500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 227 Cornelius - Sensuous

 

Avant Pop 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 45 Kate Bush - The Whole Story

 

I'm spring cleaning. It's time....Kate Bush takes me back to the Seventies and feels like having the doors thrown wide to the meadows of the past, the present and the future all at once. I discovered that a friend from school had died today . It shocked me because he was a brave friend who I knew had experienced terrible difficulties but maintained the joy along with manifesting the pain and what news like this awakens in you is a realisation that you are alive and have a responsibility to live.

 Listening to Kate Bush helps. She's a life force , Like Bowie, Like The Beatles. Like R.E.M. for me specifically. Like the sun coming out. You just know that something good is going to happen. With Kate Bush at core there's essence. The joy of being alive.  

1979 Top 40 - # 8 Rainbow

 

I never got too deeply drawn into heaviness.. But Since You've Been Gone struck a chord. It seemed to be in the Tip Twenty forever. And that seemed to be a good thing. It spoke of adult experience which was the important thing at that age. I had no idea of the specific history of Rainbow. Who Blackmore and Glover were. The smoke on that water. But Graham Bonnet's lungs were clearly remarkable 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,335 Bibi Club

 

Another day. Another Euro. Bibi Club are a Canadian Pop Duo operating in French to a large degree though not exclusively. Latest album Amaro has a fractured intensity that lit up my Mercredi..

Apparently they explore the Liminal Spaces between the here and beyond. It's a response to the passing if lived ones. Letting the days go by. Another recommendation from Starbuck, Darren Jones Meilleure Ami pour It Starts With a Birthstone. Merci Beaucoup Starbuck. Encroyable.

1979 Top 40 - # 9 Dollar

 

Would you like some sugar with your sugar.. Some would say this is a great Pop Record, Such people would also make great Pop Records. Hey I read the NME. I think Magazine and China Crisis wrote great Pop Records.

Genesis

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,432 Genesis - Genesis

 

Genesis called their albums all kind of wonderful things and made all kinds of incredibly inventive, groundbreaking music. Then for their twelfth album in 1983 they played it largely safe. Called the record Genesis. Made a lot of money, Well done Genesis.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 228 Stereolab - Sound Dust

 

When I come across certain artists on my inevitably descending lists by which I justify these daily voyages; The Fall, Nick Cave & his cohorts, Zappa. I just think 'Oh No!' What do I say. When I spot others, Stereolab for example. My response is quite the opposite. 

This is a joy. Stereolab albums are invariably a joy. A process of discovery, imagination and constant departure, The mapping out of a train if thought which invites discourse, fertilisation, harvest and procreation. They're truly modern artists. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 46 The Avalanches - Since I Met You

 

The album that's been on permanent rotation all day. It's my mother's ninety first birthday and I'm also doing a massive spring clean having taught my online classes . This record takes me back . To Katowice, Poland where I first bought it on CD just after it came out.

It's an innovative and celebrated record if course. Given that it's entirely composed of samples/ Oveer 3,500 in all. All f which naturally had to be credited, But there's no need to worry yourself with the painful processes behind that anymore than it pays to think of the creative details of Mirph or Wallace & Grimit when watching them.

It's poetry in motion frankly. A record that can easily be listened to on loop because it's not like Astral Weeks or Rubber Soul in that it's best surrendered to rather than broken down into individual moments.   .  

Song(s) of the Day # 4,334 Alice Costelloe

 

Move on with the year? Well that's certainly the plan. Onto March and Spring and the lengthening days and the Easter season. Today we have precisely that  Move On With The Year the debut album from Alice Costelloe and a veritable peach. Thanks once more to Darren Jones for directing me here.

Reading through the accompanying blurb there seems to be a certain heft and marketing expectation behind the release of the record . It struck me as a very 2026 sounding record. Innocence, awe. Wide eyed millennial wonder. It reminded me of Aldous Harding who will be along before long with her new album on May 8th. In the meantime this will more than do.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,433 Opeth - Ghost Reveries

 

Gargling rocks !

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 229 Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Live Anthology

 

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Live ! Loads of it.

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1979 Top 40 - # 10 Electric Light Orchestra

 

The bane of my life. My name is Bruce. Listen to the refrain. Felt like it was in the charts for months and even when it left the charts it continued for months,. All the dumb and irritating berks at school trailing across from the other end of the playground, 'Don't bring me down Bruuuuuce !!!!'

