

dog eyes are David Leach and Hally Firstman. He sports a sloppy moustache. She has cute plaits. Nancy & Lee for millenial kids. These songs won't change your world so much as confirm to you that you have great taste. It's a new shade of fun !

  

Song(s) of the Day # 3,882 Hard Quartet

 

Towards the weekend and the fitness centre with Hard Quartet's eponymous album a fluid, uncompromisng alternative guitar album that makes me glad to be alive.

An Indie sypergroup of sorts. Featuring Stephen Malkmus once of Pavement, Silver Jews and The Jicks most obviously and prominently but also Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Jim White (Dirty Three) and Emmet Kelly (Ty Segall)..

This is fluid, literate joyous melodicism. A love of the past, Psychedelic San Francisco, Wire, Mission of Burma, Sonic Youth, Kraiutrock, Flying Nun and errm Pavement, If I'm being churlish perhaps a mute linger than it absolutely needs to be. A couple of tracks could be pruned.

But there's much to enjoy here. These guys know what theyre doing and love what they're doing. Middle aged comfortably heeled guys revelling in the company of other guys.

A tour has been set up and it prioritises Cult appeal. Hey this is Malkmus who is inevitably the most prominent player here. Hey, his talent is undeniable. Key American cities. A date at the Electric Camden with pricey tickets then a run of daes in Australia.

I'll content myself with the record which ticks a lot of my own pleasure principles bozes. This is stellar stuff from people who know exactly what they're doing.  .  

New York in 100 Songs - # 46 Joe Walsh

 

Naima Bock - Below A Massive Dark Land

 

Some people are prone to say that the best Rock music has already been made.Frankly I think it's  preposterous idea. Just as the idea that the old days were the best. Nostalgia's not whar it used to be.

I think it's pretty easy to look around and find music that compares with anything in the canon. Look ar Syfjan. Look at Kamasi Washington. Listen to the latest Mercury Rev or Grandaddy albums. They're music with the scope and grace of Van Morrison, David Bowie, The Band or Miles Davis records. 

They just draw on different sensibilities and modes of expression. They're every bit as much works of art as what came before them. Is there any need to say one is beter than another.This seems a strange way to appreciate good work

Listen to the new Naima Bock album Below A Massive Dark Land. It's very good work.I'm very taken by Naima. This is her second album. Her frst Giant Palm was an enormous favourite of mine when it came out 

 I've been listening to Below A Massive Dark Land on a daily basis this week. I went into RPM Records, a go to refuge from the travails of the modern world on Monday and Rich and Craig, the record shop guys who know were listening to it. It even got Craig's approval and that's saying something. Rich doesn't approve of much that didn't come out in 1967.

Parts of Below A Massive Dark Land sound like it might have come out n 1972. Echoes of Van Morrison, John Martyn and Richard Thompson. But this isn't retro. It's the joys of music refracted through a post millenial lens.

Naima has a lovely voice and a lovely soul. She's playing at The Cumberland Arms in November. I'll pop down and see her. Last time we metwe talked about Joni. I wonder what we'll talk about this time.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,785 The Kinks - Kinks

 

The Kinks at their rawest in their infant days. Their are some Spinal Tap moments frankly. The hit singles that broke them You Really Got Me and All Day & All of The Night.. Elsewhere they#re nascent. In the act of becoming.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 224 The Cars - Heartbeat City

 

The Cars had their moments. At their best they were excellent, sightly leftfield, chart fodder. But by 1984's Heartbeat City their best was largely behnid them. Whereas their early albums had been Television that got played on AOR radio - and frankly who could complain about that, Heartbeat City was largely affected weirdness for the Pretty In Pink High School generation.

 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 76 Einsturzende Neubauten - Rampen

 

I've become an enormous Germanophile of late. The last month and a bit to be precise. Though I suspect I always have been at heart. Big changes in my life and I've decided I like changes. They're good for me. I've broken away from the icy grip of 'the man' and am considering myself as semi-retired from now on. I'm intent on enjoying my life from this point. That's what it's there for anyhow isn't it? 

So instead of dragging myself into an unhappy office, I've been teaching German business people online. Digging into the culture again, brushing up my German, learning about the way of and attitudes to life. I think there's much to embrace, relish and admire. So we come to the new Einsturzende Neubauten record. Rampen (apm; alien pop music).

