It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 128 Tomora - COME CLOSER

 

A collaboration between AURORA and The Chemical Brothers which synthesises Radiohead, Suicide and Bjork with remarkable results. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 78 Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid

 

Well before Andy Burnham became King of The North, there was Guy Garvey. This was something different. A little bit precious on occasion but it's earnest and heartfelt.  Ambitious.and with a genuine pride in its sense of place and moment. Its sense that the mundane is extraordinary. 

Days # 10 Ice Cube

 

There are worlds you'll never know. This is one I'll never know.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 44 Roy Harper - Stormcock

 

I've been listening to Roy Harper's Stormcock on repeat for the last week or so. It takes me back unerringly. To a favourite place. A safe one. 1993 -94 in Dortmund, Germany and the best music friend of my lifetime. I used to go to his flat on a Friday afternoon and we;d talk into the evening.and we'd drink beer and smoke dope and talk about life.

Listen to Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Kevin Coyne and Roy Harper. And Stormcock particularly . Listening to it now takes me back unerringly across the years and the continent like an arow.  I'm sat on his armchair at the window and he's sat on his sofa rolling a joint on the cofee table and we're laughing . Talking about the night ahead. Meeting the others in town.

This is a beautiful record. I need a vinyl copy of my own. It's only got four tracks but they hint at remarkable wisdom and insight. The stuff of the ages. there's incredible weeping and remarkable dignity and majesty.Music does this !

Song(s) of the Day # 4,493 Drug Country

 

Do drugs. Do drugs. Do Drugs in the country ! While you're at it. set the controls for erm, the heart of  Drug Country. Richmond, Virginia's finest. And their latest album erm Country Drugs. They're nothing if not consistent. Dinosaur Jr and Whiskeytown's ragged feral children. They start by purloining the riff from Sweet Jane and riding their charabang out of town and onto the Road to Nowhere.Careering on and off the road. loose and inspired.  Rarely in tune but that's just as it should be. Another cherrypick from Seabuck / Darren Jones and another winner.  

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 129 Woo - Whichever Way you Are Going You are Going Wrong

 

A long running project from brothers Clive and Mark Ives. Gently Psychedelic and instrumental. Nothing much happens but its all gently intriguing. 

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 44 Allman Brothers - At Fillmore East

 

There's something of the Mythic about a record like this at this distance. Live Double debut albums that start 'Wake up mama. Turn your lamp down low...' and proceed with astonishingly fluid duelling guitars may be worth sticking with.This is an album for lazy days. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 78 Grizzly Bear - Vecktamist

 

A record which came out in 2009. I saw the band shortly afterwards. They're a band apart and this is an album apart. It's one that understands light and proportion, understanding and literature. It has a rare poise and beauty.

I started listening to this this afternoon. I found I could not stop even though I know the album well. Sometime you have to pay something its due. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,492 Shredded Sun

 

Shredded Sun come motoring out of Chicago, Illinois with waterpistols blazing on latest album Never Odd Or Even. They trip through the tulips, unpack their hamper of Indie tricks and picnic in a field. Another suggestion of loveliness from Darren Jones / First Mate Starbuck. Thanks Darren.

One moment the Velvet Underground , (who provide the essence and base ingredients  and moral and artistic compass for projects like these) are chugging in the slowlane. Next C-86 pick up the batons and press down on the accelerator. Never Odd Or Even. strike a good balance and lasts the course.

Days # 9 R.E.M.

 

A song from the album began their great transition. 'Hope despite the times...'

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 79 Drive By Truckers - Decoration Day

 

Drive By Truckers records strike me as a long night out with someone you don't really care for who's intent on paimting the town red and then proceeding at a certain point to itemise exactly what he doesn't like about you.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 45 Neu! - Neu!

 

Neu ! Is an unbeatable concept and record. An album that presents itself as a brand. A name that describes exactly what it want to be. A sound that's is pretty much an intercity speeding between Dussledorf and Cologne. A record that must be climbing the charts. Into the Top Ten !

Days # 8 Nico

 

A song about transition...

Song(s) of the Day # 4,491 Hovvdy

 

Hovvdy are a Texan Independent duo who have popped up intemittently on It Starts with a Birthstone over the years but I've finally found the album I'd nail to my mast with latest release, their sixth in all, Big World.

All their ingredients and influences seem to have fallen into place this time round and no mistake. Breathy laid back relaxed ballads and mid tempo chuggers that assimilate and triangulate The Shins, Elliot Smith and Alex G. 

