Song(s) of the Day # 3,733 Mammoth Penguins

 

    'Between 200 and 2,000 species go extinct each year. I'm not that special, but I'm still here.'

A humble but valliant assertion of self. Cambridgeshire's Mammoth Penguin who've been round the block plenty of times in their ten years on the circuit. New album Here, sets out its stall in very minimal, no nonsense fashion. They're a three piece, guitar, bass and drums project, the kind you'd enjoy greatly if they were playing in an upstairs of your local pub on a Friday evening.

Emma Kupa, who takes the Penguin mic has a strictly no nonsense approach. Here is twelve songs and forty minutes long and it goes by before you know it. Stories of being in a giigging band, setting up and packing up your gear, merch stalls, flters and fanzines. Tales of a lifestyle grounded in music and dreaming escape from 9 to 5 drudgery.. 

There's a sense of natural insecurity here, but you'll be OK because you're will like minded mates and you'll be fine. Much pondering the nature of the nature of existence and our place in the scheme of things. This never stops let's face it, it's the fundmental principle of existence. Sturdy, resilient and likeable stuff. I thought 'The Housemartins'. Sometimes it pays to keep things simple.  

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 379 The Band of Holy Joy - Manic, Magic, Majestic

 

The kind of thing the Melody Maker loved towards the end of the Eighties.  An Urban Folk band who stirred up a fabilous sound that probably din't get it's due. This is a heady mix. Fantastic imagination and flair.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 604 Spiritualized - Let It Come Down

 

You know what you're getting when you start listening to a Spiritualized album. Heroin. The Velvets and The Stooges. Space Travel. Religious allusions about grace and transcendence. All boxes ticked here,

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,935 Jerry Lee Lewis - Jerry Lee Lewis

 

From 1958. That fine boogie woogie piano rolls though everything. Jerry Lee over the top. Hillbilly preacher and not one to allow near your younger female family members. Doesn't hang around. Twelve songs in less than half an hour and its gone. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,732 Jon McKiel

 

Jon McKiel's Hex. Another of those fascinating leftfield indendent records that a ruimentary browse through the Friday morning playlists of new releases helps you come across. 

This is a Southern playground. The occult. Saxaphone. Dr John and The Neville Brothers.Hex reminded me of Kevin Morby's fabulous Singing Saw from ten years back.

It's not an album that stands still. Plenty here to keep you coming back for further plays. Some fascinating interludes and digressions. It's a ghostly, haunting record.But not short on melody and atmosphere. 

Baxter Dury at The Sage

 

I'm woken by sunlight streaming through the living room windows of my mezzanine flat. I'm snug in bed but it's good to wake up and rise early and prepare for my day.

In recent weeks I've generally had three online lessons to prepare for on Tuesdays,  now two of them have come to an end for a while. One of the students for my early morning double hander has cancelled and I just need to prepare myself for the eventuality that Juergen arrives.

I put on a Mercury Rev album on my headphones and start to prepare stuff for the possibility that Juergen might show. I adhere to routine these days since I went freelance and spend much of the week at home. I'm happy that my life has taken this turn.

 One thing I don't and will never miss is the office space. I came to the conclusion that it had nothing to do with what I was doing, which was teaching. Now I'm my own master and my bank account seems reasonably healthy without giving me enough money to really make a nuisance of myself. 

Every morning I've got a handful of albums to work my way through in the ascending and descending chart lists I chronicle on her. It's a comforting routine. The Rev's All Is Dream is a smooth listen this morning although I've never cared for the guy's voice. He sounds like a homesick ET cast adrift in a Bond OST here. I shrug and get up to run my bath. 

I put It's a Sin on. That's better. It takes me instantly back to the late Eighties. The Pet Shop Boys always do. Not always the happiest time of my life. In fact quite the opposite. The first time  I was ever really tested. But I was young and I came through. Even though it has the most painful memories.

