Thursday, February 12, 2026

1979 Top 40 - # 35 The Tourists

 


Pop Singles were art statements with power chords. Take this. It's a song about loneliness and misery. It didn't break into the Top Thirty but still strikes a chord almost fifty years on. 




Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,454 Swans - Children Of God

 


I know my limits, I'm not outside of society, I'm just drawn to its cultural margins. So I've always been slightly wary of the likes of Swans who insist in dropping their trousers and baring their backsides at God and making am emormpis self-righteous meal of it. That just strikes me as exhibitionism. 

This is a record that tries ... very hard.There are things I find more amenable. It covers a lot of ground. But sometimes it seems as if it's imagining itself in a gallery to a degree where it forgets about providing an entertaining rather than a cerebral, self satisfied experience. 



250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 55 Melanie - Born To Be

 


I don't really need much to be happy. Or at least content. Work done mid way through a Thursday afternoon. A couple of good lessons taught. Paperwork done. Newcastle cold. But out there. Beyond the window frams. The days lengthening. Assuming their natural shape. 

A large mug of tea in front of me and a bar of chocolate. No immediate money worries. A Melanie album on the stereo. It feels like she's barefoot in my living room. She takes possession of songs . Inhabits them . Drags them into her carefree realm. She has a sense of genuine freedom about her. Comes from a time when you sense that they didn't agonise about being free. Just assumed freedom... . 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 252 At The Drive In - Relationship Of Command

 


Every generation needs its moment when things spin out of control and the angry youthful masses get their chance to spin out if control and shriek at the sun and stay behind and sulk in detention.  At The Drive In were The MC5, The Damned, Rage Against the Machine, Rocket From the Crypts for the Millennial fireworks.



Song(s) of the Day # 2,309 Ellur

 


'You were pushing 100 down the 62. ....you don't want to live in shadows the rest of your life...'

I certainly don't ! Currently featuring on a 6 Music C Playlist near you. Not perhaps the most urgent recommendation It Starts With a  Birthstone is likely to make this week. But I've got my headphones on as I motor towards my 8.00 online with Insurance Compliance Professionals in Dissledorf and Ellur's debur album At Home In My Mind is amicable company.

Ella is from Halifax and is the daughter of Richard MacNamara, guitarist of Embrace. Her Spotify bio  suggests that if you like Sam Fender and The War of Drugs you may like her. Always nice to have a slot to pop something into for easy classification. This is all highly generic and rather disposable but it's passed forty minuetes as I bathed, dressed and fed and I found my heart lifting and twirling momentarily.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,455 Ray Charles - Ray Charles

 


I don't use the term 'Genius' lightly but in the case of Ray Charles it's difficult to know what else to do. 



500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 253 Isolee - Rest

 


The kind of record you pretend to have been into since it came out in 2000. Even though actually you're hearing it for the first time rught now.The spirit of Kraftwerk and House for Millennial groovers.




1979 Top 40 - # 36 Roxy Music

 


Some are incredibly dismissive of the reformed Roxy but this is incredible on any number of levels. The ladies on the harps. Ferry's croon and the way he scrunches up his face like Icarus  in agonised ecstasy descending to the depths. The suits. Manzanera back in wraparounds. Mackays sax. Tibbs bass. Roxy are like a high quality five a side team powering goals from impossible angles from the starting whistle, And all becaise the lady loves milk tray.




1986 Singles # 11 The Wedding Present


The Leeds Velvet Underground get into gear. 




 

Song(s) of the Day # 2,308 Ratboys

 

'Baby you're my Ringo Starr,,,'

The Rats are back ! No kids . I'm not talking about the Boomtown Rats. I mean Chicago's Ratboys. Frequent suspects on It Starts With a Birthstone going back over ten years and six albums and planting a flag early in 2026 with latest album Singin ' To an Empty Chair.

It's an object of purity, risk and wonder. Ratboys specialise in this currency. They approach songs as if they're  lifting curious objects from a desk and holding them up to the light and observing them from a range of angles. Shaking a snowglobe. Holding up a child's kaleidoscope to ceiling and re-experiencing the wonder of being a child.

