Monday, June 30, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 182 Loyle Carner - Hopefully
'Hopefully is an adverb!' So said my late Grandfather. Who died in his nineties early in the Nineties in his bed in Charminster near Dorchester..Early in the morning. Still missed. He was born in 1903 and christened Horace. He served in Burma in World War II. He wouldn't recognise the world we live in now.
I find myself in my second hotel in Glasgow of the day. A real corporte job just off Sauciehall on Pitt Street.This is a glorious, vibrant city. I'm going to see Horsegirl in a couple of hours. Sold out. To put me in the right frame of mind I'm listening to Lloyd Carner's Hopefully ! Err Hopefully. I'm sure my grandfather wouldn't mind.
Ir's soothing like a hotel bath with steam rising and sweet selling aromas and good vibes. Loyle is Lambeth born and bred. A Hip Hop smooth talker who doesn't rap so mych as emit loving positive energy. Sounds like a laid back London dude. Hopeful is the word. . Hopefully is hopefiul and full of empathetic enrergy . .
Song(s) of the Day # 4,128 Peaceful Faces
.
Channelling Nick Drake, Elliott Smith and Van Dyke Parks, Peaceful Faces Without a Single Fight is an album of rather lovely set of highways and byways of introspection and melody. If it's a three way tug of war then Elliott probably comes out on top.The reminders are insistent but the record is winning
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 190 Mose Allison - Down Home Piano
'When the planet hit the sun. I saw the face of Allison'
It's a heatwave across Europe. In Denmark where I've just returned from. In Germany, where I'm teaching online. In Newcastle where I am now. What to do. Twist my hands and bemoan my and the planet's fate. Or throw open the windows, heat up some jacket potatoes and put on a Mose Allison record. You guessed it !
Down Home Piano came out in 1965. The year I was born. It has copious sleeve notes. A picture of Mose on the front cover looking suave. Apparently according the sleevenotes Allison was 'starting to make it with the squares.' He plays piano, trumpet orr sings in a Hoagy Carmichael style.. He composes too, but more about that later.' The record is all 'laconic interpretation if his southern ancestry'. He's a carefree man who takes life as he finds it'
Jack McKinney's notes and the record itself are of a piece. This is all charm, ease and grace, and I'm tempted to just keep playing the record all afternoon
Sunday, June 29, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 463 Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis
Jarvis of course is back.where he belongs these days. At the helm of Pulp. But this is probably where he plotted his course.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,127 Durand Jones & The Indications
Durand Jones & The Indications new record Flowers plots the course you expect of it. Golden Age early Seventies Soul without a coo or sigh out of place. You know what's coming and occasionally wonder why you don't just cut out the middle man and put on a Delfonics album. But it's all pretty flawless. Love hadn't gone out of fashion last time I looked.
Saturday, June 28, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 183 Eliza Niemi - Progress Bakery
The latest catch from Starbuck. Captain Ahab's best mate. Darren Jones, for it is he, appeared like an apparition on the maindeck of It Starts yesterday brandishing a fresh catch. The latest delicasies from the High Seas for the captain's table. Ahoy me hearties !
First up Eliza Niemi's Progress Bakery. A new artist to me. Wonky Americana Indie. Although Eliza hails from Toronto. This is a record that makes no effort to conform to the given script. In the way that Jad Fair, Roches, Laurie Anderson, and the like didn't way back in their day.
This is an odd record and not exactly easy listening. On the surface it's homey and easy going like the smalltown high street pictured on the record sleeve but actually it's a rather unsettling and uncomfortable listen.
You get the sense that all is not quite what it seems to be but can't quite figure out what. The voices are treated and unsettling. Thanks for this Darren. I'm not entirely sure what I think of this record but I'm glad I've heard it. .
Friday, June 27, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 464 The Pastels - The Last Great Wilderness
Last Sunday I had a truly wonderful evening at Mono in Glasgow. Watching Horsegirl and Nightshift. Beforehand I browsed the remarkable Monorail Music Store. Apparently there is a Pastels connection. I like The Pastels.The Last Great Wilderness is merely one reason. It's a delicate layered record that played blind you probably would not huess the authirs of.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,126 Hectorine
'Is love an illusion?' Your guess is as good as mine pal. Hectorine certainly has her doubts and makes them clear on latest LP Arrow Of Love. According to her Spotify bio Sarah Gagnon the woman behind the Hectorine thing summons up the spirit of the ancient Sumerian warrior goddess Inana as her muse for this one.
