Sometimes if you don't speak the tongue, it's difficult to truly appreciate how radical. imsightful and righteous certain records are. How significant to countless people. Such is the case with Tom Ze's Grande Liquidacao. the debut album from 1968. a truly momentous year globally.
Regrdless of your understanding Grande Liquidacao .is immediately a quicksilver urbane statement. An invoation and invitation to the dance and the streets. Of Sao Paolo and elsewhere. Impossibly melodramatic and fluid.
Clinic is a beautiful name for a band and a wonderful concept. And a wonderful band. People talk constantly about national treasures but they rarely choose appropriate subject matter. I would suggest this group as ripe for reverance and awe.
Wild In The Streets is their tenth record since 1999. They don't change their sound much but frankly they don't really need to. There's is a minimal, deadpan excellence. End of the pier macabre that's wonderfully and morbidly English. They don't really bother the charts anymore but the charts dom't deserve them. They remain an itch that it's impossible to scratch.
The Specials, The Specials as good a statement of British multicultural intent and unity as any record ever made. It didn't arrive completely alone but as part of a movement. There were similar declarations at round about the same time from other bands who were on or associated with the Two Tone record label The Specials formed; Madness, The Beat, Dexys Midnight Runners, Selecter.
But Specials were the band who highlighted the racial factor to the greatest degree and had fabulous Number One singles that took the temperature of the times while doing so. They arrived at just the right time for me. When I was 14 or 15. I wasn't necessarily crazy about them at the time, didn't buy their records 'til later but I was politically conscious as were my friends at school and it was clear that they were a very, very good thing.
Their front three was pretty much unbeatable Neville Staples, Terry Hall and Lynval Golding. At a time when black footballers were starting to breakthrough properly into English football despite the full on racist reaction from the terraces. They were a statement in itself. My school was hardly inner-city multicultural, there were a few Black kids, a few Chinese ones, a few Indians and Pakistanis but one thing nobody was was racist.
But there was plenty of it elsewhere and The Specials and Two Tone's mission was to combat it along with the Anti Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and everything else. The National Front and the racist wing of the Skinhead movement were highly visible, these were pretty violent times, though they didn't necessarily seem so growing up in a leafy London suburb.
Anyhow the records sounded great on their own. They made you want to dance and their message was loud and clear, even if racists turned up at Two Tone gigs and did their upmost to disrupt them. This was the point of all these bands. They all took their inspiration from the great Black music of the Sixties and early Seventies, Ska, Soul and Reggae but they used it to paint very contemporary pictures of what British urban working class was life at the turn of the Eighties.
The Specials first album is very kitchen sink in many ways. It's certainly black and white. It tells a lot of familiar stories. Teenage pressure and pregancies, racial conflict, night club violence. It has one false note in Little Bitch which just sounds nasty, misogynist and unforgivable now. Otherwise, it's spot on, has all the right targets and hits a string of bullseyes.
I didn't go and see the band first time round but I did when they reformed in 2009. Remarkably for the first gig of their UK Tour. Six of the original seven with only Dammers left out, probably because he didn't wanted to play the old songs as they were.
Tickets were like gold dust but a friend managed to get a couple somehow . On the night the level of expectation building up to their arrival was probably like no gig I've ever been to in my life. When they arrived they more than lived up to it. Generally you hark back to the gigs of your teenage years and early twenties as the most important ones. But this was certainly one of the best I've ever seen.
The record now sounds like a series of perfectly drawn vignettes. Statements about mantaining a positive approach even under intense provocation. The band are smart beyond their years as so many were at the time. I'm biased because I grew up then, but I'd say 1978-83 is one of the three great British Golden Ages of Pop Music along with '65-'68 and '71'-74.
In many ways The Specials spearheaded the second wave of Punk and were much needed. They were just as indignant and in many respects they had a much more focused and thought through message. Pretty much everything they recorded is essential. It has a message and sound that is at once very much of its time yet still doesn't date.
