500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 122 Hold Steady - Boys & Girls In America

You know what Hold Steady sound like by now. Springsteen meets Replacement at the five and dime with the Wurlitzer whirling. This one's a bit cheesy and lacking direction for my taste. 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,448 Baby Rose

 

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. 

250 Albums Of Memories - Orange Juice - Rip It Up

 

'                                                   How I wish I was young again...'

I live in a flat with an allbum crammed with hundreds of albums. It's an effort to keep things tidy sometimes but I'm not ready yet to let my records go.They're a part of me after all..  I was delighted to get them back when I shifted them up from the attic in my parents house in Canterbury on my move into my own flat in 2011. I could listen to everything on my television set but I'm strangely reluctant to do so.

I've been working from my flat for a couple of years now and if I have my own way I'll never go to work again. I have no desire to work in an office again or make my way through the streets with the morning traffic, attend meetings or generally deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous boredom, irritation and grief that office life seems to generate. At least as far as my experience of 2008-2023 suggests. 

So I'll be listening to plenty of records on a daily basis it seems and might as well catalogue them here. Play the record and record the memory it triggers. Kicking off like a decent breakfast as every day should with some Orange Juice. Playing Rip It Up send me spinning through time back to Twickenham Station in Autumn 1982. I'd just started Sixth Form College and bought a copy of Smash Hits with Edwyn Collins on the cover to read in the waiting room for my train back to Richmond. Our family home was down a long white tunnel connected to Richmond Station.  

I've never owned this record but saw it in the window of RPM a couple of days ago and it's playing on my record player now. Edwyn has retired from music after a drawn out Farewell Tour last year. My sister a long time OJ devotee since those days went to see him in London. Apparently it was emotional. 

Rip It Up is an elegaic, subtle and poetic album which came out on Polydor Records and performed poorly and received mixed reviews when it was released. Pearls before swine. It swings and swoons. Chugs like The Velvet Underground relocated to the Scottish Highlands then swings its hips like Chic. This is a versatile and bewitching record which shrugs its shoulders at ts absence of commercial recognition. 44 years later

The original Juice that had spearheaded Postcard Records, Glaswegian Indie Pioneers before Indie really existed had disbanded Leaving Collins and David Mclymont the bassist to draft in Malcolm Ross from labelmates Josef K  and Zeke Manyika a Zimbabwean drummer who gave the band another joyous dimension and line of attack..

Rip It Up, the single of course was the band's only genuine hit. Competition was fierce back in those days. Orange Juice feel like big winners forty years or more on. This record is a picnic in the heather.. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,363 Midlake - The Trials Of Von Ocupanther

 

A record that feels comfortable im its skin from a group of men who seem comfortable in their beards. This along with Fleet Foxes seemed to herald a general acceptance that it was almost manadatory to look back. Now almost twenty years on we all seem to look back and hope we won't get lost in the forest and will somehow make it home.. This is an album that seems very clear that this is exactly what we will do.  This is an album of rare but tangible passion. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 123 Clearlake - Lido

 

Blur meet Pixies ennui. In a place where it's always raining and Song of Praise is on in a minute. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 172 Eamon Fogarty

 

I'm listening to Blue Values an album by New Hampshire born  singer songwriter and audio archivists Eamon Fogarty. It's somewhere between Midlake, Beck, Scott Walker and Claud Debussy and is much to my liking 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,447 feeble little horse

 

There can be an almost Mythic quality  to a great American Alternative Album. Dreaming which start in the bedroon and friends parties and dank clubs listening to obscure 4AD and Post Punk records and opens up  on the grids and highways, underground clubs and the open road. 