I'm not sure where to go with that one really. Frankly it sounds rather far fetched to my mind. But the album has a splendid glacial tread that's really rather endearing and splendid. I sat yesterday in an Arhuis hotel room and allowed the record to cast its spell. .It surely did.
And the spell thickens as the record spins. There's an answer song to Cohen's Hallelujah which stopped me in my tracks frankly. The record is frequently stunning. Make of it what you will but you may find it as endearing as I did yesterday afternoon. The whole thing has a lustrous quality
Thursday, June 26, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 184 Jeffrey Lewis - The Even More Free Wheelin Jeffrey Lewis
Jeffrey Lewis, New York's Anti Folk Poet rolls on with The Even More Free Wheelin Jeffrey Lewis another referential and sly album of stream of consciousness strum.
It's comforting listening. The comparisons with Dylan are forwarded by the artist himself with the cover and elsehwere. He is happy to see himself in a line , a tradition. Let's face it we all are. This is rather a nice way to kick off my Thursday morning,
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 465 The Hidden Cameras - The Smell of Our Own
Magpie cherry picking from Pop's golden past. These feel like incredibly nostalgic times.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,125 Frankie Cosmos
Frankie Cosmos, elfin offspring of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates broaches her thirties with a record called Different Talking that hardly feels like a coming of age album. Certainly not if you chose to compare it with what Joni Mitchell was turning up with at a similar age. Growing up can seem different these days.
Everything is grounded in innicence and wide eyed wonder. Not being abe to go a day without touching your 'fucking phone'. Watching the goosebumps retract against your skin. First world problems. DIY Indie ethic. It may strike you occasionally as rather self absorbed and cutesy. But it's an enjoyable journey if you're planning on fixing yourself a decaf..
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 185 Dead Gowns - It's Summer
Once more thanks to Darren Jones for directing me to another Song of the Day / wonderful record to wake to. . Today Dead Gowns debut album It's Summer, I Love You & I'm Surrounded By Snow. If that's not enough to pique your interest I imagine the record should.
Genevieve Beuadoin AKA Dead Gowns hails from Maine and writes her own narrative and review on her Spotify bio, This is often the way these days. Artists and their packages come self contained with their own rave reviews.
In this case the plaudits and flowing prose seem apt because It's Summer, is one hell of a record. Vivid, poetic and resonant. My turns gentle then emotive. Outsider Folk. Speaking of one of those summers that will stay for you for the rest of your days. Appreciated Darren,.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 186 Sun Kil Moon - All The Artists
Not everybody makes it. Life's a long road. I remember an imagined vision I had once. A long time ago. Drinking beer with a friend in a bar on Richmond Hill when I was in my early twenties, .I probably shouldn't have been drinking. I was on medication.In my mind's eye as the alcohol began to kick in, I saw a couple of hot air balloons rising across dark heavens and I thought to myself 'life is not short' as you're constantly told. Life can actually be a long and incredible and mysterious journey.
Listen to Sun Kil Moon's latest album All The Artists for further evidence of life being a strange road..Or hot air balloon trip if you prefer. Sun Kil Moon is the alter ego of Mark Kozelek. Kozelek started out in the Nineties with Red Hill Painters who put out a number of completely remarkable but slightly medicated sounding records that might appeal to medication inclined consumers..
Over thirty years the man has put out any number of beautiful, luminous but evidently slightly depressed and potentially depressing records.,If anything with the years he seems to go further and further into psycholgical decline. Though not artistically I'd say. Listen to All The Artists thirty years almost on now. Be warned Kozelek hasn't cheered up much, even though his records are still very much worth immersing yourself in,
Kozelek can be a problematic and irrascible figure. I'm not entirely sure if he's cancelled, He's certainly had some rocky times of late. Numerous charges of sexual misconduct and unwanted advances of a sexual nature to a number of parties. Stripping naked in a hotel room with an unconsenting woman. Violent verbal abuse of other artists. Notably War on Drugs. .An aggressive and increasingly litigious attitude to accusations about his behaviour. Mark, Mark. That's what Donald Trump does. It's not pretty whichever way you look at it. Whether this makes you reluctant to listen to his work anymore is an open question. He's clearly troubled and troubling. The problem (if that's a problem), is that I still think he's very good. As are his records.
I've listened to All The Artists over the last few days. It doesn't have tunes so much as stream of consciousness monologues. It lacks the beauty of Kozelek's Red House Painters records but does emit a powerful claustrophobic atmosphere that's still impressive. I suspect it would be getting a lot more attention than it is if Kozelek hadn't backed his own career into a siding of his own making of late and made media uncomfortable about giving him any more coverage than they need to. This is a really intense record of narratives and depressed literate thought. If that's what you're after. It's not easy listening..
