It Starts With a Birthstone...

 

  Joni Mitchell, throughout her remarkable musical career, was constantly vexed and exasperated by being asked about how she felt about bein...

  More terrific product from Lawn, the New Orleans duo a band who have been one of my favourite bands of recent years. This song, Down  expl...

  It's delightful to see the return of Toronto's Ought in new skin. Two of that band are back from Ought's disolution a couple o...

 

  Strangeways is recorded and the Morrissey Marr relationship comes apart.

 

  AOR Seenties radio with high production values.But from the here and now.  A sound that seems quite commonplace these days. Can't say ...

 

 

  The golden run of singles continues.

 

 

  Song for one of the coolest actors of all. 

 

  The Smiths become something of a cultural juggernaut between The Queen is Dead and Strangeways.

 

  Crunchy, glad to be alive from New Zealand band Best Bets know exactly what they're doing .Debut album On An Unhistoric Night has been...

  Pure and simply a beautiful song to listen to with a pint in your hand looking out the window of The Newcastle Arms on a lovely sunny day.

 

  The Smiths become a genuinely commercial proposition both in the UK and the US. They start to talk to EMI.

 

  Australian duo release eponymous old school Synth record. Austere, pulse. With plenty of the rather po faced approach of British bands of ...

  Kevin Morby has a tendency to release too many records. In an age where a two to three year gap between the release of albums is deemed th...

 

  The most painful section of the book. Andy Rourke's heroin addiction escalates and is finally notuced by Morrissey. Jourke is ejected,...

 

       Not a million miles away from Christopher Cross. Not quite my thing, but it might have some takers.

 

  The making of The Queen is Dead, for many The Smiths' enduring statement. Listening to it now, I can quite understand why.

  Moonlight in Visby by Victor Mucho, a rather beautiful personal statement in the Sufjan Stevens tradition that I chanced upon while skimmi...

 

  A Cash cover.

  I've been very fond of Korean Indie band Say Sue Me for a few years now. Probably since I came upon them by chance, playing on the rad...

 

  The Smiths tour America in support of Meat is Murder  and are embraced. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore is released, against record lab...

  Smile! It's a new album from Radiohead. Or at least it might as well be, even if it's only actually Thom York and Johnnny Greenwoo...

 

 

  The new Belle & Sebastian makes its way to pub jukeboxes. Quite rightly.

 

  The road to The Queen Is Dead.

 

  The latest wave of Dunedin, New Zealand, indie-ish pop. Not exactly a million miles from the original wave in the early Eighties actually....

  Need a bit of Ruts energy occasionally.

 

 

  The wonderful Meat Is Murder.

  Japanese band do that winsome Shoegaze, Sarah Record thing on latest record Dazzly Allure . Very well actually but I'm personally wait...