Pittsburgh trio feeble little horse ride into town brandishing third album bitknot and its a quite marvellous record . Not a million miles from Chicagos' Horsegirl, versed in My Bloody Valentine but with fuel and dreams of its own

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 173 Liz Lawrence - Vespers

 

Liz Lawrence has got the look and the modern sound. The new solemnity. On current album, Vespers she sounds like Phoebe, Aldous and erm Liz Lawrence. There's plenty of atmosphere and ennui. It's a damned good album that's accompanied me through a Stormy Wednesday.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 124 Stereolab - Margarine Eclipse

 

Into the future, into the weekend. Stereolab are streets ahead of most other bands and I could understand completists where it comes to their output.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,364 Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking

 

Unhalfbricking is a record that's grained. With wisdom and joy beyond the years of its players. With a sense of history that most of us never quite accumulate. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,446 Rostam

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 .

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,365 Frank Sinatra - Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely

 

An album I'd buy for the cover alone.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 1 Kid Creole & The Coconuts - Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places

 

It's one of the great joys of having a large record collection. I constantly find myself listening to wondrous albums that I've never picked from the shelf and given a spin. This evening Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places, the album  Kid Creole & The Coconuts released in 1981 before they broke globally gleefully  and particularly in the UK with the release of Tropical Gangsters the following year,

 Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places is a fabulous record. A fresh terrain. A place where integration rhymes with misegenation. You get the sense that The Jets are meeting the Sharks in pitched battle any moment. Half Broadway Musical, half extended conga down Manhattan, Miami, New Orleans, Havana or the exotic desi\tnation of your choosing. 

It's concept and musical travelogue so naturally I pick up the Oddyssey as another possible narrative reference point. Helen of Troy is mentioned in the opening song.It's tight and just right. It got to # 40 in the Swedish Album Charts. Elsewhere it got critical garlands but the Kid and his Coconutsdidn't hit the cash tills until Tropical Gangsters,

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 125 Outkast - Stankonia

 

I've just played Cosmic Slop, Now  Stankonia is on and I might as well be in Manhattan, given how humid it is. I may have this on CD. I don't think I ever played it all the way through. I'm doing so now. It's mesmeric.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,445 The Heavenly Bodes

 

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. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 173 Death Cab For Cutie - I Built You a Tower

 

I Built You a Tower, the eleventh studio from Seattle's Death Cab For Cutie is a sweet and tender record. By contrast with the Modest Mouse alum which confused and repelled me rather, a few days ago I'm finding this amenable and skipping back to the start. It's like an inviting eiderdown you return to rather than doing something more profitable with your day.

Of course you're always resigned to records at this distance into a band's journey being consumed to some degree by grief and resignation and that's the case here. In  this case reconnecting with Emo . Bands like to rediscover their origins and speculate on the nature of their first acts of departure. This is neatly done. The abiding impression of the record is warmth.

The 60 Greatest Elektra Albums # 4 Ed McCurdy, Jack Elliott & Oscar Brand - Bad Men & Heroes

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,366 Black Crowes - Shake You Money Maker

 

This is imcredible authentic. A record for the Dazed And Confused people fifteen years on.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 126 Patti Smith - Trampin'

 

Managing a brand. From 2004. Patti settles into the stride and leads her gang across the prairie. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 174 Sombr

  

'We sit on the fire escape.'

The modern celebrity success story generally seems almost pre-ordained. A birthright. Take Sombr. This week seems very New York on It Starts with a Birthstone for some random reason. I had a conversation about going to New York yesterday with one of my Record Store counter friends who' s turning fifty and expressed his reluctance of going to New York in the current politcal climate even though he's never been and really wanted to . But he's got values. . Putting money in the pocket of a craven oligarch warmonger. I can sympathise but given a cashfall I'd go like a shot. Isn't the mayer supposed to be an actual communist? 

So to Sombr. That's a New York success story for you. sombr, actially. Styilised in lower case. But is he a Nepo Baby? More than likely.  Educated at La Guardia High School. Debut album I Barely Knew Her, released in 2025 but already repackaged this ,and globally punching above its weight with chart positions in top tens everywhere. sombre has already moved to LA and is plotting with his team the next move for global dominance.

Listening to  I Barely Knew Her I was reminded of Disco divas of my youth; Patrick Hernandez, Andy Gibb, Lief Garrett. This is not where sombr and his team are packaging him of course. Indie cred is everything these days and sombr has already posted his takes on Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees and Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. Indie greats from the Nineties. Ancient History ! Further away from us than Pretty Vacant was from Blue Suede Shoes.Lest we forget.