Last night I sat in my living room in near darkness with a beaker of tea and bar of chocolate and listened in complete stillness to Greg Weeks Folk / Prog album If The Sun Dies . It's a quite spectacular album frankly. Enchanting in many respects and I'll do my utmost to do it justice here.
In terms of its chords and mood you're very much in Neil Young's world.. The Neol of the early Seventies. Harvest, After The Gold Rush. At a certain point in the evening I stopped listening to this went off to the stove and cooked myself a bowl of mushroom soup and listened to Everyone Knows this is Nowhere while I cooked ,consumed it and then washed the bowls and pan.
Then I returned to my desk put my headphones on and started lstening to If The Sun Dies again. The mood of the evening and process frankly was quite seamless. You hear quite a lot of records like this now. Ones that utterly try to replicate the mood, ambience and very texture of bygone times. But few which are so immaculate in their conceit as If The Sun Dies. It belongs in April 1972; Or the 15th Century,
Weeks of course was in Espers and knows his Gentle Giant from his Drake and Steeleye Span, But this is not an academic exercise. The songs are heartfelt and this is an meticulous, heartfelt exercise rather than a labour of love.
Every Number One I see in charts like these seems to be a rather political decisiom. Sound of Silver is already almost twenty years old and doesn't quite seem as State of the Art as it would have done when it came out. Listening to it now it feels rather retro in terms of its base instincts
LA band Dummy's exquisite third album do you love the colour of the sky? takes the party scene from Midnight Cowboy and carpet rides it 25 years into the new Millennium. This is an inspired record. Taking a number of commonly plundered reference points from the likes of Stereolab, Broadcast. My Bloody Valentine and others and forges something fresh and dream governed from their points of origin.
It's difficult not to blink sometimes . Sometimes I'd say it's best to try not to. It's Friday morning. At the end of May. It's my sister's birthday. I imagine she'll be rising and will take her Bulgarian rescue dog for a walk at some point today. Across woods and sunlit meadows of bluebells, primroses. and the like My brother is rising in Galicia with his wife. Making their way up steep slopes. It's hot as blazes he tells us. We're all walking up steep slopes aren't we? It's the only way we know
My mother will stir and go down to prepare my father some breakfast. .Fix a tray with corn flakes, raspberries, yoghurt, toast and a cup of tea. Just how dad likes it..Run her bath, dress and descend to the living room to do her sudoku and crosswords. Classic FM. Everywhere people are rising. Heading into their day, The world turns. The weekend is coming
I run my bath and dress, I look in the t shirt drawer and find a Jane Birkin t shirt Alison gave me for a birthday many years ago. Jane Birkin isn't with us an more but the t shirt still is and I put it on. It will do me for today, It's appropriate.
I've got Alena Diane's new album Who's Keeping Time playing on my television. On my television You see what I mean about not blinking, It's called Who's Keeping Time? Who Knows Where the Time Goes ! Ir's a lovely record. With a sleeve adorned with images of Alela surrounded by a gathering of geese clustered around a dining table on a prairie. Little Table on the Prairie,.
I teach my first class. Dennis, Julianne, Beheshata. Clinical Professionals heading into their own days but making a window for English. We talk about implants and why the body rejects them. Stones in our internal organs and what we can do about them. Broken bones and our experience of them comes up. One to Ones with our line managers and how best to approach them. How to best demand appreciation and ensure commensurate recompensation for our labour. Not being taken for granted. What we have looking forward to at the weekend.
In Beheshta's case this means a drive to Rotterdam to a wedding tomorrow. A stay in a hotel and then a quick look around Antwerp. A drive back to the Ruhr Gebeit and a baby shower with friends on Sunday. Fitting in a bit of life before work starts again on Monday morning. All the while the stones keep stirring in our inner organs. The blood keeps flowing between our arteries.
I have some downtime between classes so I send off powerpoints for my classes and fix myself more tea. Boil an egg, I fancy a change from Alela so I put Soft Machine's Third on my turntable and the stylus clicks into its groove and my flat fills with light and cool burbling, meandering Hippy Jazz sound.
