Being Peter Buck - What I Did on Friday - Lukes Haines Peter Buck & Minus Five at The Cluny

 

I haven't been out for a while. Focusing on work, Doing My paperwork. Building up my bank account. Staying in evenings. Going to the fitness centre. Calling my mum. A holiday coming up.

I wake up early Friday morning. I have three classes. .I run my bath. Have my breakfast. Send some songs to a friend as I have done for  the last six months. This morning Ania gets Johnny Cash and nods her approval . She listens to him in bed with her cappuccino and asks me if I've seen Walk the Line. Then does her ablutions and wanders off for a walk in the forest with her daughter's attack chihuahua Charlie. She's feeling 'energetik'. Always the pedantic teacher, I correct her spelling. She doesn't seem to mind. I get lots of smiley faces. Pictures of her muscles. She likes to keep fit.  

My lessons are planned. Powerpoints sent. At half seven I go to Google Calendar and am submitted into a virtual classroom. Just D***** tiday. One of my favourite students. She's always great company. Charm and grace.Incredibly able. Very good English  A lady with teenage dughters and a plump hubby. He's a steadfast, reliable type who sometimes says hello on the video screen behind her . D*****'s clearly made a good choice  . He's the kind of person you want to marry. Someone who's there. 

She's canidid. Let's things slip about her feelings about work and life. That's what these classes are like sometimes. What'is said in virtual classrooms stays in virtual classrooms.Apart from my writing about it here. . Sorry,   D*****  She knows a bit about my life too. Hey, we try to be human in the age of AI as the androids gather in the wings.

I feed in some language. She mentions the idiom 'opening a can of worms' which her English boss said to her in a meeting and grabbed her interest. The silent bs in numb and dumb. She brings up Michael McImtyre's Silent Letter Day sketch and I say I'll put it on the to do list. These lessons go where the students want them to or at least I try foster that approach. I say let's do Mergers & Acquusitions at some point and she asks if she ca head half an hour early and we'll see each other in a few weeks. I have half an hour more to breakfast fully and  listen to music.

Next one's  ten. I'm full with toast and egg. Insurance O**** is there.M*** S**** hasn't made it for months.  O****'s boss. Though you wouldn't know it. They rib each other constantly. One supports Fortuna Dussledorf. one FC Koln. Kolm have just been promoted to the Bundesliga. Stolen Fortuna's star asset Isak Johanneson. He declared undying loyalty to them then signed for their big rivals and is kissing their badge every time he scores. Much to the fury of  M*** S****  and  O****'s  amusement.

 O**** knows my personal predicament . That I'm a Newcastle fan and have been since I was six and lived in Newcastle for twenty years.But that I'm pretty much fed up of the game and its ubiquity and general corruption, toxicity and predictability. Everything that's wrong with the world is wrong with football I've decided. I can still enjoy it. I just don't want to talk about it all the time. I can't anymore..In some ways it's lost much of its joy for me. 

This has been particularly heightened for me persomally all summer. Alexander Isak Newcastle' s star asset and magical goalscorer has decided he no longer wants to play for Newcastle and would rather play for Liverpool because they have turned his and his agents heads. Despite the fact that Isak srill has a couple of years left to run on his contract and Liverpool have shown themselves unwilling to pay his market value price instead unsettling the player and his agents and consequently the whole clubs preparation for the season. It's been a story that's progressed like a slug making its way up your garden path all morning. 

I'm not kidding myself. Newcastle are just as bad in this respect as anyone else. They're owned by the Saudi Arabian government. I care more about women's rights, gay people's rights and general human rights than twenty two people running around chasing a pig's bladder for ninety minutes. I've  come to the conclusion that fooball is essentially fixed. Why on earth would it not be. Theres' far too much money at stake to allow the likes of Brighton and Brentfird a seat at the Top Table. Newcastle will get there eventually but in the meantime Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea amd  Spurs will feast. and guard their plates hawkishly. Me I'd rather listen to music, chat to Ania and teach lovely Germans.

But today O**** knows something I don't and is eager to share it with me. Newcastle themselves are closing in on a prized assset themselves. They're just about to sign Nick Woltemate, Stuttgart's attacking midfielder for a record fee, much to the fury of Uli Hoeness the executive director and all round dodgy type who covered him for Bayern Munich and thought he had a god given right to get his own way. .  

Anyway, we bid each other farewell. O**** is a wonderful man and it doesn't feel like work teaching him even though I've managed to highlight the false friend potential trickery of occasion and opportunity and a couple of other things in our hour together. This is all much better than the relentless competition and mendacity I was embroiled in for fifteen years before I surfaced and started doing this last January to my immense relief.. 

I teach another class whuch I'll spare you the details of. Have an hour circuiting the fitness centre and I'm off into town. I only now can start to focus on the pressing immediate matter that I'm going to see Peter Buck, who's essentially as close to an actual hero as I've ever had. R.E.M. mean more than I could ever express. They were the band that I fell in love with when I was 17 when I bought Murmur and played it relentlessly until Reckoning came out, Then I played that relentlessly until Fables of the Reconstruction appeared. 

Then I went to university, my world changed. I spent two incredible terms with the three guys in my corridor bonding in the way you only bond at university. Playing R.E.M. constantly, constantly. With Rod the guy next door who was the first person I ever met who loved the band like I did.

I saw them twice over this period . With my brother and sister. The second gig at the Hammersmith Palais the most entrancing, astonishing and life changing gig I will ever witness. And I've seen a lot of incredible gigs. And now I'm striding down the slope to The Cluny in the Ouseburne Valley. It's a beautiful evening. I'm going to see Peter Buck play in a small intimate venue and I'm determined to park myself right in front of the stage all evening.

