;The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow.'
To live in a moment when a song like this was im the Top Ten.
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,342 Led Zeppelin - Presence
Led Zep weree winding down but you wouldn't really have known it.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 9 Arthur Conley
120 seconds. A roll call. Some dances you might like to matser. No chorus to talk of but no real need for one.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 148 Drained Aeroplanes - Childish
The kind of record I'm immediately drawn to. An Australian band called Drained Aeroplanes. A name to conjur with. Childish. The title distils the essence of the record. Dreaming Sydney Indie. Short and sweet. Awkward and imprecise. Feels like as good a way to spend your youth as any.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 99 Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Song(s) of the Day # 4,471 Fazed On A Pony
There are times on It Starts when it feels like I'm on a hitting streak. Like a midwest hitter rounding the bases with the ball long gone. I've got a few more up my sleeve for the coming days. Today Fazed On A Pony's swan. Out of Auckland and in the best Flying Nun traditions.
This one skims across the lake like a perfectly judged pebble.VBut it's a verstile pebble. arying its delivery and intent with each suceeding track. It's a record that makes you glad to be alive which is all you can really ask of any album. Wire meet The Chills.
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,343 Pearl Jam - Yield
I had my moments with Pearl Jam. An important friendship. Earnestness was the band's essential quality, but hey. I can be earnest myself. They also cannot resist drawing a metaphorical line in the metaphorical sand. Wuth them a song on every album comes along and my reaction is 'Yes'. There were actual several such moments on Yield.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 100 Jim O'Rourke - Insignificance
You feel like you are in safe hands here. A verteran of Wilco and Sonic Youth.. A craftsman. This draws on Harry Nilsson and is all the more weathered and inscrutable for that.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 10 The Who
Remarkable given what this was surely about that it was allowed to reach the Top Ten without excessive comment,
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 149 Jose Gonzalez
I'm listening to Richard Thompson and thinking about Kevin Morby today. Jose Gonzalez' Against The Dying Of the Light has been chiming with that. Plugging into that primal Folk energy. Revving up the motor and presseing your bootheels on the accelerator and bombing down the woodland road until dawn.
There's some Nick Drake inspired poetics and picking and that's always welcome. This is some record. It has plenty of company in 2026.. 'Do not go gentle until that night.; You heard what the man says.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,470 Shearwater
There are records I think are slightly affected and I struggle while listening to them as to whether I like them or not. There's a line between ambitious and pretentious which can be akin to tightrope walking.
Shearwter's The New World is such a record. The band have two decades and seven albums behind them A long established artistic pedigree so it's probably a bit late in the day to take pot shot at them so I let it spin instead and it won me over presently and utterly. Orchestral Art Rock. But that's not always a bad thing. Daydream unbelievers.
Monday, August 3, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,344 Eno - Take Tiger Mountain
I suspect I should have more Brian Eno albums.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 101 The National - Boxer
The National came to prominence at a time when I wasn't paying much attention to music. I've tried to catch up but suspect I never will. I confess I find this rather bloodless. I like the drumming but that's not in itself enough.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 150 Michael Ian Cummings - Godzilla
I was in two minds for today's Song(s) and Album(s) of the day because it's generally the latter these days on It Starts With a Birthstone. Should I share my thoughts on Make Up Is a Lie, The latest chapter in Morrissey's increasingly unhinged, slightly unpleasant and ridiculously self indulgent musical and personal narrative. He has opinions and he will not be silenced it seems.
That can wait I decided, for another day. Instead I decided Michael Ian Cummings, another suggestion from the ever reliable Darren Jones. An Art Rock album called Godzilla from the ashes of New York band Skaters. that's much to my liking.
There's a certain sadness here. A sense of life and experience receding in the rear view mirror but something exciting appearing round the next bend. Keep your foot pressed on the pedal. This is rather lovely. We're into the day
Song(s) of the Day # 4,469 Mallory Hawk
Texture. One of the distinctive qualities of the 4AD record label. Such an important ones to the likes of myself. Texture is there in abundance on Mallory Hawk's debut album Chinook. Light and shade. It's a record that's been a while in terms of its gestation and appearance but it's clearly worthy of the wait. Frankly this is a a special and magical record indeed.
