'Free to Me...'
Into the darkness....
Friday, September 18, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 111 Twilark - Never Learned The Tide
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.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,514 Beck
'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 !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 57 The XX - The XX
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.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 58 Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
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.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 112 William Matheny - Material Witness
'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.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,513 Crying, Laughing
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.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 113 Blimps
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 ,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,512 The Tubs
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.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 59 Muse - Absolution
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 !!!!
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 114 Soda Gumball - Super Honey Teaspoon !
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 !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 60 Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World
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,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,511 Hollow Hand
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 !
Monday, September 14, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 115 Dagwood - So What
New Haven, CT band with Heart & Soul and psychedelic space.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 61 Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
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,
and a feel for the future.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,510 The Guest List
Rising in the face of The New Fascism ! Into the New Week . Never mind about the front page. Look to music. British Indie Rock & Roll seems back in fashion in late 2026. And not before time. Hot on the heels of the Westside Cowboy record comes fellow Mancunians The Guest List's debut album Something Real. And it's a record buzzing with fresh, intense and familiar joys. And no little poetry.
It's been a long time since Made In Stone, The Drugs Don't Work and There She Goes but their spirit and vigour are here in abundance as is the energy and essence of so many great British guitar bands, and records of previous decades. The soul and the love of books and life and youth despite the inevitable rain which is a major player here. Never mind the darkness as we hurtle towards Christmas.
This is indeed something real and The Guest List can be very proud of what they've done and are doing, This is an articulate and beautiful and moving record which ticks with clockwork precision and will endure.
Sunday, September 13, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 116 MONO - Snowdrop
Post Rock Music that functions essentially as classic or official sountracks do.A very beautiful record.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 62 Rufus Wainwright - Poses
'One way is Rome. The other way is Meeca. On either side. On either side of our motor bike...'
I have a good friend who rails against Rufus Wainwright at every opportunity. Says he cannot hold a note and is a talentless flibertigibbet who should not be allowed within a mile of a stage.
What does he know dear readers. I think Rufus is fab. Possibly an angel in flight. Poses is triff !!!
Song(s) of the Day # 4,509 Formal Sppeedwear
Stoke On Trent's finest if that's what you were seeking, the oddly named Formal Sppeedwear take Post Punk around the block on debut album Punch Card and do the jerky presposterous affected dance that is the odd privelidge of youth. This on the surface may seem a slightly formulaic record. But it's well worth perservering with
Saturday, September 12, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 116 Ian Prowse - No Names
Ian Prowse is an old school singer songwriter of the Old School. The kind of guitar toting good humoured storytelling, Faces, Costello, Squeeze. that seems to have gone out of fashion. No Names is a timely reminder.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 63 The Delgados - The Great Eastern
The Delgados are regularly a safe place for me.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,508 Asher White
'There goes a rolling rise. There goes a dull afternoon.....' So opens Love Aggregates, the latest album from Evanston, Illinois cultural and musical phenomenon Asher White . Asher's prolific to say the least and has been releasing music since she was 14.
Love Aggregates, is consistently versatile, lilting and easy on the ear. Occasionally chintzy but with a refined Pop sensibility Imagination in flight. 'We're chasing every pigeon that we see.'
Friday, September 11, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 117 IAN SWEET - Shiverstruck
IAN Sweet continues to make the most fascinating, enigmatic reords on any block. A dollop of Jobriath. A twist of Sufjan. But brave, original and frequently deeply poignant. A match struck in the dark....
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 64 Burial - Untrue
I'm an open minded fello. But the prospect of listening to an album called Untrue by a band called Burial didn't feel me with particular tjoy. I stepped up to the plate. It initially surprised me. It didn't sound like I expected it to. My heart didn't fill with joy.. Boredom really. After seven minutes, I put on something else.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,507 This Is Lorelei
A Friday Morning and a sublime record to greet it. The Singer In My Band the third album from This Is Lorelei from Nate Amos of Water From Your Eyes. It's old school, guitar driven wonder.The great American songbook.'
This is firmly in a tradition, and it's not just an American one. Neil Finn, Jeff Tweedy. Andy Partridge, Roger McGuinn, Alex Chilton. Jangling literary and Folk wonder. But this feels fresh, flowing and pure. The good stuff.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,319 The Beatles - Let It Be ... Naked
Always one of the uneasy listens in The Beatles catalogue. Because you can sense that they are coming apart.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 65 The Avalanches - Since I Left You
A repost for the last time I listened to this:
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. Over 3,500 in all. Allo 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 Morph or Wallace & Gromit 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.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 118 Olivia Rodrigo
I make no great claims for this blog as an act of cultural commentary and significance. It's just a way of marking the days. Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl in love is an album that's making a global splash and see,s like a pretty likeable Pop Record with vegue pretences of cultural edginess.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,506 Luluc
'It's just gonna be carnage....' 'I wasn't prepared for the intense outpouring of emotion...'