Suddenly a tall, distinguished man walks past me in the evening sunlight into the door of the Ship Inn, the old school garden pub directly opposite the Cluny. I'm momentarily transfixed. It's him . It's him. 'I didn't waste time, I just walked right up.' and said Peter I don't want to bother you. I just want to say thanks.

He says without a pause. 'Well thank you for meaning that I never had to work in McDonald's'.'I know his voice. It's deeply familiar to me' I know that slow recognisable drawl. I say. 'Well  you made sure that would never happen/'. I honestly don't want to bother him. I don't want a photo. He has a right to his space. But I rabbit a bit anyway.I can't stop myself. We talk about how this is where it started at least in the UK. Newcastle. I saw them on The Tube in 1983 when I had never heard of them  and I tell him I just had no idea what I was seeing.. That nobody ever moved like Peter Buck before or since. It's something I truly feel. I'm glad I said what I said. 

Anyway I've said what I want to say.I say have a great evening and leave him to his drink.  I've had my moment. I'm sure Peter's used that McDonald's line with a lot of people. But this time he said it to me.  He must never get left alone. I've no idea what that must be like. That level of fame. Buck is obviously not as well known as Michael Stipe but to music lovers he and the other R.E,M. guus occupy a sacred space. There's nobody like them. They're an indication that you can do something like this. Treat each other well and maintain your dignity and integrity. That's why these people and moments mean so much to me.

Anyway I'm up the hill lost in the moment. I sit down in the Tanner's Arms and text my sister who is the person in the world who knows best exactly what this will mean to me. That it's actually a moment I'll remember for the rest of my life and will bring me an incredible sense of closure. I eat some chips. Drink a pint of coke. In some ways I feel like I've already had my evening. But the gig is yet to come. 

I make my way down to the venue. Get in as soon as the doors open buy a beer and go straught to the front and grab a prize spot right on the lip of the stage. It's quite easy actually. I'm not shifting. Peter is playing twice tonight. Woth the same four musicians. As Minus Five and then as Luke Haines & Peter Buck ; Scott McCaughey, Luke Haines, Linda Pitmon and Nick Fowler..

Minus Five are on fairly promptly without standing on ceremony. McCaughey takes the lead. He and Haines, wearing a large boater perch as the front two . Buck plays bass behind them, always the total team musician, not wanting to repeat himself, his guiding role in R.E.M, steering them onwards.

Minus Five are essentially a Garage band. Buck always had a thing about this. .Hey, he worked in a record shop before R.E.M. The band played Hey Little Girl and Superman Minus Five built up a head of steam with a number of melodic but fierce numbers. They're drilled but spontaneity is prized amd allowed for. Essentially they just want to have a good time and a good time is had by all. The Modern Lovers She Cracked is played mid set. The epitome of this kind of attitudinal Rock & Roll.

It's cool. A part of me wonders as they leave the stage whether I've had my money's worth but I'm not feeling tired. I've had an hour of exercise and I'm feeling good. Anyway as they take the stage essentially for Haines turn in the spotlight I'm glad I stayed.

They play the choice cuts from their latest album Going Down To The River .... To Blow My Mind. I realise immediately that's it's alrogether a more powerful proposition than I gave it credit for in my cursory review a few weeks ago. I mist revisit and rewrite, it..It's an acid pastoral minor classic. With a lot of Mott and Glam when performed live. 

Buck at last has his rickenbacker slung round him though it doesn't sound like it tonight. I watch him almost exclusively. This might be the last time I see him though I'll make every effort for that not to be the case. He's just thrilling to watch.

He's the ultimate team guy, that's how he works and though I've seen him a few times down the years this was the closest I ever got . He's such a generous and versatile player. He watches the team he's playing with. Elevates them though he's essentially modest. He's focused on the task at hand primarily but able to enjoy the experience. Essentially you know you're watching one of the greats but a man wuth his feet sufficiently on the ground to retain his modesty and humanity.

I'm siory I haven't written much about Haines or the rest of the band but emotionally for me the evening was about seeing a true hero of mine. Your heart only truly opens on a few occasions over the course of a lifetime. If you're lucky. I saw him, shook his hand and reminded myself exactly why his body of work and approach to Rock & Roll resonates so depply within me. It was an incredible and rather beautiful evening for me. . 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 122 Men I Trust - Equus Asinus

 

The seagulls are wheeling outside my window. It's a bright, spring day. The start of another working week. I'n listening to Equus Asinus, the latest album by Canadian Indie contenders Men I Trust. It  has an odd, slightly disconcerting sleeve. A plain, thim bespectatcled everyman ironing a shiry, presumably an office shirt. The life many of us are condemned to from the moment we enter the working environment.

Equus Asinus, reminds us, as the best music does thatwe are humans, first and foremost, and it behoves us not to forget it. It's a record of languid grace. Sad in its tone occasionally, it's not one that's liable to encourage you to jump up and down on your bed, but it's altogether well decked out and thoughtful and I commend it to you. It's forty five minutes well spent. Oh well. Must get ready for work. Breakfast awaits..

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 406 Elvis Costello & The Imposters - Momofuku

 

Recorded in eight days.Costello did much of his best work damned fast. He's someone who for some reason doesn't seem to have quite the status as he did when I was growing up in the Eightie. But nobody can turn a phrase or pull off a quip or melodic twist like Declan,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,191 Foot Ox

 

The sun is coming up in Newcastle. Foot Ox's A Lighthouse With Silver Dog Eyes is playing in my headphimes. I feel good. You knew that I would. 

