500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 322 Pellumair - Summer Storm

 

Did nothing for me so I shan't write about it.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,505 A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels & the Paths of Rhythm

 

In the last couple of years I have been working mostly from home. It feels like early retirement in many senses. I have a lot more space and choices. This Sunday afternoon I've arrived home from a fish and chips Christmas Lunch at Church. The sun is in its heavens and my next choice is A Tribe Called Quest's debut album  - People's Instinctive Travels & The Paths of Rhythm. It's on my turntable I have a cup of tea in front off me. Off we go.....

It starts with a baby crying as all of our narratives commence, We forget. How can we forget. We forget to enjoy the passage. Our journey Then Push it Along pushes it along. There's lots if amiable call and response. We're into the Nineties and the world is our oyster. 

I pick up the inner sleeve and it thanks virtually all of the right people. . The Native Tongues, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Public Enemy. It trips off the tongue. The album had a fluency that Hip Hop has largely lost . An easy going bonhomie .Ir sounds like a lost language frankly,

Ten Dollars says it's cool. This is unbelievably cool and we're only halfway through the first side. My flat fills with positive vibes. I wonder if it's a good time to call my mum. I'll wait' til my phone charges and we reach the end of the first side.

Really all life is here. The best records are like that. He left his wallet in El Segundo. I imagine its happened to us all. It makes me want to go to E; Segundo so I can lose mine. A Tribe Called Quest albums are deceptive . They make you feel like you've got more time and space than you'll ever need

Side 2 flows like The Nile. Bonita Applebum. You and me boney are a match  made in heaven. Then Can I Kick It.an incredibly smart move to sample Lou and drag in the cool white kids. 

In general Tribe Called Quest records feel like the best dreams, Culture, travel and the Paths of Rhythm, What mire could you ask for,

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4246Tav Falco

 

Desire On Ice, Tav Falco. The kind of album the likes of Bobby Gillespie would bust a gut to make a gest appearance on and compare their cuban heels or cufflinks between studios takes. It ain't easy being seminal and legendary kids. 

They're all here; Bobby, Kid Congos, Jon Spencer, Jim Sclavunos.. Baz Boorer.?!? The ghosts no doubt of Johnny Thunders, Link Wray. Jim Jarmusch doubtless behind the lens..Nails sharpened to a point. Like talons. 

 Desire On Ice is a record that celebrates the way they and we were. One last shot at midnight in New Orleans . Shades and leather. at the Copacabana befire we return to our rooms and coffons. A steak and fries. A stake thrygh the heart. Great fun is had by one and all.

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 33 Emma Pollock's Begging The Night To Take Hold

 

'We are cocooned and protected by the silence. Find ourselves marooned. Not in islands but in houses.'.

Saturday's the day for fun apparently and I 'm up early to harvest it. I'm in my desk with my mug of tea. Looking out of my high Georgian double glazed windows  in Clayton Street West at the equally majestic Georgian windows of the Clarendon building across the road from me. It's a grey day in Newcastle but no immediate sign of rain. .I might go to Jesmond Dene.

My bath has run. I'll boil an egg and listen to Emma Pollock's Begging The Night To Take Hold and decide what to do with my day .It's a literate, thoughtful record. Nuanced. Pretty much my favourite word.  Nuanced. Like people. Like the lines on a face of a loved one..

What this compares to most readily to me are cultural comparisons rather than musical ones. A Picador novel or a Radio 4 discussion about pottery or furnishing or films. Aimed squarely at the Indie set. At those who care. The musical reference point seems to be Elvis Costello.. People who read books and watch films...

It's not an album that I.imagine will break loose and make a commercial splash though I'd say that it probably deserves to do so. It deserves Mercury Prizes, Nobel Prizes probably. It's a wonderful listen that concerns itself most immediately with affairs of the heart. The Progress of Love. 

It rises and falls. Ebbs and flows. It's rather majestic actually. There are whole lives in every song. Poetry and heartbreak and back for afternoon tea and cake. Give it a listen. . 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,506 Grace Jones - Nightclubbing

 

'Walking down the street. Kicking cans....' This is a record that immediately makes you feel cooler than you will ever actually be. I put this on and went upstairs to get dressed. Put on my Miles Davis t shirt and a pair of day old socks, came down and dragged the needle back to the start of Walking In The Rain. Then I came over to my keyboard and started typing like bilio. As if I were Raymond Chandler at his desk on a classic Remington. Second chapter of The Little Sister.. Marlowe in peril.

 'Got to blow your horn.' More double entendre than Classic Carry On. Nut actually so upfront and  blatant that perhaps they're not actually entendres but rather invitations to go back upstairs and get down on it. This is just completely state of the art. Sly and Robbie. Top pperators wherever you look. Recorded at Compass Point, on Nassau, Bahamas.and you can feel the needle rising from the record. Bespoke tailoring from choice cuts. The taste and delivery are just impeccable

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500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 323 Black Mountain - Black Mountain

 

I rather enjoyed this. Iyr of Vancouver. Sheer. Dylan, Reed J, Mascis  and Jim Carroll delivery. Krautrock  and Hard Rock in addition to New York '67 and '7, Seattle '92  and plenty of Pavement. You can practically smell the trailed, discarded cigarette. Insouciance ! Well aware of their cool and youth  their close proximity to truth. Rock & Roll classicists. Shameless narcissists.