Another early contender . 2026 is only forty days in and already I have 30 LPs on My Albums of the Year playlist. We may not have made it to Spring technically but judging by this we have a collective spring in our step. 

Ratboys continue to punch above their weight and be contenders. This is a blistering record. Last Splash  meet Courtney Barnett at the crossroads. And the consequence was; a fine time being had by one and all. 



Tuesday, February 10, 2026

1979 Top 40 - # 37 B.A. Robertson


                             The charts were always full of this kind of knowing end of the pier stuff


Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,456 JPEG MANIA - Veteran

 





1986 Singles # 12 Janet Jackson

 


Janet Jackson parked in the Top 10 pretty much globally for much of 1986and istening through to it niw it's pretty clear why.. 



500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 254 Ja Rule - R.U.L.E

 


                                                      Tales of being brought up by the street. 





250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 56 Beth Orton - Trailer Park


                                                                   


                                 'Birds that scream fir territory can learn to sing euphorically '

I don't claim to know much about life. We none of us do, do we?  Generally I trying to orient myself against the forthcoming gale of modern existence which feels perilous to me. This isn't negativity I wouldn't say. Just reality. Anyway, whenever I need to do that these days I generally put a record on and play it throughout the day A mast against the ongoing day. Usually something that yakes me back in time.

Today my mast against the day is  Beth Orton's Trailer Park an album I originally bought on CD when it came out in 1996 just after I moved back to England after a few years abroad in Germany, Poland, Czech Repunlic and a brief jaunt in Barcelona. You could do that in the days before freedom was frowned on and we began to fear dinghies on the horizon spotted through binoculars from the turrets at Dover Castle and launched the gunboats and submarines into the briny yo go out and meet them.

Brighton. Autumn 1996. England had marched through the European Championships to inevitable surrender to Germany in the semis on penalties. Tony Blair and New Labour were exultant. I decamped from my parents home in Canterbury and went to live in Hove. I got myself a cool flat at the top of a stout building close to the seafront. My father drove me over with my record players, tv and an answerphone and I signed on, having foolishly arrived out of the teaching season meaning there was no work at the the language schools I had hoped would supply me with gainful employment through the winter months.

1996 felt post everything. I was post girlfriend. I'd been ditched fairly brutally at the start of the year and nursed a broken  heart and damaged ego over someone I realised in retrospect was not worth it, at all. We had not been suited and had three very happy months in Warsaw to look back on .when we'd truly experienced Love. You learn this in time. The ongoing goal.She the extraneous. 

Loaded magazine and Chris Evans were in their pomp. Frankly it seemed desperate and slightly craven. A friend of mine from my German days was doing his PGCE in Brighton and had ditched the girl he had been with in Dortmund who thought they might marry for a New Labour business glamourpuss who I tried but couldn't like. Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and The Verve grabbed the batons from Oasis, Blur and Pulp and the mood and sky palled.

 I was fairly brassy. Doing voluntary work at an old people's home of old aged pensioners who played bingo and had sing songs. 'Oh Oh Antonio. He's gone away.' On Friday lunchtimes and into the afternoon.I went back to my flat and put Trailer Park on. I never stopped listening to it

And I've put it on today. All day thirty years on as I've made my way through another winter's day of relentless rain..Fimic dislocation. Taught my lessons and turned over the vinyl  Kept turning it over all day. It's a feast. .Folk and Chill Out room. A lasting statement. I can't think of another album quite like it.  Introspection refection, poetry. Brightness shade, gloom. Wonder. Watched from my second foor window on Newcastle as people stamp down the pavement in macs and cagouls, crouched under plastic transparent,  brolleys. They'll all be home soon. Eastenders and Masterchef are on.  


Song(s) of the Day # 2,307 Dustbunny

 


Great things about youth . Sitting on the sofa wearing your shades with your besties. Making a melodrama out of absolutely everything . When you can be bothered. Forming a Rock & Roll band , Releasing your second album on January 2nd , Calling it Offerings For Weary Dogs. Heading out in the riad as if you're the first ones ever to have thought of doing so.

Offering For Weary Dogs takes some guitars. Sime grunge moves. Some indifference. Some heart . Some soul. A bit if Nirvana. A bit of Bettie Serveert . Female ennui. Male tenderness. Songs which are done in 180 seconds. That will do .More here. 