When It's  A Sin runs its course I put on their new album Nonetheless and listen to a few songs while my bath runs. Tennant and Lowe know exactly what they're doing. They always did. The humdrum meets the widescreen. Works for me for precisely the reason why Mercury Rev doesn't. Because Tennant's persona doesn't grate while the homesick ET at the heart of Mercury Rev always does.  Nonetheless is excellent. They've never put a foot wrong. They've got great taste. 

Juergen is prepared for anyhow. If he turns up we'll talk and seewhat he wants to do. I've got some grammar work on the back burner which I'd say is what he really needs. Just in case. He's in charge. This work with German business people that I'm embarked on is fundamentally reactive. Responding and teaching to students needs. It's enjoyable work and often doesn't actually feel like work. Early retirement in many respects. I'm responsive but I also feel in charge crucially. I've cut out the middle man.

Before my bath I take a brief listen to Stiff Little Fingers Nobody's Hero which is another one on my lists for today. Stiff Little Fingers is not something I'd normally choose to listen to before seven at my age. Maybe when it came out and I was 14 in 1980.

I take my rablets while Jake Burns rants and the guitarists mount the barricades and come on like the Irish Clash. StiffLlittle Fingers were big at my secondary school. The kind of band name that the boys in my year liked to write on their pencil cases. I could write an essay about the hierarchy of cool between boys at secondary school.

Tablets taken and ablutions completed I'm ready for breakfast. Ordinarily I'd wander down to the fitness centre and spend an hour in the sauna, the plunge pool and the pool. There's been a leak of some kind in the building and its closed. Irritating. I don't like my routine broken.

I put XTC's Drums & Wires on my record player while I sort out breakfast. In the bath I'd been ruminating between Squeeze and The Teardrop Explodes but this will do. 'She's up there turning round. Just like a helicopter...' Andy Partridge's manic spectrum Reggaisms. I used to love XTC when I was young and I stand by my 14 year old self. I still like his taste. Well perhaps I didn't need that record by The Fixx.

Drums & Wires fits my mood anyhow. You can't fault a band that wants to be The Kinks one minute. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band the next, But you know at heart that they're really just a bunch of dweeb non-conformists from Swindon. And are just mightily relieved to avoid the 9 to 5 mortgage, unhappy marriage shift. Or else the job in the warehouse or the garage.  

At half eight I click on the Teams invitation and Juergen is there. From his flat just North of the Swiss border in Freiburg. Wearing a baggy Techno Festival t shirt. Just after nine.  Rico, the other guy in the class shows up. Even though technically he cancelled. It's always a pleasure to see him. 

The lesson that proceeds is anarchic though very funny. We laiigh a lot. Neither Rico nor Juergen has much grammar. Their sentences are unmoored and sometimes it's a struggle to hang on to what they are talking about when they describe their work practices. Generally Germans are highly proficient given ten or fifteen years of rigorous schooling in the English tongue.Not these two, They missed out on the schooling for reasons I don't need to go into here. 

It's a real riot of a lesson anyhow. I keep circling back to them to the need of preparing using the given tools and apps whenever they have a meeting in English. We discuss Rico's forthcoming holiday with his partner on a North Sea Island. Germans seem always about to embark on a holiday. Sensible.

I'm done by ten and the rest of the day is mine. It's quite nice to have some down time after a few weeks of fairly relentless, online lessons. The day is bright, the heavens are full and I've got the full range of Newcastle's hostelries and restaurants to choose from.

In some ways since breaking away from my nine to five at the beginning f the year, I'm starting to think of the phase I'm going through now as early retirement in some respects. That opens up a lot of choice and that's how I'm approaching my life these days.

I decide to get in touch with Louise. An old school friend. Within a couple of messages we set up a school reunion event on social media. Always a slightly risky manoeuvere digging up the past. Stirring up memories. That's the space I'm in now. And partially will be until the reunion happens in September.  'The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.' J.P. Harttley

But today I'm free. So I visit haunts. Rosie's where a couple of great ladies are setting up a birthday meal in the rooftop restaurant in Chinatown. Freeplay on the jukebox so I put on a Queen and a Rolling Stones on for the pair of them.

