I've surprised myself by falling hard for American Football's self tutled fourth album over the last couple of days. It's spacey and grandiose. In The Smith and Radiohead's ballpark. Incredibly inventive and slightly remote and withdrawn. The band are pegged as Emo and hail from Urbana, Illinois. It makes sadness feel slightly stately.
Intertextuality. Texts feeding in to other text. A Grand Doesn't Come For Free feeds off The Oddysey, Ulysees, Good Fellas, Eastenders. A track closes . Another one begins. This is how we all live The sun rises. The sun sets. It starts again.
Hip Hop takes different pathways. I confess I sometimes find its narrowness slightly difficult but Shabazz Palaces stand apart from the herd and latest record It's a Style Sport is a pathway to the stars. I listened last thing last night and got lost there. Astral
There are so many ideas here on every track. It's pure ingenuity. bravery and wonder. A spectral journey to return to and incorporate into your day. I felt like I was in a Star Trek episode. The original gang.I sailed through its thirty eight minutes then went back to the top of the slide.
It's July. But frankly it's hotter than July. I've just taught three online classes in a flat where it sometimes felt like I was teaching in an actual tin can and headed into Newcastle to make the most of the day. Dropped in to Reflex and this took my fancy. Green Hills the debut album from Falmouth's The Heavenly Bodes. Now I'm back at my desk listening to it on my headphones and I'm gripped.
Apparently emerging from South Cornwall's Grassroots Psych scene. This is instantly recorgisable to anyone with a certain record collection; Sonics, Cramps 13th Floor Elevators, Yardbirds, Troggs, Allah Las. Add your own suspects. An utterly thrilling ride.
An artist who mkes life rich. Where every album feels like an event. Meeting up with an old friend after a couple of years of down time. Nixon has multitudes.
Well it certainly feels like it. The evenings are drawing in. The sky is darkening. The rain is falling and so are the leaves. Never fear. Because Sigil, the second album from Oakland, California's Sour Widows is here. 'Every crack in the ceiling. Let's another angel in....'
It's pure witchy wonder. There's a swan on the cover, struggling with the snow and trying to rise to the heavens. Sigil documents this constant struggle. The agonising towards epiphany. Throwing Muses provide the guiding pilot 'Light the candle.' 'put a candle in the window.' we're bound for home.
So many album like these come out on a regular basis these days. Albums made by willowy artists in flowing dresses summoning back the golden age of Folk.
Michael Kiwanuka's latest album Fudge is immediately a sunlit meadow and a great way for the weekend to begin. Soul flecked utopian semiments and melodies. I'v never really found a Kiwanuka' album to wallow in.
i'm doing just this as four closes in upon five .. It's a record that sends the message that labour is done and its time to restore .Fudge is staggering mellowness.
Cometh the hour, cometh the sound and the scene. Chicago's TV Buddha's debut album Hallelujah Anyway is unhinged on any number of levels but rather loveable. Garage Nuggets if you're looking for a peg to hang this on. Beach Boys meet 13th Floor Elevators down by the corner. Post Pandemic Pop of the kind that young Chicagoans like National Photo Committee Horsegirl, Sharp Pins are highly conversant in.these days. Urgency, abandon and slightly tone deaf joy. This is loads of fun ! Playing New York next March. Be ahead of the herd.
I find myself coveting albums I never imagined myself coveting. And in vinyl form. The act of ownership is something we couldn't really explain to ourselves or anyone else. I'm long past the point of buying records because the NME tells me to. Or because I feel the need to impress anybody. This just strikes me as very good. Something I had no real realisation of when it came out. I wasn't really interested.
The Hour Of Bewilderbeast seems easier to place within a context now to me than it did when it came out in 1999. Things seemed to be slowing down in the UK after Brit Pop and the great, slightly depressive and mordant slabs of OK Computer, Urban Hymns and Mezzanine.