The cover is extraordinary.A middel aged lady stands in an old school dreaa, like a Movie Queen, (Joan Crawfird type),  in front of a Joshua Tree in the sun. It's the kind of painting that people unwisely hang on their living room wall and freak out houseguests.'Did you see that picture on the wall?' in the car on the rude home. 

Meanwhie the record spins on. Pedal steel. Now based in Portland, Oregon  but reared and launched in Tempe, Arizona. Songs inspired by ' dreams, deals with love death adventure, heartbreak and fear.' . Loveliness and charm. Care and attentiion. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 132 Claud Debussy - L'apres Midi D'Un Faun

 

Listening to classical music is a different emotional journey from listening to Rock & Roll or Jazz. It can take you on a journey where you provide the landscape and people the terrain. Join the dots and detect the narrative. Colour in the clouds.

You can be freed of the conventional discussion. Which is your favourite Debussy? What's your favourite Claude. I like his chamber stuff.  His piano work was best. He was best when he was playing left wing for Saint Etienne and cuttung past his marker and tearimg in on goal. Let it all go , close your eyes and exact your release. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 123 Glyders - Maria's Hunt

 

Garth Hudson. Dead and gone, A new American Political Administration for those who can bear to watch. For those who can't hear are Glyders and their new album Maria's Hunt. 'Get your motor runnning. Get out on the highway.'

'Minimal rock & roll with nocturnal mystery pulsing in the mix.' Steppenwolf meet Crazy Horse meet Paisley Underground Stereolab and Kraftwerk n the open road in Iowa with the open road stretching ahead. A record with plenty of nuance, narrative twist and varied pace.

This is a fine record for anyone who is versed in this tradition. Persian carpets, handlebars, heading for the roadhouse, gonna have areal good time. Same as it ever was. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 407 Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs

 

I ,issed out on Death Cab For Cutie. I missed out on Modern Mouse.. The National. Sparkelhorse. They all came into being at a point where my attention was elsewhere. Sometimes you can go back. Sometimes you keep going forward. I'm listen to Narrow Stairs now I'm afraid it doesn't register particularly. It all feels slightly inchoate. Some moments impact. Often I find myself waiting for something to happen. .Little says I need to know this better. 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,190 Rodney Crowell

            

                                           'Ever since I've met her I've been heading South.'

I appreciate a bit of humility. Rodney Crowell has it. A C & W journeyman who's worked with Emmylou. Bob Seger and Roseanne Cash. Airline Highway his new album is the kind of thing you've heard many rimes before but iy's pretty good at what it does.

How it works is to make you feel where it is. Out on an American Highway with the wind in your hair and your foot on the accelerator heading somehwere. There are wose places to be. Wose places to be heading. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 124 C.Duncan - It's Only a Love Song

 

Friday morning. My bath is running, and I have a new C Duncan album to listen to as I make my way to a busy day at my desk.. Planning and teaching German people in Dussledorf, Munich and Hamburg.

C Duncan is traditionally the loveliest company and new LP It's Only a Love Song doesn't let the side down. Austure, crafted melodies, Love the clear objective,

Duncan is classically trained and his learning is consistently apparent and put to great use. This is sleek and suave. It soars out of suburbia and across the heavens. Scott WalkerThe , Divine Comedy and Grizzlt Bear tweaked and retuned from 20025. Nice !

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 408 John Mayer - Room For Squares

 

                                                     Sensitive old school updated Power Pop.

.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,189 Modern Nature

 

Off we go. Friday morning. Modern Nature's The Heat Warps. Velvet Undergroind licks and rythms. Less jazzy than previous outings. Enormously compulsive. I think I'll get myself a large cup of tea and listen some more. 

Nine one word titles. A methodical approach to song writing thats served Stereolab and Pixies well. Changes of pace and mood. Refracted light. There's something rather lovely about this record. I need to get dressed. I will listen to the reset later today. 

My first lesson is done. As is my paperwork for it. I'm listening further to it. I've written to my Polish friend. Happy wife, happy life.

This is a record that appreciates colour and space. Carefully chosen lyrics. Musicians that look at each other while they are playing and work together toward common goals 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 409 Califone - Roots & Crowns

 

Califone make a fascimating convoluted sound. There's more going on here than on a stormy sea. In another life I would be a devotee. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,188 Friendship

 

Uncut Magazine does a pretty damned good job. I don't always have time to read it cover to cover each month but it still encourages me to plenty of great records whuch I then sing the praises if on here.Here's the lattest one. A quite staggering record.  

Undertstatemant and wry and dry. The great American Indie character traits of the past thirty tears, See Steven Malkmus. See David Berman and Nap Eyes. Parquet Courts. Well hold that. frankly Parquet Courts need to calm down a bit. Exhibitionists. 

Now see Philadelphia's Friendship. Their latest album is Caveman Wakes Up  has wry and dry in genius servings. It's one of the most potent and powerful records I've heard this year. Its songs go through a wonderful range of emotions and are constantly surprising and moving. A record containing multitudes. . 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 125 Dutch Interior

 

Tuesday morning. Lessons planned. This gives me an hour with Moneyball. A record by a band from California with artistic sensibilities and apparent indecision about whether they wish to be Pavement or Grizzly Bear.Or the themselves. They strive manfully fir the optimum objective. 

They associations are inevitble but Dutch Interior make the best of them and they manage to plot a course of their own where there's plenty to interest the casual listener. Major chord changes. Introspection. Literary lyrics. Lots of air and light. Space.

Less preoccupation with being cleverer than thou or trying to be English like Malkmus and co. Not so oblique. Greater reflection. Less restlessness. As the album shifts on it becomes more uneasy. It sails a relatuvely steady path to its end destination.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 133 Waylon Jennings - The Best Of

                                                         

                                                    'Spring was waiting for us girl.'