Song(s) of the Day # 4,334 The Delines

 

'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, 

1979 Top 40 - # 11 Kate Bush - On Stage EP

 

Kate Bush swam against the popular stream in 1979. She was like a salmon heading upstream in the New Wave years. Swimming up that hill. This came out to publicise her  early tour which apparently was something rather extraordinary. Everything about the woman is rather extraordinary/ 

Songs About People # 1,422 Dennis Brown

 

                                                            Heartbreaking

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,434 The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree

 

The sun's descending in Sunday's sky, A nice time to listen to The Sunset Tree. The Mountain Goats always have a lot of soul and heart, So much of life is here as on any good record. It's a record to learn and sing. This essentially has all the nuance and heart and soul of a great American novel or road movie. I wish I could do it justice here because I loved the record as it played. Unfortunately my blog rarely owes me that luxury..

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 288 The Hives - Your New Favourite Band

 

This is 29 minutes long. A sensible length for a Swedish Stooge Revivalist Punk Rock Post Millennial record overseen by Alan McGee. It's pretty wonderful. WHY ME ! Indeed. 

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 47 John Lennon - Shaved Fish

 

I didn't really know who John Lennon was when he was shot in 1980. Paul McCartney was The Beatles I thought. I was a late developer. I've pieced things together over the next 45 years . Now I listen to Shaved Fish and I'm struck by the bravery mostly..

These are bold statements. The things people don't like about Lennon, he doesn't like about himself and he's quite upfront but his failings. You think he's overrated. He's john Lennon. It's brutal perhaps. But he's John Lennin. Who are you? 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,333 Morrissey

                           'I want to move away from those who stare at screens all day.'

I come back from church bearing daffodils, What better moment to listen to the new Morrissey album Make Up Is a Lie. So I fix myself a cup of tea. Take a seat at my desk . And off we go.

He's certainly in fine voice the incorrigible old ham. The album has been written off as self pitying , Come on folks this is Morrissey. What were you expecting ? Altruism? It's only the second track and he's off to Paris to the garret of the poet apparently. 

He seems to have a bee in his bonnet about his right to spout nonsense and be outraged. About the fire at Notre Dame now which he implies is an inflammation that was not accident. Shock ! Horror! I think he might be implying that it might just be something slightly more sinister. 

Is he Still Ill. It seems the jury may still be out !  Where is your punctured bicycle on 'that hillside desolate' prey Stephen Patrick ! Kindly stick to what you know 

He's actually in rude form vocally  but looking for outrage as ever and his is not a flag that I'd choose to align myself behind anymore. Hand In Glove maybe but not this bunch of old cobblers.. What Morrissey lacks is  clearly what he's lacked since 1986. Johnny Marr.

There's an uninspired cover of Roxy's Amazona coming round the bend next . Discerning listeners are referred to the original. This is pallid at best. I skip the guitar histrionics and move on to Headache which promptly gives me one... apart from the line 'with this headache I thee wed!' which makes me laugh. But,. Next !!!

Boulevard takes its time. Morrissey can still pen a good line and knows it. He throws up in an icy bathroom just off said boulevard. Oh please. No, that's no good either !

What Morrissey does, he does better than anyone else. But let's face it he's done it much better than he does it here. 'We have the stars!' Mozza wails. You're welcome to them pal ! We want The Smiths !!!

Four songs left and I'm not flinching. But my hopes aren't high. Kerching, Kerching is negligible stuff about saving the hedgehog. A little boy who only thinks about joy. Oh. It's another vegetarian thing. Is it Meat Is Murder. No I'm afraid it isn't !!!

Lester Bangs. My ears prick up. I love Lester Bangs. But the lyrics aren't up to much. And the tune's a dirge. 'So sad for the universe!' You said it Mozza..

Many Icebergs Below. Morrissey's Down The Ten Bells with his quill. Are we done yet. We must be done. Morrissey is sinking merlots and awaiting Rousseau. This is truly rolling out the barrel so you can scrape it with a runcible spoon !

Make Up Is A Lie brings down the curtain with The Monsters of Pig Alley. It's reasonably poignant. Morrissey has at least saved the best until last. It's the most likeable thing here. Almost elegaic.

But in short this is a pretty dreadful album trading on the man's name and former glories. Morrissey is never a man to be entirely written off. Hard as he tries himself.. He's trying incredibly hard here. I think I should put these daffodils in water. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,435 - Broken Bells - Broken Bells

 

James Mercer plus Danger Bird equals space.

