I've always been slightly partial to My Morning Jacket without ever finding the album that hit my soft spot so I'm giving this a spin before I turn in. But I'm not initially entirely sold. They strike me as the kind of band Cameron Crowe would like which never completely does it for me. They don't ever quite make it up the slope and rub shoulders with the Allman's and The Band which strikes me as their aspiration. On this play Golden is the one which slip into top gear a turns into the fast lane and at this point the record notches into something special. Yup. Time to turn in.
Indie Folk Stalwarts Mountain Goats are nothing if not a set of safe hooves. Active since 1991 they've moved from their base in Calermont, California and are now based in North Carolina. Days is their twenty fourth album.
It works from a familiar foundation . They sing songs about the everyman. Are prone to concepts. Appreciate the funny and difficult ironies of life. Days is like a pair of shoes that you're not sure about when you first put them on in the store but which almost immediately themselves yourself to your contours and you realise that you were made for each other.
The essential characteristic of Days is its sagacity. It's Springsteen without the raised fist. It makes Life feel like a fairly nice idea.They vary the velocity and angle of their gentle approach. There's comfort and love and then Days is done, Life is sweet.
This is a series about coveting objects. But I think that urge and also the act of listening to music at all can go deeper. Depending on your choice it can be an urge of recovery, wanting to go back and recapture and reexperience the past and the way that you felt then and have felt every since. An almost primal urge.
The Langley School Music Project albumInnocence & Despairgive me that sense and drive more than any record I know. I don't own it and I'm not sure I need to but I find myself listening to it regularly and I find whenever I do. it triggers off a whole set of invaluable and incredibly resonant memories within me. I was growing up at the time these recordings were made so perhaps my reaction is understandable made and I share it with many,
Innocence & Despair is a set of recordings instigated and conducted by a Canadian music teacher Hans Fenger with students from four different Elementary Schools in the Langley Schools District on British Columbia Canada in the mid Seventies . The children are singing in a miked up school gym in Metro Vancouver covering songs by The Beach Boys, David Bowie, The Eagles and Paul McCartney and others. .
The resultsconsciously avoid the traditional associations of 'children's music' and focus on the elements of childhood that are dark, scary and spooky. Hence the title the album was given. There's a loneliness and longing in the recordings that frankly is quite extraordinary. There's a resonance here that I find quite incomparable. It captures an incredible painful longing. Hearing children singing of emotions they are experiencing and can't understand or will go on to experience and perhaps hearing these recordings will help them to come to tems with. But the fact that they're singing together gives them a sense of solidarity and strength.I hope so. It's a quite extraordinary document.
I was a late developer and certainly came late to The Velvet Underground. I was aware by fifteen that they were a cornerstone of where I was looking to go but mistakenly bought an oddly compiled compilation that gave me the impression that The Gift, I Heard Her Call My Name and Run, Run, Run were the esence of the band. The Velvets could be difficult but they're not always difficult.
I'm there now. They're probably the cornerstone for me now. The source of the river. So I'm more than ready for National Park's glorioua outside a selection of singles, EPs and previously unreleased tracks. National Park could only hail from Glasgow and they're an Indie supergroups of sorts. Players from The pastels , Telstar Ponies, Teenage Fanclub and other notables . They soud like erm the velvet Underground. And bands that sound like The Velvet Underground.It's a gentle, wild, fractured and intimate record. It's archival gold.
Neil Young has a new album out. Hold the front page. It's a gentle record. Not a million miles away from Harvest or After The Goldrush, but with a slightly croakier voice and a shakier hand, Shamelessly sentimental which was always a Neil tendency but the sense of another beautiful sunset and the promise of a beautiful sunrise tomorrow. There's a beautiful acceptance everywhere .
I stuck with Blur which I didn't with Oasis. The latter was a not a divorce. A conscious decision. They seemed to have said what they had to say although countless millions disgaree. But Blur still seemed to have plenty to say. Think Tank clearly has quality control issues. The band are comig apart and Albarn particularly is resetting his compass. A few tracks might be clipped but generally it's an amaible trip.
'The whole place is dark. Every lot of this side of town.'