Song(s) of the Day # 4245 Juana Molina

 

We approach December I have the year Review Issue of Uncut Magazine n front of me, Their album of the month is an Argentinian record by Juana Molina called DOGA. It is indeed 'maravilloso.' Vamos !

This is an album for which apparently Molina had accumulated over 60 hours of recorded ideas. She's pared them down to just under an hour here and the results are staggering. Fragments of sui generis studio trickery that made me think of Beck and Bjork most obviously as reference points.. Put whatever you're doing right now down and listen to this. 

Molina has a long and distinguished track record as a creative, artistic mover and shaker. She works in folktronica and ambient indie stuff if you want any number of labels that fail to do DOGA justice. This is dancing on the ceiling inspiration. Joyous. 'Es hora de mi bano.'   .     

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 34 Westmoreland - I Got The Feeling In Bakersfield

 

Back from a holiday weekend in Dublin with an important, irreplaceable friend of my lifetime. The Westmoreland album I Got The Feeling In Bakersfield is spinning. It answers my needs. Another fishie on a little dishie from a blogs best friend Darren Jones.

The album deals with the passing of his father and Westmoreland alter ego Zach Alva. Also reflections on grief, loss and being a Latino artist creating in what aree predominantly whute musicaal spaces.This is a folk rock record esswsntially if you need a label. Hey we need somehwere to hang your ideas on..

Nothing changes. This is a record which could easily have come out un the early Sixties. The early Eightues or the eatly Noughties. Or I ssspect the 1460s. Nothing changes, everything changes. Dogwood is in the front yard. You are waking from a good dream and the pool tables are free.  

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 77 Moby Grape - Moby Grape

 

One of the great Rock & Roll band names and one of the great Rock & Roll records, Five band members, five songwriters. A finger on a washboard to signal intent. Every song sounding quite different from the last. A narrative which flows like a novel or a film, Or erm. Alright a river. After different rainbow's ends. Full of open ended questions, .This is quite thrilling in terms of its open endined duelling and questing. This is a precedent for Marquee Moon.   

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 324 The Delgados - Hate

 

It's Friday evening, I have jacket potatoes warming up in the oven. I couldn't thnk of anything much better to do than listen to The Delgados and drift somewhere else. Across space and time. That after all is what it's there for. The Delgados understand nuance which is not just one of my favourite words but one of my favourite things,. 

Hate is a strangely named record because it doesn't feel like the currency they trade in. But at a certain point they declare that Hate is all you need. That's what Rock & Roll is there for, Any number of people got outraged when Dylan was awarded but really it's outrageous that no Rock & Roll figures had been awarded it before. Rock & Roll has pushed on human discourse.

Hate is a great noel that now doesn't need to be written or read. The record rises and swells magically like a wonderful evening with friends or family. .The Delgados ynderstand beauty and poetry, 

Song(s) of the Day # 4244 Olan Monk

 

Songs For Nothing by Olan Monk . Just what you need on a grim Friday afternoon in November. With the rain and winds buffeting my windows as I look out at the grimness of the day. Never fear.. As they say I'm going in.

Well if it's the end of the world you might as well have an appropriate soundtrack. And this is pretty much that. It's pretty much a dirge. If Shoegaze and miserablility are what the physician ordered then this is your apple a day. 

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 35 Adrian Crowley

 

Adrian Crowley. An Irish singer songwriter in the vein of Leonard Cohen. Scott Walker. Jacques Brel. Old school. Chamber songs with lots of space and poetry. Observations of a gentle, loving and thoughtful kind. I'll listen to it as I prepare for my half eight in Dussledorf.

Crowley is a craftsman. Measure Of Joy is his tenth album. Since 1999. He has a body of work. He's not as well known as he ought to be. But those who are aware of him treasure him. I certainly do. He's one for those who appreciate the finer things in life. A glass of red wine occasionally. 

The songs of Measure Of Joy are not sad exactly so much as reflective. There's  genuine space. Space is used so well. Words and melody too. This is some record. I urge you to hear it !

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,507 Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

 

Jens Lekman is an accidental wedding singer, And a great Post Millennial artist.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 324 Tom Russell - Hot Walker

 

Felt to me like an update of Paris Texas. Quite amiable.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4243 Bug Teeth

 

Starbuck, AKA Darren Jones is back on the deck of the Peqod, AKA It Starts With a Birthstone. Scouring the waves as the porpoises skip and schools of fish dance beneath the ocean waves. Meanwhile Starbuck has brought more tasty scran to the captain's table.

In the form of Micgrographia by Bug Teeth, Serpentine and sleek Indie Pop Fare from a Leeds combo with a penchant for dressing up in fancy costumes and dancing under the stars. This is a remarkable record that lit my fire. A tasty treat for those mourning the sad loss of Tapir! perhaps, Cheers Darren ! Much appreciated.  

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 36 Hand Habits

 

 'The time to rise has been engaged'. Yeah I know it's an old R.E.M. lyric but they're much on my mind lately. Hey I'm coming towards 60 at the end of the month. The days are getting shorter And it's time - to listen to the latest Hand Habits album, Blue Reminder.

