The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories was probably the person I wanted to be and the album I should have owned but didn't when it came out in 1984. I was 18. I wanted to be literate, funny, suave and attractive. But I was holding something back and I'm glad I did. It's a medieval. intricate record which still sounds quite fabulous. Jewelled and understated. Forever young.
The song remains the same. Kurt Vile remains on his porch in Philadelphia churning out product. If ut was that easy folks, you'd be doing it His latest album is Philapelphia's been good to me. It sounds to me as if the man pays his dues.
Drive By Truckers are an Uncut Magazine which will never particulalrly be mine. The Mystique of the American South is one I share but less for tangled and wrangled Rock & Roll. I revere Carson McCullers not twisted and ungraceful guitar solos .
Where do you stand on the GOAT thing. Who is the GOAT. Joni, Bob or Len. The Beatles. The Stones or Wreckless Eric. Ronaldo. Messi, Cruyff. Pele or Di Stefano. Carlton Palmer? You may have surmised that I'm not talking about the kind of GOAT that produces cheese. But THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME !!? This kind of GOAT seems to be a peculiar preoccupation of this quite preposterous age.
The idea that people would seriously enter a discussion about whether Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen is better seems a slightly ridiculous activity in itself . What's wrong with any of them. They're all wonders aren't they? What's wrong with Wreckless Eric for that matter. I've enjoyed my ride down 50 Favourite Joni Song over the last month and a half..I've liked almost all of them and feel I have a better understanding of her and the times she emerged in. She's an extraordinary multifaceted artist. The times were extraordinary too.
But is Coyote her best? Ultimately, what does it matter. These kind of lists are only really an excersise in discussing art. To actually ruffle your brow about the specifics seems a trifle odd except as an opportunity to put forward options of your own which you feel might have been neglected. Oh well another day. I need to find myself another thing to slide down the morra I imagine.
Porland Oregon's Blackwater Holylight's Not Here Not Gone is a dark album straining upwards to the light, Like a distant young generational relative of Soundgarden's Superunknown or Amin Duul II's Yeti with dark angels harmonising at the mic to the rafters.
This is a dark mass but one that's drenched in melody . It draws on a heavy legacy Sabbath, Zep and Purple to to pleasingly light effect. Blackwater Holylight are coming to Newcastle in May and I'm tempted to book a pew in the congregation.Not Here Not Gone grows on me like moss on a rock.
Future Pilot A.K.A is the pseudonym of Sushil K. Dade. He's an 'Indie Ledge'. He's played with Soup Dragons, BMX Bandits and Telstar Ponies. Now he's done what artists naturally do therefter. Go the tasteful Soundtrack Pick & Mix way.
Missed Dunks at Summer League is a debut album by Fared Well who hail from Greensboro North Caroline. They find a subdued groove somewhere between Built To Spill and Murray Street Sonic Youth. Then ride it round the block onto the highway and into the sunset.
This is a record that builds a fabulous atmosphere of its own drawing evidently on that Nineties sound but building its own nest. And it's a snug rug indeed. Highly more-ish !!!
Drop whatever you're doing. Run to a listening posr. Access an Internet connection. Put on ace. Winged Wheel, Desert So Green drift unto space. Let go.
Winged Wheel are seasoned Indie operators with great taste and forward moment. Krautrock and ambience. Exploration and innovation.
I'm constantly staggered by how long ago records I remember coming out came out. This was released 20 years go and is the last record the band have put out. It's a stately and dignified and rather beautiful album. There's something quite ghostly and otherwordly about Green's voice and the whole mood is sensual and teasing.It has genuine spectral moments. This is probably my favourite Scritti Politti album. I've never heard it before.
Graham Coxon is back. With his ninth album Castle Park. but typically. (particularly in terms of the music business). It's not as simple as all that. For Castle Park. was actually originally recorded in 2011 and is the beginning of a reissue campaign for solo discography.
