It's 2026. And every other record it seems is an imaginary soundtrack. We seem to be being asked to gi and live in some kund of permanent fantasy existence. It's certainly inviting. Well if you can't beat them you might as well join them, So here's today's serving and its another fine record.. Peaches and cream. With breakfast. What are your doctor's orders?
Adrian Younge is an Emmy award winning self taught musician whose work apparently 'defies the digital tide.'If this means his current offering Younge recal Golden Age of Soul classics like Trouble Man and Hot Buttered Soul then I'll have a serving of that !
For those who have immaculately kept bookshelves and know their Cheever from their Coover. Tracing the great American arc. The way any life could go either way.
A malevolent, dark record im every way . Reflecting the journey The Stooges were going through and the times. Incredibly wired and frantic. Ar tunes deeply aggressive. At others deeply confused. Not easy listening. You probably have a good idea if what you think about this already. Not one for the cowering masses. Or for those who like being told what to do.....
Saturday. The Day for Fun according to my father. Still in slumber in the bedroom above the living room where I'm writing this. I've got a trip across country from my parent's hpme to my own In Newcastle. Meaning I'll miss Record Store Day in all probability. A day that means very little to me personally. I'm not that kind of collector.
I looked through the list yeaterday evening and there was just one record whuch piqued my interest and I might ask after early next week when I do the rounds of the Newcastle record stores I frequent. Badfinge'rs third album. On Apple. No Dice.
Badfinger are like The Raspberries and Big Star. Teenage Fanclub, Super Furry Animals and Belle & Sebastian. Forever in The Beatles and their contemporaries slipstream but with a flow well worth following for its own twists and turns..Fir its own magic. No Dice has much to recommend it. I'd like a copy and the original vinyl release is pitched too prohibitively in terms of cost. North of four hundred pounds.
But it's something to covet, It has a great cover. A great set of songs. Wonderful playing. Vocals and harmonies and song structures than genuinely emote and ache. Bring back the times. Only records can do that for me. 'No Matter What you are.....'
The classic collecter's item. A real opportunity to invite your pals round and strpke your chins as it spins. As for letting satan in your life. It's probably slightly inadvisable.Now dosy do your partner. Atmosphere aplenty.
Everybidy things that their tumes were the best. I'm no different but would say that this Top 40 from my times, just as I was preparing for O Levels and the exit to the wider world is a persuasive case for 1982.'See her eyes they are bright tonight, See the stars coming out tonight. See the moon looking down tonight. Ss how they light your way tonight. '
A leisurely wind down to the weekend. Woo, Clive and Mark Ives phenomenal Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Goung Wrong an extraordinary slice of New Age whimsy and drift that feels like you're falling into a blissful space.
The Ives Brothers have been creating music since the 1970's apparently but if this is your entre to theit music then you may want to seek out more. In the meantime this collage is a drop of pure and constantly surprising beauty
An old skool collaboration in many respects. With the rapping rhythms and tone of early NAS and the vague gangster dread of those times but leavened by cool samples, melodic flourishes, tight beats and the constant ability to surprise.
I don't really listen to much that might be labelled Hip Hop these days so am in no position to judge whether it's in rude health or not really.Very few records seem to appear that really grab my attention and make me think I must play, them but this one certainly did.
Producer Danger Mouse and rapper Black Thought are neither of them actually new kids on the block. Far from it. Black Thought made his name as MC of The Roots who have been putting out records since the early Nineties, while Danger Mouse has been a producer of note for a broad range of artisits from Jay Z to Beck and Damon Albarn. No spring chickens then.
But on latest collaboration Cheat Codes they make Hip Hop's broad legacy work for them. This is something of an instant classic. Put it on and it will give you the instant shivers in the way that Illmatic, De La Soul is Dead or Liquid Swords might do.
One of the albums off the year then. One of the best records of this type I've heard for some time. A lyrical free wheeling treasure that improves on every listen.
'One of the most emotional records ever made.' apparently. It's certainly pretty damned good one I'd say.It's sometimes difficult to articulate to any degree to a record that you listen to a lot and appreciate and understand the cultural significance of when they don't particular have a visceral tug for you personally. Some of Joni's do. This always puts me in a restful state whuch is more than enough. Different songs and lines stand out on different hearings,.The vulnerability and candidness are astonishing.
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 long day teaching. I made my way down St Margarey's Lane and poppped in at Vinylstore Jr to see my pal Nick making last minute preparations for Record Store Day. He had the new Squarepusher album Kammerkonzert on his turntable.
