Oh I camt get far with this rot. They all struck me as High School bullies.
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,735 Antonio Carlos Jobin - Wave
Antonio Carlos Jobin's fifth album. The best way to take you from 5 to 6 that the Brazilian's ever invented.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 26 Phosphorescent - Revelator,
Oh I give up. I really do! there is simply too much great music coming out just now. We're at the beginning of April and I already have 70 great albums for my end of year countdown. I've reviewed most of the albums I've liked, though it becomes more of a struggle to keep up, and might set off on here with my 200 albums for the year in a couple of months.
I have no fears that there will be at least 200 albums that I like or love this year. Last Friday was a great new release day and there were at least seven or eight albums released which will make my end of year list. I start with the best known releases. Then make my way down to the more obscure. There are probably some genres I favour more than others. I am Indie, essentially. That is my disposition. As a person and as a music listener. I try to be as broad as I can. I'm pleased to see my blog is getting a lot of hits these days.Onwards and upwards.
To Phosphorescent, an artist I will always associate with one of my best friends Rod. I went to university with Rod and we roomed next to one another in our first year and attended the same school, English at American Studies at UEA Norwich. I like to think we got lucky. I realised afterwards that this was probably the best University to attend and study Literature in the UK at the time and remained so for a quite a while after we both left. Oxbridge had a fossilised approach at the time. I learned so much in five years there and am still feeding on what I learned and the friendships I formed. The memories I made.
I lost touch with Rod for over twenty years. The details don't matter. The important thing is we reconnected and have renewed our friendship on a constant basis for the last fifteen years. Through Rod, I've reconnected with some other fundamental friends I made at UEA. The stuff of life.
Rod turned me onto Matthew Houck, the myseterious artist behind Phosphorescent about 2013 with the release of Muchacho which I'd still say is his go to record. He has precedents as an artist. I always think of Van Morrison for some reason. Bon Iver. He's essentially an artist who takes you 'Into the Mystic'. Latest record .Revelator, his first for eight and my reeckoning his eighth in all finds him mining the rich mineshaft of glod he first started working on about twenty years back.
Houck is somebody who makes similar records I'd say but that doesn't really matter. It's like friendships. You don't expect people to change, there was a reason you got on in the first place. But you hope you'll all grow. And prosper. It generally happens. Revelator is another magical record. Devotees will not be disappointed.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,930 Lady Blackbird
Lady Blackbird's Slang Spirituals is one of those fantastice Neo Soul spiritual extravaganzas that you see showcased on Jools on the New Years Hootenaney to mass adulation and hysteria. Raving choirs and school children with impressive afros.
This doesn't make it any less welcome round my gaff on the last day of December as we prepare ourselves for yjay hallowed month. It's a euphoruc showcase allowing Lady Blackbird to indulge her diva instincts to the max. Hallelujah !!!
Friday, November 29, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 174 The Style Council - Cafe Bleu
Many of the mannerisms and affectations of Cafe Bleu were widely mocked at the time. You git the impression that neither Paul Weller nor Mick Talbot gave a tinker's cuss. There's a lot of nice stiff on this record. Though it's very much of its time. Of course Tracy Thorn guests.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 27 Mary Halvorson - Cloudward
2024 gathers pace as The January Steeplechase reaches its final furlongs and medal contestants gather at the front of the field. Prominent in the chasing pack is Jazz dark horse, the leggy and bespectacled Mary Halvorson (sorry if that comes across as sexist, I was aiming at descriptive), who commentators discounted as an also ran before the starting pistol was fired.
Not so. Halvorson's latest album Cloudward is muscular and spacey in turn. Mary, who you might assume is Norwegian, but is actually based in Brooklyn, martials her eight piece band masterfully, contributing guitar herself on a set of fabulous improvisatinoal, instumental pieces that made me think of Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane though in terms of Jazz I don't know much, I just know what I like. Like the Rolling Stones' schoolboy although he of course claimed not to be. .
I'm no Jazz specialist, though I listen to lots of Jazz, live and in my living room. This though immediately strikes me as something else and I urge you to put down that Bill Ryder Jones record, good as it is, and cup an ear to this instead. I'll leave the descriptions to critics with a better thesaurus than I own, (I'll direct you here, a fine job is done). Sometimes though words are not enough to describe what is happening on a record. This is a case in point.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,929 Oisin Leech
A veteran of The Lost Brothers, Dublin's Oisin Leech released Cold Sea his first solo album in 2024 and it made splashes in both Uncut and Mojo's end of year charts.