As for the record itself. It may have been recorded in 2011 but its heart is really in 1978. Or 1981. Or the years in between. I was looking through the racks at RPM Records in the heart of Newcastle yesterday morning and was rather taken by a reissue copy of Jilted John's debut solo album True Love Stories. I listened to it last night and decided it was just too daft to be purchased.
But I'm very taken by Castle Park. It takes the listener back and then back again to all our English yesterdays just as the country we're in has long been taken by dreams of escape. XTC and The Bevis Frond, Wreckless Eric, Wire and Soft Boys, Beatles, Small Faces and Kinks.
Terry Meets Julie down by the Tube Station at midninght. This is the real thing. In many ways the records this is highly reminiscent of are Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife. But without Damon, Alex and Dave.
Coming up towards Christmas with a broken heart. 'Wishing you had a river you could skate away. on ' Joni is singing reputably about her broken relationship with Graham Nash. But the subject matter is ultimately far more interesting. Joni's subject matter is often love but the individual biographical specifics are not as interesting as the idea of love and the lies we tell ourselves about it..
Often when you're in love you say you're going to be in love ith the same person in the same way forever. But the metaphor of the river here is very powerful. When someone you love dies you assume that everything stops. But of course it never does . And that's something you must come to terms with . To try to live in the moment.
Bay Area guitar band Yea Ming & The Rumours park their fourth album Residue. . Delivery halfway between Nico and Hope Sandoval. Yo La Tengo and Camera Obscura/ Songs that chime for Trur Believers and True Romantics . This is undemanding easy listening Indie with a heart half broken and a record collection of pure classics.
I'm sure you've often asked yourself this pertinent and relevant question; 'So what exactly do Scandinavians actually bring to the table....' In reply i'd have to say. 'Well this !!!' Grab yourself a seat at your desk or wherever you choose to perform your labours in your flat or home. Pur on your headphones and give Les Big Byrd's new album Ruin Everything a blast. Within a couple of minutes all will be clear. That my friend is what Scandinavians bring to the table.
I went out yeterday to have a discussion about the state of Rock & Roll with Nick who owns Beatdown Records the Record Emporium across the road from my flat at the top of the rise flowing past the Catholic Cathedral and down the steady slope towards Newcastle Central Station. The State of Rock & Roll needs to be discussed and who better for this kind of summit than two middle to late middle aged men like Nick and myself . I've come in on previous occasions and Daisy, Nick's pretty teenage daughter has been helping her dad behind the counter. Daisy knows. She tends to pat Nick on the head and disppear off to Beatbox backroom and leave us to it. Busying herself with more important matters.
Back to the Rock & Roll summit of gestern nachmittag. Nick and I discuss all things Rick Rubin. Earth changing Johnny Cash albums now already a quarter of a century or more behind us, which said and say something fundamental about life itself, the human condition, made the fundamental readings on some key texts.
I meanwhile saw the sleeve of Ruin Everything which immediately makes you want to own it.It's the sleeve of the year so far. At least for me. I resisted the coveting urge which is very strong among record buyers like me bid my farewells to Nick and went down for thirty lengths at the fitness centre. A couple of great chats and a stew in the sauna and then I came back to listen to Ruin Everything again on my headphones and sailed into Saturday afternoon with my windows open to allow the sun's breezes to cool my flat and beckon us to the evning.
I'm listening to it again now on my television set. We're just past Summer Solstice but July and August look promising and it's good to hear a rip roaring Rock & Roll record with occasional calming interludes from the land of Thor and Odin on a Sunday morning before I head for church. I've just listened to SomethIn' Else by Cannonball Adderly to ease the sleep from my limbs. Now I want something to summon the blood and embolden me for the skirmishes of the day.
Ruin Everything ticks those boxes. It's gloriously dystopian. In all the right ways. Hawkwind, Les Bid Byrd's Scandinavian forefathers, The Stooges & MC5, Spacemen 3 and Spiritualised, Suicide and so forth. In genreal it's just a glorious blissed sound. A record as good as its sleeve....