The NME - 1986 Year of the Triffids ? # 11 UB 40 Live

 

'UB40 get a decent live review from Sean O'Hagen who is a journalist of serious heft and authority. 'There's something about UB40 that seys them apart; live in stage before a highly partisan youthfil audience of dreads, baldheads suburban couples , casuals and herbsmen, The warmth and positive feelings that emanate from the group ar enough to melt all cynicism.'

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 48 Siouxsie & The Banshees - Kaleidoscope

 

'                                             'We're looking through your windows.'

I didn't know. We none of us knew what an extraordinary time and place we were born into and experiencing. It only hits me passing the anniversaries and thinking back. Listening to the extraordinary  records that came out during those years  and letting them carry back like virtual persian carpets travelling in space and time back to those days and times . The past is a foreign country as they say. They do differently there. . . 

My family moved down to South West London in Spring of 1975 . We'd come back it Englsnd, to Nottingham three short years earlier, from Rhodesia where I was born. I call it Zimbabwe now because I found I want to leave the conversation whenever I meet someone who refers to use the colonial name.

Nottingham had been idyllic. For me at least. A tree lined primary school pathway lined with trees which I recall in constant blossom. Classes, schoolmates and experiences which I still remember with vivid clarity and rose tinted rhapsodic hue. Roald Dahl, and Glam. Kiddies Parties and first romance. The glow of happy childhood.

This continued in Richmond. The stop at the end of the district line which Virginia Woolf had considered the back of beyond but was actually a forty five minute underground ride from the very centre of London. There were seven of us. 

The evening we arrived in London we walked to a restaurant  in Richmond High Street and splashed out on a Chinese meal to celebrate the opening of a new chapter on our lives. Effectively now we were as good as Cockneys. Extras in a west End rendition of I'm Getting Married In The Morning, Consider Yourself, or Roll Out The Barrel.   

I had a couple of wonderful years of further idyll in Richmond. A walk up Church Road in Richmond. Past the squats and over the ride. Up Mount Ararat and left into Vineyard and the Infant Primary School. The scrum of a playground. Teeming classrooms. 

But in the Autumn if 1977 as Punk was hitting ten miles in to London my idyll  was rudely awakened by Secondary School reality. A bus ride to Petersham and Grey Court. Across the road from an estate which was harsher than nice middle class Richmond Hill. Fifth years with beards and apparent families. A whole new cauldron and a five year experience that was not frankly all to my liking. So I did the sensible thing. And kept my head down.

But now I look back and I'm glad I went to Grey Court. Rather than the train ride into London and Latymer Private School in Hammersmith which some of my classmates and their parents opted for. Partly because in the nostalgic glow fifty years on of the soundtrack we experienced between 1977 and 1982. Pop Music had been great in Britain since 1957. But I'm happy with the house  I was posted in.

The Happy House. Siouxsie & The Banshees..With The Cure the bands that I feel describes the experience of growing up in Suburban London better than any other. Before or indeed since. The childhood games. The rituals . The fear. Of mental homes and all kinds  The guitars..

Most of all The Make Up. The girls in the play ground at Grey Court went for the Sioux approach right across the board from memory. Perhaps they were scared themselves but it didn't come across. It was in itself inspiring and fantastic and  still is fifty years on.

In 1979 John McKay and Kenny Morris walked out on the band in the most dramatic circumstances imaginable and put a huge question mark over their long term plausibility. Bur Sioux, Severin and the management team held the line. Drafted in Robert Smith as an immediate replacement and then brought in two major league replacements in Budgie and John McGeoch.

Kaleidoscope is a holding, transitional  record. Some things work. Some don't. The best things I'd say are the singles Happy House and Christine which glow with nocturnal luminosity fifty five year later. Two of the greatest statements about madness ever to grace the Top Thirty. The rest takes me back to my teenage state. Not I imagine thinking about what was coming next. The state of grace that is 14.  

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 289 St. Vincent - Actor

 

'             It was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor.' David Bowie Five Years

If David Bowie places himself in a tradition it's the Bowie one. Someone who's involved in music because they wish to make an artistic statement above all else. Actor is certainly that, A glacial record that understands the tradition where it wishes to place itself..

