The kind of thing Uncut Magazine get unfeasibly excited about . I listen and generally feel slightly underwhelmed and go back to my Echo & The Bunnymen records. I supect tonight might be a case in point.
Tuesday, June 9, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 150 The Cardigans - Long Gone Before Daylight
The Cardigans is a great name for a band. The Cardigans are a great band. This is an album from 2003. The term 'mature' probably applies. But the songwriting and arrangements are pure class.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 13 Hejira
Where Joni stands in relation Jazz is better left to those who know more about jazz than I do/ This features Jaco Pastorious and is resplendent.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,415 The Delgados
I woke up early. I listened to a record by The Delgados on my stereo while I had my breakfast. Now I'm listening to another on my television while I prepare for work.
'Hate is all you need apparently' According to the song I'm listening to. The Delgados are anything but Hateful. Quite the contrary. They're novelistic. Detailed. A Scottish Indie band from the Nineties and the early part of the Millennium who never quite got their due.
But those for the likes of me are the important ones. Love, The Velvet Underground. The Modern Lovers, Telvevision, Subway Sect, Wire, Cornershop, Stereolab, My tribe. The bands that could easily have been authors. Now there's a good name for a band. I imagine it's been taken.
There are moments on Hate where the emotional horizons expand. Where the flowers bloom and the trees burst into blossom. Where the sheer accumulation of attention to detail bears small harvests and d youmomentarily feel like you're listening to the best record ever made and you want to tell the world even if you suspect that nobody might be listening. So you continue with your day. That's what art is for/
Monday, June 8, 2026
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 14 The Circle Game
This feels impossible lapsarian. It takes you back to your mother's arms.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 151 Smog - A River Ain't Too Much To Love
Life remains a mystery. But it pays to explore its terrains. Its valleys and ravines. 'Slide, slide, slide. Down River....' What better companion than a Bill Callahan record. This gathers giddy momentum and post modernist resonance and you lose yourself.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,414 Provinz
I'm done for the day. I've just finishe teaching a charming young German woman called Sarah. She talked about visiting an LGBT Trade Fair in Berlin. How it was important to work for a company that reflected her own principles and ideals. We talked about the work she did and the English she needs. Had a great time together and I hope a useful time for her.
At the end of the hour I happened to ask her what kind of music she liked . She mentioned Provinz and I'm listening to them now. They're from Ravensberg in Baden Wurtemburg. I'm listening to Pazifik their album from last year now. It's much to my liking.
It exists in the same genral ballpark as Coldplay. But I don't mind Coldplay. Pazifik is a record that billows and gathers with tangible gusto. Its epiphanies are not inconsiderable .
Sunday, June 7, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,389 Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Live Rust
An incredible way to make your break from the pack once and for all. Also a wonderful Sunday night record.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 152 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig !!!
Let's face it. The precedent for Nick Cave & The bad Seeds are - The Doors. Dark, sexy, literary. sly. I've just finished listening to Morrison Hotel. Now I'm listening to Dig Lazarus Dig !!! I find it much harder work. But that always happens !
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 15 In France They Kiss On Main Street
Teenage Romance alchemised into thirty-something artistic genius.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 10 Sarah Vaughan - Cool Baby
Music is something you can lose yourself in. Like writing. Life is essentially about escape. That's why we were given imaginations. Escape. Into a memory. Into a vanished imagined world. Into yourself. A time you may not have actually experienced yourself. A relationship you may not actually have had yourself. But one which chimes with the ones you have. Or are having. Escape. Into nuance.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,413 Modest Mouse
I am listening to Modest Mouse's new album An Eraser & A Maze. It's not a particularly enjoyable experience but I shall persist. Modest Mouse are apparrently Pacific Nothwest legends. That's news to me . My idea of a Pacific Nothwest legend is The Sonics. Or Jimi Hendrix.
An Eraser & A Maze is the band's eighth album. A key member has just died which of course is regrettable and apparently the lyrical themes circle and come back to grief. The band are currently intoning 'Life's a dream...' from my TV set. All I can say is if it is, if that's true, I hope the dream's a bit better than this album.
I keep listening because I think I must be missing something but nothing seems to stick. It seems very clever. But not remotely tuneful. Everything is clever these days. It all sounds like the audio equivalent of a shelf of tasteful paperbacks in a house in the suburbs. Vigiania Woolf, Pynchon and Carver, toni Morrison, Cheever and David Foster Wallace. But actually it all feels more like a cry of desperation .From a whisper to a squeak !
