A Song(s) of the Day # 4,568 Marisa Anderson

 

Yesterday evening I put on Marisa Anderson's The Anthology of  UnAmerican Folk Music. I listened through to its 37 minute span. Then I put it on and listened to it again. Now I'm listening to it before my day of work begins . It's title is highly pertinent. Where do we come from? Where are we going? 

Music is a place I would say more than anything else is a place to lose yourself inside when you need to . To wrap yourself up and regain your body heat when required. To restore your powers. This has been doing that for me over the last twelve hours. 

. Marisa Anderson has an interesting backstory and approach before settling in Portland, Oregon, and its helpful to inform yoursellf on both as it helps makes sense of and colour in your enjoyment of  UnAmerican Folk Music, It has done with mine. This is music as narrative . This is river of the purest flow. 

Coveted # 41 Au Pairs - Playing With a Different Sex

 

Punk changed the script in every way. For the better. Any number of bands invented their own existences and mapped out own roads, not acceping what was on their plate or think the way they were told to think. Exhibit A; Playing With a Different Sex. It's a reminder of how exciting and preposterous the radical politics of youth can be. 'Throw your homework onto the fire !'

The 50 Coolest Albums of all Time Ranked !- Shortlist .com 46 The Replacements - Let It Be

 

Calling your record after a Beatles album is a pretty cool move. Seating yourself and the band on the roof for the record's cover shoot is another impossibly cool step. The Replacements were as ragged as you could possibly want. Any number of bands have used this as a benchmark but never so much as lived in its shadow. 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 46 Cardinals - Maverick

 

Cardinals the Cork band and their debut album Maverick  have everything I would wish for if I was 16 rather than 60. They're the kind of band you could fall in love with which let's face it is what you should be doing when you're 16. They have a front row of the grid understanding  of Pogues, Libertines and Fontanes D.C that bodes very well. After all. There's no beating. A little Catholic angst and guilt.

U2 are at the far end of the Rock & Roll pike now but I think sensed the value of all this went they set off too. And they understood too that you need Wilde, Joyce  and Yeats and the luck of the Irish, insouciance, a quality bookshelf, a sense of where they came from, a taste fora drop of the hard stuff and a drop of mischief. Here's mud in your eye and a bit of what you fancy for the weekend.. Maverick is a rather beautiful set of songs and no mistake.  

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,568 The Early Years

 

Albums of the Year for 2026 are in the process of mounting up. Allowing It Starts With a Birthstone to fill in a few days of Song(s) of the Day to catch up on what's been missed. First The Early Years gloriously misty eyed Modern Moonlight. An album of the sort where you think, 'Ah. They don't make like them like this anymore.' 

The band's first album in a decade and their third in all. The first came out in 2006. They seem to like to put out albums in years beginning with 6. This is thicker in mystery than a fog bound day in old London town.  Rather magnificent. Langorous.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 4 Strokes - Is This It?

 

Music can be like an arrow. Taking you unerringly back to a time and place. The Strokes. Is This It? Takes m e back to Wroclaw, Poland in the summer of 2001. I was studying on an intensive teacher training course. Embarked on a new road. Going out with a Ukranian woman on my course. Doing everything by the skin of my teeth. Not knowing what I was doing. Going back to my flat in the evening. Listening to Is This It?

It still sounds utterly wonderful. It took me back to those glorious CBGBs records and attitude. A place I never imagined we'd go back to. The Strokes always refuted the Television influence. But it was essential DNA for me. Along with the whole roster. It was a glorious rebirth. A reaffirmtion. 

Coveted # 40 Ultravox -Ha Ha Ha!

 

Ultravox weren't always about sideburns that you could cut bread with and fin de siecle MTV videos that meant nothing to me frankly. Ultravox used to be really good! Check out Ha Ha Ha! their second album which came out on Island in October 1977 while John Foxx was still fronting the band.