It's a spectral record, just the kind of thing I'm looking for right now. Meg Duffy is the artist behind Hand Habits and she walks a crooked path jist as the most inspired artists do. Doesn't join the dots in the way that, err R.E.M.among others didn't do.

Many ideas explore the ideas of Blue-mess. Joni Mitchell. Tim Buckley. Len. Here's another. Blue. Is an interesting idea.  It's not necessarily exclusive to sadness so much as nuanc. And escape. 

I shook Peter Buck's hand on Friday and it's making me think about what I want from music right now and this record certainly delivers on all kinds of levels. I like records that make you unsure about how they make you feel but make you want to listen to them again anyway. Spooky Gospel was the way Bick referred to what R.E.M. tried to do. Only the bravest artists walk roads like these. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 78 The Doors - Waiting For The Sun

 

I'm listening to the first two songs of Waiting For the Sun Hello I Love You and Love Street again and again. I like The Doors. They seem to encourage engagement with life. Jim gets a bad press from superior would be music critics, (yes I guess I'm one myself). Bit he encourages the listening to question the given which surely is the purpose of life. 

Waiting For The Sun admittedly is a bit of a car crash in some ways. The sequencing is all over the shop. It doesn't flow. The two sides of the record are bookended by two of the band's least likeable moments. Unknown Soldier and Five to One. The grand centerpiece Celebration of The Lizard didn't cohere. Other records are better. But hey it had drama, colour and engagement. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 325 Jamie T - Panic Prevention

 

Somewhat frenetic and irritating, 

Song(s) of the Day # 4241 Mulatu Astatke

 

Swept away. I came in last night rather than staying at my local at half time in the frozen wastes of a wintry Newcastle evening rather staying out for the Champions League second half. Newcastle were one up to Marseille and playing well despite a lack of possession and put on  Mulatu plays Mulatu instead. It was the right thing to do.

Being carried across arid plans with a nomadic troupe of players. Echoes of Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Sun Ra, the train of slaves of deperados in Gladiator, Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar. The English Patient. .

I'm essentially mopping up now. We're drawing to December and the It Starts With a Birthstone album countdown is dipping into its thirties. It's always an arbitrary rundown. Never attempted to be definitive in any way because these days that's a ludicrous endeavour if it hasn't always been. This though is one of the best things I've heard all year and I'll shoehorn it in someone in the top twenty when I get back from Newcastle to my parents house in Canterbury. .Newcastle meanwhile lost 2-1.Wharever 

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It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 37 Blackxwash - Only Dust Remains

 

Only Dust Remains the new Blackxwash record is a caude for great celebration. A deeply intense and angst full album like a great episode of The Wire. Intensuty and claustrophobia mounting with every  stanza to a point of dreadgul clarity and tension.

I listened to the record as the sun set yesterday evening. It fely like the natural culminatuin to a day well spent. Scripted, tight and wuth a narrative both complex but ummediately grupping. Appocalypric in terms of pitch and intensity. This is a reminder of classuc texts; Cypress Hell and Wu Tang Clan, Graveniggaz and Eminem. Thus us wrutten un stine. Winderful stuff.   

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,508 Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come OST

 

This came up on my list and I looked for the record. I looked on Facebook and saw songs from it posted everywhere and saw that Jimmy had passed . I found the record put it on and had a cup of tea. Better tributes will be made elsewhere. If you're going to live you might as well really live. Crossing the last river.

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500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 325 The Darkness - Permission To Darkness

 

The key to your relationship with The Darkness probably depended on how you felt about the musical genre they aped and whether you found them funny, I find them funny and they're clearly gifted but I've never really chosen to listen to stuff like this.  

Song(s) of the Day # 4240 Elvis Costello & The Attractions

 

'Who put these fingerprints on my imagination ? '

I have woken up. It's a bright day outside, I should have four online classes today but one of them has already been cancelled fear not dear reader. I get paid. I'm glad I'm not going into work and I can sit and listen to Elvis Costello & The Attractions Armed Forces all day while I wait to teach the other three.

This was a record that made a bit of a splash when it was released and also um ruffled a few feathers. It's full of anger and vitriol and no little bile. The N word in Oliver 's Army a song about mercenaries and the British and owing something to ABBA. I wonder whether Costello regrets it.   It's a fine song. No wonder it didn't reach number one. That's for novelty sings. Rarely for social comment.'We could be in Palestine' !!! 

Elsewhere EC cock a snook at pretty much all and sundry. Down all the spirits behind the bar smoke all their tabs and generally behave as they bloody well want to and a good time is had by one and all. It's now 2025 and I suspect Facebook is dead. RiP. Social media is for interaction. Not surveillance and control.

