It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Led Zep weree winding down but you wouldn't really have known it.

  120 seconds. A roll call. Some dances you might like to matser. No chorus to talk of but no real need for one.

  The kind of record I'm immediately drawn to. An Australian band called Drained Aeroplanes. A name to conjur with.  Childish. The title...

  Bands creating soundtracks for films you'll never see is Id say a relatively recent phenomenon. But Trip Trop opened the floodgates fo...

  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 ...

  I had my moments with Pearl Jam. An important friendship. Earnestness was the band's essential quality, but hey. I can be earnest myse...

                                                   You feel like you are in safe hands here. A verteran of Wilco and Sonic Youth.. A craftsm...

  Remarkable given what  this was surely about that it was allowed to reach the Top Ten without excessive comment,

  I'm listening to Richard Thompson and thinking about Kevin Morby today. Jose Gonzalez'   Against The Dying Of the Light has been c...

  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 lin...

 

  I suspect I should have more Brian Eno albums.

 

   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 neve...

 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 Bir...

  Texture. One of the distinctive qualities of the 4AD record label. Such an important ones to the likes of myself. Texture is there in abun...

  I think what I love about the great Rock & Roll stories is that there always seems to be pretty much everything at stake. 'Oceans ...

  '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...

 

An archive of beauty. Splendor.  

 

  Of Montreal's latest album aethermead is from the off driven by an arthouse persona driven conviction which has been worked on and ref...

 

  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 Whil...

  There are four volumes of this should you have an afternoon free. There are worse ways to spend your time. Reflections on mortality and ti...

 

  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 ...

  There was a gig during my first year at university which became the stuff of legend. I wasn't there. Isn't that always the case. I...

 

  The second Song of the Day album in as many days from New York musicians. Start spreading the news, again lads. Sophomore album Your Day ...

  What more could you want on a Friday morning than More Songs About The Sun. Just on cue here come Pye Corner Audio with just that. Feelgoo...

 

 

  The best way to be drawn unto a new record I find is to hear it first time in a record shop.Yesterday I wandered into Canterbury after a l...

  Sam Cooke is one of the great 'What ifs...' The hanging question marks. 

  I listened to Jesse Ware's latest album Superbloom last night. I'm listening to it again now. She takes the heady essential ingre...

 

  I have this album on record and every time I play it it immediately makes me want to own all of Broadcast's albums on vinyl. They were...

  It's that Velvet Underground sound !  Full of great tunes this one. A good song to me is like a narrative. Something that takes you in...

  This album was so ubiquitous in the Eighties that it's difficult to write about without severe jaundice  and melancholy sinking into m...

 

 

You can buy a vinyl copy of Parachutes in Waterstone's if you wish to. Well 'We live in a beautiful world'  as the song goes. I...

  Lenny Kaye strikes me as an admirable man. A Rock & Roll Man. Goin' Local his debut solo album at the age is simplicity and wonder...

  Philadelphia's Labrador's first album for four years The Rosy Red World has a wonderful sleeve. An image of unwashed plates and c...

 

 

                                                         'The moral of the story is fish....' Theres always space in the pop marketp...

  I went to a Record Player event when thinks suddenly clicked into space about Kraftwerk. They were describing the future.

  Some albums make more sense as you get older. I still struggle with  Waters self regard but this appeals to me more than it would have don...