Then to RPM Records. Have they got a copy of Eat To The Beat. They have and for eight quid.I love record shops for this kind of moment.  I don't hesitate. I have a brief chat with Marek and Ritchie. Record Store banter. About Debbie Harry on this occasion. Blokes love to talk about how Debbie Harry and Kate Bush made them feel when they were young. 

Then I'm home and put the record on full blast. Sing along. My younger sister attached herself to Blondie before she was ten. Had every record until The Hunter. Sang their songs at full blast round our family house in Richmond.Younger sisters are generally right. She slipped a few years when she and her friends switched allegiance to Duran Duran a couple of years later. Teenage hormones demand such reckless switches. Eat To The Beat though doesn't date or tarnish. It deserves to be held in the same respect as Parallel Lines. I'm so glad I have a copy.

Blondie was Alison's contribution to our families soundtrack growing up. I countered with the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, Associates, an most importantly R.E.M. when they came into my life. I played Murmur, Reckoning and Fables relentlessly in my room at the top of our house. 

I play the first side now. No time for more as I've booked myself at the French Quarter for five. Always sensible to book ahead at TheF rench Quarter. I'd say its the best restaurant in Newcastle. 

But I have time for Feeling Gravity's Pull and the rest of Side One of Fables. Never mind Gravity's Pull. That record has a centrifugal tug on me that drags me down the years into the vortex of youth. It's magical what music can do to you. Few recotds like this particular one. There's nothing quite like a record that takes you back to being nineteen as this invariably does for me.  Memory and the change, the relentless change that occurs in your teenage years that is unmatched elsewhere in life. 

Once Old Man Kensey has had its say I'm off into the sunlight and make my way to The French Quarter where they open the doors for me and take e to my table. French Quarter is classy, The food is fantastic. The waitresses and waiters are smiley and chatty and love their jobs as much as it's possible to love a job. The one I know best rolled me a rollie that takes me from the doors of The French Quarter to the doors of The Bridge Hotel.

I must make my way to The Bridge Hotel at least three times a week. It never lets me down. I don't drink alcohol much anymore but pubs are special places. And The Bridge Hotel understands what most discenrning punters want from a pub. Best you go there and appreciate what I'm getting at for yourself.

I pop in briefly at The Central acroos the High Level Bridge in Gateshead. It's Book Club Night and it always pays to make an appearance. But it's a brief  appearance and Bill who's also going to see Baxter make our leave and we're off into the sunlight and head down the slope and through the doors to the Sage.

Just in time for Ernie. And I'm not taking about the fastest Milkcart in The West. I've just settled down in my seat at the back of the fantastic Glasshouse Venue and they're on. A sensitive local fourpiece just starting on their way. They've got a great sound somewhere between Elbow and Travis. No that's not wet. They have heart..Ones to watch, 

A non alcoholic beer in the foyer. A chance to appreciate light and space again. Then back for the main event . Baxter, The Man.

Baxter is Ian Dury's son. There's no disguising the fact, He doesn't bother to hide it himself. He's the son of The Guvnor. Both Ian and Baxter remind me of the things I cannot stand about London. The cheap, fake machismo of being a Cockney lad. The stuff that Ray Winston and Michael Caine before him built their personas upon. Fagin's mantra. 'You gotta pick a pocket or two.' Jack, the Lad. 

Baxter projects it. The aggressive, phoney ugly aggression. The constant threat of violence. The vast aching loneliness inside.  Baxter's not taken in for a moment. he can 'talk the talk' but has no interest in Walking the Walk. No interest in becoming a 'total cunt' in the words of Oi, one of his defining songs,  which he plays and is a set highlight tonight. 