 Elvis had a few things to say about that. 'You shine all the buttons on your green shirt.' Apparently about Angela Rippon and thought control . The President of the United States is now threatening to sue the BBC for a billion dollars.  'Don't start your talking. I could talk all night !'. I think I'll turn the record over again. I've got an hour before my first class. Time for the Metro crossword. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 38 Case Oats - Last Missouri Exit

                      

                                               '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, Guadalcanal Diary, Rank & File and have a brewski, I'll resist the temptation of the brewski. Sail into the new day.' Diane, Diane.... It's a lovely record.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 326 Electralane

 

A band that are new to me that operate in the space between Stereolab and Broadcast which is new to me. I approve. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4239 Kara Lis Coverdale

 

There are times when music is required. To provide the space and the solace. The calm and the peace, Kara Lis Coverdale'Changes In Air is one such record. A picture of a woman sat at the window. The sound of devotion and material curiosity. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 39 Bon Iver

 

Bon Iver's latest album the curiously titles album SABLE fABLE seems a return to familiar territory. Deep voiced emotive yelps across a snowy prairie for couples who met and bonded over For Emma all those years ago to stare into each other's eyes as the little ones drift into slumber 

There's an interview in last month's Uncut where this, Justin Vernon's fifth album under  the Bon Iver moniker is described as upbeat. Frankly it doesn't particularly sound so to me. It sounds like same old, same old, but in an impressive way.It's a powerful record.

Mournful, melancholy, miserable and other synonyms beginning with m. It's never a bad idea to stuck to what you're good at frankly. Vernon's very good at this. Cheer up mate ! It might never happen ! 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 326 Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism

 

This is alright but never really takes off for me. It's rather too timid to break the custard and bleed for the most part. Then suddenly Passenger Seat came on and a nerve twisted.. 

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Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,509 Paul McCartney - Paul McCartney

 

Paul McCartney. You know. That bloke in the Beatles. Yellow Submarine. All that stuff. After the Beatles went their separate ways he didn't hang around. Imagine the pain. But he didn't well on that. He knew this is what he did. 

Paul McCartney is sparse. And pure. And recognisably Macca. It howls at the moon and looks into the darkness and whispers sweet nothings,  It's rather pure. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4238 Salif Keita

 

Whole notions of Albums of the Year arerendered immediately  preposterous as soon as you put on Salif Keita's So Kono. How long is The River Nile ? How long is a piece of string . Where does So Kono stand in Keita's overall body of work, Is it as good or even better than 2002's Moffou which is listed as the sixth thousandth and ninth best album on the Best Ever Albums site. So not as good as Forever Changes then .

It still sounds pretty good to me. The rain is falling in Newcastle but this carries me to Mali which my rational mind tells me does exist and where people are enjoying the pleasures and pain and joy and sorrow that I experience on a daily basis. And I know that.those emotions are just as important as mine. You may not understand everything you hear on So Kono. But you can sense its wonder.   

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 40 Panda Bear - Sinister Grift,

 

Panda Bear. Not just a heavily threatened species that now seems to be making a heartening recovery. Also a musical project for a member of Animal Collective who has a new album, (and a heavily marketed one), of his own just out. Sinister Grift, which I found myself listening to for a siazable part of Tuesday.

It's a marvellous record. Let's face it, marvellous is a marvellous word, but it struggles to do justice to Sinister Grift. I must say A nostalgic album, but the 21st Century seems to have been a largely nostalgic exercise for good and bad. I'm not choosing to dwell on the downside this morning. This is a 'no news day I've decided. I've got lessons to teach. But this focuses on nostalgia that's something to celebrate.

Sinister Grift seems to be nostalgic primarily for The Beach Boys and most obviously Pet Sounds. Like much of Grizzly Bear and some of Vampire Weekend. There are also the occasional peeks from behind the door from the lihes of Paul Simon, The Byrds and Mamas & The Papas. Hi guys!

It's all fed through a 21st Century prism.It knows where it's. situated. It's not, like some records, The La's and Ty Segall for instance, an attempt to replicate a sound and sensibility that has gone. All in all a delightful album though this kind of record that can become rather a construction line activity exercise when you hear too many of these records. 

Canned happiness. I shouldn't complain really. There are worse things in life than canned happiness. This album is that ! It made me want to be in California, not a sensation I feel too often.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,510 Band of Horses - Cease To Begin

 

Old school. Crazy Horse reborn with slightly falsetto vocals.

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 329 Tenniscoats - We Are Everyone

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 79 Stone Roses - Stone Roses

 

'I don't have to sell my soul...'

Mani Mountfueld, the bassist of Stone Rises, Primal Scream and others died on Thursday. Only 63. It was a big moment for a lot of people. They would have listened through this album and found themselves awash with waves of memory like I was.

I imagined Mark at my local ploughing songs into the jukebox round the corner from the flat I live in in the centre of Newcastle. People elsewhere listening ti the music Mountfield played and thinking through their own yesterdays,.I've had a whole career in teaching and training since and have now made it to my own sixties. I hope I'll never go into an office again. I can't help but think the Stone Roses would approve. They advocate escape. 

 . I texted a lot of friends. My sister who had been listening to the first Stone Roses album  just as I was. The university friend I was due to go to see the band with at a small arts centre in Norwich just before the band broke huge with The Happy Mondays in that incredible Top of the Pops performance on a show where Happy Mondays featured too and in retrospect ushered in the Nineties.I had a cold and didn't go. It's long been a joke between us. Andy should have gone without me. 

It was the album of my last year at university. I bought it and played it a lot. It ushered a whole new thing in. Though I wasn't sure if the outfits and never went for the accompanying lifestyle the record itself is undeniable. Attitude, youth, melody and when it wants to be damned danceable. Not least because of Mountfeld's basslines. Some rhythm section. This was unprecedented. Indie bands didn't swing like this. 