A fabled album. The work of Tony Molina.The seventh and final album of Songs; Ohia. Tales of toil and strife with Steve Albini at the engineer's desk. Putting your shoulder to the plough and applying yourself to the task. There's something magnificent about this. It doesn't work in verse and choruses so much as cycles of sound and mythic grandeur and loneliness. But it feels incredibly consoling and comforting.
I just surprised myself. I listened to Echo & The Bunnymen's thirteenth album Apples For Isaac late on Sunday night and astonished myself. Forty five years after I'd first fallen for them as an uncouth teenager, miraculously they've found themselve agains. It's rare when this happens. But life is like that.
The Bunnymen mean so much to me. As they do to so many. They marked a map for me out of the teenage playground towards university and the world beyond it. Throughout those teenage years when anyone pointed a camera at me I instinctively turned my face to profile as the Bunnymen had on the sleeves of Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here and Porcupine because I wanted to project a romantic mystique. An idea of depth and mission.
They were the bravest of bands and they encouraged me to dream. I still play the records they made from '79 to '84 and they still make me feel the way they did then. And remarkably in 2026 Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant, (for that is who the Bunnymen are now). with Apples For Isaac they've done it again. They've rediscovered the essentially Gothic and Romantic quality that first set them apart. The Baroque, twisted Catholocism which was so deeply inspirational to the likeminded. The Jacobian flair . They've somehow rediscovered their ambition and edge . To carve anthems of thoughtful and slightly anguished worth for the masses.
McCulloch is unfeasibly sharp here, lyrically and vocally. He's tapped back into the 'people rolling round on the carpet' dazed 'found poetry' of the early days and Sergeant rises to the task in a quite inspired manner. As for me. I'm incredibly pleased to see The Bunnymen back on the podium. This is inspired stuff and as with the best of their back catalogue A Promise, The Cutter, it's light on the waves once more. Nothing will cahnge. Everything will change !
Possibly because you can't really have too much Fela. This is indescribably energetic and pretty much puts you on the streets of Lagos. It's militant, sinuous, conscious, frantic and simultaneously joyous and furious. I've also seen David Byrne who would know comment on how incredibly tight and disciplined.
The Cowboys The Bottom Of A Rotten Flower has all the jagged, misdirected romance of 1978. DEVO meet Buzzcocks and Sparks by the swings One song after another of the rollercoaster of life !
In 1976 Capital Radio hosted a countdown of all time favourite songs hosted by Roger Scott and Kenny Everett. It was dominated by somewhat schmaltzy Singer - Songwriter fixated fare and Nights In White Satin charted high and made me feel rather strange frankly. Hinting at emotions, passions and experience which I would never quite understand and wasn't sure really if I wanted to !. I confess, I don't like the song very much.
Radiator Hospital have built up a healthy audience for their ragged and disjointed Garage Rock sound over previous releases. Distorted Time sees them sticking to their guns with a sound that finds the missing chord between 13th Floor Elevators and modern operators like Black Lips, Spirit of the Beehive and The Lavender Flu.Distorted Time gathers momentum and rattles along the rails of destiny for 13 songs and 36 minutes like Dylan the stoned rabbit from The Magic Roundabout with merry effect.
I probably haven't got enough time to consume as much music as I'd like to and do it justice on here. But I'll do my damnedest. There are certain genres I can barely do justice to given how vast and unknowable they are and I'm only really beginning to dip my toes into to any degree. That goes for Jazz. For Folk and certainly for Brazilian Tropicalia.
Well you have to start somewhere so why not with Chico Buarqe's 1971 album Construcao. The most dramatic and intense record imaginable. The strings just dive out at you. Fans of Forever Changes and Oddessey and Oracle and The Left Banke take note. But given that this is in Portuguese it has another layer of melodrama and intrigue.And so much history
Written partially in Italy during a period of political exile.it's sleeve and presentation has been interpreted as a tribute to the plight of the working man during a period of intense suppression by a political dictatorship. If you don't speak Portuguese you can still appreciate the passion and colour. It's a beautiful record on any number of levels.
Inland Years latest album Nowadays lives up to its title in planting its flag firmly and squarly in the plot of vague and imprecise but gently likeable Indie American ahalfway between the giant plots of War About Drugs and The Byrds.. Occasionally you want to shake Ryan Daniels who is Inland Years head honcho in frustration but he stays close to his guiding principles and I can't say I'm compaining frankly
'What's the point in wating time with people that you'll never know.'