He stays in persona, Its only right. I love persona. It's a lost art. Bowie, Ferry and Ayers specialised in this in the early Seventies. Ian himself. Never let the mask slip.

We get our money's worth. Then after a brief pause, the encore. Baxter lets his hair down. After a disciplined performance of throwing shapes. he let's us know he loves us. There's some manic almost Acid Techno. The audience gets to its feet like only a Newcastle audience can and the venue is alive. 'I love you.,' he shouts and its clear that he means it. 'I hate London. I love it here.' 

It's what I want to hear I grew up in London adn despite many things it has going for it, I reject much of it too, It's a facade that's not for me. I'm happy here, Newcastle's my home now., It's been a great night. A great day. I make my way across the  serene Newcastle streets and home. Play the second side of Fables in my darkened flat. You have to respect the narrative of a great record. Then hit the sack. 

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 380 BEF - Music For Stowaways

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,936 Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet

 

Award winning Canadian composer and sound artist. Harmony In Ultraviolet is an album of light and space.  

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 603 The Strokes - Is This It

 

'Depending on which sie of the fence you sat in 2001, The Strokes were either a shameless cookie-cutter rehash of any number if New York rock bands from the 70s or the greatest thing to hapen to rock and roll in two decadesHowever, those who considered Is This It, he bands first LP to be anything less than an outstanding LP are simply kidding themselves.'

Myself and a good friend of mine considered moving to New York City on the basis of the power and resonance of this record. 

'The Strokes managed to cultivate the perfect grouping of accessible subversion and rock & roll pose with an unconscious yet impeccable cultural timing.' 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,731 Penny Arcade

 

When Ultimate Painting split so sadly a few years ago, Jack Cooper seemed the one of the band's core pair to keep an eye on. His records with Modern Nature have proved interesting Jazz and Folk abstractions and there's surely more to come.

But James Hoare's projects have been equally fruitful. He has quite a CV to his name now. Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting, Proper Ornaments now Penny Arcade and an album called Backwater College.

Ot's a slightly downcast, mournful recird as you'd half expect with Hoare given his legcay. In a line from Ray Davies, Robyn Htchcock, Peter Astor and other great English wordswmiths.  

Hit Factories - A Journey Through The Industrial Cities of British Pop # 9 Specials

 

The sad story of Coventry. Its wartime destructuction under Hitler's bombs. It's post-war rebuild into a concretete and unsightly landscape. Inevitable soundtracked by the finest band and one of the best the country ever produced.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 381 Stiff Little Fingers - Nobody's Heroes

 

Big band at my secondary school way back in the mists of time. They're a great band to get into when you're fourteen. I have this album but don't play it often. Irish Clash. Not a patch on The Undertones. Some fantastic singles. 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 602 Mercury Rev - All Is Dream

 

I've never had a problem with the sound of Mercury Rev albums. They're magnificently wide screen and ambitious. Fantastic. Whole vistas of the great American landscape. It's the guys voice. He's a whining drip cast out on the American prairie. It ruins the whole experience for me, much as I love the sound of the records.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,937 Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers

 

A listen to Volunteers is a journey to another time and place. Battle lines. Jefferson Airplane sound like refugees by the end of the Sixties.The hippiws were making their way to the communes in the valleys. Vietnam still raged. This might as well be the soundtrack. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,730 Pet Shop Boys

                                               'Everyone's dancing to Roxy and Bowie.' 

In my last year at university I met the biggest fan of the Pet Shop Boys I've ever known. He didn't half go on about the Pet Shop Boys. He's since told me that I introduced him to the joys of John Coltrane which he's grateful for, but Pet Shop Boys have plenty to recommend themselves too. And I'm thankful for his enthusiasm and input during this last year of education before we both made our way out into the cruel world of work.When I hear the Pet Shop Boys I will always think of Matt. . 