This was a smalller statement. Homier. A Baby Bird with a stab at the Mercury Prize which it won in 2000.. Something to buy alongside Travis, Belle & Sebastian and Elbow. Now it feels significant and bold and slightly poetic. Damon Gough. An Elliott Smith who would stay the course.
Stories They Don't Teach You At School where should we start. How about Meryl Streek's latest. A one man rant from Dublin. Twelve songs. Thirty eight minutes. Motormouth mindset . This will more than do for Donnerstag.It's not quite clear what the message is but a great time is had by all !
Sometimes only Cribbins will do. A mainstay of many British lives. A reminder of the nice stuff. Listening to this and you're at home, school is over and Jackanory is on.
Kim Gordon's Play Me is a textbook 'how to' guide on growing older on your own terms and thereby staying young. It' came out last week but I'm only just listening to it. A week ahead on Courtney Barnett's latest and a day ahead of the weekend.. I'm rather taken by it.
Mammoth the latest album from Flora Hibberd is rich fare. A playful Poppy and literate record that dances between the raindrops. It's all rather classy and serene.
* Thanks again Darren Jones for the nudge,
Listening to records like these in 2026 genuinely feels like a visitation to a vanished realm .Some of this obscure British Folk stuff which frankly isn't obscure anymore due to the Great Vinyl Collectors Phenoenon of the last decade or so is beyond sensational. Certainly this,
Fairport of course were incredible but you realise if you refine your search that there were actually hundreds of bands like this operating all over Britain and the European heartland at the time. .It feels like it must have been a rather weird and wonderful place. Touched by magic and creative inspiration. .
On The Shore is a staggering record on every level. Its cover alone is breathtaking .Trees second album from 1970 and then they were gone.This is frequently shiver inducing stuff. The band is muscular and brave. You get the sense that a spell is in the process of being cast.
Bob Dylan started the new millenium with Love & Theft. He sounded like Ezekiel after having over indulged on the communal punch. Plenty of wisdom to be gleaned here mind.
Bevis Frond have become an Indie standby over the last few decades. Something to check your watch by. A speaking clock with lilting power chords and wistfulness Latest album Horrorful Heights which is Nick Faloman and pals 30th or so and counting is more of the same.and no one is likely to complain because he's damned good. Neil Young if he'd hailed from Walthamstow not Winnipeg and been born a bit later.
Understanding ourselves and the reasons we do the things that we do. The great sturggle and journey of life. Never mind understanding others. We apply modern labels like 'Dopamine' or 'Boundaries' to help us assert control of our thoughts and environment but nothing really changes I suspect. The road we're is the same. Going back to the dawn of time.
I'm at a desk and preparing to start work.. I'm listening to Fontaines D.C.'s latest album Dopamine Chamber.. I've been listenining to it for days and I suspect I'm going t continue doing so. Much anticipated as every record by this band is now. It has plenty of Rock & Roll precedents. When I was sevnteen I was listening to Echo & The Bunnymen, The Doors and Joy Division. If I were seventeen now I woul be listening to Fontaines D.C. They have all the invitation promise and mystery of youth.
It's a fine record and will shift units. There is also top ollar resting on the record though the times have changed. They'ree rolling forward. They have momentum. What's great about Fontaines is that they continue to push the boat out and releaase records that make you want to read interviews to discover what they're listenining to and reading, where they're coming from. Where they're heading next.
Sterolab, Broadcast and Tortoie toured together in 1996. Of course I wasn't there. But perhaps I will be. In anothe life. I have a few Stereolab records. But their fabulous packaging process encourages you to rob a bank and become a completist.
With time Broadcast's albums sound more and more significant statements. Swimming against the tide of time..Static Attack .
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 though slightly unholy mix sense of disconnect, dread 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.
I fell in love last night. With Angele's Instinct. Big in Belgium, toasted in The Guardian and appreciated by It Starts With a Birthstone. It's Angele Van Laeken's third album and she switches between French and English on whim looking to break to a global market. I'm a sucker for big emotion and Instinct is just drenched in it. This record plays you like a harp.