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 51 Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica
We pause for breath here. The author is taking a hiatus. But first Trout Mask Replica. A record I've never listened to before. It's relentless eternal motion. For many a sacred text. I surprised myelf and was smitten.
I've always been reistant to this album for some reason even though I love the Good Captain. But today I just sat at my desk , Put on my headphone. Listened to the album in its entirety . It's like leaping into a highly polluted river and flowing downstream with the debris. And I found the experience highly thrilling.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 11 Ultravox - Rage In Eden
I need a record store converstion every few days. To feed in to what I write here and generally to feed my soul or what I like to think passes for one. So today, I chatted to Nick. He went to see Midge Ure last night and apparently Midge was fab. So now I'm listening to Rage In Eden and the vox lads are going through their Mittel Europa motions. I fancy a beer. In a pint glass. The way the Czechs pour them.
I confess I find the angular cheeks and vivid sidies rather preposterous, but I'm pleased Nick had a great time. I know Midge has been there and done it all. But Rage in Eden still sounds all pose and little meat on the bone to my ears. An approximation of Robert Musil in cartoon form
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 17 I Don't Know Where I Stand
Being in between. Hearing crickets call. The insecurity of not knowing what the response might be. But also the artistic permanence of the statement. And the peace.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,412 Heron
I'm sitting in my living room listening to Heron's second album Twice as Nice & Half the Price. It's a double. It came out in 1972 on Decca Reccords.. It's the definition of Pastoral charm and carried me back to my own childhood in the Seventies.Visits to Grandparents in Dorset and Sussex.
My Grandmother on my mother's side retired to a Cul De Sac bungalow in Eastbourne in the early Seventies. . My grandfather had died just before she moved there and she went on with life as well as she could for twenty years before she herself passed in the early nineties. .Though she must have been terribly lonely sometimes. My mother called her every day. I keep the tradition alive and call mum daily to see how she is keeping. Half five on the dot.
I have special memories of visiting my grandmother. Her succession of labrador companions. We used to walk them in the neighbouring avenues. Drive them up to the Sussex downs early in the morning with rabbits scuttling across the road into the ditches at our approach with the labrador bounding up and straining and frothing against the window.
Penguin Chocolate Biscuits. The different colours . My Uncle's model cars and aeroplanes, kept in the back bedroom in the cupboards. A memorial sabre sword displayed above the mantelpiece. The Moscow Olympics which we watched together. Steve Ovett. Sebastian Coe. Athletes from the Eastern Bloc trailing in their wake. The arrival of my Uncle Malcolm and Aunt Linda and their bounding red setters and their newborn arrival Alexander.
My mother held Alexander in her arms and I asked her 'Would you swap places.'She said 'Yes I would.' But almost fify years on I wouldn't. I wouldn't swop places with anybody. I think it's important to be happy with where you are and who you are. What you are.
Records like Twice as Nice & Half the Price help me feel this way. It's an ordinary record. Ram light. But it's its ordinariness is extraordinary. Comforting
It's the lead review in the current issue of Idler magazine. There's a picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney from their Beatles peak on the cover. Idler is a magazine for people like me. Of a certain age and disposition..
That's exactly what Twice as Nice & Half the Price is. Music for people like me. People who want to live in the moment and enjoy their day. This was recorded at a farm in Devon.. Listening to this you feel like you are there. Transported to exist in the moment.
Friday, June 5, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 52 Culpepper's Orchard - Culpepper's Orchard
Danish 1971 album. It's pretty full on. Dervish like and constant momentum and motion.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 12 Yo La Tengo - There's a Riot Going On
What a day ! I'll spare you the gory details. As my friend David puts it. 'Some days are out to get you.' And then you come to rest. It's not quite as bad as it seems. And then you put Yo La Tengo on knowing it's a double album and you have nothing to do but listen to all four sides and it all seems that much better as the evening stretches ahead of you. Yo La Tengo are a hipsters treat !
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 17 Raised On Robbery
Joni looking back to go forward. This is joyous, sensual flair and no mistake.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,411 Widowspeak
I've been fond of Widowspeak, an Indie band from Brooklyn, New York and previously Tacoma, Washington, for a while now. They have a new album Roses just out where they pick further at a familiar seam on Rock & Roll's Goldmine. The shaft that connects Mazzy Star to The Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan's 'Wild Mercury Sound'
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 53 Mighty Baby - Mighty Baby
An English 'Head' band. From 1969. Much beloved of Julian Cope and the like. Right up my street. Freewheeling.
