It Starts With a Birthstone...

The new Dylan album is out today. I haven't had the stomach to listen through to it all the way through just yet. But this is fine. ...

Good old Bob. Telling it like it is. From a new album, Blue Hearts, due on September 25th.

Buried deep in the first side of Document, Disturbance at the Heron House finds R.E.M. doing what they'd done before in a slightly ...

The ridiculous and hilariously bad tale of how Moulty, the drummer of the band, Victor 'Moulty' Moulton lost his hand. This hap...

This is not actually an album. Instead it's an imaginary compilation described by Dave Marsh, essentially devoted to the 'joys...

Peter Noone takes Green Rocky Road, a Folk standard, covered by everyone from Fred Neil to Tim Hardin and turns it into a nursery rhyme...

A song from Green that points a finger forward. Towards increasing experimentation and not doing the obvious, ultimately towards Losing...

Another solid gold classic. Also in its time, an actual hit!

Inspired initially by Nina, never a bad thing, this settles into its rhythm, very nicely over the course of its three minutes. A London...

The Lester Bangs essay I referred to below. It probably has a claim to being the best piece of Rock criticism ever written: 'Van...

Nice little song. Song 2 Side 2 of Reckoning.  Nothing particularly special, but cool riff, cool yearning, cool backing vocals. All the e...

This always sounded like the riff to Jean Genie to me. This came first. Just short of three minutes and pretty much perfection.

This is the most famous essay in here. Written by the great Lester Bangs who died a few years later. I'll post it later.

Pretty much a concept album about the miraculous personal experience of having a child from the father's perspective. Why didn'...

Monster is by far my least favourite of R.E.M's initial run of ten albums. It feels that for the first time in their career, they...

Thoughtful Bostonians.

What a joy to turn on the radio just in time to hear the opening notes of this coming out at me. Doesn't happen nearly often enough...

This song is by no means among my favourite R.E.M. songs but I don't dislike it either. It's an important moment in their caree...

Fabulous Dylan larceny.

A marvellous, and essentially rather obscure record to choose as the ultimate desert island companion. Nevertheless, one worth tracking...

In the early 1990's a group of young bands emerged, in London and the South East of England mostly, who made some waves in Indie ci...

One for Burl from the oddly named Antcs.

There had to be at least one track from Dead Letter Office here and at least one cover, so it might as well be this, the album's op...

Strangely a song that throws in the riff from Waiting For The Man, despite the fact that it's obviously Respect.

Late testerday evening as the light outside my window, alnost three months into Lockdown, was just beginning to fade, I picked up a tip...

Dion releases a song he wrote a while back about a friend of his who is long, long gone of course. Paul Simon lends a hand. Dion says a...

This is a massive self-indulgence. Even for me. But blogs often are, aren't they? This particular blog is, quite unashamedly. Over th...

Robert Christgau is probably best know for the succinct, paragraph length album reviews he wrote for many years for Village Voice. Here...

In Barry Levinson's 1982 Coming of Age classic Diner,  Daniel Stern, the Shrevie character chastises his wife Beth, (Ellen Barkin)...

Much beloved of Julian Cope in his early Liverpool days.

This is a record that I've never considered listening to before. But the essay about it by Paul Nelson is so fine that I will make a...

Just out today. A collection of songs from Nineties veterans Built To Spill paying respects to the talent and legacy of  Daniel Johnsto...

Chicago Indie sirens Ohmme are back. With another set of sparky though hardly essential bursts of structured energy. It sounds like a c...

This record, We Are Sent By History by Shabaka & The Ancestors, is one, long, lucid waking dream, Destined to be one of my very fav...