But the key spirit of this , at least to my ears, is that of Simon & Garfunkel. An interesting essay could be rewritten on these mavens of melody. As important in many respects as Beatles, Velvets, Love, and Byrds for the post millennial independent sound. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 130 Brother Wallace

 

I just dig this kind of record. One that doesn't really make the slightest effort to be modern or contemporary or clever because it's got a sound and attitute to burrow into for firty minutes or so.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 80 Dixie Chicks - Home

 

This is the album that Uncut takes very seriously and I can't really because I was brought up in Europe. It's nice I s'pose.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 46 Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Blood & Chocolate

 

This is a particularly personal choice for the author of this list. It's i,portant to me to in terms of my personal life narrative. I was supposed to be seeing Elvis Costello & The Attractions during my second year . I was supposed to be going to see them at the LCR university venue with a friend I was not getting on with as well as I'd have liked. The band pulled the gig and I've still never seen them or him. A great regret.

As to the record. It covers a lot of bases. You can't help thinking Dylan, There's plenty of invective. Plenty of pain. Plenty of barely checked aggression and rage . Confusion. Wordplay. But lots of wordplay anditwisted nvective. A very good innings and everyone concerned carry their bats back to the pavilion.  

Days # 7 The Beatles

 

'Got a good reason....' No good reason is required for a riff and momentum that would have done any Stax Atlantic artist proud. Well plenty of them went on to cover this....

Song(s) of the Day # 4,490 Lambchop

 

You have to wonder or maybe you don't whether a laconic Alternative C&W album released in 2026 called Punching the Clown is alluding to anyone in particular. Every American artistic statement has to be these days. 

Lambchop's latest is a set of riddles within riddles,almost fifty minutes of sly, wisecracking epiphanies. Sporadic bursts of military cadences and Russian Orthodox choir routines. Every track offers fresh pleasures. It wiles away an afternoon and early evening like a favourite Coen brothers film. So I've put it on again this morning as I'm preparing for my day.

 We're on our way to the pearly gates. Heaven. The place where something always happens. This record is genuinely cinematic and quite as good as it gets ! Another great advert for the vinyl format if further evidence is needed.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 47 Deep Purple - Shades Of Deep Purple

 

Not the Deep Purple album you might expect in a rundown of greatest ever albums but this aligns to its author's taste more than their best known and celebrated records. This is limbs flying night on the town ago go.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 81 Anthony & The Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

 

Lonely is a place on earth.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 131 Seu Jorge - The Other Side

 

Knockout Ned . The most honorable man in the Favela. A beautiful, dreaming jazzy album that has wings. We are sailing down to Rio.

Days # 6 The Dream Syndicate

 

A song about riotous unhinged debauchery that shares its name with a deeply desperate film about alcoholism. Trying somehow to remember them. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,489 Twisted Teens

 

Florida Water Blues by Twisted Teens like most records thee days is another one which reminds me of way back when. Quite a lot reminds me of the first few terms of University in Autumn 1985 when I was harvesting experience with no little appetite.

Twisted Teens are certainly twisted, possibly not teens, but seem to be at least sligtly akin to American bands of these days in that they have a tangible craving for life that's highly memorable. They have a songwriter and vocalist who basks under the name of Caspian Holywell.

They hail from New Orleans which is even better and their sound is somewhere between Death of Samantha, Pixies and Gun Club. They're depraved and possibly cursed. I couldn't recommend them more highly. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,329 Dr. John - Gris Gris

 

Best listened to as night falls. Preferably on a Swamp. Speaks of a world that most of us will never know. This is an album that flows seamlessly as a voodoo suite.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 132 Labrador - The Rosy Red World

 

Philadelphia's Labrador's first album for four years The Rosy Red World has a wonderful sleeve. An image of unwashed plates and cups in a sink. The scene that greets most of us at some point every day. Also a wonderful opening song 'It's mine all mine.' The resounding sound of clanging chords. Crazy Horse reborn. 

Labrador are an American Bar Band im excelsis. You can hear the sound of the left of the dial AOR Alternative Classics echoing in every song . Creedence. Sir Douglas Quintet , Replacements, Reigning Sound. Labrador keep it simple. And bring home the bacon for breakfast.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 82 Bright Eyes - I'm Awake It's Morning

 

I like Bright Eyes. I like their ambition and their sense of history and the conviction that now is the time to make our own history.Even though inevitably it often feels like a Sixties dream.

  

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 48 Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

 

Worth listening to the commentary for this, The guitar of Eddie Hazel. George Clinton told him to play the guitar solo in this when his mother died. It's quite a solo. In general quite an extraordinary statement. It eases you into a mindset and headspace that is sly, inventive and funky as any record you will ever hear. It comes from and angle you never knew existed. 

