So two True Blue's on here. It was a basic expectation of Madonna album that it was jam packed with hit singles gold. That something was playing from a radio playing you at every moment, That was the case with True Blue This one took you straight to the sun.
When I graduated in 1990 I got my first teaching job in Czechoslovakia on the Hungarian border in a town called Komarno..Komarom on the other side of the bridge over the Danube in Hungary .I think the division was a product of the Treaty of Triannon. There wasn't much to do in Komarno of an evening. I used to wander down to the Europa Hotel sometimes for supper. It was on the corner of the high street on the edge of the bridge.
It was a grim old place in many ways in those days. With a cigarette kiosk in the lobby. There was a lady with blue hair and gold teeth behind the kiosk selling cigarettes which made my teeth brown. . I would go in and sit in the retaurant which was pure Third Man. And smoke them
Unside there was a cafe prowled by Gypsy spivs with wallets full of Czech crowns. Plunder from dealings on the Black Market which was rife in those immediate Post Soviet days, A cafe and a grand ballroom cum restaurant area, A splendid house band made up of gypsy musicians who would come to tour tables and arch their heads and bow down to your table sawing their violins at your plate while you made your way through your evening meal.
Chicken and chips a brothy stew. A bottle of beer. A cigarette at your table once the plates were cleared surrounded by the music of dream and myth. It feels like a dream now frankly thirty five years on. Listening to Beirut always take me back to that Post Communism year in Komarno and my expeditions to the Hotel Europa . There's both jubilation and memory in what Beirut do. They're a rare band. They tell us why we travel. To learn and give witness. Collective Consciousness.
Jo Passed is a Canadian musician based in Toronto and Vancouver who has just returned after extended hiatus with a new album Away and Darren Jones (best friend of this blog) has directed me its way. Thanks once more Darren !.
It's a record that's full of deft chord changes and weird, inviting atmospheres..Jo Passed - Away. Geddit !?!
What drives somebody to get onstage and try to make a group of strangers laugh. I was stull no wiser once I'd read the interview. Henry is funny,honest, genuine and likeable .Richard Prior is his favourite comic. He had just come out of ITT which was a pretty awful attempt to mix light tabloid sexism and humour which was prevalent in the Eighties . He's moving as are many of his contemporaries towards non sexist non racist comedy,as we head into the mid Eighties.
What's great is that The NME devotes so much coverage thaat is way beyond the band playing ar toyr local venue on a Wednesday evening. It has a mission to entertain but also educate and inform that frankly is unmatched and missed now. At least by me.
The Housemartins played my university Lower Common Room in my first year there. I didn't go. There was too much to choose from and I couldn't see it all. A shame because they were a wonderful band and they got the times right, The tunes were great and the message consistent. The Thatcherite tide was coming in good and proper and would take much with it despite resistance.
What Housemartins advocated was resistance from those who kept money in jars to those who owmed oil tankers. Nothing changes. They still say the right things forty years on. There's genuine soul and it hails from Hull.
Porland Oregon's Blackwater Holylight's Not Here Not Gone is a dark album straining upwards to the light, Like a distant young generational relative of Soundgarden's Superunknown or Amin Duul II's Yeti with dark angels harmonising at the mic to the rafters.
This is a dark mass but one that's drenched in melody . It draws on a heavy legacy Sabbath, Zep and Purple to to pleasingly light effect. Blackwater Holylight are coming to Newcastle in May and I'm tempted to book a pew in the congregation.Not Here Not Gone grows on me like moss on a rock.
I'd like to write a book about important people in my life and how I happened to meet them. The moment of meeting can be a revealing one I'd say in many respects. . I'd quite like to write a lot of books really but it seems I'm embarked on this blog instead and I'll make do with that. This anyway is how I met James.
I met James in 1985. He lived in the room opposite me at the halls of residence where we both housed in our first year.at university halls of residence. Neither of us were very hard working . We both came from protective middle class stock. Both knew it. And relished the fact that we probably didn't have to struggle much in life. So why develop a chip on your shoulder of claas driven ngst. Why not endeavour to live instead. That's what we've both proceeded to do.