I've been entranced with this magical record for a few weeks. I saw a vinyl copy at one of the record stores around the corner from me where the price of the vinyl copy of this in their racks had dropped from £39 to £29 so I saw my chance, made my move and bought a copy. It already sounds like a good investment for my sixties.. A long term downpayment that should pay back in terms of stillness and space.
Onto Class Two. Olli and Stefan. Insurance professionals. Tuning in from Dussledorf and Nuremberg. We always laugh. There's time for football, family and fun. .Chat about cheese..I have a quiz on cheese prepared. This doesn't happen entirely by accident. We debate who would win the World Cup of Cheese Why does Emmental have holes. Olli and Stefan read an article to find out. Spoiler. It's the flecks in the hay folks.
The conversation meanders back to 1970. A podcast I'm engrossed in about a World Cup related Conspiracy from when I was five and in Zimbabwe and my sister was just a baby Gordon Banks drank a beer in a bar in Mexico a few days before a World Cup Quarter Final against West Germany. And was struck down with tummy trouble and missed the match which England lost,. The podcast posits that it was all a CIA related plot. There's no end to the mystery and wonder in life. Why bother doomscrolling about the here and now. Being right wing . Being scared or angry. Blaming someone else..
Onward from Srefan and Olli to Pierre. A Broker Manager from the same organisation with a great Wes Anderson look.. Charming and kind. Just turned 50. He tells me about his weekend in Holland with his mum, brother and their kids. We talk about erm football again. Where will Cologne's finest prospect Mala go in the summer. Brentford possibly.
Should my team Newcastle make their move. They've just lost Anthony Gordon to Barcelona not Bayern. Much to Olli and now Pierre's amusement. Then we talk about how he can find the word he needs when he needs it in business contexts when talking to Poles or Indians about contract and brokerage stuff. We develop a strategy which I follow up after the lesson. This doesn't feel like work.
Soft Machine have taken the place of Alela as my ongoing soundtrack as my Friday turns its attention to the afternoon. I'm in a trance for Part Four of my Friday online odyssey. The ideal state for Marina. My Friday afternoon Extemadura Angel. In Amsterdam working for a bank but always Extemadura essentially. There's never, ever a dull moment with Marina.
She's charm and intelligence personified. We're training her up to be CEO within the year. She confides at a certain point this afternoon that she doesn't actually want to be CEO but she certainly gets my vote if she ever needs it. We have the dreaded Internet is down panic midway through. That hasn't happened to me for a while. We reconnect. There are fifteen minutes left before the weekend lands.
So we get to the heart of the matter. That's what Graham Green would do. You can get to this point after four pints on a Friday night with a mate if you choose but in my experience it's far better at four on a Friday afternoon with a canny operator like Marina who knows what she's talking about. .Does Love exist? Does the Soul?
From Marina's perspective the idea of a Soul is ludicrous. It's something we want to believe in but it's actually a huge red herring. Wishful thinking. .Like Lloyd Cole though, Marina believes in love. There's been persuasive scientific research she says. She's persuaded. It's nice to hear. A good time to wish each other a happy weekend. Next week we'll discuss Atomic Habits further and delve into the Third Conditional. Anyway I need to go to Rosie's and find out who I've got in The World Cup Sweepstakes. These things are important.. Fellowship. Banter. A fiver.
I make my way up the slope from my flat. Turn into Stowell Street. Newcastle's Chinatown. Millie is perched in his place at the end of the bar. Where he belongs.. I've got Belgium. He's got Mexico. No chance for either of us. Neither Belgium nor Mexico have ever reached the World Cup Final never mind won the bloody thing and paraded round the pitch kissing the golden trophy and blowing kisses to the crowd. That's for France, Brazil, Germany, Spain and Argentina.
Millie and I. Like Belgium and Mexico are content to be supporting players. In the chorus. Halfway down the final credits. I ask Millie if he's got a tab and his eyebrows head for the ceiling. 'You'll be the death of me.' 'Not too soon I hope Millie.' I thank him and head for the exit, Get back to the flat. Put Soft Machine on again while I smoke my tab. Call Mum at half five as I always do.