 

Monday, February 9, 2026

1986 Singles # 13 Madonna

 


So two True Blue's on here. It was a basic expectation of Madonna album that it was jam packed with hit singles gold. That something was playing from a radio playing you at every moment, That was the case with True Blue This one took you straight  to the sun.  





Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,457 Madonna - True Blue

 


It's always fun listening to a classic Madonna Eighties album once in a while. It makes you realise quite how good she was  at what she did she was and what she must have meant to so many people.It would be churlish to sniff in this case.






500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 255 Beirut - Gulag Orkestar

 


When I graduated in 1990 I got my first teaching job in Czechoslovakia on the Hungarian border in a town called Komarno..Komarom on the other side of the bridge over the Danube in Hungary .I think the division was a product of the Treaty of Triannon. There wasn't much to do in Komarno of an evening. I used to wander down to the Europa Hotel sometimes for supper. It was on the corner of  the high street  on the edge of the bridge.

It was a grim old place in many ways in those days. With a cigarette kiosk in the lobby. There was a lady with blue hair and gold teeth behind the kiosk selling cigarettes which made my teeth brown. . I would go in and sit in the retaurant which was pure Third Man. And smoke them

Unside there was a cafe prowled by Gypsy spivs with wallets full of Czech crowns. Plunder from dealings on the Black Market which was rife in those immediate Post Soviet days, A cafe and a grand ballroom cum restaurant area, A splendid house band made up of  gypsy musicians who would come to tour tables and arch their heads and bow down to your table sawing their violins at your plate while you made your way through your evening meal. 

Chicken and chips a brothy stew. A bottle of beer. A cigarette at your table once the plates were cleared surrounded by the music of dream and myth. It feels like a dream now frankly thirty five years on. Listening to Beirut always take me back to that Post Communism year in Komarno and my expeditions to the Hotel Europa . There's both jubilation and memory in what Beirut  do. They're a rare band. They tell us why we travel.  To learn and give witness. Collective Consciousness.



   

1979 Top 40 - # 38 The Charlie Daniels Band

 


Now this was a fantastic record. Even to the 14 year old imagination which is all I had when it came out. in 1979 . It was on Top of the Pops for months. Ot's a  wondrous narrayive and tune. A dispute over a shining fiddle made of gold ,a man's soul and the devil himself. With extraordinary fiiddle solos, each one outdoing the last in terms of ingenuity and derring do, I'm amazed it wasn't Number One frankly.  


.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,306 Jo Passed

 


Jo Passed is a Canadian musician based in Toronto and Vancouver who has just returned after extended hiatus with a new album Away and Darren Jones (best friend of this blog) has directed me its way. Thanks once more Darren !.

It's a record that's full of deft chord changes and weird, inviting atmospheres..Jo Passed - Away. Geddit !?! 

Sunday, February 8, 2026

The NME - 1986 Year of the Triffids ? # 6 Lenny Henry Interview

 


What drives somebody to get onstage and try to make a group of strangers laugh. I was stull no wiser once I'd read the interview. Henry is funny,honest,  genuine and likeable .Richard Prior is his favourite comic. He had just come out of ITT which was a pretty awful  attempt to mix light tabloid sexism and humour which was prevalent in the Eighties . He's moving as are many of his contemporaries towards non sexist non racist comedy,as we head into the mid Eighties.

What's great is that The NME devotes so much coverage thaat is way beyond the band playing ar toyr local venue on a Wednesday evening. It has a mission to entertain but also educate and inform that frankly is unmatched and missed now. At least by me. 



1986 Singles # 14 The Housemartins

 


The Housemartins played my university Lower Common Room in my first year there. I didn't go. There was too much to choose from and I couldn't see it all. A shame because they were a wonderful band and they got the times right, The tunes were great and the message consistent. The Thatcherite tide was coming in good and proper and would take much with it despite resistance.

What Housemartins advocated was resistance from those who kept money in jars to those who owmed oil tankers. Nothing changes. They still say the right things forty years on. There's genuine soul and it hails from Hull.



Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,458 Muse - Drones

 


Queen exist. They are there already. There is no earhly excuse for Muse and what they do.