Thursday, June 4, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 54 Hawkwind - Space Ritual
A lot of these sings sound like your're getting the Motherlode. As if the Middlearth Wars are being enacted in your living room The Riders of Rohan are charging.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 18 Edith & The Kingpin
This is why I bought Hissing Of Summer Lawns I realised . Because The NME told me tii, Because I knew what I wanted to be. I want to be sophisticated and live life to the full. I'd read Fitzgerald and struggled through Hamlet. This is what Joni had for me. She was impossibly cultivated. Erudite, Bellow, Vidal, Didion. In a long iced fluted glass.
.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 153 Kylie Minogue - Fever
There's a first time for everything. I'm listening to a Kylie album. I won't listen to another one. It's non-descript. It's the one with Can't Get You Out of My Head , which isn't, on it.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,410 Leaf Hound
I think I'm going back. Got to keep going back. For surely that is how to best go forwaed. Try to pit one foot in fromt of the other. Walk the straight path. This morning Leaf Hound. Listed on Wikipedia as Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Stoner Rock, Psychedelic Rock. Call it what you will. I know what Billy Joel would say....
The band's name comes from a Ray Bradbury short story anbout a dog that came back from the dead covered in leaves. I'm listening to Growers of Mushroom which was iriginally entitled Leaf Hound. It was relased in 1970 then rereleased in 1971 as Growers of Mushroom with additional tracks. It's so of its time that you're transported back there immediately on listening to it.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 13 The Roches - The Roches
The Seventies is a foreign country. They do things differently there, If you don't believe me take a listen to The Roches self titled album. Released in 1979. An album like this could not and would not be made now. Or ever again frankly. It exists in a different light and space..
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 13 XTC - Drums & Wires
I get the sense that XTC took a while to become the band they wanted and needed to be. Drums & Wires their third record was frantic and nervy. Very New Wave. But not altogether coherent.The best thing about it is probably its sleeve,
The songs here for the most part seem not entirely sure where they are going. Production is sharp but most of this is destined for evening radio shows. Except for Nigel the band haven't fully worked out how to write sings. They improved vastly when they did.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 20 Tom Jones
Tom Jones must have had a song in the Top Twenty every couple of months for the second half of the Sixties. This wasn't the worst thing in the world surely.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 55 Baumstam -On Tour 1975
This is a controversial one. Oh don't pretend you've heard of it. Sounds like Goldin Earring's Kissing cousins.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 154 Cornershop - Handcream For a Generation
My heart leaps like a salmon through a circus hoop help a metre above the lake. Cornershop. I adore Cornershop. People go on about Oasis. They do go on and on. Bit let's face it we're not talking Cornershop. Inimitable !
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 19 Little Green
.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,409 Tyler Ballgame
Tyler Ballgame's is a Berklee College Music dropout. He dusted himself down and For The First Time his debut album is just out, It's an easy going amiable genre hopping.record that could probably have slotted in comfortably on Seventies AOR radio,
It's clear the man has done his ground work,. There's plenty of swoon and shiver here. A touch if the old west Perhaps sometimes a bit close to pastiche for comfort. but it has some lovely oranges on the cover and gets a thumbs up from here.
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 20 Cat On A Hill
I have a seat at a desk where I write these blog entries and stare down at the pavement opposite me. Watch the people come and go. The record player is spinning and I'm listening to Court & Spark as I make my way through my day. The Roland Garros French Open is on and Court & Spark spins like an absorbing rally between Vilas and Borg back in the day.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,408 Sister Irene O'Connor
God descends on It Starts With a Birthstone. Well Pentecost is fast approaching. And as all Germans know. Pentecost. means. A day off work! . So here comes Sister Irene O'Connor with her acoustic guitar,
Fire of God is a weird collection of Folk Spirituals from 1973 with echoes of Vashti Bunyan and Space Lady. It's playing on my television set as I make my way through my morning. It's all really rather lovely
Monday, June 1, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 155 Ryan Adams - Hearbreaker.
Oh Ryan Adams. 'Why do you have to be a heartbreaker/' Echoes of Gram and Emmylou. But too long !!!
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 56 Resan - Resan
The Swedish Hippy Dream. Hitch a ride. Join the Magic Bus.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 21 The Jungle Line
A song inspired by Rousseau. This is a song where Joni shows what Rock & Roll is capable of. It's so ambitious its scope is inconceivable.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,408 Kurt Vile
The song remains the same. Kurt Vile remains on his porch in Philadelphia churning out product. If ut was that easy folks, you'd be doing it His latest album is Philapelphia's been good to me. It sounds to me as if the man pays his dues.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)