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Song(s) of the Day # 4,124 R.E.M.
When I was 19, between A Levels and university I had a gap year. I didn't want to go to The University of Sussex or Brighton Poly as many of my friends chose to do. I wanted to be my own man if I could. Forty years on I probably still do. I got a temporary job in the W'H.Smith's in Richmond coming up to Christmas 1984. I worked in the basement punching price stickers onto boxes for others to put out on the shop floor shelves. I had a good time there Spent a lot of the money I earned on records. A lot more on beer. in the pubs of Richmond, Twickenham, Kew and Teddington I was happy. In the way that you only are at that age. Priveliged. Moving into life.Becoming myself.
In January I took a set of trains and travelled with an English girl of my age from Leeds to Locarno Switzerland. When we got to the Swiss border we met a German girl and a Danish girl who were going to the Casa Locarno to start work too. In a guest hotel run by the Swiss Council of Churches as a unique tool of reconciliation and fellowship.
The German girl whose name was Franziska was reading a copy of The Name of The Rose. The Danish girl I fell in love with over the next six months. I won't tell you her name to protect the innocent. We were probably all reading books. Smartphones did not figure in our consciousness. When we got to Locarno we took a funiculaire up the steady Alpine slope to the Casa Locarno in Monti where we were going to live and work for the next six months.
There were a few people waiting for us. The Hotel Director Miss Keller. A girlish but very attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties who had a chatty, vivacious manner and a sense of fun. A lot of charm. A slightly nervous laugh.
There was the houskeeper Haki another Swiss German, a wiry woman who showed us the ropes and put us through our paces. She smoked like a chimney and chattered relentlssly. She was unbelievably tough but underneath kind and deeply protective I realised with time.Always had a cigarette on the go
There was also a tall friendly German guy named Holger who I became friends with almost immediately. Sensitive guy. Good guitarist. Reader. A sweet Danish girl called Sigrin with a lovely smile and a s[pt of excema. They worked with us for a month before heading back to their families. Cleaning the hotel. Preparing it for guests. The Swiis way.
I can't remember what I brought with me. I think I carried everything in one of those backpacks with stiff aluminium back support and a basic supply of clothing which I supplemented with collarless shirts which I bought in the cooler emporiums of Locarno during my time there. They reminded me of my musical hero, Peter Buck the guitarist for R.E.M..
But I did bring a C-90 cassette with me. Yellow TDK, It had Reckoning on one side.Murmur on the other. I was playing the albums ragged. I lent them to Holger who roomed along the corridor from me until he headed back to Tubingen where he lived. He loved the albums. Said he thought Murmur was stronger than Reckoning. He came back to see us a few months later and a brief, significant spark blossomed between him and Franziska. My heart beat faster for the Danish girl next to me in the photo here.. I never told her. When I got on the train with the English girl to go back home she got onto the train compartment threw her arms around me. And we held each other. A moment I'll never forget. As long as I live.
Holger meanwhile. I visited in Tubingen the next year. I met his family. Good Christian people. He visited my family in England. A few years later in the early Nineties I was in Germany. My mother called me on a Sunday. The police had just called them. Holger had taken a ferry from Kiel where he had just graduated as an English teacher. Took another train from Harridge and travelled down to Beachy Head. Threw himself from the cliff on the coldest night of the year.
He had my parents phone number in his pocket so the police would call them. His father flew over to England to identify Holger's body. I imagine nobody in his family ever fully recovered. These experiences leave the deepest scars. For me still too. Best not to think about it.
Now I'm at Air B & B in the countryside in Denmark staying wuth Agnes another of the Danish girls I met and worked with and shared the richest experiences during my six months in Locarno, forty years ago this year. Yesterday Helle and Henny, the other two Danish women I met and worked with during my time there drove across to see us and we spent a few precious hours together discussing our memories, our lives since. The world we live in.We all had incredible, unique stories to tell. It was time well spent. Life is the great adventure. The great road. Murmur and Reckoning the albums that still spin ni my head as I approach my sixtieth birthday and my nine o'clock online class approaches..... .'The pilgrimage. Has gained momentum...'
Song(s) of the Day # 4,123 Domenique Dumont
Latvian duo sound like French Reggae ensemble on new albumo. Slightly inauthentic but soothing.The kid of thing you might enjoy in a Costa Coffe pretty much anywhere in the world of an afternoon.
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 468 Ikara Colt - Chat & Business
Wire, Mission of Burma and Sonic Youth fuelled angularity and attitude.