It has a wreckless, maniacal edge. Incredibly of its time. The album mantains the bands devotion to Bowie and Roxy of their debut but sensibly attaches itself to Punk too. This is thrill a minute sliding down the bannisters on your rollerskates glee!

The 50 Coolest Albums of all Time Ranked !- Shortlist .com 47 Dr Dre - The Chronic

 

An hypnotic hour. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 5 Radiohead - Kid A

 

Kid A is more than quarter of a century old. It's a remarkable record. An 'important' one if you like me, spend a lot of time documenting and thinking about that/ Radiohead realised that the world was changing and focussed thei endeavours on that transition and change. As ambitious as Sun Ra or Theolonious. A record of constant beauty and wonder. 

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,567 La Roux

 

I've been listening to La Roux's fourth album Old Flames for days now. None of it really sticks but none of it particularly grates either It  was six years in the making. It's a bit like a box of Quality Streets.Range.  Plenty you might like to dance too. A few if you'd like to sit one out. It worked and works for me.  

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 47 The Delines - The Set Up

 

'Did I tell you my dad had a heart attack .... my mama took the money and put his ashes in the garbage can...'

I'm finding I'm reading less but it doesn't really matter as I'm listening to more music as it provides the same service is your discernible. Take The Delines new album The Set Up. It's the great American Novel in potted form; Carver, Steinbeck, Scott Fitzgerald laid out before you like a tablecloth at the breakfast table. Whisky & Rye. The struggle, the strife.

There are so many lines and moments that stop you in your tracks. The pain and the purity. A fine record to start the week. We may not get to see as much if the world as we'd like to. But records like this make us feel as if we have, 

Coveted # 39 Felt - Ignite The Seven Cannons

 

You can't help somehow but covet an album which opens with tracks called Roman Litter and Sempiternal Darkness. Felt walked a singular road. Sometimes opting for Tudor harlequin patterns,. Elsewhere wasted found poetry. Then they were surprised they didn't sell. Perhaps they've had the last laugh but I doub't that comforts Lawrence. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 5 Portishead - Third

 

A rather terrifying album in many respects.Genuine courage and embrace of the outside. 

The 50 Coolest Albums of all Time Ranked !- Shortlist .com 48 Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

 

A band in the great Punk Garage tradition. Churning out riffs and records. Gurning into the void. Myriad invention. 

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,566 Kings of Leon

 

Wonder of wonders. Miracle of miracles I'm not only listening to O My Beloved, Kings of Leons tenth album. I'm enjoying it. It's a while since I enjoyed a Kings Of Leon album. But this is fine. Sparse, lean, supple and slightly sad. 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 48 Paris Paloma - The Fatal Flaw

 

I went to UEA in the Mid Eighties . Looking back I was in the right place at the right time. I started as a History Student using the common judgement of youth of my A Level Results but switched majors in the second term to Literature. It was the right thing to do.

The American & Literature faculty at U.E.A. at the time was unfeasibly strong. Critics, writers. Authorities on the subject. A strong Feminist reputation. Lorna Sage, Angela Carter. gossiping in the bar over cigarettes and shots. As good as it got. In a memorable lectore I attended a fresh faced young woman hasd the temerity to ask Carter if she was a feminist. The response was shrivelling and embarassing to witness.Carter cut her down. I wonder whether the girl concerned has ever forgotten it. We were all so young. Impressionable. Green.

Forty years down the line I'm listening to Paris Paloma's awaited second album, The Fatal Flaw  and it's an incredible record. Most certainly Feminist and with an immpressive inventory of melodies and narrative. By turns celebratory and introspective. Joyous and defiant. They're songs which tackle issues. 

Occasionally it's slightly pleased with itself and you wonder whether issues are being ticked off but that's not without reason or rhyme. These are the times. She's a brave artist who stands tall and makes artistic statements which are worthy of scrutiny. It's actually the stuff of master's theses which you wonder a little about. 