I Barely Knew Her ultimately doesn't walk the walk. The rhymes are bland. It feels programmed.I'm not sure it has staying power.  Ultimately like so much about the world. About money. Hey what changes. 'If I was a rich man.' 'It's a rich man's world' Tomorrow, the new Madonna record possibly. Take another bite of the Apple !

Song(s) of the Day # 4,444 Smirk

Speculative Fiction. Wipe that Smirk off your face Punk.  Wondrous West Coast Dread Art Punk. X, Crime and Wipers, and Gun Club come to mind. This is a blistering entre to my evening. Breathless, claustrophobic and clutching for the divine.  

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 2 Microdisney - The Clock Comes Down The Stairs

 

There are records that you like in your youth but don't fully come to appreciate for decades. This album is one such album for me. When I was in my twenties I think I liked it for the association between taking trains from Teddington into London with my honey. The criss cross of railway tracks on the album cover. Clapham Junction, Vauxhall and London Bridge. A litany of stations that I've long since left behind me. Sadly my honey headed off too. 

Now I'm in awe of the poetic reach and understatement of the record. The echoes of Joyce, Beckett and Behan. Wonder at Cathall Coughlan range and vision. The understatement and rage, clothed in almost MOR trappings. Like the Radio Times; I never knew there was so much in it.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,367 The Gaslight Anthem - The 59 Sound

 

Baby we were born to.... play second support on a Bruce Springstten World Tour.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 175 Dirt Buyer - Dirt Buyer III

 

It's Friday morning and like little Jack Thorner I'm sat in the corner. Alright, hold your horses. I'm not eating my curds and whey. I cant buy these at Sainbury's at Newcastle Central Station where I live. But I've  certainly put in my thumb and pulled out a plum this morning for you. What a good boy am I.

Dirt Buyer's Dirt Buyer III. ticks requisite grunge related boxes of Great American introspection and undolence for those who can't get out of bed and aren't even sure if they're planning to do so. It's a mellow record for duvet days. It strays sometimes to feeling overly sorry for itself but hey, that's all part of the Rock & Roll quilt.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 127 The Webb Brothers - Maroon

 

Part of the gradual transformation of select parts of the world into a Wes Anderson film. This is a nice album but it's not really there to challenge your perceptions quite as much as confirm you in terms of your own taste. Reader, of course I liked it !

Song(s) of the Day # 4,443 Birds Flying Backwards

 

A hertfelt ode to Love. Lovebirds the self released debut  from London sextet Birds Flying Backwards is very much a product of these strange nostalgic times. The band themselves are moustachioed, bearded or flaxen haired look as if they yearn to return to 1972 and pack a picnic basket, pop it into the back of the beetle and head out to the open fields. It's a remarkably unchallenging record. But strangely comforting in that I quite like being taken back in time to when I was seven ! 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 3 Prince - Parade

 

Prince was quite ubiquitous when I went to university for a couple of years. From memory he was part of the furniture. The time when we were in the prime of life and discovering it together. Listening to Parade now there's a furious playfulness about it all.' Fishing in the river of life.'

There are a lot of hit singles on Parade but also a sense that the man himself was moving fast and was already somewhere else. That he was moving on to the next room of the gallery.A new position. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,368 Howlin Wolf - Howlin Wolf

 

There's an incredible essence when it comes to this man.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,442 Dead Pioneers

 

Denver, Colrado's Dear Pioneers exist in the most righteous and uncompromising American Punk renegade traditions and take no prisoners in latest album Wagon Burner . Banded to the ideals of identity and reistance. this accepts no compromise and climbs unapogoletically onto the barricades. Lacking in subtlelty occasionally but not in vigour.  

The 60 Greatest Elektra Albums # 3 Sonny Terry - Folk Blues

 Erm. Pretty much what it says on the tin.