I remember him saying that Being Boring might as well have been the band's definitive moment. You could always have accused the band of being boring.It was a huge part of their persona and appeal. The way that Neil Tennant sang. Their austerity and sensibility. They embraced the accusation. 

Never more so than on new album. Nonetheless. An archetypal Pet Shop Boys album title.The Phatic Filler.The understated. The droll, English wit. And language. And sound.

Pet Shop Boys have  not really been about enormous change down the years and they're not starting here. This sounds like a Pet Shop Boys record that might have come out in 1994. Every bit as much as 2024. They still look young. Why not? 

All their standard tropes are here. Minimisalism. Spareness.  Wit. That sound. The light. The space. Generally I'd consider myself an advocate of change. Of growth.  In some cases if it ain't broke don't fix it is actually the right approach. Much of Nonetheless comes across as a prolonged curtain call. Tennant and Heath.  Masters of their art. 

Jukebox

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 382 Guy Clark - Old Friends

 

An old school C & W craftsman that Robert Forster speaks highly of. A little prosaic this morning for the most part for my tastes by comparison with Gram and Townes.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 601 Starsailor - Love Is Here

 

Starsailor, like Kasabian seemed almost like a stuio or possible computer generated band to fill a gap. In the wake of Oasis an Verve once they ha worn their inspiration dry. There were still arenas to fill an lighters to hold aloft. Starsailor, like The Verve, came out of Wigan and took their name from a fantastically visionary and out there album. Their records were rather more formulaic. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,938 Kasabian - Kasabian

 

Kasabian seemed custom designed to fill a gap when Oasis seemed utterly to have exhausted whatever steam they had and there was need of another provincial thross and pills generator. What they had to offer did very little for the likes of me. I liked Shoot The Runner (a true Yobboe moment in the sun classic),  but most of their fuelled anthems an their hellbent desire to 'get out of Leicester' left me pretty instantly cold, so I didn't last very long with their debut this morning. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,729 Tara Jane O'Neil

 

Tara Jane O'Neil has been plying her trade as an artistically inclined musician since she turned 20 in 1990 playing bass for Louisville, Kentucky Punks Rodan.

Thirty years and more on and with an incredibly varied and mutifaceted body of work to her name, she has a new record out, intriguingly entitled The Cool Cloud of. Okayness. It's one of the most blatantly abstracted and obscure album titles you're likely to come across ths year and the record itself lives up to the title and more. 

I love chancing across records like this. Which plant themselves firmly in the quirky, bohemian traditon of the likes of Rickie Lee Jones and Laurie Anderson. Aristic, strange and completely unwilling to bend themselves and run with the herd.

It's an easy one to listen to though you may not be abe to grasp meaning so much as enjoy the abstraction, like a contemporary exhibition you wander around on a Sunday afternoon and take a fancy to without delving deeper. 

The Cool Cloud of.Okayness floats on its own currents. It's the first record of this sort which has come my way since Cassandra Jenkins An Overview of Phenomenal Nature. A pleasuredome

Edwyn Collins

 

Camera Obscura - Look ToThe East, Look To The West

 

Camera Obscura are a band that chime with my own tastes, my past my sensibility. Very, Glasgow, even if they are named after an Edinburgh landmark just down the road from Edinburgh on the Golden Mile. But in terms of their musical heritage they're very Glasgae. A little sister band to Belle & Sebastian. Solid in the musical tradition of Postcard. Orange Juice, Axtec Camera, Lloyd Cole.

The band suffered a terrible blow with the loss of core member Carey Laner who passed in 2015. It's difficult for bands like them to maintain the forward momentum in the face of such a loss. Look ToThe East, Look To The West is their first album since 2013. It's spiriting to see it so richly and solidly in their romantic and melodic tradition.