1979 Top 40 - # 39 John Du Cann

 


I have no memory of this at all. I expect Jason Burby and Raymond Capon , the kids in my class who delighted at such dubious Metal gems danced and frolicked to it of an evening. The Tommy Vance Friday Rock Show. It wasn't for me. I certainly didn't !  I don't remember this !  It has been utterly expunged from my memory and cast into a deep pit. A mine in Mawdor where orcs make mischief. Take it away. I'm scared !!!!








500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 256 Lee Anne Womack - There's More Where that Came From

 


I beg your pardon Lee Anne Womack? You might not have promised me a rose garden. Byt this is Old School C & W of the most lachrymose and most fattening decription, and I fear for my fillings.




Song(s) of the Day # 2,305 Blackwater Holylight

 


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.



Saturday, February 7, 2026

1986 Singles # 15 James Brown

 


I'd like to write a book about important people in my life and how I happened to meet them. The moment of meeting  can be a revealing one I'd say in many respects. . I'd quite like  to write a lot of books really but it seems I'm embarked on this blog instead and I'll make do with that. This anyway is how I met James.

I met James in 1985. He lived in the room opposite me at the halls of residence where we both housed in our first year.at university halls of residence. Neither of us were very hard working . We both came from protective middle class stock. Both knew it.  And relished the fact that we probably didn't have to struggle much in life. So why develop a chip on your shoulder of claas driven ngst. Why not endeavour to live instead. That's what we've both proceeded to do.

My abiding memory of the moment we met was that we were both in the communal kitchen one afterniin and James was grinning relentlessy from ear to ear. I've felt looking back at the Trotrskyite line that his companion Ben who roomed in the room next door to James and who I was meeting for the first time too was feeding me. As if he were fishing for political souls and  he'd cast his hook deep into the briny and I'd swallowed his line hook line and sinker. Like some gratefil guppy. Closed my gills sloppily and ardently round his bait and find myself  being reeled in swung promptly on deck and having my fishy brain promptly bashed about the planking while I thrashed my sorry last. Ben cheers was never sctually that naive,

Ben's hardline barricade spiel was complete guff I've since realised. OK we were all people with political ideals which I'd stand by and stull hold as I know James still does, But not much excuses the Trotskyite line , Particularly when you;re all pretty privelidged which we were. .  . That's permanent revolution whether you like it or not whuch means little time for Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. ouzo. taramasala and all that. Doctor Martens and living on Hampstead Hill which it transpired Ben had a great appetite for too,.Middle class trappings. Revolutionary reading and preaching matter, 

I knew what I liked. Collarless shorts uncense sticks. R.E.M , Penguin Paperbacks and Marxist iconography. A bust of Lenin which I'd brought back from Moscow with me from a college trip a couple of years earlier from Andropov's Soviet Union and Ben eventually asked me to give to him as he was clearly a better socialist than me. I demurred and still  have the bust of Laughing Len in a sharp suit, sharp tie and shirt in a hollow silver cast in front of me at my desk as I write, I'm not really a Bolshevik either. Just a poseur, let's be frank,

James meanwhile it transpired liked sleeping.James Brown and sloanes. Probably in that order .He was quite right to do so . He;s done alright for humself since . Well ditch the Sloanes. All you really need is Jimmy B.. So here he is....  


 


250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 57 Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley , Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

 


Simon & Garfunkel albums are incredibly resonant, sturdy things. They take you through all the passages of your life. Memories. Back to a beloved sister who loved them forty years back. Her illness and premature early death. Through love affairs. To a mother thinking her husband might be dying one Christmas  after over sixty years and wanting simething calming to listen to in the living room in between bouts. Those are just my memories. What are yours? .

 Back to The Graduate. One of the finest films I kniw.  A film that says almost everything like the best cultire should. And back to the records. All of thse songs are Dangling Conversations. Uncompleted kisses. They'll still be here when the reat of us are not. They're in their time and place. Listen to A Simple Desultory Phillipic . But they transcend them with emotions that transcend the context of time effortlessly amd become the eternal. Listen to almist anything else. Like a fleet footed inside left, darting into space.Paul Simon on the sleevenotes it's written us planning to write a book.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,459 Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan

 


Magellan is a term reated to AI data analytics. I won't go into that as here seems neither the time or the place. It was previously most readily a surname used in application with Francesco Magellan the Portuguese maritime explorer famously renowned for hs journeys ir duscveries,

Alternatively there's Swing Lo Magellan a rather tirsome geek fuelled album by Dirty Projectors/ Geeky and ridiculously prog inclined, Two tracks in it started to annoy me intensely and I had to take it off immediately !