.
.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 187 Fib - Heavy Lifting
Don't tell Fibs. All right I won't. Fib are Fab. The latest morsel brought to the Captain's Table on It Starts by Darren Jones, AKA First Mate Starbuck . Fib strut their stuff on latest record Heavy Lifting, and very bracing it all is too.
Out of Portland, Oregon, never a bad start. Very dare I say it Pop Post Punk . Not a million miles from the base station Omni operate out of Portland, Oregon. Never a bad thing. It's often a sign of angular, quizzical enquiry.
That's certainly the case here. Each track is a new area of investigation. Heavy Lifting is easy listening for the Indie inclined. Thanks again Darren !
Song(s) of the Day # 4,122 US.Girls
I was driven away from the new HAIM album by an exceptionally annoying George Michael sample in the first song, Fortuantely I was nudged into the arms of the latest US Girls record Scratch It which I found a lot more amenable
This is Meg Remy's eleventh long playing outing. She remains a force apart from the herd. A restless soul who swerves from narrow definition who suggests we challenge and critique the culture we find ourselves in or else risk being confined and defined by it. More powerful stuff that resits narrow pigeonholing nd challenges the listener. Splendid.
Monday, June 23, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 188 Lifeguard - Ripped & Torn
'they're so they're so goddamed young'.
It's Sunday and the sky is firm in Newcastle's heavens. I am listening to Chicago pup's Lifeguard's debut album. Ripped and Torn. What do we have here Horsegirl Junior? Hansen. If they'd listened to Sonic Youth rather than Jackson 5. Deodorant?
It's a bristling listening and they would be truly an excitinglive proposition. Their songs fizz and ring. They have dissonance. They know their Stev reich from ther Glen Branca. Their Philip Glass. Their Band of Susans. Swans.Arthur Russell.
At a certain point I think i hear Kim Gordon shrieking out of the mix. But I realise it's Lifeguard channelling Kim Gordon. It's all very bracing I must say..
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 469 Bark Psychosis - Codename Dustsucker
Post Rock from Snaresbrook. Much mellower and spacier than I anticipated when starting an album called Codename Dustsucker by an outfit called. Bark Psychosis. I warmed to this and will return it.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,121 Loyle Carner
'Hopefully is an adverb!' So said my late Grandfather. Who died in his nineties early in the Nineties in his bed in Charminster near Dorchester..Early in the morning. Still missed. He was born in 1903 and christened Horace. He served in Burma in World War II. He wouldn't recognise the world we live in now.
I find myself in my second hotel in Glasgow of the day. A real corporte job just off Saucuiehall on Pitt Street.This is a glorious, vibrant ceity. I'm going to see Horsegirl in a couple of hours. Sold out. To put me in the right frame of mind I'm listening to Lloyd Carner's Hopefully ! Err Hopefully. I'm sure my grandfather wouldn't mind.
Ir's soothing like a hotel bath with steam rising and sweet selling aromas and good vibes. Loyle is Lambeth born and bred. A Hip Hop smooth talker who doesn't rap so mych as emit loving positive energy. Sounds like a laid back London dude. Hopeful is the word. . Hopefully is hopefiul and full of empathetic enrergy . .
Sunday, June 22, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 189 Hannah Cohen - Earthstar Mountain
Yesterday, while I was preparing myself for the working week, I listened through on and off to Hannah Cohen's Earthstar Mountain. It was an album that I initially regarded as generic and slightly nondescript. But as the day went on a spell was cast and I was charmed.
So I'm listening to it again now on Monday morning as I ready myself for the 8.15 to Dussledorf Teams Link to carry me away to class as we sweep towards April.
It's a record that seems to set itself an inreresring remit for itself. Aldous Hardung meets Sheryl Crow at a Fleerwood Mac Convention on The Astral Plane. Sometimes the right co-ordinates and intentions are sufficient to ensure half an hour if plain sailing as we make our way into the breeze of the coming day.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,120 Hotline TNT
Finding myself in a snug Glasgow hotel room after experiencing North African humidity and a a full on tropical lite rainstorm while searching for my point of destination . I'm tempted to just stay in and listen to the Hotline TNT album Raspberry Moon Much as I like Glasgow I must be getting to that age
.Hotline TNT are a very 2025 band and Raspberry Moon is a very 2025 album They're from New Yprk apparently but it sounds like Seattle or Chicago 1992-94 They're close cousins of Urge Overkill or the Smashing Pumpkins 1979 It's sort of Grunge Lite meets Power Pop and all very unchallenging and palatable.