It sounded great and now it sounds great again as I'm listening to it in my parent's living room as the evening draws to a close.. Punchy, Jazzy exercises that might surprise those who associate Tim Jenkinson with more obviously 'Street' exercises from way back when . This is a thrilling record
Associates were hysterical genius. Like overdosing on helium. It was incredible at the time to have songs like this in the charts. Sometimes it takes forty years to begin to realise just how remarkable they actually were.,
A slightly geeky but highly eloquent Swedish man named Jonas Samuelsson starts a YouTube countdown of his favourite records and I'll hitch a ride which will take us to summer. He's incredibly eclectic and this should be a proper education. What I like about him most is that he doesn't talk about himself but focises his energy entirely upin the record he is focusing on. . Almost no Soul, Metal or Funk apparently but we start with something fairly Soulful and certainly visionary.. He says this is primarily about the envronment it creates.
Big Black were pretty confrontational and aggressive. They require certain level of endurance and determination. I lasted a couple of tracks. Until it sounded like someone drilling in my head.
Space. The final frontier. You can put this on and cast yourself in a Science fiction film of your choosing and drift into oblivion in the best way imaginable.
Influencers? Are you hip to this.. Dead Finks fourth New Plastic Abyss strident agitation of the most vigorous kind. A coat of many colours. The Scars meet Rats On Rafts. Wumderbar !!! Hysteria is back in vogue. See them in Leipzig, Berlin, Prague and Munich in April and May. New Favourite Band Number Blah, blah, blah.
Spandau Ballet. Cheeky chappies! The Kemp Brothers actually played for Melchester Rovers for a while in the Eighties in one of the more remarkable twists of the modern football narrative. I wondered whether Instinction was the Spandau single I actually quite liked until I listened to it again yesterday and everything that really irritated me about the band came back.. Like a dose of something ghastly contract in Tunisia..
The funkiness. The hats. The wardrobes in general. The lyrics. The obligatory sax solo in every song because they had a sax player. The relentless narcissism. The drumming.. The videos. Tony Hadley. Spandau Ballet were truly the pits !!!!
I'll never know what Aerosmith felt like in the mid Seventies. I was too young and they were too ... American. Listening to Pump now, which I was aware of when it came out and relatively grown up it sounds like an attempt to cash in. Fair enough but I've never like guitar solos which make you screw up your face as an involuntarily gesture. Straight to MTV . That band were always on MTV..
I'm sorry but this is patently ridiculous and all of the stuff that I like is really good.!That's why I have written a blog for so long. I won't be persuaded.
If in doubt, go down to the underground. Black Beach reignite the conflagration first lit in the early Eighties by the likes of Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, Black Flag, et al in the early eighties on Mail Thief. It's all incredibly authentic.
I took time out of new music largely between about 2004 and 2014 when I felt I should start paying attention a little bit more given that I started writing this blog. This strikes me as one of the best albums I mussed during that fallow period.
A rather wonderful record from earlier on this year that I haven't written about yet. Tragic Magic. Folk Dreaming from Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore. It sounds pretty much like the first album you put on when you get to the jukebox heaven . Whatever or wherever that is .
A strange anomaly of my youth. There was all of this Rock & Roll crap in the charts. Not like the originals. Reliving the late Fifties, and indeed the early Sixties would have been great. But dreadful covers or songs that sounded like they were with anachronistic, clothing haircuts and dancing. Knock yourself out Rocky Sharp & The Replays.
Battles. are the kind of band that I started making an effort with when I first arrived back in England in 2008 and settled in Newcastle and thought I at least needed to make an effort with to attempt to organise myself and catch up with to some degree.
It was sometimes.. err 'a battle' This is frantic, frenetic but not unpleasant clutter and change. Up and down the scales. Happy percussive turbulence.
Soul 'Legends' became an endangered species in the new millennium for hipsters to hang their hat and pretensions of authenticity on. That doesn't take anything away from the attention to detail and loving care evident in late career, records like this.
Genesis were struggling for relevance. A few years make a lot of difference at that age. They were surrounded by young beautiful things, .Gabriel was long gone and this sounds tired tired, ZZZZZZZ !
The sun is up, But today it rises in a Canterbury sky for me at least. A friend is on Mount Everest. Another is dealing with he death of his father, Another is in Baghdad, Bombs and rockets are exploding a mile away frim where he us waking up. Pictish Trail's new album Life Slime is spinning on headphones as I sit at my deskin he box room of my parents house.