1979 Top 40 - # 12 Nick Lowe

 

Nick Lowe, like Edmunds and Costello  seemed grown up when I was a teenager. Qualified rhymed with Bonafide and Lowe appeared on Top of the Pops with a band called Rockpile by his side.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,332 Michael Ian Cummings

 

I was in two minds for today's Song(s) and Album(s) of the day because it's generally the latter these days on It Starts With a Birthstone. Should I share my thoughts on Make Up Is a Lie, The latest chapter in Morrissey's increasingly unhinged and self indulgent musical narrative. He has opinions and he will not be silenced it seems. 

That can wait I decided, for another day. Instead I decided Michael Ian Cummings, another suggestion from the ever reliable Darren Jones. An Art Rock album called Godzilla from the ashes of New York band Skaters. that's much to my liking.

There's a certain sadness here. A sense of life and experience receding in the rear view mirror but something exciting appearing round the next bend. Keep your foot pressed on the pedal. This is rather lovely. We're into the day.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,437 Slayer - Seasons In The Abyss

 

Sounds rather like you'd expect it too,

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 230 Built To Spill - You In Reverse

 

Boise Idaho underdogs put up doughty performance in lane between Sebadoh and Dinosaut Jr,

1979 Top 40 - # 13 The Commodores

Before Lionel became the leading chin of the Eighties he fronted some excellent Commodores tunes across the Seventies.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,331 Landowner

 Landowner. Hollyoak, Massachusetts' finest. At least I imagine so . I'm not an authority on the Hollyoak, Massachusetts scene. But it would certainly be a town going somewhere if it had a finer band that  Landowner., Their current album Assumption is pure joy.

Think Meat Puppets. Or Minutemen. Think the late much mourned Steve Albini. Think any number of smalltown American, nothing to do on a Friday night except hanging round on street corners  with the other rootless Punks

The Associates

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 231 Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City

 

Kele Okereke had a tendency to stare at his navel. When he resisted this Bloc Party could be meaty and compelling. Weekend in the City vacillated between slightly self pitying navel gazing, slightly ludicrous sermonising and engaged, lyrical intensity. . 

1979 Top 40 - # 14 Frantique

 

You heard the ladies ! You don't have to dance like Travolta.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,330 deathcrash

 

deathcrash are a four piece slowcore band from London. Labels such as these seem spurious to me but new album Somersaults reminds me most of all of early Radiohead and the way their early songs could connect through a cultivated sense of disconnect and ennui.

It's a powerful album of skillfully constructed and slightly depressed songs but there's almost a sense that deathcrash are choosing this stance because they enjoy the state and know they are skilled at constructing morose edifices. They certainly are. But 'three years and no heroin'.is a key line. Somersaults is a fine record. but I suspect the next album will be better still. 

1979 Top 40 - # 15 Secret Affair

 

;'Standing in the shadows . Where the in crowd meet.;'

The Mod Revival / Phenomenon of 1979 and 1980 were odd things to et your head around if you were a teenager with little context or understanding of the social significance and atttraction. The records didn't sound particularly great. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,438 Interpol - Our Love To Admire

 

Interpol were rather sombre frankly. But always seemed slightly more career focused and in control of their destinies than Joy Division or The Cure who seemed the obvious inspirations. Somehow they were all heading for a place in the suburbs .

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 232 Adjagas - Adjagas

 

A Norwegian group named for the state between wakefulness and sleep. This is all very calming. In fact a rather triumphant discovery of a whole new kingdom.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,329 Isabel Pine

 

'Isabel ringing in my head?' . Well seeing as you ask, in fact it is.. Isabel Pine's new album Fables to be precise. An album of serenity and calm where the music sounds as the album sleeve suggests it might. Like an early morning slalom through pines of a different kind. 

Pine is a classically trained violinist and artist frim British Columbia.  Fables finds her working on variations of a theme of mindfulness and repose. A fabulous exercise in escape.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 233 The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse

 

Preposterous Rock & Roll mythologising at its best. This is magnificent conceit ! Beach Boys harmonies and Prog ambition for the new millennium. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 49 Long Ryders - Native Sons

 

In my first year at university it was much more common for people to come up to university accommodation with a record player than a television set. We had our heads screwed on in 1985. There was a communal TV set where you could go and catch I Claudius reruns or Citizen Kane if it was showing on one of the terrestrial channels. For the most part you didn't really bother because there was so much else going on.