I found a Best of Waylon Jennings in the Amnesty International around the corner from me yesterday for three quid. I've been listening to it ever since. I focus in on Jennings' version of MacArthur Park which is particularly remarkable . A song which I've long associated with Richard Harris. But Harris cannot sing strictly speaking while Jennings certainly can. His voice is a potent emotional weapon. 

I've been strangely moved by this record playing it on repeat over the last twenty four hours. Emotions are things that are worth rurning over and reflecting on and songs are the best way to do this and live within particular emotions that I know. There is much else on here that creates a simiar endurung and mythic sensation.Like finding yourself in a stately car winding its way down the drive at Manderley. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 134 Melanie - Born To Be

 

Born to Be Alive, Born To Be With You. Born To Lose. Born on the Bayou. Born to Cry. Melanie it seems was Born To Be... Finish the sentence fir yourself. She's a spectacular, one off talent. Not conventionally a great singer perhaps. But a great character-full artist. The embodiment of drama from some of the most dramatic years of the whole Rock & Roll experuence.

Born To Be came out in November 1968 the year the world burned and a lot of dreams caught flame. Melanie embodues the rage and pain of a turnung, burning worldbut the line holding firm against the onslaught. The sleeve notes embody the pure idealism and perhaps naivety of the age. The sense of motion and change. Passion and belief. Iy's still a record that feels inspiring. These are cynical times by comparison.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,540 Chance The Rapper - Coloring Book

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 126 The Weather Station - Humanhood

 

January remains something of a trial regardless if how we approach it. For me, leaving a hearth and home, elderly parents the length of the country one short week ago, back to work, lessons to plan and teach.

 A best friend struggling with health elsewhere.. Meanwhile outsude my window the sun is struggling to show its face outside the window in the darkness.

It's a consolation to have a new Weather Station album Humanhood to listen to on my headphones as my bath runs. Tamara Lindeman (for Weather Station is she), is a doughty, resilient talent. A box to box performer who knows her craft and gufts.

The Joni Mitchell comparison is inevitable and plain here, but that's ni slur o defecit. You can't beat a bit of Joni. This is a record of vitality and health. Another winner. Humanity strikes back. 

The Unstoppable Rise of Czech Oligarchs

 I couldn't sleep last night. I won't trouble you with why that is. This isn't that kind of blog. But I was tossing and turning between 4 and 5. That's the time our fears and anxieties bubble and percolate. Ask Shakespeare . 'To sleep perchance to dream.' You know where I'm coming from.  And where he was.

So I started texting ludicrous stream of consciousness gibberish to a friend who I knew would wake a couple of hours later, look at it in a cursory manner and go 'Oh it's him.' turn over and go back to sleep rather than thinking 'Right I've had enough. I'm blocking that bloody nutter.' That's what friends are for. Thanks Rachael !

And what was I writing about. Band names. Names of bands that you wish you'd been in. Imaginary narratives of  bands. Getting together falling in love and setting out with common or mistakenly disparate goals ,. Working songs up in garages and studios. Going out on the road together. Falling out. Breaking up and getting back together years later to find they stull didn't get on. Taking drugs !

There's a noble history of charting these alternative narratives of Rock & Roll. Any number of novels from Don DeLillo to Salman Rushdie. Kevin Sampson to  David Keenan. Amazon documentaries about bands where you think, 'oh that must be based on Fleetwood Mac'. Films about Frank Sidebottom with Michael Fassbinder in a paper mache head. 

So to The Unstoppable Rise of Czech Oligarchs. What d'you mean you've never heard of them? Not from Prague but from Staines. Reared on Joy Division,  Stereolab and Wire. Changed their names in thrall to Verlaine and Hell, Devoto and Shelley. Toured in dark red and blue button up shirts. Bought from Slater's.  OMD meet British Seapower. Suburban dreamers who should have gone for marketing careers instead like their mums suggested. .

Specialising in motorik rhythms and songs that  don't have choruses but do have long, meaningless but profound sounding titles. And lyrical plays at plays they'd never seen and actually knew virtually nothing about but talked about pretentiously at every opportunity. They changed their names to those of their heroes; Singer Eugene Ionesco, Guitarist Walter Benjamin, Bassist Rosa Luxembourg and drummer Josef Broz Tito. The slightly derailed drummer with the angular haircut . History mourns them !.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 410 Nagisa Ni Te - Songs For a Simple Moment

 

Get your hour of mindfulness and space and light. Some time under the Japanese sun.I put this on and thought I'd head for my bath after  song but found it exerts a hypnotic grip. I went to the bath. Stopped the taps running and came back to my desk and kept listening. Staggering.  

Song(s) of the Day # 4,187 HORSEBATH

 

HORSES ! HORSES ! HORSES ! HORSES ! Coming in in all directions. My new favourite band. Blah ! Blah ! Blah!  HORSEBATH Canadian rootster's new album Another Farewell comes out of the traps like The Band reborn wuth a pince of Lovin' Spoonful and gathers pace from there.

Smokey and dreamy by turns. A band that know their heritage. Their Three Dig Night, Guess Who and Sir Douglas Quintet. This is an enchanting trup back to a land that time forgot. Like Slow Morion Cowboys in warm embrace with Grandaddy. Enough comparisons already. Here's an album that walks its own shoes. Into Mittwoch !!!!

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 135 Super Furry Animals - Furry Logic

 

I went from Prague to Warsaw in early 1996 nursing a broken heart from a a painful break up with someone that I realise all these years later simply wasn't worth it. We all need to go through these experiences. Brit Pop was moving from its second phase to its last legs. NME and Creation were trying to squeeze the last pips out of it and had seized on the Super Furry Animals.