It's rather magical. Spacey. Dancey, Rising up from earth's orbit and into space. We live in the moment and time where we are and myst make the most if it, This will more than do me for today.
1998 ! It feels like a long time ago. Everything feels like a long time ago ! Queens of the Stone Age sounds like Grunge for people who like Punk but also have a few Metal records in their collectuin. And they make that sound like not such a bad thing. Listening to this also feels like a portal to a Seventies childhood.
Japanese Psych Folk, Narcoleptic. Full of Wonder ! A good friend's father died a couple of days ago. A sad day? A normal day in the history of the world. Which keeps on spinning. Something we oftentimes don't realise and acknowledge fully. This a good way to spend an hour,
Simple Minds were a big thing for me in 1982. I'm essentially a dreamer. And Simple Minds. Associates and Echo & The Bunnymen were essentially the forerunners for R.E.M's magnificent dreaming.
Bella's Litsa's Dramaticism a new album from Brooklyn, New York. The latest example of the new sadness, Lana Del Ray, Weyes Blood. Britney Speaks. Remember her? Nowadays more refined classicism is in vogue. Carpenters meets Laura Nyro in Central Park. And the consequence is, refined classicism of the most tasteful kind..
I expect it was always thus. Youth has always been drawn to melodrama. Going back to Cassandra of Troy and The Lady of Shallot . There's a track here called Never Ending Movie. You said it Bella. Sergeant Troy and Fanny Robin go to different churches on their wedding day and heartbreak ensues,Dramaticism is just the latest tasteful psychodrama up the pike. It doesn't sound new exactly, far from it frankly. Bur every hair is in place,
A scenario of youth. If it happens later in life it's considered staking I imagine The Velvelettes. It soundsed fresh with Banarama who were new on the block in 1982. It was a cool juxtaposition to have lads doing the backing vocals. Does memory play tricks? I tend to think mune does. This seems to stay in the charts for the longest imaginable time. .
Every day it seems brings fresh drama . I feel I'm at the best time and this is really living. the world is in flames and it feels great to be alive and await what each new dawn brings. I'm travelling South but first must find listening fate to take me from one class to the next. Today Robber, Robber's Two Wheel's Move the Soul.
Desperate frantic, noise. Somewhere between the poles of My Bloody Valentine and Deerhunter. Claustrophobic, Clawing for the daylight. Plenty of .space for melody. Robber, Robber hail from Vermont . Two Wheel's Move the Soul is fine, fresh product. It makes being in a band sound like the 'best idea' That's enough. Onto the next, .
In terms of listening fare it seemed increasingly I'm looking for the stuff of dreams wherever I can find them these days. I was just browsing in the record shop across the road from me and I found the second album from Curved Air going for a fiver and now I'm listening to it in my living room and I'm pretty much enraptured.
I don't know much about Curved Air except that they are Prog by disposition, had a big hit in Back Street Luv. Have a singer called Sonja Kristina who starred in the original production of Hair and Steward Copeland served some time on the drum stool before his time in The Police.
I'm clearly uninformed. This is greatly to my liking. First of all it has a wondrous inner sleeve which immediately takes you back almost fifty years to a world you don't know but wish you had. It's a little bit Proggy. But Poppy, with Jazz, Folk and Classical leanings too and definitely glass half full which is mandatory for me these days. And more Drama than an evening with Ibsen. Certainly worth every penny of the fiver I spent on it
Welcome to enchantment. This may be the first Song(s) of the Day in this history of almost 4,500 to be written in wet socks. What do you want I hear you ask? A medal? I shall spare you the story. In brief dear reader, I spilled a cup of tea just before teaching an online lesson. Never mind. I'm still in said socks and will switch to the matter at hand . Namely Wendy Eisenberg's current album; also Wendy Eisenberg.
It's rather lovely. A talented artist with a number of records under her belt. This is Folk nominally. In the tradition of John Prine and Nick Drake. But also Willie Nelson and Richard Dawson. We're talking the The golden path people. This is lush, gorgeous stuff. Time to change my socks.
If I'd have been born in a different time and place I might have been a Yo La Tengo completist. I go for their cool veneer. Their relaxed and collected air. Painful comes from 1993. It walks the streets of New York City with a spring in its step.. Not a bad thing to do. It howls in a rather polite Indie way. Into the day !