Songs About People # 1,427 Vaclav Havel

 

I was fascinated with the Eastern Bloc from about the age of 14. It led to a lot of reading, fascination with Iron Bloc architecture, literature and film. A formative college trip to the Soviet Union  and then heading off to Czechoslovakia on Graduation. 

Vaclav Havel was installed in the presidency. In total I spent over 10 years in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Latvia/ Incomparable experience. It's a rich and magical part os the world. 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 176 Failure - Location Lost

 

Failure is not endemic or inevitable. Don't believe the hype. Listening to Failure may be a good move. Some records and artists sometimes sound as of they were designed in test tubes rather than  being genuinely creative poetically birthed exercises to me. There's something of this going on here for me. I'm not complaining,  I realise my own ideas of musical perfection and majesty are not shared by everyone.

Take Failure. Los Angeles Failure in case you want the failure pinned down to a specific region. First of all that's a great Rock & Roll name if ever there was one. Where did you get the idea that Rock & Roll was about success. Do you really fancy a peek at Elon Musk's record collection? 

Failure have been round the block a few times. They were originally active between 1990 and 1997 and reactivated in 2014. Up to now they've released seven albums and any number of EPS.

Latest record  Location Lost feels strangely weightless. I was minded of a hot air balloon kicking clear of its moorings and heading towards the heavens Their sound is dense but strangely crystallised and poised. A list of points of influence and interest on their Wikipedia page was instructive and covers a lot of ground; Bowie, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Kate Bush . Doesn't really sound like failure to me. Cool record !.     

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,369 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizzard - I'm In Your Mind Fuzz

 

When  King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizzard were relatively young. Their fifth album and came out in 2013 the year I kicked off with It Starts With a Birthstone. It's errr. A Psycheldelic Australian Krautrock album which like almost evrything else I've heard down the years makes me wonder whther I've neglected the band. This feels like a pellmell dash through the bazaars of Istanbul.with the hounds of hell snapping at your heels.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 128The Shins - Oh Inverted World

 

The Shins make me think of Riga where I lived and worked for four years between 2004 and 2008 and tried to drink the city dry. Well god loves a trier. The Shins were something of a revelation. It was great to realise that not all of the great songs had been written or that emotions were not quite used up just yet.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 4 Gigi - Original Soundtrack

 

As I get older I suspect I get softer and I hope my heart opens, and not just in Spring. After a lifetime of watching musicals with my dear mother, they will always work for me. Always make me think of her and happy afternoons or evenings spent together. So to Gigi, which I've watched with mum on several occasions. In several decades.

Stars of the sort that they don't make any more. Don't call me a nostalgist. Name me modern equivalents that compare with Caron, Jordan and Chevalier. A front line that could have captured the European Cup before it was renamed whatever it's called now. Beaten De Stefano, Puskas, Gento and Didi . Not just that, but outplayed them. Outnumbered or not.

Gigi has a beating, real heart. The Parisians. Our memories. Ennui. Jealousy. Inseecurity. The way that older people think of the young. The constant search for love and repose and most of all holding back the hands of time when we know that's simply not on life's table and never has been. Turn the record over. Refuge is always here. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,441 Sombr

 

'We sit on the fire escape.'

The modern celebrity success story generally seems almost pre-ordained. A birthright. Take Sombr. This week seems very New York on It Starts with a Birthstone for some random reason. I had a conversation about going to New York yesterday with one of my Record Store counter friends who' s turning fifty and expressed his reluctance of going to New York in the current politcal climate even though he's never been and really wanted to . But he's got values. . Putting money in the pocket of a craven oligarch warmonger. I can sympathise but given a cashfall I'd go like a shot. Isn't the mayer supposed to be an actual communist? 

So to Sombr. That's a New York success story for you. sombr, actially. Styilised in lower case. But is he a Nepo Baby? More than likely.  Educated at La Guardia High School. Debut album I Barely Knew Her, released in 2025 but already repackaged this ,and globally punching above its weight with chart positions in top tens everywhere. sombre has already moved to LA and is plotting with his team the next move for global dominance.