It's a perfect soundtrack for this moment for me and encapsulates everything I've always loved about teutonic culture with a wry restraint that resists the maniacal self destruct button. Blixa Bargeld and his boys have matured nicely over the years. Still in black, no longer so intent on raising messy hell and waking the neighbours. But the Faustian pact was made many moons ago and they remain bound by the same prnciples. This is a disquieting but nuanced listen. Perfect for my Monday morning as I wait for my online workshop with young Leipzig bankers.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,881 John Roseboro

 

Bossa Nova corner. Not a general It Starts With obsession but this is a neat record. John Roseboro's Fools tends your inner soul. And as any Fule Noesm the inner soul requires tending.

Roseboro works out of Brooklyn, one of the workd capitals of New Bohemianism. In the words of the Bandcamp page the record 'subverts traditional conventions on what alternative music is. Disposing of tored chord progressions, kitschy themes and larping emo aesthetics.'  Somebody's swallowed a dictionary.

Still I'm happy to endorse the principle. I like manifetoes. And this is a rather lovely record. Thanks againt Darren Jone for tending to the Captain's Table. I'm off to listen to Sade.

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New York in 100 Songs - # 47 Jimmy Eat World

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,786 Paul Weller - Stanley Road

 

Stanley Road came out at an odd moment in British Pop. When Oasis had just hit and most bands in the publuc ete seeed to be looking cakwards rather than forwards. The recird had its moments but U honestly don't feel like listening to the whole thing, Everybidy was buying CDs, vinyl seemed to have died a death. Albums were just two damned long. There's nothing wrong with ten orr twelve song albums. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 225 The Go Betweens - Tallulah

 

Tallullah  is an odd album in The Go Betweens narrative. Some of theur finestmoments, the love that was developing between Amanda Briwn and Grant McLennan but some odd missteps. An iver earnest attempts on Grant's part to achueve commercial success. Right Here and Cut It Out. Neither of them the hit single they craved but were fated never to realise. His other more literary ventyres drag. Elsewhere, his one gem on the record,  Bye Bye Pride. One of the finest things he ever wrote. The essence of this wonderful band.

But really this was Robert's album. Gothic mastery. Tallulah, I Just Get Caught Out. Clarke Sisters, Spirit of the Vampire ,The House Jack Kerouac Built. He died his hair into a majestic auburn shoulder length mane in tribute to Dynasty's Blake Carrington. It was Cult stuff. But Cult of the most magnificent elan. The band moved onto their Pop Masterpiece 16 Lovers Lane. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 77 Night Beds - Mountain Radio

 

A Rocky Mountain reared dreamer now based in Nashville, Tennessee. Winston Yellen's lastest record Mountain Radio is a joy from the off. It seems to concern itself mostly with the creation of beauty and awe. I'm not about to complain about that. 

It's a lovely record, right the way through. Yellen comes across a better adjusted hick cousin to Mark Kozalek's urban toiler. This is a much more contented listen than Kozalek's remarkable but deeply troubled records.

There's something of Bon Iver's late career poetic ennui to Mountain Radio too. This is a very American record in essence. A gorgeous one. Lost in the stars.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,880 Ada Lea

 

Toronto artist Ada Lea releases a new a EP notes. Amiable and atmospheric electro emotionality. These sound like sountracks to a long night drive over darkened landscapes. Worth a punt.  

New York in 100 Songs - # 48 Jim Croce

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 226 Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Stations

 

Another record that reminds me of my youth. A few years later. I wasn't very well. Still with the same beautifu girll. Everything was great about it. The name of the band. The slow, loving narcotic drag of the songs. They way they introduced you to classics you weren't aware of. Patsy Cline. Waylon Jennings.It's still such a wonderful record. Carrying me to my 8.15.   

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 78 Oso Oso - life till bones

 

Lethargic, slightly depressed but trying to put a bright face on it Indie Rock from Jade Lilitri out of Long Beach, New York. New album life till bones boasts a terrific sleeve. As if the Ray Harryhausen skeletons have decamped from Jason & the Argonauts screen and are rockin' American suburbia.

The record is cool. Geeky Strokes. I went to Oso Oso Radio on Spotify in search of further comparison points but didn't find many.  I just found plenty more interesting leads.

Anyhow  life till bones is loads of fun. The kind of slacker American indie that's all over my It Starts With a Birthstone 200 countown as we come towards my Top hundred. I'm increasing realising that along with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, this is uncreasingly one of my favourite things.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,787 Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega

 

I'm always happy to give Suzanne Vega's first album a play. It reminds me of my first relationship. Being young and being in love. Suzanne was a precocious and finely formed tlent who made you want to be in New York. Th efinest city on God's Earth. Wriing poetry and making art in a loft somewhere o the Lower East side.. In Manhattan.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,879 Pop Filter

 '                                            

                                                  I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be...'