                                                 'Citrus, sucking sunshine.'  R.I.P.   

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 40 OK Cool

 

From the best of my knowledge Michael Stipe's sister Linda was in a band called Uh Ok. They played around Athens, Georgia for a while. Probably with R.E.M. I imagine. They never became the biggest band in the world. But I appreciate the gesture . It's the essence of Punk.

OK. is a great word. Its neutral . An acceptance of the way things are. A shrug. Let's get on with it. You asked for it 'It is what it is fella !

It's Saturday morning. I'm listening to OK Cool's Chit Chat  They're from Chicago, Chicago sounds like the place to be right now This is one of those records where you think. Yes, that hits the spot !

Song(s) of the Day # 4239 Mavis Staples

 

It's a sad and beautiful world.. Ain't that the truth, Never mind. We plough in into the gathering headwind. Mavis Staples new album is clenched and durable and up to the task. She's 86 and frankly has seen it all. She's a Gospel Singer and Civil Rights activist and her voice still holds good and true. It's an record to listen and learn from

This is a Soul album in the richest sense. Mavis is pictured on the album sleeve with  at her dining room table with her hands folded and her eyes closed. It's an album of inspiring purity and stillness..

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,511 David Gray - White Ladder

 

David Gray made a splash with Babylon. Here's the album that came from. It was music that sounded good coming out of the radio. Leonard Cohen lite

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It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 41 Emma- Jean Thackray

 

 Hey there. I'm a weirdo baby. So why don't you spend some time with me. Emma- Jean Thackray beckons her finger and the reclines into a long hot bubble bath in he video for the album of the same name.

It's all hot slinky Soulful stuff of the kind that ticks Giles Peterson's boxes. Loose, spruce and reflective music on the passing of Thackray's partner Matthew Gordon.

There's a lot going on here emotionally and lyrically. But really it's just an easeful and rather impressive record. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4237 Adrian Sherwood.

 

Space. The final frontier. Adrian Sherwood's The Collapse of Everything. An apt reflection of the current condition. Still, never fear this will take you to the next whisky bar and beyond. A beautiful record

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,512 Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold

 

Marked them out early as a band apart. Their generation's Sonic Youth or Pavement.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 329 The Charlatans - Wonderland

 

I always liked The Charlatans. They seemed to have an angle of their own. Their own direction and their own way of shifting their weight to nonplus the opposition. Giving a body swerve to wrong foot the clumsy central defender leaving him on his  and backside closing in on goal. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4236 David Byrne

 

David Byrne's latest album 'Who Is The Sky' is playing where I am. It's sunny where David is. Not where I am . I woke to snow outside and snow on the streets. It felt like Christmas. I've been through a busy and eventful day. Taught my classes.

Now in darkness I'm listening to  'Who Is The Sky' again while my supper warms, I rather like it. It's everyman stuff, the kind of thing Byrne and his Talking Heads compadres have long specialised in. Truisms that set them apart, But essentially glass half thinking and positivity. And tunes and rhythms that invite you to get up and dance and then sit down and think.  

'You can surrender to  happiness, anger and frustration but that doesn't help anything,' said Byrne in Mojo recently 'You have to persevere, believe that things can be changed.' l'll go with that. The man who wrote ir at least co-wrote Psycho Killer, The Big Country Heaven, Cities and Once In a Lifetime and This Must Be the Place is still in the ring and punching above his weight. 'Same as it ever was,;

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 42 Index For Working Music - Which Direction Goes The Beam

 

Thursday's Bells. The first track from Which Direction Goes The Beam the second album from Index For Working Music. It's  wired and weird.  Velvety, (I'm talking Velvet Underground) We're off  I wonder whether we're moving into a new phase now. Everywhere you look there are dystopic, twisted visions. This is only the latest down the pike. The water is swimming with nightmares.

Only Ones, Magazine, The Cure, Pere Ubu. 13th Floor Elevators, Televisuin, Wire. Bookshelves of worn and greying Penguin Classic Paperback. Opiated dreams. Symbolists, Modernists, Post Modernists, Satirists, Surrealists. Vorticists. Marxists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Anarchists, Nihilists. Pampleteers. Woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks.  Index For Working Music are out on tour next week. Catch them. In the meantime hear this . It's a fantabulous album. There are insects twitching under its skin. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 330 John Cale - Black Acetate

 

John Cale continually comes from a different place, God bless him.

Song(s) of the Day # 4235 Dominie Hooper

 

An album that resonates like Astral Weeks, Trailer Park or The Dreaming and that always lures draw me in. Dominie Hooper's debut album on Lost Map,  In This Body Lives is really rather triumphant,

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 43 Benjamin Booker - LOWER

 

Hold the front page folks! It's the weekend. The sun, albeit a sickly one, has risen in the Newcastle heavens and I'm giving the latest Benjamin Booker album LOWER a second listen. It's an occasionally bleak but consistent and compelling record.

This is something of a comeback I imagine. Booker made a splash of some kind in Indie circles some time back. But as far as I can tcan tell, this is his first studio album since 2017. That's almost ten years and that's a long time in the world we inhabit now. The world seemed a relatively rational. place in 2017.