500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 257 Blink 182 - Blink 182

 


Things may get bad, but there are always alternatives to listening to Blink 182 albums.




1979 Top 40 - # 40 Dr. Hook

 


'When I get to the bottom I'll go back to the top of the slide . When I stop and I turn and I'll see you again....'. The Beatles Helter Skelter

Such is the nature of life. We awaken. The sun goes up. We start another day. So with me. I finished a rundown yeaterday in 1972 at 6 in shorts in Zimbabwe. I wake and start again at the top of anither slide. Into another chart. It's 1979 and the 30th September. My 14th birthday, It's a Sunday. So my family are probably off to church.Into Richmond and off to Duke Street near the green. I dutifully tag along.

The Police are Number One and eventually we'll get to Message In A Bottle. Philosophy in a bottle. But in the meantime we'll start at the bottom of the Top 4p. When You're in Love with a Beautiful woman its hard apparently. Especially if you've got a dodgy eye patch, a worse for weat cowboy hat and you're only role is to grab a pair of maracas and grin inanely at the camera.. . 


Song(s) of the Day # 2,304 Ulrika Spacek

 


Like The Radiohead who decide they'd prefer to stay underground. Formed in 2014 in the environs of Reading EXPO is their fourth album which by any standards is slow going but they've been active on other projects in the meantime.

EXPO is slightly more interiorised in tone than 2023's Compact Trauma which still has my ears ringing three years after its release.. But it's a fascinating record on its own terms. Rhythmic and subtle. Easing me into Saturday's tributary. Flowing on to the ocean.

I find  Ulrika Spacek comforting. they're like the mechanism of a precisely governed wrist watch. The tick tock mechanisms never missing a thing.  

Friday, February 6, 2026

1986 Singles # 16 The Chills

 


A lpt of the best msic from 1986 came from Australia and New Zealnad though sometimes you had to search hard foe it. This was # 4 in New Zealand that year. It chugs like so much of my favourite music does. It didn't chart in the UK.




Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,460 Spiritualised - Lazer Guided Melodies

 


Easy Listening for the Velvet Underground and Stooges set..






500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 258 Loney Dear - Loney Now

 


Emil Svanangen '.a kind of synth pop Bon Iver'.  Judging by Loney Now an enchanting thing tto be. This is a wonderful album heralding in Friday evening and the reason again  why I write this blog.



The Cure & The Police

 


250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 58 Sophie Bridgers - Stranger In The Alps

 


January in Newcastle has finally succumbed to an equally unpromising February whuch if today is anything to judge by is going to be highly demanding. Spiritually. No signs as yet of Spring. So Sophie Bridgers Stranger In The Alps  has been my go to.record all week . I wonder if she actually went out to look at the Alps on her holiday on Swirzerland or Austria.. Frankly I suspect she stayed in and moped in the ski lodge, Nick Drake without the walk in the woods. 

 Depresesed teenage years drift into depressed twenties. Settle down towatds depressed thirties and start a family and bring some depressed offspring onto the planet. This stuff has been gettimg more introspective and mopey since the turn of the millennium. Travis wondered in 1996 Why it always rained on them. 25 year on  we're not alone . We await. the deluge.

 It's a relentlessly cheerless record  but quietly comforting at the same time  with little chance of respite or a break in the clouds pn either side. Like Edward Munch on mogadon. But introspection has always been a part of the human condition and this has always been  an album that's on relatively frequent rotation on my record player. Along with Belle & Sebastian, Radiohead, Nirvana, Joy Division, Magazine, Smiths, Bowe (whose mentioned early here, another reason to be sad. A long list is made) . Dylan, Leonard Cohen Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles too, Once they decided they wanted to do more than hold your hand and started wondering where all lonely people came from and why that girl made Lennon crawl off and sleep in the bath..