Lead singer Will Anderson has an unemotive drone of delivery which makes an instrument of his voice It's all a bit of a pick and mux exrcise in terms of songs of the increasingly distant past Sugar and My Bloody Valentine drift in and out of the mix None of this is a criticism They do what they do quite impeccably The only thing really lacking is enough of their iwn identity
Saturday, June 21, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 471 Holy Fuck - Holy Fuck
I saw Holy Fuck one memorable evening in the upstairs lounge at an All Tomorrow's Party session in Minehead. They were a vivid and kinetic experience and I imagine remain so.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 190 Beirut - A Study Of Losses
Easter Saturday and I'm sitting in the living room at my sister's in Becenham. A cup of tea in front of me. Headphones on. I'm going into London in a couple of hours to meet a very special person from my past. Meet her daughter or the first time and go and eat tea and cake wuth them. Life is a celebration and demands to be feasted upon.
I'm listening to Beirut's new record, A Study Of Losses. It sounds like other Beirut records but you wouldn't really want it otherwise. Zach Condon, the driving motor at the engine room of thus band has a special understanding of poignancy and gentility. A feeling for Folk Traditionals. Eternal emotions and rituals.. Fragility, Poignance, Culture. It's another beautuful record. Adhere to your values.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,119 Caroline
Ambition. It's no bad thing somethimes. They're an eight piece London based collective called Caroline. Their second album is called Caroline 2. Sometimes it probably pays to keep things simple. I've been listening to it on my as I dressed and had my breakfast before going off on a working holiday.
The first thung I had to do was turn down the volume slightly. First track Total Euphoria was slightly clamorous.It's all rather odd. But it's diverse. Their mission statement is clearly to stretch themselves and their audience. I liked some tracks more than others. Speed things up and slow things down. They don't seem a million miles from The Brixton Windmill Post Punk collectives.
It quietens its pace rather after Total Euphoria and becomes really quite alluring and soothing for the most part from thereon. As I completed my packing and realised I was ready to go I fely calm. It reminded me rather of Robert Wyatt and that's quite a comforting association I find. I'll revisit this.
Friday, June 20, 2025
Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 22 Mick Talbot - Manhood
From Merton Parkas to Dexys to The Style Council. Second on the bill on Live Aid after Status Quo.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 191 The Altons - Heartache in Room 14
It's no challenge to find a great new album to listen to every morning. I've got plenty piled up for coming days and know I may not get round to them. Direction on here across the sea of blog changes from day to day according to the prevailing winds. I coud easily start my rundown of album of the year at 300 this year. And I'm fairly sure I wouldn't run dry by Christmas Day,
Today Heartache in Room 14. No, not the Waltons. That was The Blue Ridge Mountains of Vurginia. John Boy, Jim Bob, Mary Anne. Those guys. This is Los Angeles Neo Soul Nostalgia. The kind of thing that Quetin Trantino endorsed and furnished his soundtracks with.
This has something of the hanging beauty of Massive Attack and Delfonics records. The stillness of the night. Switching between English and Spanish on whim. This gets Top Marks and will be beack in a countown when I finally get going
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 191 Judy Collins - Golden Apples of the Sun
Sometimes you want to go back to when you were young. Sometumes you want to go even further back. To a place before you were born. With extensive sleevenotes. This came out in 1962 three years before I arrived. It has purity and space and geniune beauty. A song that takes a W.B. Yeats as its starting point.
Films colour your consciousness. Your perceptions of things. I can't help but think of Inside Llewin Davis when listening to this.. But it has a still folk intensity and follows a sure course.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,118 Lucy Gooch
At the beginning of his cricketing test careeer in the mid Seventies, Graham Gooch was not an opening batsman. He came in a couple of wickets down at 4 or 5 with responsibiliries for holding the middle order together . England, as England often does, were shaking. Gooch invariably fumbled around for fifteen minutes, flashing at the ball outside the offstump nervously before edging to the slips. Heading back to to the pavilion head down. Caught and despatched in single figures. He was Essex boy. In white. And leg pads.
This is little remembered now. Graham Gooch is a cricketing legend. But it's how I think of him. I used to sit in front of the TV set watching The Ashes with my Dad. Sport was so exciting when I was young. Now I don't bother much. I haven't sat and watched Test Cricket for years.Anyway I digress. We're talking Lucy Gooch not Graham here .I imagine they are not related.