They were for the likes of me but not for mass acceptance. They sang in Welsh at every opportunity they got. Seemed to spend most weekends in the woods seeking mushrooms. Were barmy in a charming and well read way rather than in a mad  for it coked up Slade kind of way. I walked round Barcelona for three months  visiting the Gaudi, the Olympic Marina  and thinking my heart was breaking when really I was letting someone hurt me who I should have just moved on from. Fuzzy Logic still sounds great. Many have drawn from Super Furry Animals well. And quite right too. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,541 J.Cole- 2014 Forest Hill Drive

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 411 Roy Harper - The Green Man

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 127 Laughing Chimes - Whispers in The Speech Machine

 

A wistful throwback start to the first working week of February.. Brett Anderson fronting a Flying Nuns band. Ohio band The Laughing Chimes strike no end of artful poses which hark unmistakeably back to yesteryear on the posily entitled Whispers in The Speech Machine. 

You can't help but feel that you're in a damp cellar somewhere in the Eighties wearing your favourite polkadot shirt. Back in the days when you had a full and not unimpressive head of hair.

The lack of variety in  The Laughing Chimes schtick wear slightly over the course of a whoe album. Also the mannered delivery of their lead singer. But this is a bright start to the working week. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,186 Katsy Pline

 

Katsy Pline. They're crazy. Do you see what they're doing there. They're walking after midnight on latest album Incandecsent Fire. Frankly, you'd be crazy yourself  if you didn't fall to pieces. Immediately. A church, a court room. Then goodbye.

OK that's enough Patsy. Back to Katsy. This is a wan, sophisticated songwriter from Berkely, California. wonderfully sculpted unpredictable album with wisdom for the past and hunger for the future.An  album that I'm embracing with open arms as the clock ticks from three to four. Wondrous record.  

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 128 Bridget Mae Power - Songs For You

 

Bridget Mae Power's Songs For You, a set of spartan, stripped down covers of Roy Orbison, Television, Neil Young and Cass McCombs tracks that take the songs as the point of departure and sails off to surprising and easeful shores..

Strangely emotive and affecting. his makes a mindful listen, taking me from six to half six with easy and compoulsive grace  and making me wish to go back to the source. Job well done. 

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 14 Love

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 412 Peaches - The Peaches of Teaches

 

Strangely further away from us than The Sex Pistols were from Elvis.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,542 Kings of Leon - Because Of The Times

 

                                  Good bamds become bad bands. Kimgs of Leon get a chapter.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,185 Laufey

 

A couple of hours to kill before I meet a lovely Dutch lady and discuss Tax if she'll let me. I have a great swoony Jazzy album to float through 

Laufey's A Matter Of Time is a very ,odern sounding record. It's a little bit Jisephune Baker. A little bit Carole King. A great big bloody meringue of a record in fact. I like it, it has charm and fulls you up without really winning your heart completely. 

That seems to be the modern experience in many ways and i'm certainly not blaming Laufey for this malaise.I sometimes felt like I was drowning in meringue, but hey we've got to go with the times. . This is a very nice way to spend fifty minutes of yours.  

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 129 Tunde Adebimpe - Three Black Boltz

 

'the age of tenderness nd rage...' 

A recommendation for Friday from a dear relative. And a fantastic one. Fabelhaft. Three Black Boltz, the latest album from TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe. Full of his old band's frantic, kinetic energy. Consciousness. A really great start to my Good Friday. Thanks Kate !

By turns spiritual, tender. Then engaged. It's a ,ultifaceted record than energises me as I prepare myself for adventure . Art the begunning of a four day break from work before heading towards Summer 

I'm n London where I grew up. Staying at my sister's in Beckenham. On my way to Richmond. This is pitting a spring in my heels. You're grateful for it when you get to my age. Up and at 'em..

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,543 Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix

 

Teenage Fanclub almost exist outside the standard ranking of things of their time . Largely because they resolutely refused to compete. An admirable instinct. Almost everything is absolutely 'in place' on Grand Prix. It's a record of realisation and arrival. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 136 James - Village Fire

 

Takes me back instantly to the first time I heard it. In the room of the guy next door to me with James, Rod and Ben, almost forty years ago now. My first term at university. The great time of discovery and the tentative shift into adulthood which lasted the best point of twenty years.

James sound at their best to me here. It's deliberately sliphod and hesitant. But explorative. In the way many of the best bands of the time were Josef K. Fure Engines. Woodentops. Not intent on the charts so mych as an NME interview and a Peel interview. Those will always be the days.. There's something glorious about this raquet 

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 13 The 13th Floor Elevators

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 413 Cat Power - You Are Free

 

Freedom seems to be something that Cat Power is concerned with. Well let's face it we all should be. She walks her own road. Again. Why not...

Song(s) of the Day # 4,184 Tullycraft

 

Seattle's Tullycraft have been round the Rocl & Roll block more often than you've had hot dinners . Forming in 1994 from the ashes of Crayon, would you believe it, they're stull unreedemably twee thurty  years om. Latest album  Shoot The Point makes you feel like you've finally got that job in the High Fideluty store you'v always secretly yearned for.

If songs called Jeanie's Up and Playing Faith By The Cure and  Love on the Left Bank are what you're waiting for then Christmas well have come early. It's cute as Betty Boop and a packet of Tate & Lyle. But I like it. .

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 414 Nisennenmondai - Destination Tokyo

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 130 Free Range - Lost & Found

 

The priceless player in the baseball set up apparently is the utility set up. The one you want to get your hands on. The ace in the pack. Swim Into Sound's Blog Page makes the comparison in its review of Free Range's Lost & Found album.