Listening to  I Barely Knew Her I was reminded of Disco divas of my youth; Patrick Hernandez, Andy Gibb, Lief Garrett. This is not where sombr and his team are packaging him of course. Indie cred is everything these days and sombr has already posted his takes on Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees and Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. Indie greats from the Nineties. Ancient History ! Further away from us than Pretty Vacant was from Blue Suede Shoes.Lest we forget.

I Barely Knew Her ultimately doesn't walk the walk. The rhymes are bland. It feels programmed.I'm not sure it has staying power.  Ultimately like so much about the world. About money. Hey what changes. 'If I was a rich man.' 'It's a rich man's world' Tomorrow, the new Madonna record possibly. Take another bite of the Apple !

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 5 Wah - Nah Poo - The Art Of Bluff

 

Way back in the mists of time when the world was young, Or at least when I was a teenager. John Peel ruled the evening airwaves on Radio One. He played pretty much what he wanted, quite often at the wrong speed and mumbled and pretetnded to be working class. 

Peel liked everything that came from Liverpool including the football team , (the one that played in red) and favoured bands that came from the city and its environs. Towards the end of the Seventies the cities music scene exploded spectacularly in response to Punk with a whole raft of fabulous bands and personalities. Wah ! led by the irrepressible Pete Wylie were right at the front of the pack.

Wylie was a ludicrous blagger and self publicist but there was plenty going on on Wah!'s records. I bought the band's debut album Nah Poo - The Art Of Bluff a couple of week's ago on Newcastle Quayside market. It's a bristling, fibrous record that's restlessness is compelling even if it lacks immediate coherence. 

But this is actually part of its appeal. What's most striking about is the almost tangible excitement and urgency of the era which it burst forth from. It's incredibly immediate. I look foward to getting to know it better. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,370 Yo La Tengo - Painful

 

By contrast with Modest Mouse, I'm now listening to a Yo La Tengo album from 1993 and I feel like I'm back with my people and the world has relaxed to a pace I feel comfortable with. It's 1993 and I'm listening to bands with lots of Velvet Underground and Television albums in their collection.

Bands familiar with the mean streets of Manhattan who gravitate to the record shops and cafes of Greenwich Village. Who wish they'd been a little bit older than they were so they could have seen Blondie and The Ramones in 1975 at CBGB's who know they'll start getting into Jazz as they grow older. Who are comfortable in their uncomfortable skin. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 131 Modest Mouse- The Moon & Antarctica

 

Every day these days it seems. I wake up, look at my to do list. And there seems to be a Modest Mouse album for me to listen to and attempt to document my impressions of. I realise I'm actually not obliged in any respect. I could stop writing this blog any day I pleased and the world would keep turning but I've clearly formed a habit I'm unwilling to break. And I'm game for a challenge anyhow. So, The Moon & Antarctica.

The record came out in 2000, was the band's third and is 58 minutes long which dates it. The band and record company may have had CDs in mind rather than vinyl which we've since returned to like  resurgent knights to the round table. Films seem to be getting longer nowadays.Albums shorter. This is's a hokey, mishappen and occasionally poigant record. But I find its poignancy slightly offputting.It's not really written with my needs in mind. 

The Moon & Antarctica. sets out its stall as Modest Mouse continued. By drawing the listeners attention to the bands angularity and reluctance to conform or be put in a box. This is not unprecedented. That's what The Rolling Stones did. What Nirvana did. But here the drive is inward rather than outward and frankly awkward.

There aren't conventional verses and choruses. There is rather a lot of self pity I'd say and not enough melody for my liking. Confusion it seems is the modern affliction and you have to at least credit Modern Mouse for being ahead of the curve in that respect.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 177 Mariachi El Bronx -Mariachi El Bronx (IV)

 

The Bronx understand the essence of being in a Rock & Roll band . That it's a license and a liberty but also a  responsibility and a duty to those who are chained to the Nine to Five. What bands like these provide is the opportinity. The idea. That you could be in a hardcore band called the Bronx one part of the evening. Then change into ponchos and loud tops and start fure eating and jugglingand do the full Mariachi thing later in the evening .