The new Oasis film is in cinemas near you now. Here are two lines from its trailer. One from each of the Gallagher Twins. They're clearly 'living the dream.' Well they have been for as long as I can remember. You could go and watch it. Or you could give Luluc's sixth album Sweet Thief a listen instead.
To my ears this is a preferable option. Sweet Thief is the easiest uneasy listening experience on the block. Soft and gentle with dark interiors and infinite depths. Nico and Simon & Garfunkel are listed on the Spotify bio and that generally works for me . This at the moment is my place of eternal stillness. The weekend beckons !
' Dopamine slot machine. Stole my baby.....' Luluc Dopamine Slot Machine,
'It's Ok to be different. It's OK to want to get free...' Luluc. Wanna Get Free
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 119 Real Numbers - Was It Always This Way
Mineapolis Jingle Jangle. Anglophile Indie that makes June Brides its Polar Star..
Song(s) of the Day # 4,505 The Womack Sisters
The Womack Sisters eponymous album hits the spot. It's not innovative so much as a confirmation. There's not a sequence or note out of place . It's state of the art Expressway To Your Soul !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 66 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
Queens of the Stoneage were a Rock & Roll franchise very much in tune with the age of Tarantino, Wes Anderson and The Coen Brothers with a very refined taste and sense of history and where they wanted to fit within it,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,504 Off Contact
Sioux Falls, South Dakota's finest's latest album Can You, (their third by my reckoning), draws an interesting line in the sand.
There's something quite special here. A sense of genuine engagement. Fervent, questing insurrectionary quality of Jane's Addiction.The Doors, Big Thief and Protomartyr . The way that only an American band at their best can sound and Off Contact sound like they're in line and urgent for their turn. .
I really believe that life matters and it's a test. I get the sense of that in good records and I get it here. Can You has a febrile, insolent quality. Ones to watch.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 67 Eminem - The Eminem Show
Eminem happened during my cd years. I bought a couple of cds but didn't listen to them much. It doesn't tell my story.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,321 Agalloch - The Mantle
Exreme metal band out of Portland Oregon. I wondered how long I would last. It started promisingly with portentious major chords. The first track passed without vocals. I was a bit wary though. The next track was fifteen minutes long and called In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion . I rode The Spotify advert break. We sailed into The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion . I suspected it was by Styx. The first vocals came in. I was minded of Gollum. I ejected.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 120 Ultra Lights - Pleasure's All Yours
I noticed recently that these days I'm generally listening to young bands from Idaho that sound quite a bit like Pavement. There are worse things to do as you make your way into your sixties. As far as I know it's not an indictable offence. Though you can't be sure of anything these days.
Ultra Lights are the next best thing. They hail from Atlanta, Georgia and sound not unlike Kiwi Jr. Montreal's very own nephews of Pavement whose latest album Blowin' Up I eulogised on Wednesday.
Ultra Lights are definitely too cool for school and cast their net slightly wider. To err Parquet Courts, Teenage Fanclub , The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and err Pavement on debut Pleasure's All Yours.as with Kiwi Jr' they keep it simple, avoid complications, are catchier than the Plague and have more hooks than Captain Hook. This seems to be a feature of this err Modern Age.
They're firing aces and tying laces for thirty minutes here. It's a formula sure. But pretty much Formula One, Certainly on the podium come the chequered flag. . Another near bullseye from Darren Jones, best friend and first mate of this blog. Many thanks Starbuck.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,503 Reds.Pinks & Blues
Red. Pinks & Blues are one of those bands that you know what their album sounds like before you've heard it. That is precisely their charm and appeal. Or perhaps if you weren't inclined why you wouldn't touch their records with a long bargepole.
I'm in the former rather than the latter category. I listened to their latest record Acknowledge Kindness last night. it's a sound basic principle and the songs adhere to its principles. The songs unroll like a summer afternoon doing nothing in particular in grassy sunlit meadows. Being seeventeen forever, at least at heart There's something effortless about the atmosphere inetrwoven here. It's like staying seventeen forever.
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