It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Mithchell was unable to appear at Woodstock and was bitterly upset not to do so. So she wrote this Listening to it now it feels like a mag...

  I started this blog in 2013 with no clear destination in sight ,because it seemed like a good way to occupy myself, because writing was on...

  I've heard a lot of nonsense about The Clash in the last few years. That The Damned were better than them. That they were just a Londo...

  This is what television's were invented for . To play whimsical, joyful albums on. Well done John Logie Baird ! A whi,msical compilati...

  Domestic Bliss ? Surely an oxymoron A vain imagining. But in this case it happens to be the latest album from Voka Gentle a band for Londo...

  You gotta pick a pocket or. ..... I don't really care how Elastica are viewed these days. Strangely enough for such a bunch of brazen ...

  Music isn't always particularly in 2026 I must say. Take Jalen N'Gonda's latest album Doctrine of Love . It's Neo Soul of ...

  Joni's only Top Ten US Singleshit. About the act of falling in love. Not an easy thing. Joni was somewhat dismissive of this but said ...

 Well we'd better get going on this. I know very well that we're not yet halfway through July. But these things don't write them...

  'Look at that mama spider crawling on the bouganvillea' Day Two of the World Cup. And while I eagerly await witnessing the best fo...

  The 2026 World Cup is due to start in twenty minutes. Mexico versus South Africa. I will watch it. But first I will listen to this. I have...

  A whole era of expression I'm completely deaf too I'm afraid. Blink 142 and you'll miss it. 

  This is beginning to feel like Hopscotch between Court & Spark , Blue, Ladies of the Canon and Hejira..   Free Man In Paris is abou...

  I Built You a Tower, the eleventh studio from Seattle's Death Cab For Cutie is a sweet and tender record. By contrast with the Modest ...

  An incredible portrait of the times. A dream seems over .

  Liz Lawrence has got the look and the modern sound. The new solemnity. On current album, Vespers she sounds like Phoebe, Aldous and erm Li...

  The kind of thing Uncut Magazine get unfeasibly excited about . I listen and generally feel slightly underwhelmed and go back to my Echo ...

  The Cardigans is a great name for a band. The Cardigans are a great band. This is an album from 2003. The term 'mature' probably a...

  Where Joni stands in relation Jazz is better left to those who know more about jazz than I do/ This features Jaco Pastorious and is resple...

  I woke up early. I listened to a record by The Delgados on my stereo while I had my breakfast. Now I'm listening to another on my tele...

  This feels impossible lapsarian. It takes you back to your mother's arms.

  Life remains a mystery. But it pays to explore its terrains. Its valleys and ravines. 'Slide, slide, slide. Down River....' What b...

  I'm done for the day. I've just finishe teaching a charming young German woman called Sarah. She talked about visiting an LGBT Tra...

  An incredible way to make your break from the pack once and for all. Also a wonderful Sunday night record.  

  Let's face it. The precedent for Nick Cave & The bad Seeds are - The Doors. Dark, sexy, literary. sly. I've just finished list...

  Teenage Romance alchemised into thirty-something artistic genius.

  Music is something you can lose yourself in. Like writing. Life is essentially about escape. That's why we were given imaginations. Es...

   I am listening to Modest Mouse's new album  An Eraser & A Maze. It's not a particularly enjoyable experience but I shall pers...

 

  We pause for breath here. The author is taking a hiatus. But first  Trout Mask Replica. A record I've never listened to before. It...

  I need a record store converstion every few days. To feed in to what I write here and generally to feed my soul or what I like to think pa...

  Being in between. Hearing crickets call. The insecurity of not knowing what the response might be. But also the artistic permanence of the...

  I'm sitting in my living room listening to Heron's second album Twice as Nice & Half the Price . It's a double. It came ou...

  Danish 1971 album. It's pretty full on. Dervish like and constant momentum and motion.

  What a day ! I'll spare you the gory details. As my friend David puts it. 'Some days are out to get you.' And then you come t...

  Joni looking back to go forward. This is joyous, sensual flair and no mistake.

  I've been fond of Widowspeak, an Indie band from Brooklyn, New York and previously Tacoma, Washington, for a while now. They have a ne...

  An English  'Head' band. From 1969. Much beloved of Julian Cope and the like. Right up my street. Freewheeling. 

  A lot of these sings sound like your're getting the Motherlode. As if the Middlearth Wars are being enacted in your living room The Ri...

  This is why I bought Hissing Of  Summer Lawns I realised . Because The NME told me tii, Because I knew what I wanted to be. I want to be s...

  There's a first time for everything. I'm listening to a Kylie album. I won't listen to another one. It's non-descript. It...

  I think I'm going back. Got to keep going back. For surely that is how to best go forwaed. Try to pit one foot in fromt of the other. ...

  The Seventies is a foreign country. They do things differently there, If you don't believe me take a listen to The Roches  self titled...

  Johnny Rep was the man. 

  I get the sense that XTC took a while to become the band they wanted and needed to be. Drums & Wires their third record was frantic a...

  Tom Jones must have had a song in the Top Twenty every couple of months for the second half of the Sixties. This wasn't the worst thin...

  This is a controversial one. Oh don't pretend you've heard of it. Sounds like Goldin Earring's Kissing cousins.

  My heart leaps like a salmon through a circus hoop help a metre above the lake. Cornershop. I adore Cornershop. People go on about Oasis. ...

  There's an intricacy and intimacy about the songs from Blue. He went to California and wrote a letter . Which he posted in a box. Imag...

  Tyler Ballgame's is a Berklee College Music dropout. He dusted himself down and For The First Time his debut album is just out, It...