Days # 5 The The

 

This song ages like a fine wine. It strikes me as a fine way of looking at days. Good days. Bad days. On to the next. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,488 Wild Pink

 

                                             'I lost my mind like a brick in the weeds'

Wild Pink are a band from the districts of Brooklyn and Queens. I suspect they wish were The Band. They're not really. Who could be. But they have a gently rolling and quietly majestic sound which talks about the wear and tear of life and how it wizens us but how we get back up and return to the office or the bar or the road.

Still Coming Down is their sixth album. But it sounds like their sixteenth. They sing of Sirhan Sirhan shooting Robert Kennedy in a hotel kitchen. Jack Ruby killing a patsy. They tell of the lies we're told and keep on being told and will surely always be told and how we grit our teeth and wake and ride to each day determined to make the best of it.

This is a well worn furrow but it needs to be ploughed and Wild Pink are more than up to the task. Nine songs without a chorus to speak of but a dogged, earnest engaging spirit. Thick with energy, memory, nostalgia  and widescreen but somehow modest Americana 'melodrama,

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 49 The Thirteenth Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

 

A record you can listen to sixty years on and more and feel we're still catching up. This came out when I was one and I bought it when I was 24 because it was one of those records I felt I ought to buy. It's a damaged and frantic record. Incredibly exciting but also slightly frightening. The music is only half the message. You need to read the sleevenotes and visualise the times and their tenor. As with all great albums of this era this is a matter of choice. The imaginations and energy which fuel it are genuinely inspiring. It's a pleasurable album but the dread, pleading and craving in its grooves are genuinely palpable..

 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 133 Johanna Samuels

 

Johanna Samuels has a safe pair of hands. Sorry Kids, is another assured set of stories and arrangements. There are always stories to me told. There are guitar breaks and choirs which drag you back to the Seventies and wonder if George Harrison is playing in the band.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,487 Elanor Moss

 

The Knife, The Needle the debut album by Elanor Moss on Merge Records is the kind of Retro Folk record that is becoming more common and more frequent. And more welcome. It takes you back to 1972 whether you were there or you just wish you were. The land of Nick Drake and Bridget St John, Of knitted pullovers and open fires and the modern world a distant dream.

It's lyrical and sweet. Memorable. Played by musicians who make every effort to listen to one another first and foremost Domestic drams are relayed in sensitive tones. The best trick a record can pull is slow down the hands of the clock to a measured tread

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 50 Talking Heads - Remain In Light

 

'Changing my shape. I feel like an accident....'

The author of this countdown has been on a crisis enforced sabbatical since early June but he's back. And I'm back with him to document the second half of his descent from 50 to 1. He starts again with a record I listen to a lot . Remain in Light. It's an extraordinary document from an extraordinary band of musicians and their assembled cast. This is an impossibly rhythmic, lyrical and ambitious record. It ranges over continents. 

I was struggling to write bout what makes it so special. What makes Talking Heads so special and this album extra-special. So I looked to the Pitchfork review of the album for inspiration. The opening paragraph helped things to click into place immediately. Remain In Light makes artistic activity visceral and danceable. Listening to the record is one of the best ways I know to circumnavigate the globe without moving from the armchair in your living room.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 134 Victoryland - My Heart Is a Land With No Music In It

 Kitchen sink art rock debut from Brooklyn's Julian McCamman. No holds barred. The Cure trapped                                                           within a clocks ticking inner mechanisms. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 83 Gwen Stefani - LOVE, ANGEL, MUSIC, BABY

 

'It's a confused mess.' Uncut's Review. That was enough for

me to evacuate. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,486 Westside Cowboy

 'What Goes On in your mind ?' One of the eternal mysteries . What indeed . This piece will not even attempt to answer that one. It's just intended as a lead in to a record review first and foremost. For a very good record by a very good young band called Westside Cowboy . They're on tour this Autumn as the evenings darken daily and we rush towards another Christmas.

 There's always someone heading up a slope pushing a boulder . Ask Sysyphus.You know what generally happens? The boulder you're pushing invariably slides down the other slope just as soon as you get there.  Just relax and listentothe music and go where it takes you is the best advice I can offer.  You could do worse than listening to this one next. 

Forty years ago I was at university, On the way up my own slope of life. In the throes of my first important relationship and forming fundamental friendships . I was working on music. I always find i'm working on music. Begining to appreciate The Velvet Underground who I'd initially found 'difficult'  while also harking the lessons of Andy's Babies. It was a B Side by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. About The Velvet Underground and their relentless, pervasive and slightly wearying influence on so much that was going on on the alternative side of culture. Lloyd knew. When Lou Reed died he said that without him he would probably have become a dentist

In 1986 I was also listening and finding out more about Andy's Babies; Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu,  R.E.M. The Smiths, Aztec Camera, The Triffids, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Echo & The Bunnymen. The Go Betweens, The Jesus & Mary Chain. David Bowie, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop and the rest. Have you got all day? Records that keep on blooming on a daily basis decades later.