She tells me of her cleaning lady Linda's latest travelling drama. Coming home from Majorca the flight was delayed. A passenger was taken off the flight.. Charged with murder in Majorca. Where is Morse when you need him? Perhaps Nigel Farage who Linda feels is the bees knees is the answer. I doubt it personally. That guys a spiv. Private Walker.
I say goodbye to mum. She's going to a birthday party tomorrow. Makes a change from funerals. I go upstairs collapse on the bed. Wake up at nine and make a cup of tea. Alison has had a good day. She's having a barbecue. There are parakeets flying over her lawn. She likes the Bowie book I've sent her. I go to bed.
Now it's Saturday morning. I'm listening to Who's Keeping Time again. I commend it to you. Time to head into the new day. Somewhere the geese are flying .
Yesterday evening I put on Marisa Anderson's The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music. I listened through to its 37 minute span. Then I put it on and listened to it again. Now I'm listening to it before my day of work begins . It's title is highly pertinent. Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Music is a place I would say more than anything else is a place to lose yourself inside when you need to . To wrap yourself up and regain your body heat when required. To restore your powers. This has been doing that for me over the last twelve hours.
. Marisa Anderson has an interesting backstory and approach before settling in Portland, Oregon, and its helpful to inform yoursellf on both as it helps makes sense of and colour in your enjoyment of UnAmerican Folk Music, It has done with mine. This is music as narrative . This is river of the purest flow.
Punk changed the script in every way. For the better. Any number of bands invented their own existences and mapped out own roads, not acceping what was on their plate or think the way they were told to think. Exhibit A; Playing With a Different Sex. It's a reminder of how exciting and preposterous the radical politics of youth can be. 'Throw your homework onto the fire !'
Calling your record after a Beatles album is a pretty cool move. Seating yourself and the band on the roof for the record's cover shoot is another impossibly cool step. The Replacements were as ragged as you could possibly want. Any number of bands have used this as a benchmark but never so much as lived in its shadow.
Cardinals the Cork band and their debut album Maverick have everything I would wish for if I was 16 rather than 60. They're the kind of band you could fall in love with which let's face it is what you should be doing when you're 16. They have a front row of the grid understanding of Pogues, Libertines and Fontanes D.C that bodes very well. After all. There's no beating. A little Catholic angst and guilt.
U2 are at the far end of the Rock & Roll pike now but I think sensed the value of all this went they set off too. And they understood too that you need Wilde, Joyce and Yeats and the luck of the Irish, insouciance, a quality bookshelf, a sense of where they came from, a taste fora drop of the hard stuff and a drop of mischief. Here's mud in your eye and a bit of what you fancy for the weekend.. Maverick is a rather beautiful set of songs and no mistake.
Albums of the Year for 2026 are in the process of mounting up. Allowing It Starts With a Birthstone to fill in a few days of Song(s) of the Day to catch up on what's been missed. First The Early Years gloriously misty eyed Modern Moonlight. An album of the sort where you think, 'Ah. They don't make like them like this anymore.'
The band's first album in a decade and their third in all. The first came out in 2006. They seem to like to put out albums in years beginning with 6. This is thicker in mystery than a fog bound day in old London town. Rather magnificent. Langorous.
Music can be like an arrow. Taking you unerringly back to a time and place. The Strokes. Is This It? Takes m e back to Wroclaw, Poland in the summer of 2001. I was studying on an intensive teacher training course. Embarked on a new road. Going out with a Ukranian woman on my course. Doing everything by the skin of my teeth. Not knowing what I was doing. Going back to my flat in the evening. Listening to Is This It?
It still sounds utterly wonderful. It took me back to those glorious CBGBs records and attitude. A place I never imagined we'd go back to. The Strokes always refuted the Television influence. But it was essential DNA for me. Along with the whole roster. It was a glorious rebirth. A reaffirmtion.