I am sitting on my sofa litening to Lucy's latest album Desert Window. It has an arresting cover and the album itself is equally strikking. 'Spectral' it says on the stickers on the record and when you listen to the record you realise the description applies. Like much music these days it seems to arrive in the slipstream of Kate Bush. It gasps and sighs in wonder.It's rather magnificent really In cricketing terms it carries its bat back to the pavilion aloft having despatched a winning boundary. Graham would be proud.
Thursday, June 19, 2025
101 Essential Rock Records # 83 Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power
It's difficult to imagine just quite how intense and furious and uncompromising this must have sounded at its time of release. Its a record about the unallowed and the utterly confrontional.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 192 The Carpenters - Ticket To Ride
Sometimes it pays to slow things down. Drag the cartrridge back to the start if the side, close everything, but everything down. And actually listen to the record spinning on your turntable.Show it the respect it deserves.
That's what I'm doing now The Carpenters Ticket To Ride. is the record that's spinning It's The Carpenters' debut album..Came out originally in October 1969 as Offering and was then repackaged, renamed and rereleased in November 1970 as Ticket To Ride after their version of the Beatles tune was a hit.
The record is not spoken about in the same hallowed times as the likes of Marquee Moon or Suicide for example but it's still a rather remarkable album. The vocals are split fairlt equally between Karen and Richard and Karen provides most of the vocals.It's state of the art , middle of the road orchestrated shmaltz on one level but actually it has a cosmic drag that is worthy of the deepest respect. Just as Iggy, Lou and David's records of the time are
There's something about Karen's vocals and the marshmallow production values of the Carpenters songs that drags me back across the decades to my childhood self. I won't be at all alone in that respect. I imagine The Carpenters was the soundtrack to millions of peoples earliest memories.My mum relaxing, her shoes off and her feet up on the sofa at the end of the day. Listening to The Carpenters Greatest Hits
My parents didn't have many records growing up. It was The Carpenters, The Seekers, Louis Armstrong, The Dutch Swing College Band and later ABBA. We just had Greatest Hits for the most part. But when I see Carpenters records now in second hand shop I seize on them. It's a portal back to the childhood state and who doesn't seize on that opporuinuty with the hungriest relish when they see it.
This talks of ordinary lives and the acceptance of suburbia every bit as profoundly as any Modern Lovers, Feelies or Cure record. It's The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, The Ice Storm and John Updike's Couples writ large. It's the best £2 pounds I've spent in a very long time.....
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 192 Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto
Woke up. It was an Easter Monday and the first thing that I listened to... was a record that made me think of Can, and Vitmain C in particular. That weird fuggy Kosmische fug. Woven in the early Seventies, but some spells last. You know the story of Sleeping Beauty.
Little Barrie and Malcolm Catto's Electric War, draws unahamedly on the mythic narratives of Rock & Roll. Mass hypnosis. The two sport insectoid wraparound Suicide shades. The music is by turns languid and wired. Funky and Soulful. You know where this comes from. You know what they say. If it ain'tbroke, why fix it...
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 473 Brendon Benson - Lapalco
Before joining Jack White in The Raconteurs, Benson was Detrout's greatest proponent of sunny folk infused West Coast guitar pop and second album Lapalco his finest hour. Tiny Spark and Folk Singer patiicularly were converiible- friendly wonders.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,117 Lyra Pramuk
This caight my attention a coupe of days ago. Now I'm revisiting on a Bank Holiday in Germany which means I have no classes on my way to a workung holiday and a short trip to Denmark. Lyra Pamuk is an Berlin based American multidisciplinary artist. A vocalist, producer, DJ and ermm, Astrologer.
New album Hymnal is a book of transformational worship songs, apparently , quite bracing anyhow, a sea of noise. Exploring the ecstatic genesis of sacred rituals. I was taken.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
101 Essential Rock Records # 82 David Bowie - The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
The sun is going down. 'We have five years left to cry in.' This album has always been pertinent. But especially now. 'No you're not alone...' This is Pop music. Pop music as The Present and the Future. Bowie knew so much and his voice is missed.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 193 Rose City Band - Son Y Sombra
Rose City Band provude a gentle, rolling backdrop for household chores or breakfast. A roadtrip perhaps. Their sound strikes me as an update on the early Dire Straits sound with C&W preferenced over Blues. They have a sound that doesn't grate for a moment. Smooth as the open highway.
Latest album Son Y Sombra doesn't tamper with a formula that the band has honed over years and several years. Sunkissed feels an apt description.This is a throwback. Creedence, Riders of the Purple Sage. Harking back to older times and simpler values. The record's a welcome reminder that such things are always possible.