It's Monday morning and I'm heading towards my start at ten. The Cribs have their ninth album and I'm not familiar with their previous eight. But I'm listening to Selling A Vibe again. I had it on loop last night and it actually sounds alright although I find it difficult to put my feelings into precise words,
It's just Pop Music innit? This actually sounds a but Glam to me and certainly has me on a flying carpet to short trouser days. A glass half full approach.Thumbs up from me.
The Hanging Stars were playing down the road from me six short years ago. A bus ride away from the Centre of Newcastle where I live. In a bar in Gosforth High Street. I was looking forward to seeing them play. Considering inviting a friend down who I've since fallen out with. I seem to have fallen out with a few since then. But I wonder if I'm alone. It seems to be the times.
Anyhow, the gig was cancelled because COVID night was impending. The night from which we haven't yet completely emerged it seems. But The Hanging Stars have hung on in there.Just a Day is their sixth album and there are no evident changes in their signature sound.It's comforting.
This record makes me think of one of the most memorable days of my life. A glorious sunny day in 1984 when my sister and I walked from our lovely three storeyed family home in Teddington. opposite Bushy Park. All the way along Queens Road and across the bridge to Kingston and a record shop which specialised in the Paisley Underground sound and all the ringing American guitar bands that The Melody Maker were championing at the time.
I had a chat with the guy behind the counter and bought Reckoning the second album by R.E.M. I'd been wearing down my copy of Murmur and had high hopes that Reckoning was going to be Murmur Part II. I'd lost myself in it entirely and just wanted the same thing again, an indication of my limitations but I'm proud looking back that my heart and instincts were in exactly the right place. I still play Reckoning every couple of weeks.
Alison and I walked back in the burning, golden sunlight home to 111 Queens Road. I went upstairs and put Reckoning on my record player and found I didn't know what I was listening to. I was slightly nonplussed. It turned out Reckoning was not Murmur Part 2 as I'd hoped. It was something else. R.E.M. were ahead of the game. Certainly ahead of mine. I was a follower essentially. I probably still am.
Just a Day is not in Reckoning's league. It hedges its bets and gives the listener what they want. What they've learned to expect. I'm actually quite pleased it does. This is a well worn sound forty years and more on. Sixty years since My Tambourine Man.
It's a record for those for whom Gene Clark was their favourite Byrd. Who think Big Star lost the plot rather when Chris Bell flew the coop and still haven't recovered from Gerry Love's departure from Teenage Fanclub.And probably never will. Who go to record shop blow outs on a Saturday morning hoping to chance upon choice New Riders of the Purple Sage, Flying Burrito Brothers and Poco albums in the bargain bin. People like me. This is a great record. For people like me ....
Every day it seems brings fresh drama . I feel I'm at the best time and this is really living. the world is in flames and it feels great to be alive and await what each new dawn brings. I'm travelling South but first must find listening fate to take me from one class to the next. Today Robber, Robber's Two Wheel's Move the Soul.
Desperate frantic, noise. Somewhere between the poles of My Bloody Valentine and Deerhunter. Claustrophobic, Clawing for the daylight. Plenty of .space for melody. Robber, Robber hail from Vermont . Two Wheel's Move the Soul is fine, fresh product. It makes being in a band sound like the 'best idea' That's enough. Onto the next, .
You sense with Rock & Roll bands that they just can't resist one more shift at the seam. With the sense that this is 'the one'. Or even if it doesn't turn out to be exactly that. This this is what they like to do best and perhaps this far into the game, they really don't know any other way.
So to Black Keys and their latest album Peaches. It's their fourteenth in all since they first headed out from Akron, Ohio, one of the great Rock & Roll cities in 2001. They always had a mythic Blues and Garage sounds and never more so than here.
It all sounds great at the end of a week with the weekend looming. It's a set of covers that encourage you to hunt down the originals. No sign of the well drying up any time just yet.
The sun is up, But today it rises in a Canterbury sky for me at least. A friend is on Mount Everest. Another is dealing with he death of his father, Another is in Baghdad, Bombs and rockets are exploding a mile away frim where he us waking up. Pictish Trail's new album Life Slime is spinning on headphones as I sit at my desk in the box room of my parents house.