The 50 Coolest Albums of all Time Ranked !- Shortlist .com 49 - Kendrick Lamarr - To Pimp a Butterfly

 

This was probably around the time that I decided I couldn't keep up with everything going on in the music world because I couldn't follow the contours of the conversation. 

Coveted # 38 The Clean - Getaway

 

There are certain sounds you feel comfortable with. A sense that you can huddle back under the duvet and spend a couple more hours in bed. Turn the record over and snuggle down. This is that sound.A wjole set of mellow rtakes on Velvet Underground family favourites.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 6 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

 

Wilco don't really sound like a Millennium Band. If anything they sound like the band that picked up the torch from R.E.M. after Bill Berry left. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has a grand majesty and scope. It's old school but feels like a cool set of dads hitting the dance floor on the High School Reunion Ball.

I saw Wilco in Newcastle about 16 years ago fairly soon after I'd arrived in Newcastle. I'm glad I've seen them. I always get the sense that they're actually quite modest in the way that bands I really love tend to be. 

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,565 Slack Times

 

This might be the right time ..... for Slack Times  A band from Birmingham, Alabama They ring out the old and ring in the new. On Casting fresh out on Meritorio Records .It's all my favourite things. I'm ... Paisley Underground and Flying Nun. Sitting on my bed at the age of seventeen on my Habitat duvet, recording R.E.M on a TDK Cassette in Concert playing at Rock City, Nottingham in 1984. Listening to The Swimming Pool Qs. Dreaming of The Chills, Look Blue Go Purole and Three O'Clock. 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 49 Caroline Rose - Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall

 

All I really want when I listen to a record is to hear something I haven't heard before. Surely not too much to ask. Richard Llloyd of Television died yesterday. Marquee Moon was certainly this. Caroline Rose latest Gentling The Horse At The Walt Whitman Mall  in its smaller, slightly frantic way is this too. 

Twelve songs taking different angles of attack to nonconformism. For not doing what you're expected to do. No song follows the same script. Frankly this is a trip to the funfair every bit as much as The Walt Whitman Mall. Offbeat poetry in motion.

Coveted # 37 Duke Jordan - Flight To Jordan

 

The nights are closing in. The countdown is on. I seem to have nothing to do but spend my evenings listening t Blue Note Albums. Finally refining my actual knowledge of Jazz haveing listened to it for so many years in pretty much ignorance and counting down the days to Christmas.

Duke Jordanwas a Jazz pianist of the fist rank who passed at a good age. twenty years back. He was born in Brooklyn and died in Copenhagen. He played in the Charlie Parker Quinetet with Bird and Miles.From the mid Fifties he flew solo and also drove a taxi in New York City for a while in the Sixties.Flight To Jordan is as smooth, as beautiful and wonderful a ride as you could possibly want.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 7 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

 

Every age needs its canon. This seems no be highly in the new Millenium's Curiously this one is not yet twenty. I saw Jason Vernon shortly afterwards in a Butlin's Camp in Minehead. and was slightly underwhelmed. The record has a hallowed aura but it's not an album I seldom play. there's a slightly self satisfied air to it which grates rather. 

The 50 Coolest Albums of all Time Ranked !- Shortlist .com - 50 - Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching For The Young Soul Rebels

 

Another countdown. Haven't you heard. Christmas is coming. From shortlist.com. Some you'd expect. Some you wouldn't. This was an early milestone for me. Dexy's hd an anger I didn't umnderstand. But also a swagger, an incredible cool that led me to Mean Streets and no end of others.Dexys and Rowland have made no end of other statements. But they've never quite matched this pure ire .

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 50 Kellie Gregson-MacLeod

 

The Albatross. That mythical bird. And as good as any to start the countdown for this year on  It Starts With a Birthstone towards Christmas Day in earnest. Kellie Gregson-MacLeod is a singer songwriter from the Inverness Scotland.  Albatross is her fifth long player and I suspect the one that matters

This is flaxen haired folk the way they used to make them. I'm glad they still do. Not unnaturally, Gregson-MacLeod has made waves on Tik Tok. But this is music which cuts deeper and flows like the river to the sea.  