 LOWER reflects a slightly darker mood than I remember from Booker previously. Also more eclectic, playful and deft in terms of genre. This is not purely Blues. It flirts restlessly with Trip Hop. Garage. Soul, The man says that he's spent his hiatus working on a new identity. Its realised here. This is a record that deserves to be listened to.

Literate,evocative song titles. Black Opps, LWA in the Trailer Park, Pompiei Statues, Slow Dance in a Gay Bar, Speaking With The Dead. .An indistinct but resiliant new identity and sound for the new year and the new American hinterland. This is a terrific record. I hope it's noticed.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 331 Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

 

Mark Lanegan is incredibly well read and  travelled. He understands and revels in the dark poetry of the underbelly. A Grunge Bukowski with a taste for Baudelaire.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 80 Japan - Quiet Life

 

It's a bleak winter's  afternoon in Newcastle and I'm listening to Quiet Life. Because it takes me back and carries me away. Big band at my secondary school. We were heading out into the world without any real idea about where the tides of life would carry us and where we were heading. Japan sang here about 'refugees' and we had little idea of what the word actually meant but would probably find out between then and now. 

Japan meanwhile seemed to know s much. They'd been ridiculed broadly as New York Dolls wannabes initially. Then as third hand Bowie / Roxy clones. But both band's records have aged well and make classy and sophisticated listening fare still. Youth clearly is not always wasted on the young.   

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 44 Gwenno - Utopia

 

I'm immediately amicable to any album that starts with a song called London 1757 as Gwenn's latest Utopia does. Heaven? A place where nothing ever happens.But Utopia is certainly heavenly. A wonderful record. Focusing on the past to say something about the present and the future.

Lyrics sung in Cornish and English. Melodies that sound like Confectionary Pop Folk.. It's all rather creamy. Like a Cornish Scone Tea with steam rising from the kettle. Cherries on the plate and the sun shining through the glass. You'll meet the devil in Brighton apparently. According to Gwenno anyhow. Well it can be a rum place on occasion.

This is loveliness on wax. A fine, fine album to drive us from July to August and beyond. Resist the mundane. Embrace the imaginative alternative. This is a great place to start.

Song(s) of the Day # 4234 Constant Smiles

 

Music can do something for me that nothing else can do. Drag me back from a place. Into a better place. Moonflowers did that for me yesterday evening. Drew me into a forest glade and bathed me in the moment showed me in the wonder.

This is internally born ambient pop apparently. I give up on labels, It's a trek in the forest. A walk on the gentle side. This feels like an album that deserves a song on The Eternal Sunshine soundtrack. That's enough for me, 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 322 Paul McCartney - Chaos & Creation in the Backyard

 

McCartney makes the best of things and you can forgive him some dumb rhymes.

Song(s) of the Day # 4233 Tortoise

 

I do not know the work of Tortoise. Though I know them by repute. They have a new album out. It's called Touch and has a large venomous looking scorpion on the front cover who you wouldn't really allow to touch you.

Ut's their first album for nine years , Pitchfork describes it as 'strangely moving') Strangely because it's largely instrumental and like Kraftwerk sounds like a set of machines playing themselves. It's no great disclosure to suggest that this can be an extremely moving experience. The ghost in the machine.   

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 45 Golomb

 

No kids. Not Gollum ! Not that infernal  'Precious my precious' wretch who trails after Sam and Frodo halfway across wherever they were off to while  taking the ring backto Sauron to thow it in the crack of doom or whetever that's all about.Look thie is It Starts With a Birthstone. We have other fish to fry.  This here;s Golomb and their new album The Beat Goes On.

They're dark scuzzy knaves that's for sure. It sounds as if there's mud wrestling going on on an indie stage. Then they break into sunlight and skip and frolic on grassy meadows. A good time is had by one and all. Thumbs aloft. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 81 The Four Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

 

This is the kind of record that collector slaver at the mouth at like Pavlov's Dig and pretend they prefer to Pet Sounds to irritate their friends. It is a pretty classic package though. An album released at the end of the Sixties by the Four Seasons who had been huge only five years before its release in 1969 but now seemed like dinosaurs.

But here they reinvent themselves. No Big Girls Don't Cry or Walk Like a Man in raging falsettos but melancholic state of the nation elegies in the year of radical protests, drug proliferation and the oncoming decade. It's a beautiful record of the time. As demonstrative of what being alive in 1969 as Abbey Road in some ways.  

I'm glad I've got it. It comes out a couple of times a year. Generally as darkness falls.  Bit I confess this afternoon, halfway through the second side tiday I've fallen half in live with the thing and will be playing it more from now on. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,513 Brockhampton - Saturation

 

No. Just no.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 334 Andrew Chalk - Fall In The Wake of A Flawless Landscape

 

Take half an hour out of your day and listen to this. You deserve it. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4232 Brad Mehldau

 

Fifteen minutes with you. Oh I wouldn't say no.  An hour with Elliott Smith. Even better. Orchestral pieces by Brad Mehldau a record called Ride Into The Sun where the beauty of the man's music unwraps like an early Christmas present and we can all experience the wonder and the magic that the man gave to the world.

With an artist like Smith people tend to focus on the sadness of the biograhy. What they might have been going through at the time and grab a bit of reflected glory, rather than try to appreciate the beauty. This applies to Nick Drake. To Gram Parsons. To Tim Buckley. To Ian Curtis, To Grant McLennan. 