Albums like these stand or fall on the investment and emotional stake cultivated in the listener for the musician or musicians behond it In this case I'd suggest that Hawk scores highly. I was won over in three songs.
This reminds me of Throwing Muse, Breeders and This Mortal Coil records, Willing to shift gear and move into space of one moment, then become more ruminative the next. Chinook is a pure state of being. Exceptional.
Sunday, August 2, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,345 The Beach Boys - Smiley Smile
I think what I love about the great Rock & Roll stories is that there always seems to be pretty much everything at stake. 'Oceans fall and mountains drift.'
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 151 The Chutes - The Chutes
'Let's go out tonight'. No let's not lest's stay in and feel sorry for ourelves. 'Do you remember when we used to hate the sunshine.' It seems that in 2026 the Spiritual home of the jingle jangle sound of C-86 and Sarah Records is San Farncisco. Latest piece of evidence for the prosecition The Chutes. The debut album by.... erm. See if you can guess.
This is wan, knowing and doesn;t stray from the Twee formula for a moment. It's all highly crafted, sticks to the script and that's all fine by me. A night that never ends. Well actually this does. After seven songs and twenty two minutes,
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 102 Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
An archive of beauty. Splendor.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,468 Of Montreal
Of Montreal's latest album aethermead is from the off driven by an arthouse persona driven conviction which has been worked on and refined for years. Athens, Georgia band always goes down well on It Starts With a Birthstone. Particular one with no obvious resemblance or DNA of their obvious antecedents B52s, R.E.M., Pylom amd so on and so forth,
This has a more particular set of reference points. The Wainwrights, Southern Literature and Films. A glass of wine from a good year. The finer things in life. This is gossamer light and deft. A rewarding as a rich meal in the company of cultivated company.
Saturday, August 1, 2026
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2026 # 152 Bill Orcutt - Music In Continuous Motion
I may have got to that age. The age where I can happily gaze at a fly wnadering across a pain of glass facing out on the street below While listening to Bill Orcutt's Music In Continuous Motion on my television set as the sun goes down. Then going over and cooking my tea. There are wirdse ways to spend a Monday evening in April,
The record is like something that Tom Verlaine and Tichard Lloyd might have dreamed up. Otcutt has been round the block more than most. He was apparently initually unspired to create by seeung Muddy Waters perform on The Last Waltz.. He's supported Sonuc Youth. He has nothing left to prove. But Music In Continuous Motion proves it. Just the facts !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 103 William Basinski
There are four volumes of this should you have an afternoon free. There are worse ways to spend your time. Reflections on mortality and time conceived after 9/11.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,467 Land Whales
It's 2026. Where are we going? Your guess is every bit as good as mine. I have no crystal ball and I'm just back from my free eye test in tolwn where the optician said to me that the world would be completely unrecognisable in ten years time. I suspect he may be right. I needed new glasses but didn't buy any . Given the exorbitant cost.
I'm an EFL Teacher. I don't kid myself otherwise any longer. What you get in an EFL teacher is that they don't know very much about anything but a little bit about virtually everything. Enough anyhow to keep the conversation going.
I'm reasonably conversant and interested in music too. Hence this blog, which was launched in 2013. I started writing about the records I bought when I started building a record collection back in the Eighties. Now I try to focus on 'new' music. Although some of it doesn't sound completely 'new' to me,
Take Land Whales. Formed in La Habana in Cuba in 2021. They used to go under the name of Hey Joni, which tells you what you need to know.
If I consider myself remptely knowledgeable about anything apart from the rudiments of English lexis and grammarowaLand Whales are fond of Sonic Youth. They used to call themselves Hey Joni . They owe a debt to that band which they will never fully pay and their latest album How To Make A Breakfast sounds like a dogs dinner of distortion. feedback and inchoate rage in Sonic Youth's best tradition. You have to hane it to Land Whales. They're doing their legacy proud.. As someone else said 'It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.' Land Whales sound far from beached.