So if you're after a utility player, the go to guy apparently is Ben Zobrist, whose efforts led to back to back World Series Titles for Kansas City Royals and Chicago Chiefs.. Now you know. What about Free Range?  Sofie Jensen apparently is one of the unique players in the Chicago Indie Community.

What this means in terms of Lost & Found is that you have an Indie Folk album of rare beauty. One that inhales and exhales with easy grace and no little beauty. Songs of unpretentious with occasional home runs hit into the stand. No doubt by the itility player. 

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 13 The Purple Gang

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,544 The National - I Am Easy To Find

 

I missed the curve of The National. Sometimes if you miss the time of a band you find them difficult to locate emotionally. I mean their music can resonate with me. But I can't help thinking of a suburban Joy Division. I just think if you live in the suburbs and are reeasonably comfortable, perhaps yu should fund a way to be content.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,182 Case Oates

                     

                         

                                               'Aren't you glad you didn't kill yourself.'

A name that looked appealling in the new realeases schedules and is now easing me into my Saturday morning routones. Gram Parsons meet Wednesday. Case Oates Last Missouri Exit. Does what it says on the tin. Moonshine magic.

It's a sweet set of songs. It makes me want to listen toThe Replacements, Gaudalcanal Diary, Rank & File and have a brewski, I'll resist the temptation of the brewski. Sail into the new day.' Diane, Diane....

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 137 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

 

I put   A Love Supreme on yesterday on a whim. It was the first time I'd played it for a long time. When I was considering whether to listen to it or not as you do when deciding whether or not to, Jazz classic  or go for Velvet Underground or Gang of Four or some other hipster manouvere.  A thought occured. 'Would I actuallly enjoy it. Was I in the right mood.'

I shouldn't have worried. It was a foolish thought, Because like all great records A Love Supreme dictates the mood. I'm listening to it again now and we're clicking into the mantra towards the end of the first side; 'a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme...... ' You know how it goes. 

When I was at university I bought this. I played it a lot in my last year. My fifth year in total . My university story was prolonged and complex. I won't bug you with specifics and anguish here. I'm not angling for sympathy.

Anyway to cut to the chase I used to sit in a snug flat in a univesrity residence listening to A Love Supreme and smoking cigarettes and thinking about a woman who was the first real love of my life and had now headed off tp Italy and was probably sleeping with other men I decided. Mainly because she told me she was. I didn't know it but it was the beginning of a long and painful emotional river of experience for both of us. Hey we meant a lot to each other. These things cannot be measured or contained in words or paragraphs. We're alive in order to experience such emotions.

Eventually the river reached the sea twelve years on when she wrote to me to say she was getting married. Yes, I do mean to someone elae not me. Listening to A Love Supreme is the best way I know to write about this particular emotional event fir me. I'm not in pain anymore. Meanwhile A Love Supreme is the river that will never run dry, A glorious and eternally rewarding experience..  

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 131 The Bug Club - Very Human Features

 

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 record's 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.

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 12 Bert Jansch

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 415 Cortney Tidwell - Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up

 

This series is alerting me to fabulous leftfield artists and songs. Out of Nashville but this is poetic beauty which avoids geographical moorings. Quite enchanting.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,181 Destroyer

 

Destroyer. An artist I've been aware of but never listened to properly up to now. I'm amending that. A cup of piping tea on my desk, the sun rising in the Newcastle sky. Headphones on. Latest album Dan's Boogie booming on headphones August in descent. September on the horizon.

It's persona based eccentricity. A charming, disparate record. Pet Shop Boys. Lou Reed, John Cale  and Divine Comedy traceable in the DNA. Wryness irony and stream of consciousness expression. It's all rather likeable. 'life is exquisite,' Mr Destroyer intones. I can endorse that. The man has a track record which perhaps I should explore. For now this is enough. Ot's a record that contains multitudes

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,545 Stranglers IV (Rattus Norvegicus)

 

The Stranglers were lairy. And meaty. And beaty. I went to Secondary School from 1972 to 1982 ten years from the epicentre of where things were happening in the centre of London and The Stranglers felt as pertinent  to the times as any band going.We all went from Hanging Around to Duchess to Golden Brown and then out into the world.  The Stranglers aggression was different from most of the front line Punk bands and it's not worth quibbling over whether Punk is  what they were. They certainly sounded pretty Punk if you were twelve as I was.

But they were smart as well as nasty. The Doors had passed their baton. And they clearly had plenty of gas in the tank. Whether the fact that they were clearly busting for a scrap was an issie probably depends on where you were standing. These were violent, stark, lurid times. The Stranglers painted a vivid representation of them just as J.G.Ballard and Ian McEwan did..

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 417 Willard Grant Conspiracy - Everything's Fine

 

Sturdy guitars . Steered like a shipfaring vessel being steered by navigators with broad sealegs. Headed out to sea.

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 132 Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon

 

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 own identity

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 138 The Smithereens - Especially For You

 

The Tube. Some records make me speed, (like an arrow to the bullseye of a target), back to The Tube, and a Friday Night episode which led me to biy the record I'm listening to now. Such is the case this moment. I have a mug of piping tea in front of me, dressing gown warm on my skin and I'm listening to Especially For You the debut album by New York mid eighties New Wavers but essentially retro poppers  The Smithereens.

I first saw The Smithereens churning out three choice cuts from  Especially For You one eveningmid Eighties  on The Tube. It was an odd show. I found it so. The presenters seemed to have done no preparations whatsoever and have the deepest disdain for both the audience and the people they were interviewing. The comedians weren't funny, the audience fron Newcastle were clearly being herded by the crew like cattle from stage to stage.But it was something you didn't miss. Largely for the music which was frequently stagggering. Sometimes life changing.. 