It's a rather wonderful, evocative Folk tinged record, Best lstened to late at night or first thing at dawn. Leech has a poignant, resonant voice.The songs are unembroidered yet moving.
The record shifts like the colours of the landscape in the cover of the record. Songs called October Sun and Colour of the Rain. What more could you hope for as we head yowards the weekend.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,737 Linda Perhacs - Parallelograms
A journey as deep into the heart of the late sixties hippie dream as you could possibly hope to take. This will doubtless leave some listeners cold but Parallelograms, the debut, and for a long time only album by Linda Perhacs, (actually released in '70), is certainly a remarkable document. The record was barely noticed and soon forgotten on its release but was later unearthed, as these things often are, partly through the encouragement of musicians it inspired, and listening to it you can well understand why it found its way back. It's an almost definitive 'love child' statement.
So light up a joss stick, take your shoes and socks off, sit cross-legged on your living room floor, (headphones of course are obligatory), inhale, exhale, close your eyes and take the journey within. Linda moved back to her career in dental hygiene on the album's failure, before being drawn back to singing on its re-emergence thirty five years on. As for my experience of the album on listening to it yesterday, I enjoyed it greatly, but certainly don't plan to move there.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 175 The Cult - Electric
With The Cult I found ut hard to get behind their look, preposterous moves and Ian Astbury s banshee howl and furry hat.I'm sorry but it's complete tripe.
Hold the Line. Normal Transmission Will be Resumed in a Couple of Days - Beak - VVVV
Of course I always get the Math wrong. A holding operation and then we continue with my rundown of favourite albums tomorrow in order to get to the Number One on Christmas Day.
So to Beak. One of my favourite albums of the year frankly and certainly the standout sleeve of 2025 by my reckoning. A Krautrock record via Bristol,
If H.G. Wells made a Trip Hop record with wire haired terriers coming from outer space to jevel the earth. Dystopian Albums are one of my favourite things these days. See The Waeve. See Index For Working Musik. See this.
Let's face it this age is dystopian. This though us repite. A fantastic atmospheric record. The spirit of Jaki lives !
Song(s) of the Day # 3,928 Heavy Moss
Meanwhile, in Djilang west of Naarm, the Australian music scene, currently to my mid the most excitig musical scene and sensibility on the planet, continues to rage with irresistable momentum.
A book could and should be written about this. The Antipodes and Rock & Roll and Pop. It won't be written by me. Starting with Frank Ifield, The Easybeats, The Loved Ones. Germain Greer, Richard Neviie and Oz. Olivia Newton John. The Saints. Split Enz. The Birthday Party and where Nick went from there.
The Go Betweens The Triffids. Courtney Barnett, Total Control. Now Djilang west of Naarm. Another find record.
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,738 Tom Waits - Heart Attack & Vine
All lufe is here. The ultimate bohemian.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 176 Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July
Frankly it ain't hotter than July where I am. It's colder than the coldest November. But it's Stevie, and Stevie's incredible visionand talent is one of the most difficult things to appreciate and process.
Hold the Line. Normal Transmission Will be Resumed in a Couple of Days - Myriam Gendron
Not posting Albums of the Year tiday because I've miscalculated and want to end up with Numeber One on Christmas Day. So a few days with some that I have to leave out. Even with 200 there are some you have to miss out.
Myriam Gendron is an old school artiste of the very best kind. Melancholy and winding folk switching from French to English or just staying.instrumental.
Myriam Gendron works out of Montreal. Mayday is her third record. It's heartfelt. Frankly it deserves a place on any list. Pardonne Moi Myriam. La prochaine fois Je t'assure.
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Song(s) of the Day # 3,927 Underworld
Underworld are back with a new album Strawberry Hotel, It;s heartening to see them fastening to the values by whuch they made their name back in the Nineties. Still sticking to stream of consciousness street patter and hard dance beats and mantras.