Back in Newcastle. The skies are dark and we begin the run towards Christmas. The pavements are wet with night rain and I'm up early as is my wont. Enjoying a mug of peppermint tea. Preparing to run my bath and head for the fitness centre before my morning online lessons.

Darren Jones has sent me another wonderful suggestion of another lesson to listen to; Pop Filter's Ray & Lorraine. Another pick & mix of wonder off the Melbourne conveyer belt. Members of Ocean Band, Cool Sounds and Snowy Band.

It's a mixture of confection and profundity. And isn't that a wonderful description of what's best about life itself. Exactly Where I Want To Be stood out for me but there's plenty more here that's worth your while. Friends having fun and laying down some deeper moments/. Cheers Darren !   

New York in 100 Songs - # 49 Jeffrey Lewis

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 227 The Proclaimers - This Is The Story

 

'When you go. Will you send me. A letter from America...' 

The records I find myself listening to this morning seem to be working common seams. Guitar fuelled, impassioned. Literary. Detemined. Scottish and American. Proclaimers fit perfectly,  

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 79 Being Dead - EELS

 

Arch Texan weirdo cowboy and cowgirls Being Dead are back with EELS a second serving of their nutty B52s meet Ler's Active with a spoonful of Pylon, Rank & File and Guadalcanal Diary.stirred in.

A delight for the likes of me who was reared on this kind of stuff in the Eighties. This is 16 songs and forty minutes of carefree wackiness.

I had the pleasure of seeing Being Dead a few months back supporting En Attendant Ana at the Cumberland Arms. They were everything I could have wanted back then. They're even so more here. Slippery characters. And all the better for it. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,788 Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

 

Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight. Tender, brittle guitar missives. Out of Glasgow. Headed for the Highlands. Magnificent. Jagged.

Within a Scottish tredition. The Vaselines, Teenage Fanclub, Idewild come to mind. All of them inspired by American Independent Noiseniks. It's Monday I'm in Love.  

Song(s) of the Day # 3,878 Parlor Hour

 

It's somerimes difficult to be entirely sure what constitutes an actual album these days. This one seems slightly short to be pegged quite that. Seven songs. Just short of twenty minutes . It's probably an extended EP if you want to get technically inclined. 

Anyway, Parlor Hour's Little Known Secret is a sparkling, jagged debut. Described as a Slacker Twee outfit though frankly they don't sound very Twee here. The barbed kiss of Sonic Youth's Evol seems the obvious reference point here. 

It's a record that's a compelling, magical opening salvo  to It Starts week. Zoe, Noah, Nancy and Eli are out of Portland, Oregon but now find themseves working out of New York City according to my notes. All of this makes perfect sense. ;Mystery Trane, Freeway Plane. Expressway to your skull....' Some thingsnever get old.   

New York in 100 Songs - # 50 Jay Z & The Notorious B.I.G.

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,789 The Wailers - Burnin'

 

What to say about The Wailers. What to say about Bob Marley & The Wailers. My Dad saw them play. Not In London. But in Zimbabwe. In the Zimbabwean Independence Ceremony. My Dad is now 90. Burnin' is one of any number of incredible records Marley made. I'm listening to it now on my television. The modern worled is great. But so is the ancient one. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 228 The Go Betweens -Before Hollywood

 

The Go Betweens know and understand the meaning of home. And loss. And pain. And consolation. This is their first classic LP record. Angular. Literary. Questing. Tumbling. Profound. How can some so young know so much.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 80 Richard Tripps - Between The Morning

 

Fantastische ! Fabelhaft ! Wnuderbar ! And other German synonym adjectives for pretty bloody great.Richard Tripps is not a name I've heard before an I doubt very much whether you're very familiar with either his name or work. But sit up and pay attention because his debut album Between The Morning is something rather special.

Out of New Hope, Pennsylvania which is immediately a place  I want to g to right now. The album sports a picture of Tripps trudging up a hillside in blue clothing towards a blue sunrise shoulers hunched by determined.

The sound is meandering Lo Fi strumming out of The Mk 2 Velvet Underground, flights of pastoral Seventies Folk frippery, Beck and Allah La's garage. This is an expansive, idiosyncratice album at ease in its skin. I couldn't think of a better way to start a Sunday morning.