There's not a hint of cynicism or smarter than thou aloofness. Songs are titled Lights On The Way. Open Roads. We're not talking Pavement or Kurt Vile here. I have no end of time for both. But Son Y Sombra takes a simpler route to the same destination. Can Get There From Here.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 193 Cowboy Junkies - Caution Horses
One of the two records over a lifetime I remember taking back to the shop. The other was the 12 inch of Resistance by Clock DVA. In both cases I now own the record concerned. I wasn't very well when I bought this but I was young so I went on, even though I was missing someone.
I still relate to Cowboy Junkies. They're not afraid if unpacking emotion and putting it on the plate in front of them on the table. They understand what it means to cover a song and their songs have the languid grace and warmth that make you feel you're in the company of friends and fellow travellers. The light is coming up on the prairie.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,119 Tamino
'We built ourselves a tower.'
My lesson is planned . My bath is run and I have time to listen to a record. Tamino's Every Dawn's a Mountain. His third mountain . An earnest singer songwriter from New York out of the Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen stable.
Life is not an easy road. There's no point kidding yourself. Such was the case in the sixties for Tim and Len. Nothing changes. There are classical allusions. A voice that soars and emotes. Second track Babylon stands out. 'In the tower of Babel they knew what they were after.;' Not everything is to my taste. It's a but too heart on the sleeve modern emoting rather than pushing musical envelopes occasionally. But worth a listen.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
101 Essential Rock Records # 81 Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
I took off The Carpenters record I was listening to and listened to this all the way through when I saw this listed here.. I don't listen to Exile very often and I've never listened to it all the way through.
I'm not sure the Stones always age so well. I'm tired of seeing Mick and Keef on magazine covers. Do they really have anything to say now ? Though I'm always pleased to put on Sticky Fingers, Rolled Gold or some other records. Goats Head Soup just recently. Exile is slow burn. About midway through Side One I started to feel loose and relaxed.Tumbling Dice.
From that point on it's a warm bath in a clasy hotel. Slick and coiled. Like a bittle of quality red shared with an old friend. While you crack open a packet of tabs for old times sake. You make allowances for the slightly ridiculous aspects of the Stones fify years down the line. In the end it's best let your critical faculties go and enjoy the ride.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 194 Caamp - Copper Changes Colour
Ohio boys making beautiful noise. Copper Changes Colour. A album of raw and tender guitar songs that struck a chord between 6 and 7. Slightly reminiscent of early Kings of Leon but on slighty wiser shoulders.Songs that yearn and emote but are also deeply sincere and heartfelt.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 194 Supertramp - Breakfast In America
'Take a look at my girlfriend. She's the only one I got. Not much of a grlfriend. Never seem to get a lot...'
I've got a large record collection and nothing that particularly embarasses me within it. I'm not a particular believer in the Guilty Pleasure conceit. I either like something or I don't. I don't like Heavy Metal or genres like Grime or Emo. I'm not fond of things when they get too messy or shrill.
Breakfast In Americe can get shrill. It has a lot of great songs on it. But there was something weird about it when it came out. I was 14 years old and didn't know what I wanted. But I sensed I wanted something a bit more exciting and a little less, well creepy.
It was the beards,. That falsetto. And some of the lyrics . Particularly those lines. It might have gone down well in the mid west. But it sounded eerie and not right where I was as a fourteen year old, on the edge of London in Richmond. Ten miles from the centre of London which frankly felt like the centre of the world right then, Compared to Costello. The Clash. The Banshees. The Jam. It just seemed ever so slightly sinister at the time. Certainly not attractive emotions you didn't understand
I've got a vinyl copy of Breakfast In America now. I'm listening to it right now and it sounds fine for a 59 year olds to wind down towards tea with. I'm not sure it's ever going on the jukebox.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 475 Sleaford Mods - The Originator
The new anger. Pre Andrew Fern. Uncleared samples and lays down an unapolegetic marker which they've remained true to as they've gron and diversified. .
Song(s) of the Day # 4,118 The Bug Club
Forgive my cynicism but sometimes I listen to modern 'Independen't bands and sispect they are almost pre-packaged with a certain target audience and market position in mind. A lifestyle and position in life that they're after..Where everything has a wry expression on its face and a sly knowing grin Quirky Indie is particularly prone to this attitude it seems,.
This instinct kicked off early in Rock & Roll. In fact it's always been a factor. Listen to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. The Velvet Undeground's After Hours. They can be very wry and knowing. Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.alternative culture started out as a more organic reponse to life and seemed genuinely political and radical.