The variety and quality of great albums I'm coming upon this year is gathering momentum. Rostam Batmanglij's American Stories is an elliptical record with plenty of the sparkle which its author contributed to Vampire Weekend before his departure and plenty to say to the confused, embattled age we all live in.
It's a warm and mysterious record that cherry picks from the Great American Songbook and draws from the World that America is currently plundering and in some quarters attempting to shut itself away from though of coursee it can't . Records like this may not provide all the answers but they direct you towards the light and a life spent on golden mountain pathways
This feels like a listening to reading from the Old Testament if that's your bag. And why shouldn't it be ! the sage statement. Sometimes its worthwhile listening to the seers. The sages. The ones who come down from the mountains carrying tablets of stone.' Walked out of the desert. Been a long time since Rock & Roll...; ? It's even longer now. But nothing in the scheme of things.
The Avalanches remind me of being in Katowice, Poland a quarter of a century ago.. Since I Left You, a genuinely significant and innovative album that has become commonplace since. Twenty five years on, I'm still trying to write shopping lists on my smartphone but here am I listening to the Avalanches fourth album No Bad Memories on my laptop. These are slow Avalanches but their albums are certainly worth waiting for worth waiting for. I love it.
It's a record that foregrounds technology. There are a floppy disc and an I Phone classic hand in hand on the album sleeve. All our yesterdays ! The album itself features appearances from the likes of Karen O, Carly Simon and Mike Patton. According to the press release it's about how 'advertising and brand name technology wraps itself around our memories.' . Gulp! It's fun and might take you back if that's what you want.
There's something implicitly nostalgic about the album. But comforting regardless of the deeper intent and message. It revisits childhood jingles and through them reimagines emotions It's inherntly positive and upbeat .Feelgood. Onwards towards the summit !
In another lifetime Wilco would have been the band for me I find I can choose pretty much any of their albums. Grab a mug of tea and a slice of cake and just let the record spin. I've known bad tempered people who have been to see Wilco and been unhappy that Jeff Tweedy was rather bad tempered during the concert. This strikes me as slightly rich! The man can do what he wants as far as I'm concerned.
A Ghost Is Born is instilled with holiness and grace.Tweedy takes over the lead guitarists role here as encouraged by Jim O'Rourke the album producer. You can hear the Television in the mix.But there's plenty else besides. I like listening to music by people I sense appreciate poetry
I've had an emotionally bisy day. Sometimes circumstance dies this to you and you deal with it as best as you can. Still it's early evening now, I've put the day to sleep and I'm listening to The Loft's second album Badges as evening's fading light beckons.
The Loft are an interesting story in themselves. They reformed a couple of years ago after splittung in 1985 under the most dtamatic circumstances imaginable. They modus operandi us simple in essence. Twin guitars. The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Television late middle age. Reflected wryly on the vicissitudes of live. The curveballs fate throws ys.
It's just short of half an hour of Glory and Beginning to See The Light. A few miles high on cruise control. It stays true to its script. Doesn't fuff a line or miss a beat. Blue Peter badges all round
I kind of dig Arab Strap. They come from Falkirk .They're drawn to the darkness. The bleak. The disturbing and uncanny. .They drag me relentlessly back to te Nineties . The vibes and moment of Trainspotting. But they have a voice that endures. Latest album Half-Told Tales (their ninth I think) sticks to the script . It's a minimal, relentless, pulsating record which will make few converts but appeal to admirers.
Grand Prix was the moment when Teenage Fanclub proved themselves. And ensured they were here for the duration. I played this so many times for so many years on CD. The CD years !!!It makes me feel slightly forlorn for some reason. I may not listen to my CDs much ever again. I suspect I might need Grand Prix on vinyl. It sounds like a vinyl record in the same way as Revolver, Younger Than Yesterday and #1 Record do.