There was a mature student in our block who had a colour set where you could go and watch a football match. The Home Internationals. The cup Final and such like. But from memory football wasn't a particular priority to us. There were more interesting things. More important things. Like being young,

 I got into an important relationship in my second term with a beautiful Chinese Malaysian girl. She had a Singaporean friend with a colour TV in his room on the ground floor on campus. When he was out he'd let us borrow his room .It was the World Cup in Mexico in the Summer term,. The Hand of God, Mundial. 

Min and I snuggled down  under the duvet and watched games. But we both far more interested in the snuggling than the outcome of the match. People forget. Life makes you forget. When you settle down to the 9 to 5 and start to chip away at your mortgage and the binge watch and the next ninety minutes takes over and somehow stretches out to actually mean more than The Bronte Sisters and Scorsese and Astral Weeks. 

What means more than these things. A legalised war on a field of grass? Not to me it doesn't. I can watch a match of football and enjoy it as much as the next person but essentially these days for me mostly it boils down to jumping up and down when your team scores. .  .

Back fiert tears again. In my home block one of the girls upstairs had a record player. She lent me her copies of  Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos and Long Ryders Native Sons. Both debut albums, both slightly retro tecords  in different ways but entres. Signposts to all kinds of great music . Nuggets, CBGBs, Australian pioneers from Stoneage Romeos a; Buffalo Springsteen, Byrds and Gram from Native Sons.

I saw Long Ryders in my first year. They were supported by That Petrol Emotion who had come from the ashes of The Undertones and seemed a natural broadening of that palate. Both bands seemed like  primer courses. Different modules on a music appreciation degree 

The steps to follow; Get out of the venue get a bus into town. Go to a record shop. Find out where they came from . Form a band or write a book. Listening to Native Sons now is easeful bliss.Let the inner cynic in you go and relax.  It thinks Punk is a great thing. It thinks C & W is a great thing. It thinks the British Invasion was a great thing. It's forty years old and it's a pretty great thing too. Form that band. Write that book.

   

1979 Top 40 - # 16 Madness

 

It's interesting watching this . Where Madness came from. They were from London . Camden Town. I was from London too. Growing up in Richmond and Petersham. Kew, Kingston and Twickenham. St Margarets, Strawberry Hill and Teddington, But I was innocent and protected.

Madness here already sound versed in life and the big city. They knew their stuff. Ska and The Sixties. Punk and Reggae. Old school Music Hall. They kept their edge and never forgot where they came from. At school it just seemed like a bit of fun. A conversation point on Friday morning on the bus. In the playground 'Did you see their video on Top of the Pops? ' But they clearly deserved and deserve a lot more respect than that.. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,328 Buck Meek

 

Buck Meek new album The Mirror.has a strangely retro cover . He's looking over his shoulder, clasping a chainmail fence. It's all strangely Pat Benatar or The Cars. The album itself also seems oddly disorientated. Ynmoored. Perhaps he is. Unmoored from Big Thief who he usually anchors on guitar.

It's a lovely record anyhow. Very 2026 Hippie. Bug Thief are highly Hippie these days. That's why they're greatly loved I imagine. The Mirror. has precious little connection with Benatar and Cars apart from its sleeve.

But it's a fine recird. I'm not sure how the Big Thief surviving trio do it but I'm glad they do. Buck Meek here is Floating In Space. And frankly it suits hum. .   

MC5

 

100 Miles - Mojo Magazine # 15 Miles Davis Quintet

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,439 Boredoms - Vision Creation Sunshine

 

If you're looking for Ambient, Psychedelic Noiserock you may like to start here.

1979 Top 40 - # 17 Cliff Richard

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 234 Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

 

Album title of the day. The album's pretty imposing too, 'Glacial Spaghetti Western.'

Song(s) of the Day # 4,327 Nothing

 

It's Monday . We steam into Spring, What have I got for you. Well?!? Nothing,.A Philadelphia band. Their fifth album  A Short History of Decay. Trust me. Sweet things sometimes come in unprepossessing packages. This is Shoegaze, meets Grunge meets Sufjan Stevens it would seem. And it's frequently lovely in many respects. 

This record drifts into the sombre, desolate places that late Beatles, My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins and Elliott Smith records do, It's a sensational record and covers a lot of ground.  

100 Miles - Mojo Magazine # 14 Herbie Fields Band With Rubberlegs Williams

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,440 Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage

On Bluenote. Released in 1965. A concept of sorts aiming to replicate aquatic passage. I'm not sure I'd realise but certainly plain sailing.