Jonathan Richman. Television. Subway Sect. Orange Juice. R.E,M. They all used humour to good effect. Pavement were a pivotal band to my mind. They made things Post Modern in some respects. A set of individuals that didn't have to form a Rock & Roll band. Could have been just as happy with a job behind a desk in middle managament . So long as the package involved an occasional skiing holiday or trip to Hawaii was thrown in. The world got smaller as The Internet Age dawned.
Now thirty years on quirky Indie is everywhere. We're all hyperaware. All ironic. But slightly detached. Take The Bug Club. The new Half Man Half Biscuit except with less strings to their bow. They tick boxes. Select their own audience, The constituency who go to small Indie clubs and pubs to see three guitar bands on a Friday night. The Bug Club know how to get on 6 Music Playlists and get played in regular rotation before or after the likes of Wet Leg.
I prefer The Bug Club to Wet Leg. Their latest album Very Human Features (god knows how many they've put out), is forty minutes of likeable Indie Guitar quirkdom. Music made by people ewho pull oddball faces in synch onstage. The records alright.
It just seems conditioned by mannered expressions and slightly feigned quirkiness.Songs didn't really stand out so much as fit into prescribed grooves and channels. I waited for Very Human Features Take The Skinheads Bowling moment and it never really arrived. 6.5.
Monday, June 16, 2025
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 195 Olivia Newton John - Greatest Hits
I'm not by nature a great nostalgist but sometimes as the sun sets you find yourself wanting one of life's simpler pleasures. Something on EMI. The girl next door who you lost your heart to when you were fifteen. Sweet pop songs from a blond with eyes to make you melt for. Virgin Radio in the Seventies. The way that you felt at that age and assumed you would feel like forever.
101 Essential Rock Records # 80 Big Star # 1 Record
'Lit a long fuse on a long career that burned slowly and intensly for decades.'
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 195 Chris Eckman - The Land We Know The Best
'Wars are won. By those who quit. And leave dreams undone.'
I often post the covers of Uncut Magazine and Mojo Magazine on social media with some kind of puzzled personal response. I still buy both on a monthly basis, I post puzzled comments because the deeply conservative and repetitive market positioning and approach of Uncut and Mojo strikes me as odd.
What I'm talking about mostly is their cover stars and the photos the respective magazines choose on a monthl basis. Dad's Rock & Roll Army. Isn't Rock & Roll supposed to be about youth. Not any more apparently.It's for Grannies and Grandpas. Keith Richard with his new teeth again. Macca looking slightly bewildered. Dave Gilmour positively furious. Probably with Roger Waters I imagine. Have they hand another tiff nurse. Put Mr Gilmour in one corner and Mr Waters in the other.
I generally don't bother to read the article inside which refers to the cover star(s) of any particular. issue,Hey, I'm a Go Betweens and Pale Saints fan. The cover star is not generally why I buy the magazine. I do so despite it. Paul Weller looking like he's left Woking and become a commanche. Jeff Tweedy with an expression on his face which makes you wonder whether he's mislaid his medication again.
It all seems slightly odd to me. Rock & Roll becomes unfirm and slightly confused. The original generation are the ones that must be venerated. The Sixties people. I guess the magazines know their readership. It makes you wonder for the long term future of both. My social media posts are generally greeted by comments from disillusioned ex-readers who have stopped buying the magazines. The covers are always the same. The magazines are too expensive. There are too many ads. They're boring.
It's not my experience or perception, .I'm not bothered about splashing out slghtly. I think they're lovingly compiled, beautifully presented and well written. Music remains my main driving passion and I want to be directed towards records that I wouldn't otherwise hear. On a regular basis. I trust Uncut and Mojo's editorial judgement and musical taste and direction. They lead me to stuff. Today they led me to Uncut's February Record of The Month, The Land We Know The Best by Chris Eckman.
The Land We Know The Best is very much the kind of record you expect Uncut to laud and Chris Eckman is the kind of musician you'd expect them to praise. Slow and sensitive singer songwriting Americana stuff from a well read bloke. Something to listen to while you're making your way through a John Steinbeck or Hemmingway novel and seeing if you can afford to make a roadtrip on Route 66 or a pilgrimage to Memphis next year.
These are not things I'm likely to do. And so I'm not really the kind of music fan that's going to be sufficiently engaged to find this record quite as thrilling as Uncut staffers do. It's alright, It certainly wiles away an hour with headphones on at on my keyboard on a Thursday night. But appreciative as I am of Uncut's nudge towards this record it's not really for me long term.There is no Velvet Underground influence here that I could identify. Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy are more prominent forefathers to the songs here.. It's a record I admire rather than love though I'm pleased I've heard it. .
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)