It's made up of excellent, lovingly crafted songs first and foremost. You can't go far wrong if you get that bit righ. This is as good a collection of pure, swooning and delicate Pop songs as you'll hear all year. Great to see them back in the saddle.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 383 Elvis Costello - Spike

 

A pleasure to hear this for the first time possibly since the decade it came out in. It's a ragbag collection. Almost wilfully. There are some terrific songs on here. Costello is essentially a song and dance man and would surely be happy with that description. He has a particular vision of life 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 600 The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

 

There was enormous peer pressure to fall under The White Stries spell when they emerged. I tried with White Blood Cells when it came out and was championed by all an sundry. John Peel and the rest. I could see how good it was and how special they were. It just never chimed with my personal tastes and allegiances as closely as The Strokes did. .Listening to it this morning again, there's plenty to ring my oorbell. Oh that one comes later.

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,939 Pink Floyd - The Endless River

 

Pink Floyd rear their unwelcome and rather ugly head on here in here more often than is palatable to be frank. They're probably the one band in the canon that I simply cannot stomach, apart from the Barrett incarntion, but every few days they seem to pop up on one of the ascending or descending charts I chronicle on here. Hey, a man's gotta do. I lasted about five minutes on The Endless River their final studio album from 2014. I'm afraid I found it mournful, portentious and slightly ghastly. Look at the cover. I rest my case.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,728 Corridor

 

Corridor is a word I struggle to spell for some reason, I have no idea why. but I'm an English teacher and it bothers me. A weird phonemic blind spot in my consciousness along with other words I struggle with. Such a bicycle, and soldier for some reason. And continuous. As in the present continuous.

Never mnd my flaws. To Corridor the Canadian band from Montral, Quebec. And their triumphant new album Mimi. On Sub Pop records. Another peach sent my way by Darren Jones, first mate and best mate of It Starts With a Birthstone.

Corridor are a new name to me, though this turns out to be their fourth album, They're a fabulous band in a given tradition, Most immediately, obviously that of Stereolab, Broadcast and Jane Weaver and the older traditions of Sixties and Seventies of Psychedelia, Prog, Krautrock and childhood ephemera which they drew on.

Richly detailed adn textured. Mimi charts a gorgeous journey on buoyant ocean waves. Fantastic stuff Darren!

Lemon Twigs - A Dream We All Know

 

Be careful not to over egg the pudding. It strikes me as good advice. Nobody needs relentless eggy pudding. It just wouldn't do.

Not over egging the pudding I supect has never been a problem for The Lemon Twigs. The oddball Long Island D'Addario brothers who seem to actually believe they're living in a Wes Anderson movie. 

A Dream We All Know, their latest sounds to me like the ultimate Lemon Twigs record. They've pulled out all the stops on this one. It's the whole Power Pop Beach Boys, Raspeberries Big Stars, Todd Rundgren symphony retro trip in full effect.

Some of the songs here are among the best they've ever written.They clearly have no shame in the ham and cheees departments. Personally I'm pleased. I like ham and I like cheese.

This autumn The Lemon Twigs are coming to my home town in a venue I haven't been to. I'll pop down if I  can. In the meantime I have A Dream We All Know a place where it's forever 1973. 

Hit Factories - A Journey Through The Industrial Cities of British Pop # 8 Dexys Midnight Runners

 

'Birmingham city centre, or at leaast the area around the Bullring shopping station an New Street Station is the half-revived corpse of a peculiarly dated kind of  spaceage streetscape, one that originated in the twentieth century. 

A trek through the streets of England's second city. Municipal politics. Immigration. Steel Pulse, Black Sabbath, Dexys.

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 384 Art Bears - The World As It Is Today

 

Avant Garde torch songs from the ashes of Henry Cow. Fronted by Dagmar Krause. Roots in Brecht and Weil. Agit prop.Nur mein tasse tee.. 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 599 Nitin Sawhney - Prosphesy

 

An album that achieved Mercury Music status in 2000. Symphonic Asian soul and a great soundtrack to Saturday morning's sunrise.

. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,940 Snow Patrol - Final Straw

 

Dundee's finest, Unless you'd give that crown to Associates. I cerainly would. These sound like comfortuing, slightly rwee bedtime stories by comparison. Moments of urgency. But generally plays to the mainstream.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,727 Kamasi Washington

 

A fresh release from Kamasi Washington in the recording calendar really feels like something special these days. Something to set aside the time it takes in your life and immerse yourself in. Here's Fearless Movement. .

These guys work on a different plane from most of the Rock an Indie players you might go to. The Astral one. Really the best way to experience this is to let go of every other distraction from your everyday life an cast yourself adrift in its river of sound.

Fearless Movement. manages a remarkable balancing act. It's transcendental in the best traitions of the classic Miles, Coltrane, (Alice and John), Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra Records. It's also contemporary, with generous space for guest performances from all kinds of musical fields of Black American experience. It pushes the envelope without pause for breath for the best part of ninety minutes,

I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I can't write about a really great Jazz record and attempt to do it justice. If you can't why bother to try. But this is some feast. Some achievement,   

Songs About People # 1,389 Baby Huey

 

R

                               Rather lovely selection from the latest Camera Obscura record.

Adrienne Lenker - Bright Future

 

In the near ten years since their inception, originally Brooklyn based Big Thief have become something of a phenomenon. A string of quite spectacular albums, fantastic shows and spin off projects. There's no other band quite like them. At least not that I can think of.

I've been tardy abut neglecting this; Adrienne Lenker's latest, Bright Future which came out several weeks ago. Lack of appreciation was not the basis of my neglect. It's brilliance is immdeiately evident.

A factor which stands against Big Thief and the imminent global dominance thay is surely their birthright is their inbuilt prolific nature. Back in the Sixties, bands like Creedence could put out three records in a calendar year and it was accepted as a kind of given.

This is no longer the case given modern market forces. Bands put out an album every couple of years then tour it for a further year, It's difficult to process artists still working to the demands of the more strenuous treadmill of yesteryear.

Bright Future has a leaner instrumentation than Big Thief. The songs are no less impressive and memorable. Lenker's talent is astonishing frankly, 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 598 Rufus Wainwright - Poses

 

Listening to Poses again is a reminder of the fully formed arrival of a particular talent. Arch, decadent, camp and extravagant. Gay of course. And not apologetic about any of these things  for a moment. It's an extravagant record and beautiful record. A coat of many colours.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,941 Beirut - The Flying Cup

 

I'm still very taken with Beiruit and the vision of Zach Condon. His records are the soundtrack of an American wandering abroad. Intoxicated and intoxicating. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,726 The Girl With The Replaceable Head

 

A Post Script to my gig of last Friday. When I went to see The Girl With The Replaceable Head at The Cumberland Arms where I had a brief but memorable encounter with their drummer Lindy Morrison, once of The Go Betweens of course. Where she helped to get me into the gig. 

The album itself is called Sometimes She Lives in the Dark, Sometimes She Lives in the Light. You'll need to go to its Bandcamp page to hear it because it's not on Spotify. But its worth chasing down. It's an excellent record as well as a curiosity that drags some of us back to some things that were fundamental to us in our youths. . A reminder of a bygone age. The time before the Internet when you had to make an effort to track down the music you fell in love with. The time when falling in love as it transpires meant doing so forever.  

The band is a meeting, a reunion of Hurrah! and The Go Betweens. Two bands who shared bills back in the Eighties Dave Taffy Hughes, once guitarist of the former. Lindy Morrison once drummer of the latter. A singer Sylvia whose voice quivers and trembles.

It's a record and and it was an  evening that took me back. Hughes may not have the most faithful singing voice but he has a faithful heart. The record casts a spell. Some things which did not make the charts feel a lot more memorable and treasurable than things that did. For those this interests there is a lengthy podcast with Hughes discussing the story of Hurrah! and the genesis of the record here.

Songs About People # 1,388 Duane Allman

                                               Touching tribute to one of the true guitar greats.