Mariachi El Bronx (IV) does exactly what you want it to do. The same thing. The thing that (i) (ii) and (iii) did. The corona and tequila are flowing. The burritos are as hot as the senoritas. The sun us always shining unless its setting, High Chaparal ! Vamos ! And other cultural cliches

Song(s) of the Day # 4,440 Play Time

 

Magic Box an Album by Play Time is pulsing from my TV set this morning. The first Saturday in July. It's a record by a percussive and synth trio based in the Hudson Valley in New York. New York seems to be a theme on It Starts With a Birthstone . 'Keep spreading the news.'

This reminded me of a Folk focused Can. Suicide having chosen Life. It's an elliptical, sinewy album. It speaks in tongues and set me off for the weekend across magical mountain paths.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,371 Beck -Mellow Gold

Beck is a truly extraordinary artist. Of course his thing was feigned. But that was its glory. The best musical artist's work competes with novels, film auteurs and poetry. 

 

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 179 Joe Glass - Snakewards

 

A life on the open waves. Joe Glass Snakewards. Another tasty morsel proferred across the captain's table from Starbuck to Ahab as they gaze out the porthole at the watery swell. The rise and fall. The distant horizon The middle of January. It's surely all plain sailing from here until the flowers begin to sprout and bloomfor Spring.

Joe Glass meanwhile insists it seems that Punk's not dead and  Snakewards. is chick a block with tasty new wave snacks. Don't start that talking I could talk all night! Thanks Darren. Every one's a winner!

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 132 Sunn O))) - White 2

 

I haven't fully signed up for Sunn O))) masked ball. they ask rather a lot from the casual listener. But they can't be faulted for atmosphere!

Song(s) of the Day # 4,439 Mary In The Junkyard

 

It's almost seven in the evening and I'm finally at my desk after a long Friday of work. But this is wheree I feel most alive. A good album on my TV and my fingers tapping away to try to do some kind of justice to what I'm listening to.

London band Mary in the Junkyard are in the basement. Stirring up the cauldron. Mixing up the medicine. Role Model Hermit their debut album is clearly a candidat, a spectral Michael Stipe type on the cover. The music is elusive and sinuous, reminiscent of the likes of Big Thief, Life Without Buildings, Hugo Largo and likeminded wastrels.

Role Model Hermit has legs I'll wager. In order to produce magic you need to cast a spell. Dreaming and poetry never go out of fashion. This is  a wonderful act of arrival. Watch it fly !

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,372 Doves - The Last Broadcast

 

Doves capture something of the deep seated anxiety of the thirty something man. The fear that posiibly he might have missed the bus.

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 180 Isabel Pine - Fables

 

'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.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,438 Chanel Beads

 

The second Song of the Day album in as many days from New York musicians. Start spreading the news, again lads. Sophomore album Your Day Will Come sounds neat in my living room on a Thursday evening.Endorsed by big hitters like Lorde, Rosalia and Billie Eilish. The record is elusive and seductive.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 131 Beyonce - B'Day

 

I lost my energy for this after about twenty minutes. As soon as I get my trampoline installed in my living room I may well come back to it. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 6 The MC5 - Kick Out The Jams

 

I bought this album more than 35 years ago. I'm not sure I've ever listened to the whole thing until now beyond the mythical invocation to the barricades that kicks into Ramblin' Rose and Kick out the Jams which comes next. It strikes me as a record that's probably more owned than listened to.

I'm listening to the whole thing now and I already know that really I prefer second album Back In The USA, where the band saw some kind of sense went for some commercial payback chastened by the reaction to  the full on revolutionary zeal, not to say lack of tunes of Kick Out The Jams. 

This may have been an incredible spectacle. Gestural Rock & Roll .It wasn't much of a gig. It isn't really much of a record. More of a document of incredible and unrepeatable times. It picks up towards the end and strikes out for Sun Ra like inspired freak out. Then it's over and back on the shelf. For a while I imagine.