Perhaps there's less 'shouting lager, lager...' . There's no leting up on terms of the intensity mind and hardcore devotees will surely not feel let down. This feels like one to put on headphones on a long cross country train or bus journey or a drive across hilly terrain,
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 177 Kirsty MacColl - Kite
Kirsty MacColl in 1989. Folk, Country and Indie Pop. Good nature, sly wit and gentleness. A niceway to go from 7 to 8 as the sun rises.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,739 Spirit - 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus
Van Morrison denied ever being a hippie and he's so unfailingly grumpy that you might take him at his word. But this is surely pretty much the ultimate hippie album. None of its, yes twelve songs, sounds much like the other. It also doesn't sound anything else in my record collection and it spends most of its time on the shelf. Listening to it will take you to a time and place that really doesn't exist anymore, except perhaps in Goa or in communes in California or the like or within the confines of veteran hippie heads. This is probably inevitable. We really couldn't have continued acting this way except for those who made a conscious decision to drop out entirely and were fortunate or smart enough to be able to do so.
Parts of it are kind of beautiful in a beardy mystical way. It's consistently concerned with the far end of human consciousness and pondering on the human condition stretching towards other kinds of being. I'm slightly self-conscious even typing this stuff myself. It's music to take drugs to. The structures are unconventional and unpredictable. I imagine it's amongst many people's favourite albums but it's just too trippy to make me want to play it except very occasionally. Its best known song is probably Nature's Way which is the least far out thing on here. It was later covered on one of This Mortal Coil's albums. It's the song I'll return to most on here.
Their songs are written by a guy named Randy California which seems somehow appropriate. Their drummer was a shaven headed, extremely tall man called Jack Cassidy who had been born in 1923. He had a great CV having played with jazz greats Cannonball Adderley, Jerry Mulligan, Art Pepper and Roland Kirk amongst others. By contrast California was a child guitar prodigy who pre-deceased him by fifteen years, dying in 1997 aged only 45.
As I said I can't play it too often as it makes me slightly queasy. Bits of it remind me slightly of Steely Dan, both of them are inspired by jazz. This for example.
The rest of it seems to come from the time and place that gave birth to them. I hear bits of Beefheart, The Beatles Across the Universe, and the other psychedelic American groups. It's not typical of my tastes and though I can salute its sheer invention it doesn't speak to me in the way that Forever Changes, Astral Weeks, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Os Mutantes and Safe as Milk do. Perhaps that's because it came out two or three years after all these records in 1970 when the hippie dream seemed a bit frayed and betrayed and a lot of the hippies had retreated to the hills. This sounds a bit like a missive dispatched from those hills. It lacks the beauty of all those records which all pretty much came at the dawn of the dream.
Still here's a review from someone who was there at the time and understands where it came from a bit better than I do:
'In 1973, I was an un-soldier stationed at a remote U.S. army outpost in South Korea. We lived in metal Butler huts (hooches), 12 people per hooch; and most of the guys in my hooch were draftees like me. We spent a LOT of time sharing aromatherapy materials and listening to all kinds of music, including Eddie Kendricks, Pharaoh Sanders, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Al Green, Donny Hathaway, the James Gang...and Spirit.
Many nights I would fall asleep with the Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus playing in the background, over and over again, on a small portable cassette player that had been left running because someone had been too stoned to turn it off. The player was set up to auto-repeat every time it reached the end of the tape, so this album was literally the soundtrack of my own dreams for months. I never got tired of it. It's magical music.
These songs have always been out there just sort of weightless, floating above all of the other tunes in my musical subconscious. I've never completely figured out the lyrics to "Nothing to Hide" or "Life Has Just Begun" -- the lyric translations submitted online are just laughable -- but it doesn't matter. My own personal soundtrack has changed over the years, so I hear different things now than I did when these 12 songs first got under my skin, 34 years ago. Sardonicus still gives me goose bumps today. '
So back on the shelf for my copy of Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. It's probably best heard right the way through though you need to be of a certain disposition and specific tastes to do so. I'm currently hearing lot of hairy men harmonising 'life has just begun' at me from deep into Side 2 and think I need to replace it with something from a guitar group from the late seventies or early eighties when I developed my own tastes and groups informed by the more cynical punk years no longer felt they could do this to their listeners. Still, I don't altogether regret the hour spent with this record this morning. Give it a listen. You might like some of it.
P.S I've taken it off and put on the radio to be met by The Clash's London Calling which along with others wiped this stuff off the map for quite a while. There you go.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 28 DUNUMS - I wasn't that though
More smalltown American , madcap visionary tumult. Inspiring given the age we're living in. This morning North Carolina's DUNUMS. 'Arty and noisy Post-Rock; nostalgic bedroom fake Jazz for a free Palestine.'