My abiding memory of the moment we met was that we were both in the communal kitchen one afterniin and James was grinning relentlessy from ear to ear. I've felt looking back at the Trotrskyite line that his companion Ben who roomed in the room next door to James and who I was meeting for the first time too was feeding me. As if he were fishing for political souls and he'd cast his hook deep into the briny and I'd swallowed his line hook line and sinker. Like some gratefil guppy. Closed my gills sloppily and ardently round his bait and find myself being reeled in swung promptly on deck and having my fishy brain promptly bashed about the planking while I thrashed my sorry last. Ben cheers was never sctually that naive,
Ben's hardline barricade spiel was complete guff I've since realised. OK we were all people with political ideals which I'd stand by and stull hold as I know James still does, But not much excuses the Trotskyite line , Particularly when you;re all pretty privelidged which we were. . . That's permanent revolution whether you like it or not whuch means little time for Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. ouzo. taramasala and all that. Doctor Martens and living on Hampstead Hill which it transpired Ben had a great appetite for too,.Middle class trappings. Revolutionary reading and preaching matter,
I knew what I liked. Collarless shorts uncense sticks. R.E.M , Penguin Paperbacks and Marxist iconography. A bust of Lenin which I'd brought back from Moscow with me from a college trip a couple of years earlier from Andropov's Soviet Union and Ben eventually asked me to give to him as he was clearly a better socialist than me. I demurred and still have the bust of Laughing Len in a sharp suit, sharp tie and shirt in a hollow silver cast in front of me at my desk as I write, I'm not really a Bolshevik either. Just a poseur, let's be frank,
James meanwhile it transpired liked sleeping.James Brown and sloanes. Probably in that order .He was quite right to do so . He;s done alright for humself since . Well ditch the Sloanes. All you really need is Jimmy B.. So here he is....
Simon & Garfunkel albums are incredibly resonant, sturdy things. They take you through all the passages of your life. Memories. Back to a beloved sister who loved them forty years back. Her illness and premature early death. Through love affairs. To a mother thinking her husband might be dying one Christmas after over sixty years and wanting simething calming to listen to in the living room in between bouts. Those are just my memories. What are yours? .
Back to The Graduate. One of the finest films I kniw. A film that says almost everything like the best cultire should. And back to the records. All of thse songs are Dangling Conversations. Uncompleted kisses. They'll still be here when the reat of us are not. They're in their time and place. Listen to A Simple Desultory Phillipic . But they transcend them with emotions that transcend the context of time effortlessly amd become the eternal. Listen to almist anything else. Like a fleet footed inside left, darting into space.Paul Simon on the sleevenotes it's written us planning to write a book.
Magellan is a term reated to AI data analytics. I won't go into that as here seems neither the time or the place. It was previously most readily a surname used in application with Francesco Magellan the Portuguese maritime explorer famously renowned for hs journeys ir duscveries,
Alternatively there's Swing Lo Magellan a rather tirsome geek fuelled album by Dirty Projectors/ Geeky and ridiculously prog inclined, Two tracks in it started to annoy me intensely and I had to take it off immediately !
'When I get to the bottom I'll go back to the top of the slide . When I stop and I turn and I'll see you again....'. The Beatles Helter Skelter
Such is the nature of life. We awaken. The sun goes up. We start another day. So with me. I finished a rundown yeaterday in 1972 at 6 in shorts in Zimbabwe. I wake and start again at the top of anither slide. Into another chart. It's 1979 and the 30th September. My 14th birthday, It's a Sunday. So my family are probably off to church.Into Richmond and off to Duke Street near the green. I dutifully tag along.
The Police are Number One and eventually we'll get to Message In A Bottle. Philosophy in a bottle. But in the meantime we'll start at the bottom of the Top 4p. When You're in Love with a Beautiful woman its hard apparently. Especially if you've got a dodgy eye patch, a worse for weat cowboy hat and you're only role is to grab a pair of maracas and grin inanely at the camera.. .
Like The Radiohead who decide they'd prefer to stay underground. Formed in 2014 in the environs of Reading EXPO is their fourth album which by any standards is slow going but they've been active on other projects in the meantime.
EXPO is slightly more interiorised in tone than 2023's Compact Trauma which still has my ears ringing three years after its release.. But it's a fascinating record on its own terms. Rhythmic and subtle. Easing me into Saturday's tributary. Flowing on to the ocean.
I find Ulrika Spacek comforting. they're like the mechanism of a precisely governed wrist watch. The tick tock mechanisms never missing a thing.
Emil Svanangen '.a kind of synth pop Bon Iver'. Judging by Loney Now an enchanting thing tto be. This is a wonderful album heralding in Friday evening and the reason again why I write this blog.
January in Newcastle has finally succumbed to an equally unpromising February whuch if today is anything to judge by is going to be highly demanding. Spiritually. No signs as yet of Spring. So Sophie Bridgers Stranger In The Alps has been my go to.record all week . I wonder if she actually went out to look at the Alps on her holiday on Swirzerland or Austria.. Frankly I suspect she stayed in and moped in the ski lodge, Nick Drake without the walk in the woods.
