It Starts With a Birthstone...

By a strange bit of kismet, my # 2 albums and books of the year meet again on Christmas Eve. In the same way as you can wait for a ...

And while we're making lists, here's another. But a one item one. While finding things I like to post on here I'm constantl...

Australia's Rolling  Blackouts Coastal Fever, (and yes I think they should keep the full name despite having a tendency to abbrevia...

And another from this same record. This is oddly reminiscent of Coldplay's Clocks in terms of its rolling piano motif but I'm...

Adelaide's finest, (to be honest I don't know any other bands from Adelaide), and two tracks from Lightning Ears their albu...

An almost six hundred page oral history of New York, its music scene and the bands artists and historical events that shaped it and thr...

Something I posted back in April: Today is also the anniversary to three years of the day that Wilko Johnson had the operation to rem...

1. St.Vincent - Masseducation 2, Kendrick Lamar - Damn 3. SZA - Ctrl 4. Lorde - Melodrama 5. Perfume Genius - No Shape 6. LCD Sound...

As I wrote back in May, almost like The Go Betweens decide to form a band with The Raincoats and go Glam. This is what the real charts ...

This could easily have been my # 1. It was the record I heard this year that most of all seemed just right for the age I'm at right now....

Incredible compilation from Lisa Walker of Wussy of recordings she's put together under the Magic Words moniker over the last few y...

What I wrote back in February: The Blue Orchids are playing their first song on a small raised stage in a small upstairs room of ...

Brooklyn duo No Kill write evocative song at least partially about the  Pearl Jam man. This came out a couple of months back.

Big Thief were a big part of my year. I loved their second album Capacity even more than I loved their first, in 2016 Masterpiece. Then they...

1. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN 2. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream 3. Wolf Alice - Visions of a Life 4. Lorde - Melodrama 5. Gorill...

And here's the cream of the crop on that particular record. A song that you can only gaze on in wonder!

It's very rare for a white guitar band to attempt something genuinely funky and soulful but not actually try to make a soul record ...

To mark the 25th Anniversary re-release of Automatic for the People here's a song to one of Hollywood's more interesting leadin...

The first of five countdowns of Albums of the Year as we head to Christmas Day. 1. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream 2. Nadia R...

Morrissey did much that was wrong this year but not this!

Written back in August: A friend of mine, (and long term supporter of this blog), commented a few weeks ago that there hadn't really...

. There are some times when you hear a new record and are familiar with every single sound on it but that is exactly why you love it. S...

Much of Melbourne's The Stevens album of this year Good was shamelessly derivative in an enjoyable way, making its way down a well ...

Perhaps the most deranged but utterly enjoyable record of the year. The review comes from August: If there's one band working toda...