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,564 Pet Fox

 

Boston's pet Fox have an interesting sound.Robust geometric guitar spin and gather around sturdy vocals like spyrogyra patterns on fourth album Balance .Recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. Think Beach Fossils, Real Estate and Omni. Running on the tracks that New Order and Railway Children laid ofrty years and more back. Scattered sound.

Coveted # 36 John Phillips - The Wolfking of LA

This is a record for anyone like me who loves early Seventies Americana. The sense of waste and desperation and wrought grandeur that hangs over so many of its books, records and movies. This is near as dammit Exhibit A.The waves are still rolling in and out on Venice Beach. Much of the cast is no longer on the stage.  But I imagine Malibu People still really know how to live. 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 51 Improvement Movement - Your Perfect Real Life

 

It's always interesting to find a band that seems to be bending Rock & Roll into fresh shapes, seventy years an more down the road.Improvement Movement work out of Atlanta and are not entirely disimilar to acts like Omni and Canada's defunct Ought.But latest album Your Perfect Real Life yesterday marked out fresh territory to my ears.

Drawing from. on the surface. incongruous ingredients from Prog and Post Punk but the results here are consistently intriguing.There were moment where I found myself drawn back to some of the horrors of listening to late Seventies AOR Easy Listening Radio but the band have a routinely deft touch which hauls the coles from the fire time and again.  It's a record that demands little from the listener save for  an apprecition of open teritory and minimal clarity. This is unfailingly restless is the bestest fashion, 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 8 Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise

 

Sufjan Stevens  The human imagination in full flight.His albums are like haunted houses. You can visit different rooms. Take a visit to your own memories.

Coveted # 35 Josef K - The Only Fun In Town

 

A band that didn't quite get its due in its day but now bathe in a semi mystical Independent glow.. The roster of bands on Postcard Records were all saintly and put out a set of startling records. Josef K were from Glasgow by contrast with Orange Juice and Aztec Camera who hailed from Glasgow and The Go Betweens from Brisbane, Australa. They took their name from a Franz Kafka character and their sound was appropriately literary, European, imtense and erm angular.Bands that deal in this disciplined, fevered geometry are rare.    

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,563 Sadurn

 

Philadelphia's Sadurn's second album The Underworld comes four years after their first. And in the wake of chronic illness and agonising struggle . It's a record of considerable grace and constancy. Not unlike Phoebe Bridgers in terms of temper. It seemed to be a tale of riding the crests and troughs . Enduring....

Coveted # 35 Can - Soon Over Babluma

 

Listening to Can albums can frequently be like exploring lunar terrains. Take  Soon Over Baluma; released in 1974 after the departure of Damo Suzuki who was responsible for so much that was distinctive about the band. But this is a seamless response to him leaving. Michael Karoli and Irmin Schmidt took over vocals and frankly sounded rather like Damo. Many of the tracks here sound like cult exorcisms. 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 52 Elanor Moss - The Knife the Needle

 

The Knife, The Needle the debut album by Elanor Moss on Merge Records is the kind of Retro Folk record that is becoming more common and more frequent. And more welcome. It takes you back to 1972 whether you were there or you just wish you were. The land of Nick Drake and Bridget St John, Of knitted pullovers and open fires and the modern world a distant dream.

It's lyrical and sweet. Memorable. Played by musicians who make every effort to listen to one another first and foremost Domestic drams are relayed in sensitive tones. The best trick a record can pull is slow down the hands of the clock to a measured tread

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 9 Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

 

A rare talent.

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,562 - @

Who needs a name when you could be a symbol. @ in the names of the song are currently where it's at on It Starts With a Birthstone. Latest album Autosmile finds them on 4AD. This feels like Roches baroque episode.