Depresesed teenage years drift into depressed twenties. Settle down towatds depressed thirties and start a family and bring some depressed offspring onto the planet. This stuff has been gettimg more introspective and mopey since the turn of the millennium. Travis wondered in 1996 Why it always rained on them. 25 year on we're not alone . We await. the deluge.
It's a relentlessly cheerless record but quietly comforting at the same time with little chance of respite or a break in the clouds pn either side. Like Edward Munch on mogadon. But introspection has always been a part of the human condition and this has always been an album that's on relatively frequent rotation on my record player. Along with Belle & Sebastian, Radiohead, Nirvana, Joy Division, Magazine, Smiths, Bowe (whose mentioned early here, another reason to be sad. A long list is made) . Dylan, Leonard Cohen Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles too, Once they decided they wanted to do more than hold your hand and started wondering where all lonely people came from and why that girl made Lennon crawl off and sleep in the bath..
The depressed state of white Rock & Roll,'Jesus Christ I'm so blue all the time.' On and on Sophie drones but somehow it's all rather like being under a warm blanket..All this relentless post millennia drifting into Z Gebration atrophy I love this record despite myself, Meanwhile Sophie and pal are staying in at The Chelsea Hotel.You can't help wondering what Sid and Nancy might wonder about the fate of The Ghost of Rock & Roll. It's under the blanket Sid.
What is the Sound of one Hand Clapping? Your guess is as good as mine. Never mind that; The Sound of Trying? Give up? Well it's the new album by Sotto Voce the alter ego of Brooklyn's Ryan Gabos.
I've been listening to this on / off for a week now and it's compelling. Trying in the best sense of the word. Engaged rather than annoying. Bringing something to the table. Low fi sinew..
You What ? The essential quality of the 21st Century musically at least seems to be that it has got obscure. It's got either very obvious or tyrned in on itself and become a trife elitist, But you don't have to embrace the elitism . You can if you prefer immerse yourself in the arcane.
Here is an album where you can do exactly that.. Apparently 'a move away from heavy drone towards spaghetti drone. Very listenable for all that.Rather like a summons to the deep sleep state.
A bit of wistfulness and indie guitar as I make my way to half ten and a virtual date with Dussledorf Insurance Types. Youmi Zouma's No Love Lost To Kindness ticks the requisite boxes. It sounds like Barney Rubble out of New Order on guitar.. Out of Christchutch, New Zealand and with a few albums under their belt. Due to tour Europe in March. This seems to offer a good night out.
'Whether Morrissey is questing romantic or bruised archangel is something I leave to your own musing. I prefer to hear the work of J.Marr as the true spirit of the Smiths. Hand In Glove to these ears their one true masterpiece, could be about legwarmers and stirrup pimps for all the difference it makes -with that crimson flush of guitar and rhythm any words would do... sounds like an acid song,' Richard Cook
Geologist's Can I Get Another Packet of Camel Lights is another Animal Collective related release in case you were missing your latest drag on Animal Collective related product in addition to fancyong a drag on a Camel Light or other nicotine related merchandise.
It's a fantastic avant gard experience. It's almost a raga rock album and there aren't nearly enough of those. There's a fair but of drone and some livelier abrasion related interludes.This may not appeal to everyone but I can certainly buy in to what's going on here.
I first heard this remarkable record shortly after it came out in the late nineties un my sister's upstairs flat above the Maid Of Honour Tearooms a short walk from Kew Green. I had never heard of Elliott Smith. I suspect we were both rather depressed . We were going through difficult periods of our lives, Depression is part of the life condition and I suspect we are all prone to it. Even if we don't admit it. I'm always wary when people tell me they are never depressed, I suspect they have something to hide.
As soon as the music started in the dim light of my sister's bedsit I had a moment of recognition that this was something I needed. My sisrer has similar musical taste to mine.This us something that has happened to me before and since; Nick Drake, Gram, Courtney Barnett. I recognised places it came from. Beatles. Big Star.
But also a place inside that people who like music like this recognise. A way with wirds. A way with melody. A sensitivity. A poetry..I don't think of this as sad music despite what happened to Elliott Smith a few years later. When it did this was painful to people who loved his music. Oh he meant it ! Of course he meant it. That's how he made it. After a while you transcend the pain and appreciate the exquisite art
They didn't put scores on album reviews back in those days. Never mind Pitchfork style decimal points. You had to actually read the thing. But here at least the title gives the listener a hint. KINDA HO HUM some kind of indicator the record concerned might not be altogether a classic. There's a number on it about how Ray Davies ince fancied Lady Di. Also one about uce cream. It diesn't seem like an essential purchase.