The depressed state of white Rock & Roll,'Jesus Christ I'm so blue all the time.'  On and on Sophie drones but somehow it's all rather like being under a warm blanket..All this relentless post millennia drifting into Z Gebration atrophy  I love this record despite myself, Meanwhile Sophie and pal are staying in at The Chelsea Hotel.You can't help wondering what Sid and Nancy might wonder about the fate of The Ghost of Rock & Roll. It's under the blanket Sid. 

1972 Top 30 - # 1 T. Rex

 


Telegram Sam is the kind of song that should always be at Number One. 'He's a natural born poet she's just out of sight...'. 'Me I funk but I don't care. I ain't no sqyare with my corkscrew hair.' Mauc Bolan changed the English language . We short all be grateful.




Song(s) of the Day # 2,303 Sotto Voce

 


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..

Thursday, February 5, 2026

1986 Singles # 17 Prefab Sprout

 


This didn't make the Top Forty. It was a songle too far from Steve McQueen. It makes my Top Twenty.




500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 259 Earth : Hex or Printing in The Infernal Method

 


You What ? The essential quality of the 21st Century musically at least  seems to be that it has got obscure. It's got  either very obvious or tyrned in on itself and become a trife elitist, But you don't have to embrace the elitism . You can if you prefer immerse yourself in the arcane.

Here is an album where you can do exactly that.. Apparently 'a move away from heavy drone towards spaghetti drone. Very listenable for all that.Rather like a summons to the deep sleep state. 



1972 Top 30 - # 2 Chicory Tip

 


Chicory Tip were actually the first band I ever consciously chose to like. I was six and I arrive back in England from Zimbabwe and they were the entre into the world that is sstill the most important one to me. The song for me is really What's Your Name. But this was pretty fabulous too. I vaguely remember a flexidisc of some description. 



Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,461 Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

 


Foo Fighters in 2007. They'd settled unto theur stride by now. They clearly weren't Nirvana ir Husker Di but franly they never pretended to be. This was life in the middle lane coming to an enirmodome near you and there's actually nothing wrong with that . Regardless if the naysnayers and elitist types who probably regretted Dave Grohl taking the drummer's stool way back in the mists if time..Quite serviceable.







Song(s) of the Day # 2,302 Youmi Zouma

 


A bit of wistfulness and indie guitar as I make my way to  half ten and a virtual date with Dussledorf Insurance Types. Youmi Zouma's No Love Lost To Kindness ticks the requisite boxes. It sounds like Barney Rubble out of  New Order on guitar.. Out of Christchutch, New Zealand and with a few albums under their belt. Due to tour Europe in March. This seems to offer a good night out.

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

1986 Singles # 18 Primal Scream

 


Primal Scream started here. Crystal Crescent was the A Side but ut should have been this. A genuine classic which the band themselves realised in time.






The NME - 1986 Year of the Triffids ? # 5 The Smiths - How Soon Is Now - Singles Review

 


'Whether Morrissey is questing romantic or bruised archangel is something I leave to your own musing. I prefer to hear the work of J.Marr as the true spirit of the Smiths. Hand In Glove to these ears their one true masterpiece, could be about legwarmers and stirrup pimps for all the difference it makes  -with that crimson flush of guitar and rhythm any words would do... sounds like an acid song,' Richard Cook



500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 260 Spoon - Kill The Moonlight

 


In terms of household objects Spoon aren't quite up there among essentialthinngs I need to listen to . Like Televiion, Magazine and Wire for example. This is alright I s'ppose.Bonus points for use of the word 'taciturn'. 





1972 Top 30 - # 3 Chi-Lites

 


The kind of thing I used to be quite sniffy about but now I pretend I've always liked.




Song(s) of the Day # 2,301 Geologist

 


Geologist's Can I Get Another Packet of Camel Lights is another Animal Collective related release in case you were missing your latest drag on Animal Collective related product in addition to fancyong a drag on a Camel Light or other nicotine related merchandise.

It's a fantastic avant gard experience. It's almost a raga rock album and there aren't nearly enough of those. There's a fair but of drone and some livelier abrasion related interludes.This may not appeal to everyone but I can certainly buy in to what's going on here.