That's what it says on the tin. Or the Spotify bio if you prefer. 'I wasn't that though.' All lower case wonky carm and misrule goes off in umpteen directions, each track zanier and more unconstrained than the last.
I've been listen to this all day and frankly it's so more-ish I can't really do it justice.. Cacophonous, freeform and genuinely riotous..
Song(s) of the Day # 3,926 Mount Eerie
Mopping up in November. The new Mount Eerie album. Night Palace. It's extraordinary frankly. Static and cool. Quiet muttered fervour An Indie guy with an an impassioned, fevered heart. A record worth getting up early on Sunday morning to listen to.
Or else listening to it again in your lunch break at Monday lunchtime.Ir early again on Tuesday. I confess I'm playing this a lot, I keep listening to this record through my TV set. It's a wonderful soundtrack to whatever I happen to be doing. A weird contemplative album. It sounds like a record made by a man camping out in a steep mountainside in his teny, sitting huddled in the rock as the darkness.
Phil Everum who is Mount Eerie essentially has a track record for grim, sprawling emotional records. He documented his wife Genevieve's death with meticulous care and became homeless. Night Palace is astonishing even given that track record.
It's also so vast it's almost umpossible to process given that it's 26 tracks and almost ninety minutes long. Such vast ambition is certainly commendable and the record certainly has light and shade and is frequetly leavened with light, shade and no little warmth and humour. It's immediately became an album that I connected with,and will treasure.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,740 Broadcast - Tender Buttons
Broadcast are a band whose shadow of inflyence broadens with each passing year. There's something magnificent about them. How they toiled in the marginsm their mission more fundamental than just making a swift buck. You get the impression that they will be listened to by suceeding generations. In no little awe.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,740 Metallica - Masters of Puppets
Bit loud for me. Metallica I've always been wary f and a brief snippet is an urgent reminder as to why.It's like finding yourself surrounded by headbanging orcs.
.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 29 Naima Bock - Below a Massive Dark Land
Some people are prone to say that the best Rock music has already been made.Frankly I think it's preposterous idea. Just as the idea that the old days were the best. Nostalgia's not whar it used to be.
I think it's pretty easy to look around and find music that compares with anything in the canon. Look ar Syfjan. Look at Kamasi Washington. Listen to the latest Mercury Rev or Grandaddy albums. They're music with the scope and grace of Van Morrison, David Bowie, The Band or Miles Davis records.
They just draw on different sensibilities and modes of expression. They're every bit as much works of art as what came before them. Is there any need to say one is beter than another.This seems a strange way to appreciate good work
Listen to the new Naima Bock album Below A Massive Dark Land. It's very good work.I'm very taken by Naima. This is her second album. Her frst Giant Palm was an enormous favourite of mine when it came out
I've been listening to Below A Massive Dark Land on a daily basis this week. I went into RPM Records, a go to refuge from the travails of the modern world on Monday and Rich and Craig, the record shop guys who know were listening to it. It even got Craig's approval and that's saying something. Rich doesn't approve of much that didn't come out in 1967.
Parts of Below A Massive Dark Land sound like it might have come out n 1972. Echoes of Van Morrison, John Martyn and Richard Thompson. But this isn't retro. It's the joys of music refracted through a post millenial lens.
Naima has a lovely voice and a lovely soul. She's playing at The Cumberland Arms in November. I'll pop down and see her. Last time we metwe talked about Joni. I wonder what we'll talk about this time *
* I didn't get to see her. Next time.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,925 The Coward Brothers
Elvis Costello. T Bone Burnett, The Coward Brothers. A record called The Coward Brothers, Which sounds fairly the way you would expect it to sound. Sweet, lovelorn, heartfelt.
Costello and Burnett are masters of their trade. This is serious craftsmanship. Like when you go to a cobbler to get the soles of your boot reheeled to get you through the coming winter, Value for money.
This is distinctly old school. But let's fac eit costello was always old school even when he was cutting edge,
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,741 Cocteau Twins - Victorialand
Fluffy Gothy Pre Raphaelite tufts. Moves very slowly.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 179 Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses
Someone said to be that The Cure seem to have entered the pantheon. A nice way of putting it. Depeche Mode are probably there too/ You would never have thought it would happen to either of them in the Eighties. Well deserved in both cases.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 30 Bats - Good Game Baby
Bats. Not The Bats, This distinction is important to establish right from the off. The Bats were one of the original Flying Nun records roster which formed around the Dunedin, New Zealand music scene in the early Eighties. And a fine one at that. If you don't know their records, check them out.