There are plenty of bands with pairs of sonwriters. Go Betweens, XTC, Husker Du. Teenage Fanclub likeThe Beatles have three. There's something about the way Blake, Love and McGinley dovetail on Grand Prix. The way the production, sequencing and sheer quality fall into place. Pole position to chequered flag.
'Straight off the door to the factory door...I was looking for something to do.'
Teenage Fanclub are a wheel that just keeps turning. If you buy into what they're doing and have done you'll buy into this. I ido and I do. They're old school in some ways. Do Not Dare To Dream sounds like a record that might have come out in 1972. That's not a slur on any level. It's intended as high praise.
Steff Chura has a good pedigree. She's from Detroit, Michigan.Tight band .Neat formula. Three or four minute New New Wave songs that hark back to the sharpest parts of previous decades. Chrissie Hynde, Liz Phair. Steff Chura.
She first made a record because a good friend died and she decided she needed to do so. This strikes me as a good basis for decision making, She's on Saddle Creek Records which also seems a fine idea. Dancing Alone On The Concrete is her third album and her first since 2019.
She exhibits control of the form and how she wants to project it on all of her nine innings here.She has the Art and the Smarts. Peter Buck and Mike Mills contribute and everything shines. Songs of the street. Songs of how broken hearts have a remarkable knack of healing.
Cat Power to me feels like an artist who understands the times she lives in. The transition between Rock & Roll as a living process and road and Rock & Roll as a curation with a shared awareness of where this all comes from. A museum piece with matching his and her cocoa mugs and egg cups and slippers and Jack Daniels nightcups.
This is not intended as a shot across the bow by any means. The Greatest is pretty... err great. It has a measured sense of time, pace and place. It also has great taste. But you can't actually fault that iin itself n a record I'd suggest.
There's an incredible melancholy to almost everything about The Mamas & The Papas . Chreck out their Wikipedia Page. That band was not a bunch of happy campers. But the records are woven gold. They're something that everybody needs.
Deliver was clearly thrown together. The band didn't have a Sgt.Pepper in them in 1967. But they did curate The Monterrey Festival to me a happier idea than Woodstock. Here you get their take on My Girl and it sounds like chiming bells. Creeque Alley. every band worth its salt should write thei memoirs in song. Nothing feels out of place.
Boards of Canada invariably supply the 'headspace'.. This is their third album and came out in 2005. It features more organic musical instruments and slightly more conventional song structures than they're usually associated with but still is heavy on the 'whirl'. There's a more explicit connection with the traditions of British Pastoral Folk.Plenty of crypticism for those seeking clues and conspiracies but also space.
I like music which takes risks. Baby Rose's third album Yearnalism will do me for today. It's cimematic and soulful and aches. Reminds me of Nina Simone one moment, and having a broken heart the next, It's a beautiful, sensual record that reaches for the stars as all good records should .and makes you feel you're wishing on one.
A John Cooper Clark eulogy to this record in Mojo Brought me here now. It's a glorious historical document. 'The state of the Doo Wop art.' Lou knew it John Copper knows it. Dion DeMucci's first performance with the Belmonts for twelve years.
There's something about the whole record. It feels like a forgotten memory, A whole world of innocence opening up before you on the first day os Spring. A golden meadow. An unknown memory. Those of us who missed the initial years of Rock & Roll and what that must have felt like, can listen to this and wonder.
As I grow older I find myself more open to the posibilities of Noise unadorned by lyrical concerns. It's it a good way to calm myself before I slip into darkness and easeful sleep.
But it can also prepare you for the coming day. I'm listening now as the sun rises to Andrew Chalk's Mystical Obscurant. Chalk is base din Hull and has been active musically since the mid - Eighties. It's clearly an act of accumulation. Of bearing witness.
Keeping an eye on the tiller. The shoulder to the plough. A hand on the wheel. Choose your own synonym or metaphor . Head towards the distant horizon. Towards the sun. Perhaps there are things behind it. Mystical Obscurant is powerful trance for Thursday in October as the light gathers and collects.