Ultravox weren't always about sideburns that you could cut bread with and fin de siecle MTV videos that meant nothing to me frankly. Ultravox used to be really good! Check out Ha Ha Ha! their second album which came out on Island in October 1977 while John Foxx was still fronting the band.
It has a wreckless, maniacal edge. Incredibly of its time. The album mantains the bands devotion to Bowie and Roxy of their debut but sensibly attaches itself to Punk too. This is thrill a minute sliding down the bannisters on your rollerskates glee!
Kid A is more than quarter of a century old. It's a remarkable record. An 'important' one if you like me, spend a lot of time documenting and thinking about that/ Radiohead realised that the world was changing and focussed thei endeavours on that transition and change. As ambitious as Sun Ra or Theolonious. A record of constant beauty and wonder.
I've been listening to La Roux's fourth album Old Flames for days now. None of it really sticks but none of it particularly grates either It was six years in the making. It's a bit like a box of Quality Streets.Range. Plenty you might like to dance too. A few if you'd like to sit one out. It worked and works for me.
'Did I tell you my dad had a heart attack .... my mama took the money and put his ashes in the garbage can...'
I'm finding I'm reading less but it doesn't really matter as I'm listening to more music as it provides the same service is your discernible. Take The Delines new album The Set Up. It's the great American Novel in potted form; Carver, Steinbeck, Scott Fitzgerald laid out before you like a tablecloth at the breakfast table. Whisky & Rye. The struggle, the strife.
There are so many lines and moments that stop you in your tracks. The pain and the purity. A fine record to start the week. We may not get to see as much if the world as we'd like to. But records like this make us feel as if we have,
You can't help somehow but covet an album which opens with tracks called Roman Litter and Sempiternal Darkness. Felt walked a singular road. Sometimes opting for Tudor harlequin patterns,. Elsewhere wasted found poetry. Then they were surprised they didn't sell. Perhaps they've had the last laugh but I doub't that comforts Lawrence.
Wonder of wonders. Miracle of miracles I'm not only listening to O My Beloved, Kings of Leons tenth album. I'm enjoying it. It's a while since I enjoyed a Kings Of Leon album. But this is fine. Sparse, lean, supple and slightly sad.
I went to UEA in the Mid Eighties . Looking back I was in the right place at the right time. I started as a History Student using the common judgement of youth of my A Level Results but switched majors in the second term to Literature. It was the right thing to do.
The American & Literature faculty at U.E.A. at the time was unfeasibly strong. Critics, writers. Authorities on the subject. A strong Feminist reputation. Lorna Sage, Angela Carter. gossiping in the bar over cigarettes and shots. As good as it got. In a memorable lectore I attended a fresh faced young woman hasd the temerity to ask Carter if she was a feminist. The response was shrivelling and embarassing to witness.Carter cut her down. I wonder whether the girl concerned has ever forgotten it. We were all so young. Impressionable. Green.
Forty years down the line I'm listening to Paris Paloma's awaited second album, The Fatal Flaw and it's an incredible record. Most certainly Feminist and with an immpressive inventory of melodies and narrative. By turns celebratory and introspective. Joyous and defiant. They're songs which tackle issues.
Occasionally it's slightly pleased with itself and you wonder whether issues are being ticked off but that's not without reason or rhyme. These are the times. She's a brave artist who stands tall and makes artistic statements which are worthy of scrutiny. It's actually the stuff of master's theses which you wonder a little about.
This was probably around the time that I decided I couldn't keep up with everything going on in the music world because I couldn't follow the contours of the conversation.
There are certain sounds you feel comfortable with. A sense that you can huddle back under the duvet and spend a couple more hours in bed. Turn the record over and snuggle down. This is that sound.A wjole set of mellow rtakes on Velvet Underground family favourites.
Wilco don't really sound like a Millennium Band. If anything they sound like the band that picked up the torch from R.E.M. after Bill Berry left. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has a grand majesty and scope. It's old school but feels like a cool set of dads hitting the dance floor on the High School Reunion Ball.