I've been waiting to find a place of calm in my day and I suspect it may have come. It's half past two on a Sunday afternoon in late September and I've finally arrived at my desk, put my heaphones on and I'm listening to an album from 2000 by Broadcast - The Noise Made By People.
it could really be pretty much any album by Broadcast I imagine. They're one of the important bands for our age I'd say. A band that understand many of the central preoccupation of our times. The Age of Anxiety. They've been labelled within the whole disticussion of Hauntology. A way of seeking answers to the problems of our time by wrapping ourselves up in the concerns of the past.as a means of heading into the future.They're quietly inspired frankly
This is still coveted becase it was an album I almost bought when it came out. I was 14 and just starting to get interested in music seriously. On the funfair ride and process of accumulation I've been on for almost fifty years since.
It's a fairly generic New Wave record really with an album cover very, very much of its time. An image of a man making the after news weather forecast. It barely registered chart wise. The competition was unfeasibly strong back in those days. The song everyone knows and The Vapors shot at immortality Turning Japanese, famously a song which seemed to extol the wonders of onanism was quite rightly a Top Ten Hit and hung around the Top 40 for weeks.
The rest of the album is solid if unremarkable. Less to my taste than The Only Ones, Magazine, The Passions, Gang Of Four or any others who carved out a space for themselves at the same time and wielded a sharper scalpel. It's sub Jam and Sub Costello without being a patch on either . But if I ever see a reasonably priced copy. I'll probably buy it.
The Homesick are a Dutch Avant Pop group who have moved from Sub Pop to Vienna's Siluh Records in recent years They play on the influence of bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra and have a broadly Eighties sound.
But as someone who grew up in that decade and has mixed opinions about any number of its defining characteristics. None of them seem particularly garish or overstated on latest album What's Up With All These Shangri Las which is a thoroughly bright and creative record.
It's artistic without being lofty. Incredibly melodic and restless. This is a record that puts the 'art' in heart and I thoughly endorse it.
I'm in a 'space' at the moment which allows me to consume culture, music, film and culture in general. This allows me to listen to a lot of music and fall under its spell. My natural urge is to covet it. the act of owning it, but that's not always necessary. Instead I'll document my appreciation here.
An album released in 1978 and intended for the ages Budd is an avnt-garde west coast figure. This is his second album and was part of a cycle of works begun in 1972and produced by Brian Eno. It has a cast of distinguished musicians and feels like an ascension to a sacred place frankly
A band from a town called Alice. Alice Springs, Australia. A mythical place. And here's a mythical record from there .Of Nothing from the Charlie Ivan Band. No lack of dread, mystery, pathos and and the sense of tumbleweed making its way down Main Street while the locals make their way to and from their local.A good record can plumb the same emotional depths as a great novel and Of Nothing is a good exmaple of these processes detonating and falling back into space. A stunning and quietly stunned record.
* Thanks as so often to Darren Jones for directing me here. That's classy Darren.
Pylon. A coooler than coolArt Rock band from Athens Georgia and the early Eighties . A cooler than cool, (I imagine), novel from icon of the American South William Faulkner. The third album by Filipino born singer songwriter Beatrice Laus, better known as beabodoobee.
It's a record that imeddiatiately impresses with its cultural heft tugging me back to the Nineties most obviously. She's an arist who has cited the Sundays, Mazzy Star, Veruca Salt and Elliott Smiths as influences and that's the place this occupies and it's very comfortable in that space.
It's a great record but its nostalgic drag is inescapable like so many of the records I'm listening to in 2026. 'Disconnected from reality,,,,,, like a pylon on an open road.' There are worse places to be.
Twilark's Never Learned the Tide is not going to cheer you up.It raise the flag of surrender halfway up the flagpole and then runs out of energy. It's a whole heap of modping and self pity. But hey we've all had some of these moments. It's a cry in the dark a healthy blow into a handkerchief and amd you really shouldn't bother with it but I've just done so for you.
'I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. It feels good to be out of the rain.'
