It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Oh this is great! Cerys, doing what Cerys does so well on a Sunday morning. One to dance round your living room too. If that's your th...

 While we're in 1974, here's a great review, (not written by me, I hasten to add). Of a great record from that year. Second on my li...

 I'm going to struggle slightly for the next three years. My record collection isn't blessed with many albums from '74, '75 ...

  'The shocking and extraordinary Johnny Dowd.'

  Jam & Lewis.

  What's Growing, the second album from Christchurch, New Zealand trio Wurld Series sets off off from a familiar base. The skewed, indep...

 

  A memory. A very happy one. How listening to Climate of Hunter  by Scott Walker, on a Facebook group which I'm a member of, which didn...

 

  'A legendary band reborn without Ian Curtis in the room.'

Now here's something unexpected. On a day when I was disappointed by the new Lana Del Ray album I chanced upon this, a record that seeme...

 

 

 

  'The first to suggest that they were more than synth poppets.'

  Thoughtful, restful stuff out of Yarmouth, Maine.

  One thing you have to give to Lana Del Ray, regardless of what you think of her is that she's certainly prolific. She has another albu...

 

 

 

  'a sinister anthem of loner pessimism and search for meaning...'

Australian guitar light. Impossible to get too much Australian guitar light.  

  Where to start with Goat Girl and why I've neglected their second album, the unfortunately named, On All Fours. There is only one plac...

Oops late!  ' the overall best thing about the Mode is their understanding of the evryman nature of Dave Gahan's voice, and how that...

  'a lost gem.'

  'The first classic Prince single still stands.'

  The Telephone Numbers is first and foremost a great name for a group. And this is a very lovely song that makes me want to hear more from ...

 

  'If ever an album felt like an ecstatic release of tension, it's this...'

  'Time has not diminished the strangeness of Billie Jean.'

  I can tell you nothing about Todd Briefley. This is the only thing he has on Spotify and I can't find a biography of him anywhere. Thi...

  It's clear, listening to it through properly for the first time, that I've really neglected the second Goat Girl album, the rather...

  Rather sprightly number for one of the great observers of the English.

  'The Buffalo Girl video brought a technicolour  explosion of breaking and bombing and scratching into every pop kid's living room....

  Under an Ocean of Holes is a fascinating title. Song's pretty nice too. Good way to start the week.

 1973 seems to be some kind of gap within my own personal record collection. I don't care for much of the Top Ten here and didn't ha...

  'Thirty six devilishly catchy and enormously influential nuggests of electronic pop.'

 'this I think is the last big Madness single, a summing up of all they'd achieved in just three amazing years.'

  A group with a sound and ambience that you would probably need to make up if it didn't actually exist. The Fallen Angels, (and what a ...