But I realise now it all goes back essentially to The Velvet Underground more than anyone else. They ultimately, are probably the band that means the most to me if I think about wanting to play in a Rock & Roll band. Rock & Roll bands are important to me. It's an important spirit. An important idea that relates most fundamentally to me with the idea of freedom which Is an elusive thing but I'd say an important idea to try to keep an eye and ideals and pronciples set  on.

The next best thing I realised to being in a Rock & Roll band is to listen to them ,. And I thought about it while I was at university. Plotted it. Tried it briefly with another important friend I met in the first year. Andy. The Velvet Underground were very important to him. But it was an idea I gave up on pretty quickly. We could never be as good as our heroes so I pursued other roads.I'm still pursuing them. Teaching is the best road for me I'd say. It's the best way I know to really learn. 

I've never lost hold of the idea though.I like Rock & Roll bands. It seems a much more descriptive term than Indie which I find preposterous. The important matter I'd say is to discovered them listen to them, find out about them and go and see them The source for all this for me generally comes down to The Velvet Underground and The Beatles.

What goes on in your mind?!? It goes on. It's not over yet. Forty years on and more on for me. Sixty years and more on if you're talking about the big picture. Westside Cowboy are a band from Manchester. A city that knows of the centrality of the Velvets. Ask Joy Division. New Order. Happy Mondays. They were all weaned on Lou, John and Co. Bought their first guitars. Plugged in. Wrote their first songs. Struck their first record deals. Went out onto that great road. Joy Division after all signed to. Err Factory Records.  

I'm listening to Westside Cowboy's debut. It's called It Goes On. On its sleeve there is a picture of a Manchester tenement building with a horse on the grassy slopes around it. You know 'Westside' 'Cowboys'. They seem a band aware of their heritage. Lonesome Cowboy Bills ! Riding the rodeo.

My nephew Oskar is at university. At the University of Sussex where I might have gone forty years ago. He listens to a lot of Hip Hop but he's heard the buzz about Westside Cowboy and we were chatting about them last time we met up. I might have gone to Sussex  But everyone I knew was going to Brighton so I went to Norwich instead. I'm damned glad I did for any number of reasons. I went to UEA and lived my dreams. Fell in love with a wonderful woman. Learned a lot which I've been processing and building upon ever since.Lived in a room next to someone who played me Live '69 in my first term. 

The four of us in that corridor Rod, James, Ben and I sat around late evenings, clasping our steaming cups of coffee those first two terms after filling our bellies with Snakebite and Black at the bar on the other side of the fields between the our former RAF Blocks where we slept. We talked and talked.. Talked and talked about girls and records and politics, literature and dreams.Talked about ourselves.  Just writing these lines and listening to this record brings back the dreams and the talk. I'm pleased to find my fervour hasn't dimmed all these years down the line. I'm glad to have these memories.. 

University is for living dreams and chasing them. But we kid ourselves too. None of us really ever leave school. It Goes On is the latest piece of the puzzle. The puzzle will never be completed. Catch this bus. It might take you where you want to go. Or withdraw your outstretched arm and let it sail past you. There will be another one along in a minute...... 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,330 Genesis - Invisible Touch

 

It was difficult to know what Genesis were really wanting to do during these years. The album covers were ghastly, they'd lostall the wonder of the Gabriel incarnation and it was clear they wanted to make money. Phil Collins had some Pop nous but frankly it was all rather ghastly. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 84 Deerhunter - Microcastle

 

Deerhunter are an odd blend. The Avant Gard and Esoteric. Jagged introspection. Fencing in a shadow world. Then odd moments when everything comes into focus suddenly and you have expelled melodic pop noise, You get the impression that these elements are inextricably linked. You can't really have one without the other.

I've had a wonderful day so I'll listen to this again. You have to do your time in the line to fall under the spell. It's a record that kicks off with Agoraphobia and ends at Twilight at Carbon Lake. Bradford Cox has the eye of a Southern Writer. There's a pained ecstatic chill to Microcastle. Days are haunted. Nights magical and thick with wonder.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 135 Sotto Voce - The Sound of Trying?

 

What is the Sound of one Hand Clapping? Your guess is as good as mine. Never mind that; The Sound of Trying? Give up? Well it's the new album by Sotto Voce the alter ego of Brooklyn's Ryan Gabos. 