Coveted # 34 Belly - Star

 

I rather wish I'd bought this when it came out. Tanya Donnelly is ome whose 'Star' I didn't watch. This is an album that seems informed by Angela Carter,Lots of Moons and Witches. An album to get to know,

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 53 Cindy

 

Cindy from San Francisco. They're playing songs from The Velvet Underground Songbook, Their latest album Another Country. As I rise and pack and prepare for a train journey South to be with my elderly parents.

Now I'm down South in my family's bosom with all the madness that entails. I have Another Country on again and actually it feels rather like Christmas. Perfect soundtrack. Mum is downstairs preparing tea. All is right in the World. Frankly, if this is Another Country, I'd like to go there immediately.

We must live in the moment and appreciate our good fortune. I appreciate mine. Cindy make me appreciate it more. They don't veer from a well established formula that has kept me happy for my adult life and will do so as long as I'm on this earth. Until it ends with a tombstone as the blog I write's title implies.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 10 Primal Scream - XTRRMNTR

 

I've just listened to Boy by U2. It came out in 1980 when I turned 15. Now I'm listening to XTRRMNTR in 2000 when it came out. I was in Catania, Sicily. I was 35/ The world had changed as it always does and so had I. I still like both albums but probably prefer Boy . 

Both albums are political expressions of a different sort. I'm not sure I buy XTRRMNTR's righteous anger. It frequently feels like a trip to the dentists. It was the time of No Logo. Today is the day of the US Mid Terms. It is always an interesting time to be alive.

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,561 Jack Larkin

 

Jack Larkin's Purkinje Shift. Charming Pastoral Folk from a teriyaki chicken enthusiast and full time cat daddy. A record from the Fmily Tree of Fleet Foxes and Midlake. But this has a clockwork charm all of its own.

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,560 Gwenno Morgan

 

Gwenno Morgan' a leading figure in Wales neoclassical and music scene.' You didn't hear it here first . New album gwereiddiau goes gently into that dark night and takes you with it for a rather blissful forty minute ride

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 54 Lex Walton - ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER

 

'We are all of us in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars...'  So it goes. No generation is ever truly different Lex Walton it seems was saying get me out of here before he was ever born. Certainly if latest album ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER is anything to go by. It's ragged punky attitude from the word go. Seemingly with Daniel Ek for one in his sights and heading the charge to the barricades.

Brooklyn Trans Rage. Iconoclastic confrontational and not a little knowing but highly listenable, disposable and ready for the spotlight in the queue heading back to Lou, Andy, The Dolls. And from there of course back to Oscar. 

'Some people should be shot....; is intoned at a certain point. Adrian Borland is namechecked in standard Hipster fashion. Grease it seems is no longer the word. It's spirited and short and sweet in the extreme . Seven songs and twenty minutes. Blink or Blank and you miss it. But it's got Pitchfork's attention and deserves yours

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 11 Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

 

An album that like its cover feels loke suburban night. Yo La Tengo as they progressed took on a Jazzy quality and confidence about making your way down the road. There's a beauty and grace here that's rare indeed. A cool and happy hipster core.

Songs About People # 1,451 Detlef Schrempf

 

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 55 Grumpy - Unfindable Ring

 

Grumpy. Nobod'sy favourite of the Seven Dwarves. But a canny band from Brooklyn. They swagger and sway in the queasy Southern sunlight  on latest album Unfindable Ring a record which draws from the likes of Big Thief and Wednesday and feels rather 'Now'.Singer and songwriter Heaven Schmitt has a lilting presence. 'I'm so hapy I could die' she intones on opener title track. I'm not sure about that but I'm more than content to listen on.

Occasionally this tips over into a queasy, giddy recklessness as if the whole thing is about to fall apart but the incoherence is clearly deliberate and has a giddy steeliness throughout which is rather impressive. Thanks once more to Darren Jones (Starbuck to his friends) for nudging me here. 