Bats though is a different, but equally intriguing musical propostion. Jess Awh a wonderfully named, and wonderfully talented musician from Nashville, Tennessee, Her latest record Good Game Baby is a quite fabulous country tinged Indie record with a wonderful cover, which shows two animated yellow ping pong balls conferring on one side of a ping pong table's net.
The cover itself is interesting and encourages speculation as to its genesis and message. What are these ping pong balls talking about? Where are their opponents? The other side of the net is empty. A whole short story attempting to answer some of the wild speculation immediately arising from this animated image begins to gather in my poor, fevered and weary brain. I'll get back to Good Game Baby before I become too distracted.
It's a fab record. Pure and simple. Thanks again to First Mate Darren, my own doubles partner, (if he'll forgive me), in this blog endeavour. This one's simply brill Darren. Let me count the ways.
Jess's voice, not a million miles away from Ratboy's Julia Steiner. Immediately calming and beguiling. Another inaginary girlfriend for you. If you're after one. I can never get enough myself.
Number Two - the songs. Indie, Country. A steel pedal to set the scene and then a steady hand on the tiller throughout, Well paced and effortlessly managed songs. Some of the best I've heard, or are likely to hear this year. Self depreciating humour. Heart. Soul.
Number three the mood. A less excitable and anxious American country cousin of Courtney Barnett. Good work Darren. Just what I was looking to hear without knowing it. RELEASE BATS! Apologies. But it had to be done.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,924 Roge
November and December increasingly become enormous mopping up operations on It Starts. Flicking through the November and December issues of Uncut and Mojo magazines. The end of year rundowns, finding tasty musical treats that I need to shoehorn into my own list as December approaches.
This for example. Rio De Janeiro's Roge's a carioca merchant from Rio and his latest album Curyman II . swings with the flair, swerve and verve that only Brazilian muic and football can, Like Tostao throwing a deft turn and flowing into space before breaking the offside trap with a neat ball and setting Jairzinho in on goal the crowd roaring in anticipation..
This is a wonderful record. Another one. They're flowing into It Starts With a Birthstone's nets with abandoned fishy joy and relish these days, But hold that relish. At least until we reach the Captain's Table. There's a particular happiness, a particular momentum which can only be described as Brazilain happiness and momentum. A spirit that can't be contained. Certainly not by nets. , 'Este album tem tuda de sobra. E coma uma festa em Copacabana,'
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,742 Kamasi Washington - Heaven & Earth
Two hours with Kamasi. Frim 2018. Two hours with Kamasi is always time well spent. Star Trek meets Sun Ra.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 180 Jacobites - Robespierre's Velvet Basement
Jacobites were a particularly Eighties phenomenon. 'It was different then.' as Michael Stipe intoned sadly in the same decade. 'Elegantly wasted..' There's beauty in every sig here and it takes me back. Years fall away..
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 31 Peter Perrett - The Cleansing
'Just another dead survivor.'
Doing the best work of your careet at the end of your life in Rock & Roll. An interesting article that's yet to be written. Johnny Cash. Can't think of too many others off the top of my head. Here comes Peter Perrett.
A man who didn't look as if he was going to make it out of the Only Ones is now heading into his eighth decade and may have made the best record of his lifetime.Well we've just had a fantastic Cure album. Wreckless Eric's last album was triff. Maybe the New Wavers cavalry is about to hit town. I must say I hope so. Who next Elvis Costello.
In the meantime the coolest and certainly the most wasted wastrel ever to come out of Catford. Now a cool kitty in shades and raging against the dying of the life with a magnificent rwenty minute and hour long album of lessons in life and love. Stunningly articulate. Wonderful tunes lyrics and attitude.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,923 Shovel Dance Collective
As the world spins and the years pass things change and so do we. This is not necessarily a sad process so much as an inevitable one that it's probably not advisable to resist. So it might be an idea to embrace change rather than surrender to despair.
Shovel Dance Collective are one of those Folk Collectives that seem to be occupying a more central place in musical culture and consciousness now now. Groups of people carrying ancient and unwieldy instruments gather in pubs and small venues and engage in communal ritual. Magical.