It's rather magical. Spacey. Dancey, Rising up from earth's orbit and into space. We live in the moment and time where we are and myst make the most if it, This will more than do me for today.
Bay Area guitar band Yea Ming & The Rumours park their fourth album Residue. . Delivery halfway between Nico and Hope Sandoval. Yo La Tengo and Camera Obscura/ Songs that chime for Trur Believers and True Romantics . This is undemanding easy listening Indie with a heart half broken and a record collection of pure classics.
Phew! Rock & Roll. Primal Scream were frequently utterly preposterous but Exterminator certainly cut the mustard. I was in Catania, Sicily, enjoying one of the best years of my life and bought it on CD when it came out during that year and played it frequently. I'm playing it now and its heady and uncompromising as ever. Stick it to the man Bobby ! Woo!
No Logo and insurrection were in the air. Primal Scream knew a bandwagon when they saw it and jumped aboard. I meanwhile was writing a very bad novel where I chucked the checklist of the zeitgeist at the wall when I got back from my lessons or early in the morning. I hoped something would stick. Precious little did,
I stuck with teaching but I'm glad I wrote the novel . Everyone should write a novel, plant a tree and have a baby they say. One out of three ain't bad. I was having the time of my life. Perhaps its time for my second novel or maybe I should focus on the other two next !
Halifax' finest Orielles are back with a fourth album Only You Left which finds them again heading off to distant shores once more. They don't like the conventional. If this leads to slightly inconclusive junctures occasionally you cant but commend their modus vivendi.
I came across Eyes Full by Zoh Amba completely by chance late on Sunday night. I listened to it again on coming home from the Jazz jam yesterday evening without a full context either time as I generally think that's the best way to listening if you can.
It sounds like much of the best music in that it seems as if it was directly transmitted from outer space. Or else America which is often one of the closest things we've got at our immediate disposal for that sensation. If you're looking for an earthly comparison it strikes me as a mutant strain of Appalachian blues.
There's plenty of grief and plenty of joy and plenty of purest emotion that's somewhere in between. The singer seems to be a country cousin of Big Thief's Adrienne Lenker which is hearty recommendation alone and some of it sounds like it was recorded in a blender frankly. It all has a giddy drive and vision.
You cannot help but wonder at Can. They plot lunar landscapes. Impossible but remarkable highways. I started listening to them today at seven as I went into my working day. I've been teaching since eight. Slotting in and out of online classes. Now I'm done for Wednesday and looking to the evening and Can spins again. One for the ages.
The streets are wet with rain and it feels like we're ready for Spring. Jana Horn's latest album is spinning. Ingenue beauty. Sybille Baier. Vashti Bunyan,, David Lynch. Slightly offkey outsider music. It's all better on the outside. That's the way to the inside.
Jana is playing at The Cumberland Arms at the beginning of March. I need to get my ticket and see if I can fid myself someone to go with. Donald Trump has decided he has a right to Greenland. Minerals? The world for the time being keeps turning.
I always associate Chelsea Morning with Terri Garr. Her role as a rather grim waitress in Afterhours with Rat Traps in her living room. It's not fair to the song itself which is about the act of becoming, Of 'putting on the day.'
I'm up early, and I'm listening to Nirvana. No, not that one, though I might give Nevermind a spin later. But the original Nirvana, the Baroque Pop London band from the original Psychedelic dawn. Chamber Pop of the simplest, most innocent and appealing sort. Like finding yourself on the carpet again. In front of Children's hour.
I'm listening to The Story Of Simon Simopath their debut album. It came out on Island Records in 1967. All innocent wonder and the sense that the world is turning from black and white to colour at last. That will do me. I'm ready for whatever the day has to throw at me .
I've always thought there was something wierd and perverse about this song and the the way that a father and daughter sang it to each other. Nobody I've ever mentioned this too has shared my opinion. I guess you call it Show Business.
Watching the World Cup with the volume off. Reading about Lenny Kaye's friendship with Lou Reed and their shared passion for horror comics. Listening to Pixies' Bossanova at high volume. True Romance and Rock & Roll are not dead.