I saw Wilco in Newcastle about 16 years ago fairly soon after I'd arrived in Newcastle. I'm glad I've seen them. I always get the sense that they're actually quite modest in the way that bands I really love tend to be.
This might be the right time ..... for Slack Times A band from Birmingham, Alabama They ring out the old and ring in the new. On Casting fresh out on Meritorio Records .It's all my favourite things. I'm ... Paisley Underground and Flying Nun. Sitting on my bed at the age of seventeen on my Habitat duvet, recording R.E.M on a TDK Cassette in Concert playing at Rock City, Nottingham in 1984. Listening to The Swimming Pool Qs. Dreaming of The Chills, Look Blue Go Purole and Three O'Clock.
All I really want when I listen to a record is to hear something I haven't heard before. Surely not too much to ask. Richard Llloyd of Television died yesterday. Marquee Moon was certainly this. Caroline Rose latest Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall in its smaller, slightly frantic way is this too.
Twelve songs taking different angles of attack to nonconformism. For not doing what you're expected to do. No song follows the same script. Frankly this is a trip to the funfair every bit as much as The Walt Whitman Mall. Offbeat poetry in motion.
The nights are closing in. The countdown is on. I seem to have nothing to do but spend my evenings listening t Blue Note Albums. Finally refining my actual knowledge of Jazz haveing listened to it for so many years in pretty much ignorance and counting down the days to Christmas.
Duke Jordanwas a Jazz pianist of the fist rank who passed at a good age. twenty years back. He was born in Brooklyn and died in Copenhagen. He played in the Charlie Parker Quinetet with Bird and Miles.From the mid Fifties he flew solo and also drove a taxi in New York City for a while in the Sixties.Flight To Jordan is as smooth, as beautiful and wonderful a ride as you could possibly want.
Every age needs its canon. This seems no be highly in the new Millenium's Curiously this one is not yet twenty. I saw Jason Vernon shortly afterwards in a Butlin's Camp in Minehead. and was slightly underwhelmed. The record has a hallowed aura but it's not an album I seldom play. there's a slightly self satisfied air to it which grates rather.
Another countdown. Haven't you heard. Christmas is coming. From shortlist.com. Some you'd expect. Some you wouldn't. This was an early milestone for me. Dexy's hd an anger I didn't umnderstand. But also a swagger, an incredible cool that led me to Mean Streets and no end of others.Dexys and Rowland have made no end of other statements. But they've never quite matched this pure ire .
The Albatross. That mythical bird. And as good as any to start the countdown for this year on It Starts With a Birthstone towards Christmas Day in earnest. Kellie Gregson-MacLeod is a singer songwriter from the Inverness Scotland. Albatross is her fifth long player and I suspect the one that matters
This is flaxen haired folk the way they used to make them. I'm glad they still do. Not unnaturally, Gregson-MacLeod has made waves on Tik Tok. But this is music which cuts deeper and flows like the river to the sea.
Boston's pet Fox have an interesting sound.Robust geometric guitar spin and gather around sturdy vocals like spyrogyra patterns on fourth album Balance .Recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. Think Beach Fossils, Real Estate and Omni. Running on the tracks that New Order and Railway Children laid ofrty years and more back. Scattered sound.
This is a record for anyone like me who loves early Seventies Americana. The sense of waste and desperation and wrought grandeur that hangs over so many of its books, records and movies. This is near as dammit Exhibit A.The waves are still rolling in and out on Venice Beach. Much of the cast is no longer on the stage. But I imagine Malibu People still really know how to live.
It's always interesting to find a band that seems to be bending Rock & Roll into fresh shapes, seventy years an more down the road.Improvement Movement work out of Atlanta and are not entirely disimilar to acts like Omni and Canada's defunct Ought.But latest album Your Perfect Real Life yesterday marked out fresh territory to my ears.