It's a Friday morning in Canterbury and I'm listening to Beck's new album Ride, Lonesome. We're all on lonesome roads. Whether we acknowledge it or not. But Beck has always been a better soundtrack for those roadsthan most. Ride, Lonesome is him doing what he does betst of all. Ballads to comfort and highlight the beauty of existence as we make our way down the highway.
This is classic songwriting and ennui. There's none of Morrissey's self pity and inchoate rage. Far from it. This strikes me as more enlightened and worldly. Plenty of consolation and comfort. Ride, Lonesome is twelve songs of comfort and consolation as we make our way down or up another slope towards Christmas !
The XX were one of those bands that I heard and felt music was leaving me as I could not connect with them as I did to the music that meant most to me. With The XX it was not really that they were austere. Joy Division and Young Marble Giants were austere. But this felt rather clinical and claculated and positioned for a market and I felt uncomfortable because I didn't wish to be their target consumer. A genuine Post Modern 'Post Punk' sense of discomfort.
Rated R came out in 2000. I bought it on CD. Of course I did. I was still in thrall to The NME even though it was in a pitiful state. I didn't really like Rated R . I didn't really understand where it was coming from , Heaviness was never something that particularly appealed to me.
But this doesn't sound particularly like a Heavy record so much as a crafty one. A gamechanger. The kind of record you want to hear when you're fifteen.
'I've been talking to stray dogs. And empty stools.'
Material Witness is a proper gem of the old school from William Matheny out of West Virginia. It's an album that speaks loud and clear about the story of life. The way we navigate the bends in the road as best we can,`
It's deteminedly glass half full and well adjusted. Full of good lines and good tunes. Worldly wisdom. Homely charm. Good Night Jim Bob. Good night Erin.
I can't particularly write about Jazz but I do appreciate it. Crying, Laughing have and album called Starting and frankly, it's Smoking. Different ways of getting to the same place.
Underachievement. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Over The Moon actually probably would more accurately be described as Under The Moon. Seven songs filed with endless Dinosaur Jr. soloing and staring at your socks, 'it is like it is...' shrugging and margin hugging craftsmanship ,
I've been listening to The Tubs latest album Hard Life for a few days now. They're a ragged dysfunctional band that are on an interesting road. I saw them last year giving a drunken, spirit performance at Xerox night club on the Newcastle Quayside lats year in spitting distance of the swing bridge.
Ragged dysfunctionalism seems to be the suit that The Tubs specialise in. But why not? Latest album Hard Life reminds me of my youth and revels in the bands own and rings amiable all the way from starter's pistol to breasting the finishing tape. As generallly with the band it's a spirited uneven performance.
They swing like The Smiths with Richard Thompson on vocals. You get the sense that they care which is surely what matters most. They may remind you of the past but they're heading into the future in their ragged dysfunctional manner.
It Starts with a Birthstone sometimes is a monstrous Snakes & Ladders exercise with inevitable consequences when I land on certain squares. Go Straight to Jail. Don't pass go.. Listen to another Fall, Nick Cave or Muse album and try to think of something new to say about it.
I don't care for Muse and never have. Their very concept doesn't seem like a good idea. Queen meet Radiohead and the Queen instinct prevails. Next !!!!
Hey Kids! It's Super Honey Teaspoon ! by Soda Gumball from Seattle Washington. It's every bit as good as it sounds. Twee, joyous Indie Pop ennui. Canned C-86 inspired happiness! Looks like we've found our way back to The Garden !
Super Furry Animals albums plot a new Psychedelic Path. This record strangely is 26 years old. They;re a sensationally versatile and magical band that chant their own path,
Brighton's Hollow Hand sound like a strange and inspired fusion of Dexys Midnight Runners and Dire Straits. Dire Midnight Runners? Dexys Straits. Alan McGee would have signed this band to his record label back in the day ! New album Wish Road South has that odd Seventies twang that's half way between Peckham High Street and the America of its dreams. Ther eare hints of The Kinks and The Beatles. It's really rather gentle, rather English and rather lovely !
In another lifetime and born at a different time, Wilco might have been my favourite band. They have a delicate sensitivy that appeals to me deeply. A sense of the past, a poetic gift,