Choose your fallen hero. Caravaggio.. Chatterton.What their work and inspiration is most of all is an invitation to create. Life is sad. But be glad Ride Into The Sun.does precisely that. Onwards and upwards 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 46 Racing Mount Pleasant. - 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. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 334 The Rapture - Echoes

 

The Rapture were Post Modern and threw Pop Group and Cure shapes long before it was de rigeur. I still found Echoes rather bloodless.. Alienation can be rather alienating.

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250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 81 Sinead O'Connor I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got

 

This year seems to be the year for reunions, anniversaries for me, Reconciliation. Finding pathways out of the forest. Here's an artist and a record that means something to me. I've turned 60 this year. Reunited with someone I never expected to see again who means a great deal to me. Seen friends I've met in my youth, 40 years ago. Met up again with someone who was across the corridor from me forty years ago as I started university, Discussed with all of these people the state of the world we now find ourselves in.

I also graduated 35 years ago and set out earnestly into the world of work. Teaching. Which essentially is what I've been doing ever since. Before I did so I sat in a flat in Norwich before my finals, watching Sinead O'Connor on TV with my flatmates. Performing on the late show. One of my flatmates who came out as gay that year watched me and Tim another flatmate and commented on our slack jaws and glossy gaze. She had something that no one else had.

In September after I graduated my brother and sister in law drove me out to Komarno, Czechoslovakia in September 1990.. Stopping in Prague to witness a vanishing world before it vanished and dropping me off in a town ender dust on the Slovakian border where I lived and  taught for an academic year without really knowing what I was doing. .I had no teaching qualifications or materials save a couple of old Cambridge Press teaching books. A word processor to type out worksheets for my classes. Otherwise working on a chalkboard and with my students,. Now I 35 years on  teach online. One of the miracles of modern existence. And certainly progress.

 I lived in a flat without  a fridge or a telephone. In a town where there was little to do except stay in and watch television and listen to the World Service telling you of the bombs raining down on Iraq. Dave Lee Travis. John Peel. The Magnificent Seven occasionally. Where things were so dull that somebody sprayed my name on a wall. 

There were very few bars because all of the bars were gypsy bars and people hated and feared the Gypsies. I used to dine out at the Europa hotel which was full of Gypsies opening their wallets, full of black market money. They ran a knocking shop in the hotel itself. . The musicians were all kinds of wonderful on the other hand. Coming to the table and serenading you with violins as you dined on chicken and stew and roast potatoes and boiled vegetables. 

Back in my flat cockroaches winking at me on the end of my bath. Taking medication at the start of each day and waiting for half an hour before I ate as I'd been told I needed to do .I can still recall the state of nausea I experienced daily. All the time thinking of a girl that I loved and who was now in Turin sleeping with other men and for whom nothing compared in my earthly experience. For whom I was bleeding internally. 

All the while I was mourning the loss of a sister who'd died a couple of years before in the most painful and gut wretching circumstances imaginable., At a point when I also might have died I now realise. But I fortunately had been diagnosed and treatment commenced. Before the condition got to my inner organs, Gripped the hubs and terminals of my inner arterials and I began to shrivel as I'd seen patients with the same conditions disintegrate and crumble in the hospital where I'd first been treated..  

At Christmas I arranged a cross European train journey and travelled from Vienna to Turin to spend ten days with my love. We shared a bed but it was not as before. It was a gorgeous mistake in the words of Sinead. Our time had gone but we didn't actually realise it fully for a further 13 years until I finally realised what was for the best for both of us and I severed the connection..

I'm sitting listening to  I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. It's Saturday. My day is free and I feel free. More people have gone. The brother who drove me has gone. To wherever my sister has gone. The sacred, unknown space where we'll all go at some point. Sorry to break it to you but I suspect you're already aware. .Sinead herself has departed, I've got this record . That's good enough for  me. She sleeps with the angels.  Min is in Singapore I suspect, now married and I wish her well. I should get going. The day is mine. . 

 

.  

 

 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 47 US Girls - Scratch It

 

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

Song(s) of the Day # 4231 Snocaps

 

I almost get the sense sometimes that artists curate their own records these days. Frame their albums in the terms the want them to be perceived in a classic sense among the records they loved and they first clasped to their chests as they were coming of age , with half an eye on eternity

Snocaps eponymous record is one such album  . The Crutchfield sisters regroup and they're shooting at will from the hip and the get go, jangling instant bullseyse to garland. Songs to learn and sing. Slot them in your collection in between you Big Star, Emmylou Harris, Pavement, Byrds and Lemonheads records, Have a jingle jamgle morning. Or afternoon if you prefer.

It's a delight to wake up to and listen through to this  before my bath and a drawn out breakfast. 'As if the Paisley Underground were founded in the Deep South.' .This feels the new coming of age, We are all, always coming of age. In the act of becoming. 

This record is raining pleasure. Lines jump out you and make you reach for a pen. Because they strike you as worthy of Harper Lee. Carson McCullers. The melodies match. A wonderful record to greet Mid November and make it feel like the coming of Spring..      