Manic Pop Thrill came out in May of 1986 and I played it a lot over the next couple if years. That Petrol Emotion were not quite like any other band on the scene at that point. They had the pop nous if the Undertones the ashes if whom they'd emerged from. But they also augmented that with a barbed art Punk approach. Television, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, Beefheart , Stones. I took note and broadened my record collection
:
'Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and the world laughs at you.'
Getting through the day by the skin of their teeth. Bristol's Lagkamer are up and at them on tour in an Indie venue near you in support of fourth album No .
It's old school Indie guitar joy. A kissig cousin of Courtney Barnett and Bill Ryder Jones. Dating back to Teenage Fanclub, Pavememt, Lemonheads et al. And beyond that to XTC, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground Attitude and swagger, And devil may care shrug,
I warmed to No immediately. It lives in the moment. And encourages you to do the same/Old fashioned fin. An excellent record. Yes from me !
Thus is the kind of thing that I unstinctively went for in 1986. Polite Indie that was on Creation. Liked Television, The Velvet Underground. Poetry and Penguin paperbacks. Was made up of people who either wrote or could have written for the NME. Had good fringes shirts jeans and shoes,
This wasn't a hit as it should have been and Alan McGee was obliged to look elsewhere. I saw Weather Prophets at the Hammersmith Clarendon. Supported by Pop Will Eat Itself, The Servants and a notably lairy and unhinged Happy Mondays. I liked the Weather Prophets but instinctively knew they were too polite to go where they wished to go, It doesn't stop me loving this any less.
To listen to Neu! is still to speed into the futire almost fifty years after the original releases.. Germany Michael Rother claims are still catching up with the trail they blazed. Prophets without honour.This is an incredibly calming forty five minutes.
Don Watsin goes to see Lou Reed at the Brixton Academy and writes his copy. It's a proper slagging. No sacred cows here, Lou is despatched as a lamb at the slaughter. He plays perfunctory versions of the classics; Waiting For The Man, Rock & Roll, Sweet Jane, Walk On The Wid Side et al. But his heart is clearly not in it. His between songs patter minimal. 'I just got one bad habit left and that's playing pinball.' Watsin signs off, 'Put simply he's getting a bit dull these days.' The review is worth the 45p cost of the issue in itself. It's what The NME was for. And why I kept buying .it long after it stopped doing it,
A record I was nudged towards by a recommendation a few days ago by Darren Jones best friend of It Starts With a Birthstone and that I've been playing pretty much relentlessly ever since,
London Electronic trio PVA's second album No More Like This has an intense sense of purpose and clarity which seems set to rattle a few cages and gather some garlands while it may..
It has a fairly upfront amd striking sleeve, An immediate sensual claustrophobia that's incredibly rare, Artistically inclined but not in a forced or gruelling way but an instinctive one.
The whole thing has a breathy intensity I find compellingly hypnotic, Not spelling itself out like the best records,But making you want to plau it again to try to work out what it is that you like so much about it. It's the best thing I've heard so far in 2026..
* Thanks as always Darren. Give that man a medal
The Hoodoo Gurus took a blender approach to Rock & Roll. You couldn't help but weigh them up against precedents. Richard Grabel, NME's New York correspondent thinks they're great and compares them to The Cramps and The Dolls.
He praises their debut album Stoneage Romeos to the heavens .. Grabel is less restrained than the majority of NME's British staffers who are genrally predominantly concerned with their artistic cool, Difficult to maintain when you're chatting to the Hoodo Gurus
In my second year at university I made the mistake of moving in with my best friends from the first year on the only hill in Norwich. It was an incredibly steep hill and ,made up for the lack of any others by being forbiddingly steep and a deeply depressing place to return to at the end of each university day when I really should have been with my girlfriend in her snig bedroom on campus.. The house where we loved was next to the prison where Lester Piggott the prizewinning jockey was serving a prison sentence for tax evasion. That was probably the most interesting thing about the part of town where we foolishly decided to live
My friendship with the other guys in the house didn't make it until Spring although we've since made our peace . The album we listened through to continually over our months together was Anita Baker's Rapture. Probably the greatest album ever made.concerning the sacred act of rumpy pumpy.
Kings of Convenience are a gentle duo from Bergen, Norway who find the soft spot between Simon & Garfunkel, The Shins and Belle & Sebastian. Works for me. .
