It Starts With a Birthstone...

Emily Moales is Star Moales and she's on the Highway to Hell  . Heading out of Philadelphia where she dwells and onto the Great American...

            Deep breath. From 2006. Is Bob drunk? He seems in a loose mood. There's fun to be had !

  Pop Matters had a tagline which caught my attention yesterday   'Dorea's second album is vulnerable and seaworthy' Like a gul...

  Searows Death in the Business of Whaling. An album that I was naturally disposed to warm to given that I've adopted the pursuit of wh...

  I was in Budapest when this came out. 2003.The most beautiful woman in the world came to visit me there for a week over Christmas and New ...

 

  Cindy from San Francisco. They're playing songs from The Velvet Underground Songbook, Their latest album Another Country . As I rise a...

  I could listen to the albums of Bill Callahan and Smog a lot more than I do. His songs and manner suit my stride to a much greater degree ...

 

  Lenny Kaye strikes me as an admirable man. A Rock & Roll Man. Goin' Local his debut solo album at the age is simplicity and wonder...

  An album that reflects a country in the act of becoming. Twenty years on it still is.

   I've been keeping this in reserve for a few weeks. Planning to post it on a Sunday. Now is the time. It's no longer Sunday Mornin...

  Franz Ferdinand were a band with a great name, great hairdos, great cheekbones and a great set of tunes. They knew their Pop History, the ...

 

  Wilco don't really sound like a Millennium Band. If anything they sound like the band that picked up the torch from R.E.M. after Bill ...

  Sometimes you hear a record that you're not at all sure about initially which gradually insinuates itself as the tracks succeed one an...

 So do you want the good news? Or the good news? I only have good news here. What do you think this us the Daily Telegraph.? Fox News? Well ...

  I saw That Petrol Emotion several times between 1985 and 1987. They broadened my plate. Directed me towards Beefheart and Ubu. Reminded me...

  I cannot abide Muse. I'm a patient man, or at least I try to be but this Radiohead meet Queen schtick is an appalling idea from the of...

 

  It's Wednesday. But I'm going through the day. Sweeping through Thursday and Friday to the weekend. And SUNDAYCLUB by sundayclub. ...

  Another day. Another Euro. Bibi Club are a Canadian Pop Duo operating in French to a large degree though not exclusively. Latest album Ama...

 

  Sleek mid career Janet. No need to ask she's a cool operator.

  The beginning of one of life's rare third acts. Heathen seems to veer into H'G.Wells territory occasionally. 

  Lauren Auder's  Whole World as Vigil is exactly the kind of album that the chattering classes like to chatter about. Precious and drab...

    Life's Too Good is an album I associate with a difficult time in my life. Life always has dangerous aspects to it and we're foo...

  You carry the people who depart before you for the rest of your days. The ones who leave too soon. You do what you can to bear them with y...

  Every dog has his day. And this .... in 2017.... was pretty much Mac Demarco's.

  Despite hailing from California Sparks have always struck me as incredibly Weimar. That's their essential appeal as well as their utte...

  I never particulary warmed to Wild Beats. They struck me as nutered and emaciated Sparks or Associates for a more prosaic age. 

  'Your hands are shaking and your arms are shaking..' Another day in January in the North if England. Notoriously a difficult month...

  Picture yourself on a beach in Brazil. It isn't hard to do. Bruno Berle's mellow and jazzy Sem Fronteiras is helping me to do tha...

  ' This foursome's first full-length is a mix of over-the-top whimsy, extreme rhythms, vise-tight musicianship, and a 21st century ...

  It's 2026. And every other record it seems is an imaginary soundtrack. We seem to be being asked to go and live in some kund of perman...

  Records which remind you of times when you were unhappy sound richer with the years as you distance yourself from the person you were when...

You know what Hold Steady sound like by now. Springsteen meets Replacement at the five and dime with the Wurlitzer whirling. This one's ...

  I like music which takes risks. Baby Rose's third album Yearnalism will do me for today. It's cimematic and soulful and aches. Re...

  '                                                   How I wish I was young again...' I live in a flat with an allbum crammed with...

  A record that feels comfortable im its skin from a group of men who seem comfortable in their beards. This along with Fleet Foxes seemed t...

  Blur meet Pixies ennui. In a place where it's always raining and Song of Praise is on in a minute. 

  I'm listening to Blue Values an album by New Hampshire born  singer songwriter and audio archivists Eamon Fogarty. It's somewhere ...

  There can be an almost Mythic quality  to a great American Alternative Album. Dreaming which start in the bedroon and friends parties and ...

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

  Into the future, into the weekend. Stereolab are streets ahead of most other bands and I could understand completists where it comes to th...

  Unhalfbricking is a record that's grained. With wisdom and joy beyond the years of its players. With a sense of history that most of ...

The variety and quality of  great albums I'm coming upon this year is gathering momentum. Rostam Batmanglij's American Stories  is a...

  An album I'd buy for the cover alone.

  It's one of the great joys of having a large record collection. I constantly find myself listening to wondrous albums that I've ne...

  I've just played Cosmic Slop , Now   Stankonia is on and I might as well be in Manhattan, given how humid it is. I may have this on C...