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 335 Johann Johannsson - IBM 1401: A User's Manual

 

Like a lot of great music that's being created and you may not be aware of this is modern classical and it puts me in a great mood heading up the incline towards my final class of the week. This makes me want to go to Iceland.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,514 The Black Keys - Turn Blue

 

'When I saw my baby. She was turning blue...'

Black Keys turn blue and it takes me from nine to ten one late day in November. I rather liked this and and frequently more inclined to Black Keys and their Retro shimmer patterns. Their ability to have their cake and eat it. After a while I took it off and put a Doors album on. Ten I took that off and looked for Robert Johnson, Or Wolfgang Amadeus..

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 48 Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka - Hiraeth

 

I use the Idler review for this. A strange, enchanting and magical record: 'Recorded directly onto a Niagra machine in the Polish village of Sokolowsko - legendarily the village which inspired Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, Hiraeth is an exploratory and dream-;ole blend of ambiend folk and environmental sound.. With zithers, harpsm Minimoog , pipe, organ and layered field recordings, the album drifts through a vivid,improvised, landscape that theduo likens to a ' little ecosystem, alive and spirited.' Named after the intranslateable  Welsh word for a kind of longing, Hiraeth channels that ache fpr place and memory. This is healing music, an essential balm for uneasy times.

Song(s) of the Day # 4230 Billy Nomates

 

As ever come November here on It Starts With a Birthstone the mop up of albums I haven't had time for begins. Records I haven't had time for. Records I've mussed. Records brought back to my attention by the end of year rundowns on the music magazines.

So  Billy Nomates . She's an artist I've praised and enjoyed a lot over the years she's been makng music and playing. I've seen her and enjoyed that experience too. She struck me as brave and free. All you can ask for. 

Her latest album Metalhorse is stirring stuff. She has the tunes and seems to have honed her sound so it is less obviously Punky and insolent but will certainly make you dance and make you think, 

She seems to question a lot of the underlying values of the age. Thats valuable because the values of the age strike me as fraudulent and in need of urgent scrutiny. This is rather splendid. I'm her mate !

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 336 The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart

 

Loosely affiliated to the Strokes inspire explosion of New Wave inclined bands that greeted the turn of the century.  If you like that set of bands you will probably like this.

Song(s) of the Day # 4229 Loaded Honey

 The Seventies were a foreign country. They did things differently there.  Loaded Honey's latest album Love Made Trees lives up to the band name. It's full of the indefinable yearning for the past that seems so prevalent everywhere in 2025..

  Loaded Honey draw on the Avalanches sound here and the record overflows with Retro Soul goodness. This is rich and dreamy and I suspect the St Bernard's might be called for pretty soon. Roll out the barrel

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 82 David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World

 

Today's a Bowie day, It's a good idea occasionally. I listened to a Paul Morley podcast discussion about the man and his work yesterday. How many people are still in absolute wonder and some despair at his loss. I don't competely understand that. His records are always there.

Listening to The Man Who Sold The World makes  me feel like I'm sitting down to BBC TV Children's Programming. It's so rich of the early Seventies. We going 'through the arched window with Brian Cant or Toni Arthur. What's going on at Hector's House. Ooh, David's wearing a dress !

Morley mentioned H.G.Wells and talked about how Bowe walked the same streets and would have been fully aware of the fact that he did and was doing so. You can hear the awareness and sense the consciousness that he's doing so in in every song on The Man Who Sold The World. You can't help but hear War of The Worlds; the Time Machine . 

It's an elven album, All the stuff that he's reading and listening to are apparent and given trails of your own to explore. He's in awe of being alive and inhabiting the universe as he explores its utopian and dystopian alleyways. It's infectious voyaging to say the least. 

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 49 Sueno Purpura -Souvenir

 

Right all bets are off. The Peruvian Shoegaze album of the year is here. I imagine you probably weren't looking for one. But here it is anyway. Sueno Purpura break loose on their sound pedals and crank it up to 11, (one higher) on Souvenir. 

The whole recurring wave of Shoegazing is a slightly strange one for me. The original scene broke in my last year at University in 1990 and was largely mocked in the music press on the UK at the time but its waves reverberate everywhere 35 years onwards and now kids in Lima sit at home and listen in awe to Ride, Chapterhouse and Revolver  records. 

There's something faintly Prog about  Souvenir.. No wonder. There was something faintly Prog about Shoegaze. This is a record that is worth devouring at single sittings.  A veritable feast.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 337 The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic

 

Not the kind of band I imagine your mother would want you to get into I imagine. But then again my mother wasn't too keen on The Doors, This is very cluttered, and a couple of track in I gave up on seeing the wood for the trees.

  

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 83 Elvis Costello - Taking Liberties

 

I often feel very seasonal when I listen to Elvis Costello. Forty years ago I was living in University Residences next to the biggest Elvis Costello fan I've ever know. He was smart. More smart academically than I will ever be. We were firm friends, Elvis Costello was the guy for him.

He loved Morrissey. He loved Lloyd Cole. We both loved Michael Stipe and Marvin Gaye. But it all comes back to Elvis Costello for me with this guy .I've never felt I could write about Elvis Costello much. I should leave it to the  guy next door that first term at university back in the mists of times.  Taking Liberties is a grab bag of Costello numbers A Sides , B Sides and obscurities ,   It serves no particular purpose except to act as a reminder of how great Elvis Costello is,