 The Smithereens weren't quite that. But they were impressive and I went out and bought the record. They made you want to be in New York. They were  street and had that street glamout. The whiff of the hardlands of New Jersey. They went straight to the Sixties. Who could blame them. The Ramones and Blondie did that. The album's a pearl.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,180 Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

 I can do no better than filch this review wholesale from Did Not Chart. Hey people are wunning novel awards with albums they've written using Chat GBT. I.e. not writing but using a machine to write something for them. Anyway this is charm itself.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul

Honky-tonk heartbreak and punch-drunk pop. The sound of summer 2025 (if you drink a lot and are emotionally unstable). If you liked Dancing On The Edge (if you didn’t, we’re not talking anymore because that’s a stone cold classic you heartless fool) then of course you’ll love this.

Bittersweet folk, unholy country and back porch blues, New Threats From The Soul really should go platinum in Nashville, Los Angeles and Stockholm. If you ever loved Bill Callahan and Will Oldham you will fall hard for this one.

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 133 Peaceful Faces - Without a Single Fight

. 

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 recipe is a winning one. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 418 Lloyd Cole - Music In a Foreign Language

 

Many swear by later Lloyd. I might start doing so myself if this is anything to go by.. The beautufil young poet grows middle aged charmingly and winningly.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 139 R.E.M - Chronic Town

 

Every six months or so I'll put this on. Crank it up full and be transported back forty years within a few seconds. It's all power, energy, brash invention, colour and light. A firerball of creativity and brilliance. I did it just now. I might have been back in my first term at university, playing this to the three guys in my corridor. Three of the most important friends I'll ever have .All of us charged with the pure fire of youth. Only music can do that for me.Chronuc Town does it every single time.   

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 11 John Prine

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,179 Sam Fender

 

OK. My lesson is planned. I have Wednesday morning stretched ahead of me like an open canvas. I'm listening to Sam Fender's People Watching which has swept all before it these last eight months. It's alright frankly. The kind of thing the world needs. A CD that would sound great on the car radio as you hit the highway. Heading northward to Newcastle where Sam is from. Where I live.

The guitars are a little bit Springsteen meets The Go Betweens late period. Meet The Byrds occasionally. The sentiments are positive and upbeat. Thought throug. You can't knock it. Unless you are a snob.  I am that at heart. I would probably prefer to be listening to Marquee Moon. But it's too early.This sounds fine to me. 

It's slightly bland sometimes. But the Go Betweens are rather bland to many ears. Not all of us have a flat full of Pere Ubu, Only Ones and Raincoats albums. Most people buy a couple of CDs a year and that keeps them happy. Go to one enormodome gig.Why shouldn't they.  It's actually cheering that a talent like Fender can prosper and break through the crush to heartland AOR Radio. Good luck to the lad. 

Mojo - Feed Your Head - The Second Course # 10 Lil Green

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 140 Bill Ryder Jones - West County Kirby Primary

 

Being British is an attitude you're either born to or need to adopt pretty damned quickly of you're hoping to survive.The best time for this realisation is the moment that it sinks in that the decline towards Autumn has begum. You could put on the Kinks. They're very good at expressing this ennui. The mpment the heart sinks. You could play Nick Drake . Or alternatively just play West County Kirby Primary Bill Ryder Jones masterpiece of Every Day Is Like Sunday Northern grit and bear it classicism..

It's textbook 'well if I seem a luttle strange well that's because I am' almost defeated attotude. Billy in Kes.. 'Yeah I'm a bit depressed .That's cos I'm sensitive pal. What's it to you.' Kitchen sink shrug and off down the pib romanticism of the finest order. If Simon Armitage , Alan Bennett, Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn had formed an indie band they'd sound just like this.. Oh Simon Armitage already did. Listening to this I'm not sure he needed to. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 134 Jonathan Richman - Only Frozen Sky Anyway

 

It's a still July morning There's a Jonathan Richman album out called Only Frozen Sky Anyway I'm listening to it as I make my way from Onlime Lesson One to Online Lesson Two and an egg boils in a pan on my stove.

Jonathan is an artist apart. You can bracket him, most obviously with The Velvet Underground, with Lou and John and Nico who were his intial mentors along with artistic inspirations . The painters he loved. The Boston suburbs, Doo Wop.Rock & Roll of a cool spartan description. Being Jonathan.

It's what we're used to. Minimal yet pure joy. No reinvention of the Richman wheel at seventy four. No Modern Lovers this time round although there's a cool backing band who might as well be. A cool take on Night Fever. A hispanic sway of the hips.  A feint then speeding off into space. Nobody does it better

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 419 Peter Yorn - Musicforthemorningafter

 

The kind of record you've noticed but haven't heard. I'm just listening t it to remedy that state of affairs. It's rather good . Rattling, storrytelling. Fine guitars. Harmonica.A sense that everything is going to be ok.  Another day on earth.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,178 Racing Mount Pleasant

 

I am the passenger. And I write and I write, Today Racing Mount Pleasant. By Racing Mount Pleasant. A couple walking down a desolate beach, An album of fits starts and emotional tremors. A nice thing to settle into as the sun rises and I cup my lips arounnd my first tea of the day, Tuesday. We're off! 

This is ambitious and has sweep. Why don't you tell your friends about them. No need to mention It Starts With a Birthstone. Pretend you discovered them yourself.They're an Ann Arbor septet. Hey, The Stooges were from Ann Arbor. But there were only four of them though it sounded like a lot more. 