This is an initially instrumental album that breaks into voice a couple of tracks in and a spark ignites and before oo long a full fire is raging . More than that. A forest fire. It seems to owe as much to Bagpuss as diggers, levellers and the middle ages..Latest album The Shovel Dance has a purity and synergy which strikes a deep chord.
This is magical stuff which personally I'd rather listen to than the records we are being directed to by End of Year lists being posted elsewhere, An incredible year that started for me at a wondrous and spectral l Lankum gig which was strange beyond perception is drawing to a close. Records like these are to be clutched to your heart
Friday, November 22, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,743 The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines
Well what Did You Expect From The Vaccines? A very good question. The Ramones go to Posh Art School if this was anything to go by.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 181 The Waterboys - This Is The Sea
The Waterboys. Ragged mariners. Navigating the waves of great oceans avross the Eighties. To fine effect. Certainly here.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 32 Mabe Fratti - Sentir Que No Sabes
Otherwordly avant garde from Guatamalan pop cellist and baroque expressionist Mabe Fratti. Latest album Sentir Que No Sabes pulls no punches..A fantastic atmosphere that weaves an increasingly tighter mesh and spell with each passing track.
If you don't like Art with a capital A chanted in Spanish with a weird, constantly shifting disorientating backdrop, you should probably give this a wide berth. .Pushing the borders of pretension like there's no manana.
Incredibly theatrical right from the off.. All the way to the puesto de acabado. That's finishing post for those without immediate access to Google Translate. Fratte's vocals have a tightly meshed, lyrical power and resonance and the instrumentation dots the ''i in intensity..
Serving up reminders of Scott Walker, Okkyung Lee and Arthur Russell along the way. What d'you mean who ? This is truly out there. Am extraordinary journey.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,91 # 3,922 Kim Deal
Round about this time, It always happens. Round about this time every year, Spectres turn up late to the feast and mess up the best aid plans of man, beast and sad blokes like me who are onlytrying to compile End of Year Albums of the Year that no one else is particulaly interested in. Probably not even other sad blokes who are too busy compliling their own.
This year Kim Deal is in front of the latecomers queue. She's always been trouble that Kim. Since Pixies turned up decades ago to kick start the Nineties and wake up David Bowie and make him realise he wasn't dead yet and might have something else to offer.
Kim always had that surly look about her. As if she's just turned up half anhour at detention hall in some Eighties Brat Pack movie. Chewing gum. Flicking V signs at the man.Now in 2025 I imagine she probably does less drugs. But she was always the tough chick with the tender soul. The one that was going to break your heart,
But you wouldn't know it from a cursory listen to her new album Nobody Loves You More. It's seven shades of the kind of fun you thought had been made illegal by now. Fortunately Kim as ever evaded the sentences, This is wonderful stuff, Destined for countless hearts
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,744 Weezer - Everything Will Be Alright In The End
I guess what you think about this album might depend on what you think about Weezer and where they come from. Amiable and whacky but lacking in emotional engagement. I find ut diffucilt to get through a full album
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 182 The Wedding Present - Bizarro
The Wedding Present are one of those bands that for me are always in a particular time and place. An inarticuate age when you can never quite say what you want to the one you love, And it's always cold and dark out
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 33 Dialup Ghost - May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven'
Six on Tuesday morning. Bath had. Lessons planned. An hour to kill before heading to the fitness centre. Just time to listen though to First Mate Darren 'Starbuck' Jones latest tip. May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven'. From Nashville's finest Dialup Ghost.
Just my cup of sick if you'll pardon the expression. From the sleeve of skeletal gun toting desperadoes onwards. .American Bohemian Weirdo Expressionism for forty minutes. My run down charts are full of these kind of nutty statements these days and may the well never run dry.
Thes people can't really sing and the playing is basic but consistently heartfelt and utterly committed. Som emight tellyou that love is allyou do. Ifficial rundowns might consistently tell you that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are in terms of the new conformity of grief and despair. Here is another record
Song(s) of the Day # 3,91 # 3,921 DUNUMS
More smalltown American , madcap visionary tumult. Inspiring given the age we're living in. This morning North Carolina's DUNUMS. 'Arty and noisy Post-Rock; nostalgic bedroom fake Jazz for a free Palestine.'
That's what it says on the tin. Or the Spotify bio if you prefer. 'I wasn't that though.' All lower case wonky carm and misrule goes off in umpteen directions, each track zanier and more unconstrained than the last.