I've been listening to this on / off for a week now and it's compelling. Trying in the best sense of the word. Engaged rather than annoying. Bringing something to the table. Low fi sinew..

Days # 4 Echo & The Bunnymen

 

Ian McCulloch was and is a strange one but then aren't we all. But he had a distinct Pop Gift as did the Bunnyman. Crystal Days glides for a hundred seconds and is gone ! 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,485 Nina Winder-Lind

 

 Nina Winder-Lind of the New Eves' latest album Wild Love has something of the uncanny, wide eyed wonder of Joanne Newsom, Bjork and Life Without Buildings records. It's self consciously bold and desirous, quite deliberate in its aspirations to Outsider status and acclaim in the way that The Slits and The Raincoats were way before it. These days there are established markets and audiences for this brand of outre exhibitionism.

But I took to the record immediately. And fell deeper as I made my way into its caress. It has the garish daring of great Lou Reed and Patti Smith records and although the influence of both is clearly apparent, the record is full of shape throwing and posing that's artful but actually quietly affective and potentially startling  It's a coiled, emotive, expressive record.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,331 Geordie Greep - The New Sound

 

A New Sound perhaps but a rather frantic one. Out of Black Midi and the Windmill Post Punk scene. For me I'm afraid this tries far too hard, which is not always the best way to get to a new place and offers little respite.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 85 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

 

My mood is momentarily soured by the prospect of yet another Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album to listen to. Don't they ever sleep. This is really kitchen sink stuff. It even has two titles. I'm not quite sure what you're supposed to do while listening to it. It strikes me as smart marketing.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 136 The Menzingers

 

 'I'm a zero. I'm a hero. I'm a struggling superhero.' 

Stay in your lane. One of the current adages which describes our culture. The Menzingers were sixteen once but they never will be again. No one's coming to save them so they head out on the road with best intent from their base in Scranton, Pennsylavania. 

On latest album Everything I Ever Saw they resolutely stay in their lane. The one paved for them by the likes of Killers, Hold Steady, Japandroids. over previous decades most obviously going back to The Boss. Much more Bruce than Patti. 

This is all good stuff to plug into if you're heading out on the road this weekend. There's no pretension or restraint, It is what it appears to be. Cultural comments is scattered like so much confetti from the window as the car speeds onwards into the day, Nothing really sticks or jars.

Days # 3 The Drums

 

The third song in a series called Days. A song called err Days. A band that always seem to be one that have listened to an an enormous amount of New Order.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,484 Kiwi Jr.

 

Kiwi . Jr Canada's reponse to Pavement twenty five years on are back on the siewalk and in a rich vein of form indeed on Blowin' Up their 4th album. In Pitchfork's words 'it radiates a frantic, bottom of the ninth hopefulness'. Drilling a winner into centerfield just before the lights go out. to send the crowd home jubilant.

Kiwi Jr strike me as the sort of band that enjoys wordplay and crosswords. Play as the highest form of life. These songs understand poignancy when required but also the pleasure principle that drives us forward. Glass half full three and four minute puzzles as we all spin around the sun. 

Every ones' a winner baby. The song have a saminess but that's no slur. Rather the highest praise. They've swallowed a dictionary and are spitting out pearls on farfisa  organ. If it was this easy everyone would be doing it. Kiwi. Jr don't come from a land down under but you should take them in and give them breakfast !!! The Kiwi Explodes !. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,332 The Pop Group - Y

 

I struggle with The Pop Group. Y stretches the limits of my openness to the avant garde. I can see the skill of the playing, the resourcefulness, poetic bravura and artistry. I just don't want to listen to much of it which isn't the case with Josef K, Mission of Burma or Pere Ubu. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 86 Doves - Lost Souls

 

The second song in three days on this rundown but this is the one I bonded with. In a large bedroom in a cool student flat in Catania, Sicily  in the year it came out where I spent one of the best years and made some of the best friends of my life. I was 35 and came to Sicily to write my novel but mostly to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Catania in every way was a Golden Dawn.

I listen to Lost Souls a lot during the year. It spoke to me. I was lost in some respects but Catania helped me orient myself and get onto the righteous path. My novel wasn't a disater in many ways. It was something I needed to do. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,483 Above Me

 

Above Me's Soften The Blows is a gentle floral, ambient thing. Like a flower opening its petals to the sun in spring or slow motion camera effect.

An act and album that would have been on4 AD or Creation back in the day. Chapterhouse  and Cocteau Twins join forces and don't enunciate their words properly or get to the chorus. Why would anyone expect them to.