It Starts With a Birthstone...

More from Arthur Kitchener. This one for one of the most regrettable men in Brutish history.

Sleek, modernist and utterly clinical. Along with French Disko,  the Stereolab hit that never was.

First posted way back in February. When Paul Webb started making  Drift Code,  the second album by Rustin Man, he had a newborn dau...

Pixies returned this year with a more than solid album, Beneath The Eyrie , Here was what I thought the standout song. And what I wrote...

Mancunians fuse Metronomy and Suicide to telling effect. This is just one track from their new album Incidental Music. It's enough ...

Another in a mini-series of three, this time from The Hobo Manifesto an album of songs by Arthur Kitchener. The first for Derek Bentley ...

One of my 'new band discoveries' of the year. From October. My new favourite band Part blah, blah, blah. For anyone taking n...

Referenced in the introduction to  It Gets Me Home This Curving Track , the collection of essays by Ian Penman, which I got yesterday a...

Belle & Sebastian came from here.

From the strange but compelling The Undivided Five by A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Written in July: My favourite new band, Part blah, blah, blah.. Yes, I know I say this a lot, but Bay Area trio Neutrals are quite def...

Old School Ska. Sunday morning.

Golden Earring do one for the partial inspiration for Ziggy Stardust. 

From May. Brazilian band Boogarins are back with a new album  Sombre Duvida  and it's one long pleasurable dive into aquatic sensa...

Confessions of a Reluctant Superhero, another record the end of year list from Rough Trade has brought to my attention. An old school R...

From July: Until The Tide Creeps In,  is the charming and noteworthy debut album from Brighton four-piece Penelope Isles released last ...

Great song and video from young, Nottingham band. Haunted by Mark E. Smith in the laconic, offbeat delivery but there's something s...

Fancied hearing With a Hip, the second track from The Bunnymen's masterpiece Heaven Up Here in The Newcastle Arms . So I requested ...

Appreciation for Ray Liotta. In French.

From August. A couple of years back, Parsnip, a Melbourne four-piece, first reared their collective heads on here with their debut sin...

The Rough Trade Album of the Year List gives me a chance to catch up on records like this. The Healing by BCUC, (Bantu Continua Uhuru ...

Song for the rugged Italian-French movie star.

First posted back in March. James Yorkston has become over his fifteen years of making records, something of a British Folk legend. F...

Highlight from Worn-Tin's wonderful Cycles album which could easily have made my End of Year Album list.

Remarkable free-form Jazz scatting from the Songs in the Key of Z compilation.

One from James. At Rosie's.

Not Erasure's finest single. Zsa Zsa played Minerva in Batman. The last of this particular series within a series.

First posted in July. Mantra Moderne,  the debut album from London based duo Kit Sebastian, (out today) is a hipster's pipedream....

The whole of the Injury Reserve album was worth a listen. This was the song I liked best.

In my second year at university I shared a house with a couple of Post Grad science students for a couple of terms. In addition to thei...

Ida Lupino was a trailblazer in many respects. An English-American actress, singer and producer, she was one of the few female film-maker...

Bands don't seem to split now, the way they did in the old days. Not like The Beatles and The Smiths did for example, way back when. ...

An absolutely fabulous record that's been brought to my attention of late. 1800 by the plain as plainly named  could be Big Supermark...

It's gratifying to see a young bad hit their stride a few years into their career. Such seems the case here with Pennsylvania's...

Space Lady's Greatest Hits is on the jukebox at The Newcastle Arms thanks to me requesting it. This sounded suitably spooky yesterd...