I've been listen to this all day and frankly it's so more-ish I can't really do it justice.. Cacophonous, freeform and genuinely riotous...
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,745 Chromatics - Kill For Me
I likes me a bit of Chromatics. o this will take me from 11.00 to my 11.30 in a freezing flat. New Wave Retro Pop out of Portland Oregon.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 183 Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard Of Oz
I;m not listening to this crap !
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 35 Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan - Your Community Hub
The latest Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan record sounds much like previous installments on this remarkable set of musical conceits and journeys have.
This is not so much a development as a refinement,. Variations on a theme. Records that sound like a member of Kraftwerk's dreams if the member of Kraftwerk had been raised in Lancashire in the fifties and Sixties rather than the Ruhr gebeit.
I hope this series runs and runs. I'm not going to compare this with previous Warrington- Runcorn records. That would be missing the point. Anither excellent exercise in atmosphere.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,91 # 3,920 Green Child
Nothing immediate on the horizon. So I'll tuck into the fish that Darren Jone , AKA Starbuck, brought to his Captains table a couple of das back as the sun was setting on the watery horizon at the Peqod's brow.
This morning's fishy treat. And its immediately something to tuck into and no mistake.Green Child's Look Familiar. Warm and bubbly.Sensual. 'Lush analog synths'
Vocals reminiscent of Jane Weaver breaking in and out of the mix. Jane Weaver joins OMD Splendid. A life on the ocean waves, More Starbucks more ! Extra grog rations,
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 184 The Creatures - Boomerang
Siouxsie and Budgie's ryhthmic, percussive love affair.. A bit claustrophobic for me after a while. But impressive for sure.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,746 Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music ... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop
I rather enjoyed listening to this. Between my lessons. It takes Nevermind an runs with it towards large arenas and quite right too. Not everyone got to see Nirvana STP wasn't a shabby second best.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 36 Amelia Coburn - Between The Moon & The Milkman
Browsing through the postings in social media yesterday afternoon, I came upon one from Shinding which directed me to Amelia Coburn. A remarkable young artist with a distinctive Northern brogue and a vivid and thrilling vision.
Listen to her debut album Between The Moon & The Milkman. I did yesterday..First drawn in by the Shindig prod to a couple of tracks. Later in the same evening. not convinced by a Netflix film that had toyed with my affections but not won me over I went back to my desk, put my headphones back on and dove deeper into the album.
It's a fascinating record and she's a brilliant artist. She plays a ukulele and let's face it, this has hardly been an in vogue musical instrument since George Formby put his own down several decades ago and probably was hardly all the rage even back then.
Coburn's a performer with a touching emotive voice with thoughtful intonation patterns. This is a record that an enormous amount of wor./ Care and love are key ingredients. I love stumbling across artistic endeavours such as this one, I get the impression that she knows her Jacques Brel and her Jake Thakray. Her Disney and Hollywood musicals.. Her Scott Walker. David Bowie and Edith Piaf. Also crucially herself.
She knows what she loves. She has her own guiding stars. But she's not for a moment overawed by them. This is a fantastic first step on what could be a Fantastic Voyage . It will be wonderful watching wherever she goes next. In the meantime this is one of the most exceptional and inspiring records I've heard this year,
Song(s) of the Day # 3,91 # 3,919 Euphoria Again
'A man needs a maid' wailed Neil Young in the song of the same name on the evergreen Harvest Back in 1972. Fine song. But the sentiment. Are you sure Neil ? What you mean someone to shop an dcook and clean after you. And then perhaps lie back and think of Tennessee. Stretch her legs when you're so inclined. It seems clear he hadn't been reading Susan Sontag, Joan Didion,. Germaine Greer. Or Simone De Beauvoir. Let's put it that way.
But sometimes the Captain of a blog like It Starts needs a Mate. First Mate Starbucks aka Darren Jones in this case. He turns up just when he's needed on the Captain's Table with a fishy on a litte dishy for my Song(s) of the Day. I'm most grateful.
In a world that's gone mad for ticking boxes Euphoria Again's Waiting On Time To Fly ticks all of the ones I'll need this Tuesday morning as the sun rises in the Newcastle heavens and I make my way towards my half eight with Dussledorf businesspeople.
Gentle Americana with a yearning heart and a dreaming consciousness. Songs that ache and tremble with soul and heart. Thanks Darren Another winner.
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