Coveted # 33 Egg - Egg

 

I become more prone to Prog. This is one of the more ridiculous records I've heard this week. 'Go to work on an egg' as the expression went. Unusual time signatures and apparently a strong Stravinsky inclination.Out with the Clockwork Cuckoos.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 12 PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

 

The most urban PJ. I sense it came as rather a relief to the faithful.

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,559 Heathers

 

Shades. Youth. Attitude. Fringes. Noise. It's not so hard. Heathers eponymous album. Out of Missouri. Sounds pretty much as if it could have come out in any year with a 1 or a 6 in it. The ghosts of Slade, Big Star. Primal Scream and erm The Beatles haunt its grooves. 

Songs About People # 1,450 The Rolling Stones

 

Coveted # 33 Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad of The Broken Seas

 

A classic image. A woman gazing at her reflection at a motel dressing table. Pinning up her hair. Behind her on the bed a slightly more unkempt type in trainers frowning, sullenly. Where are they going. Where have they been. Does anyone significant not know they are together now. What would they think and say.And do?

Ballad of The Broken Seas is classic Nancy & Lee, Johnny & June, Nick & Kylie balladry. Songs to die for and possibly die to. Off we go to war. Never knowing what we're fighting for The confusion of life. The record keeps spinning. Then the stylus rises, returns to its sentry post. Descends again. Click.

200 Albums for 2026 It Starts With a Birthstone # 56 The Cat's Miaow - When You Smiled & Turned Away

 

A Monday afternoon. Grey and overcast in Canterbury. Nothing better to than listen to When You Smiled & Turned Away the latest album from Melbourne Indie stalwarts, The Cat's Miaow. A band that have taken a 25 year hiatus after first putting out cassettes on the small Australian label Toybox. Anglo strumming in the vein of The Velvet Underground, The Go Betweens and The Sundays. Heaven clearly is a place on earth.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 13 Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

 

Now this is a record which is incredibly important and which I covet too and I could easily have had two entries for today on It Starts With a Birthstone. But this will do, 'It's a pilgrimage in which an American band asked direcions from English Folk, got lost and found themselves lighting campfires in an undiscovered land.'

There's something quite gripping about the first Fleet Foxes album. It harks back. To Laurel Canyon and Haight Ashbury, but further too.It heads forward from 2008 to a time when albums like this would become commonplace. It has a cover with an image of a Pieter Bruegel the Elder/ Pastoral Life. The album plants you directly into that existence. 'the sound of ancient voices ringing on your ear..'

A Song(s) of the Day # 4,558 Kali Malone

 

It's November. It's a beautiful day where I am. I've got up and gone for a walk. The leaves are falling but the light is strong. I'm back and am breakfasting. Listening to a track called Grieving Figure from an album called Burning Song. I don't fancy its chances of the Christmas Number One slot let's put it that way.

What is the sound of one man clapping? Search me readers. Your guess is a good as mine. It Starts With a Birthstone doesn't really deal readily with the deep stuff. This is mainly just a bloke trying to write something worth reading about music on a daily basis.Still, here is a record I really like so here goes....

A couple of years ago I became deeply engrossed with Malone's album All Life Long. And now I'm undergoing a simlar spell, cast by her latest record. They're not the kind of thing I would have listened to ten years ago; never mind twenty, thirty or forty years back. But I suspect they're exactly the kind of records I'm going to find myself increasingly drawn to from now on.

You find yourself talking about 'The drone' and 'tonality'. Wondering whether you need to invest in a subscription to The Wire. This is a record which is not immediately accessible to those who like Rumours. I like Rumours as much as the next person but couldn't listen to it all day. 

I've really been primarily guided by melody, by verse and chorus for most of my life but this is music to get lost in and get carried away by. The undertow. Here's a link if you're interested in a more considered and informed response. Otherwise just immerse. 

November