Drawing from. on the surface. incongruous ingredients from Prog and Post Punk but the results here are consistently intriguing.There were moment where I found myself drawn back to some of the horrors of listening to late Seventies AOR Easy Listening Radio but the band have a routinely deft touch which hauls the coles from the fire time and again. It's a record that demands little from the listener save for an apprecition of open teritory and minimal clarity. This is unfailingly restless is the bestest fashion,
Sufjan Stevens The human imagination in full flight.His albums are like haunted houses. You can visit different rooms. Take a visit to your own memories.
A band that didn't quite get its due in its day but now bathe in a semi mystical Independent glow.. The roster of bands on Postcard Records were all saintly and put out a set of startling records. Josef K were from Glasgow by contrast with Orange Juice and Aztec Camera who hailed from Glasgow and The Go Betweens from Brisbane, Australa. They took their name from a Franz Kafka character and their sound was appropriately literary, European, imtense and erm angular.Bands that deal in this disciplined, fevered geometry are rare.
Philadelphia's Sadurn's second album The Underworld comes four years after their first. And in the wake of chronic illness and agonising struggle . It's a record of considerable grace and constancy. Not unlike Phoebe Bridgers in terms of temper. It seemed to be a tale of riding the crests and troughs . Enduring....
Listening to Can albums can frequently be like exploring lunar terrains. Take Soon Over Baluma; released in 1974 after the departure of Damo Suzuki who was responsible for so much that was distinctive about the band. But this is a seamless response to him leaving. Michael Karoli and Irmin Schmidt took over vocals and frankly sounded rather like Damo. Many of the tracks here sound like cult exorcisms.
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
Who needs a name when you could be a symbol. @ in the names of the song are currently where it's at on It Starts With a Birthstone. Latest album Autosmile finds them on 4AD. This feels like Roches baroque episode.
I rather wish I'd bought this when it came out. Tanya Donnelly is ome whose 'Star' I didn't watch. This is an album that seems informed by Angela Carter,Lots of Moons and Witches. An album to get to know,
Cindy from San Francisco. They're playing songs from The Velvet Underground Songbook, Their latest album Another Country. As I rise and pack and prepare for a train journey South to be with my elderly parents.
Now I'm down South in my family's bosom with all the madness that entails. I have Another Country on again and actually it feels rather like Christmas. Perfect soundtrack. Mum is downstairs preparing tea. All is right in the World. Frankly, if this is Another Country, I'd like to go there immediately.
We must live in the moment and appreciate our good fortune. I appreciate mine. Cindy make me appreciate it more. They don't veer from a well established formula that has kept me happy for my adult life and will do so as long as I'm on this earth. Until it ends with a tombstone as the blog I write's title implies.
I've just listened to Boy by U2. It came out in 1980 when I turned 15. Now I'm listening to XTRRMNTR in 2000 when it came out. I was in Catania, Sicily. I was 35/ The world had changed as it always does and so had I. I still like both albums but probably prefer Boy .
Both albums are political expressions of a different sort. I'm not sure I buy XTRRMNTR's righteous anger. It frequently feels like a trip to the dentists. It was the time of No Logo. Today is the day of the US Mid Terms. It is always an interesting time to be alive.
Jack Larkin's Purkinje Shift. Charming Pastoral Folk from a teriyaki chicken enthusiast and full time cat daddy. A record from the Fmily Tree of Fleet Foxes and Midlake. But this has a clockwork charm all of its own.
Gwenno Morgan' a leading figure in Wales neoclassical and music scene.' You didn't hear it here first . New album gwereiddiau goes gently into that dark night and takes you with it for a rather blissful forty minute ride
Brooklyn Trans Rage. Iconoclastic confrontational and not a little knowing but highly listenable, disposable and ready for the spotlight in the queue heading back to Lou, Andy, The Dolls. And from there of course back to Oscar.
'Some people should be shot....; is intoned at a certain point. Adrian Borland is namechecked in standard Hipster fashion. Grease it seems is no longer the word. It's spirited and short and sweet in the extreme . Seven songs and twenty minutes. Blink or Blank and you miss it. But it's got Pitchfork's attention and deserves yours