Racing Mount Peasant are not proto punk. There's is a gentler neo folk tip. Horns not feedback and inchoate rage and frustration. . As if they're just out of college and heading out on the highway. I can get onboard this. This is some kind of wonderful. They've got it. Like watching The Holdovers or The Last Derail. One more time. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 141 Belle & Sebastian

 '

Probably the longest continuing friendship of my lifetime outside of my family is a guy called Garth. We met at Primary School with a couple of others I'm still in touch with over fifty years later. Hallowed turf of childhood. My parents moved down from Nottingham to Richmond, all seven of us. I started to go to Vineyard Primary School. A twenty minute walk up Richmond Hill. Mount Ararat. The road to Primary School heaven.

A playground full of screaming kids. Football. Conkers. Genuine innocence even though some of course came from families where parents were splitting up. In one case a good friend of mine in the picture here a mother dying tragically young.Poor guy. Of course you never know what's happening in other people's homes.But you're in a shell of your own experience at that age. Oblivious. We were mostly fairly privelidged. The rude shock was secondary school a couple of years down the line. An entre into the real world.

But personally at this point of my life I realise now I was blessed My own personal trials came later. That's a tale for anther day. Good times , bad times. I realise now as I head towards sixty that the important thing was the happy start. My parents sheltered me from the world. That's all you can hope for. I'm grateful..

I reconnected with Garth on social media about fifteen years back. We have names that help you realise instantly, ' Yeah I know that guy. We go back...' I've met up with him a couple of times since.   One time in a concerted attempt at a Primary School reunion when it turned out to be just us but that didn't matter in the slightest.

We met on Richmond Hill. To raise a pint to those days. Relive our youth and share an experience on a beuatifully sunny evening sitting above Richmond Park, looking down to Petersham Meadows where later I used to go into Secondary School late at 16 as I made my way towards O Levels I hadn't really revised for. There was less pressure back then.

I didn't drink on our reunion. I don't much anymore. But Garth had a few pints and the beer, as beers do, did its work. He got dewy eyed and nostalgic. Particularly about absent friends. The fallen. But nostalgia though if you're still alive is mostly a happy glade. A wonderful path. I'm prone to it myself. Find myself more prone with the passing years. 

We talked about music. The glorious soundtrack of our youths, Wire. Killing Joke. Associates. At a certain point Garth got to his feet and muttered. 'I don't think much of....Belle & Sebastian.'He almost spat it. . I couldn't help smiling. Involuntary.  I was taken aback. Not just becaise It was so unlike Garth. He's such a good bloke. But also at the object of his disadain. Belle & Sebastian. They seem so unobjectionable. 

We wandered down the hill and said our goodbyes. Until the next time. For the record I love Belle & Sebastian. I'm listening to The Boy With The Arab Strap now. They're a band that seemed to arrive ahead of the curve. In the CD and Imternet age and just before Napster broke music open forever like an egg being cracked unto a basin of flour, salt and sugar, - making all music open for everybody forever and musicians in peril when previously you'd had to work damned hard to harvest Rock & Roll's secrets.It's all there for you now. 

It's all there on The Boy. You just have to unwrap it. Simon & Garfunkel,The Velvet Underground, The Left Banke, The Lovin Spoonful. CBGB's Orange Juice, Felt. The fact that they could only possibly be from Glasgow, The ghost of Gregory's Girl. I'm sorry Garth. But I love Belle & Sebastian.They always make me feel warm.  Wire of course are great and they're yours . 

Elvis Costello

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 135 Fruit Trees - An Opening

                         ' Fruit tree. Fruit tree. No one knows you but the wind and the air.'

It was true then it still is  now. Fruit Trees thank the LA Dodgers and Raymind Chandler on their Bandcamp page for current album An Opening. They know where they stand in the scheme of things.

They also might thank Karen Dalton, Sandy Denny. Fairport and Pentangle. I could write a long list. But I don't wish to. I'd rather listen to this wistful, reflectove, pained, veined but rather marvellous record.  There's a lot on here.Unpack at your leisure.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 419 The Blithe Sons - Waves of Grass

 

Drone before tea.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,177 Marissa Nadler

 

Minor chords as my bath runs. Marissa Nadler's New Variations coming down the wire. Spectral beauty and haunting lyricism. That'll do. This is her fourth album and she's starting a US tour currently. She'll be in the UK and Europe come Ocrober and November.

In the meantime .New Variations  seems timely given that the days are gtting shorter and the shadows drawing in. This is all rather dreamy I must say. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 136 Lake Ruth - Hawking Radiation

 

Lake Ruth lay claim to that particular Astral Plane that heads unerringly into distant galaxies. And I'm not talking about the chocolate bar,. The territory staked oit in the party scene at the end of Midnight Cowboy. Silver Apples and The United States of America. Boldly going where plenty of Indie Kids have been before and will continue to go.

New album Hawking Radiation stays wuthin the perameters established by itself early on. Those familiar with this particular subgenre will be familiar with the journey to the stars it plots. And enjoy their morning his and hers cuppas on their Jetson teasmades reclining in their space hammocks. 

Street Level Superstar - A Year with Lawrence - Will Hodgkinson # 4 The Loft

 

How in the head of Alan Magee Pete Astorm Bobby Gillespie and Lawrence were all bound to be Pop Stars but how actually it was just never going to happem. Though of course Gillespeie made it eventually.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 420 Flotatation Toy Warning _ Bluffer's Guide To The Flight Deck

 

Great cover. Great Albim title. A nice album to turn to as the mind turns to the working week. A strange, poetic, ruminative albim whuch surprises at every turn.. Literary, 'occupying a space between Mercury Rev and The Divine Comedy.