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 385 Prince - Dirty Mind

 

Strange to think now that Dirty Mind was Prince's third album. He took a while to break. For Prince himself and his record company to martial his almost uncontainable talent into a viable, commercial proposition. 

This is such a dynamic album right from the off. It almost sounds like a New Wave record. The obsessive, almost consuming fixation with sex is already in place. As is his songwriting genius. Some of these songs are beyond belief.

Listening to it this morning, it felt most of all like a Pop album showcase for a prodigy who could easily have done everything himself should he have chosen to. One off.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 597 Rachid Taha - Made In Medina

 

              French Algerian Punk Dance rage.from 2000. A fascinating, urgent record.Uncompromising.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,942 Klaus Schulze - Irrlicht

 

Leading light of the Krautrock movement. I'm not personally familiar with Tangerine Dream or Ash Ra Tempel. But I gave Irrlicht a listen this morning. It's a beautiful record. Long, atmospheric, meditative instrumental pieces. I listened on headphones but I imagine this would be just as effective and impressive on vinyl in a spacious living room at substantial volume.I didn't do the whole trip this time but I can fully appreciate why many are so enamoured with this man's muse 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,725 Joyer

 

Slightly opiated marriage between Galaxie 500, Codeine, Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine. Apply the labels that you see fit. I'd say complimentary adjectives are the most appropriate ones here..

Driving through the night from Brooklyn to Boston. With the radio on. Brothers Nick and Shane Sullivan understand this journery better than most. One of them lives in Brooklyn. The other in Boston. The have several albums under their belt. Night Songs is just their latest. As good a place to start as any. 

They slow things down and speed them up when they feel the mood fits. Some of this is almst uplifting. Other parts seem gently stoned. A wonderfu,l warming, independent record with plenty of fire in its belly.

Television - The Earth, Portland

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 386 The Fall - Grotesque

 

' Hang out with Gary Bushell. Go on Roundtable... I like your single...'

Early Fall. By far my favourite Fall. When Mark E. used to let others get a word in edgeways. Before he decided that he'd rather like to spend most of the rest of his life in the pub. And attempt to become Albania.This is tight, taut and lean., Northern Poetry. My. What is Mark E. banging on about. There are plenty of people who would be more than  happy to tell you. And bang on about their youths at great length. Such people are sometimes best avoided. This is genius though..Frequently just hilarious. Musically inspired. One to struggle to maintain your dignity to when you fall off your stool at the bar of your local Working Men's Club. Don't spill your pint.

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 596 Lambchop - Nixon

 

Kurt Wagner has one of the most treasurable Alternative visions of the last thrirty years. C & W tinted. Deeply romantic and lovingly wrought. Nixon is generally the Lambchop album you're directed to first. It's a sumptuous, maverick record..  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,943 The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good

 

Not the kind of record I'd generally play first thing in the morning. But it turned up on here so I gave it a go. It's a clamourous, discordant album. Largely remarkable now for introducing Bjork to the world.

I probably bought it when it came out because Melody Maker  told me too. Peel adored it, but I never cared for Birthday, the break out single which he played non-stop. Life's Too Good is still divisive I imagine. Much probably depends largely on what you think of Einar, Bjork's loopy sparring partner. Birthday sounded great this morning. As did much else. 

It doesn't really hang together as a record but it was intended I imagine primarily as a statement of difference which it certainly remains. Most of the Indie bands of the time were clearly indebted to The Velvet Underground, Byrds, Buzzcocks, Beefheart and The Fall. This certainly wasn't. I'm glad I have this. Even if I generally play it once a year at most.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,724 Callum Easter

 

Willy Wonka had his 'little helpers' and I've got mine. Willy had his Oompa Loompas, I've got my first mate Darren 'Starbuck' Jones and my Bury correspondent Jo 'Napoli' Adkin. Invaluable advisors both. I'm very grateful for their direction and support. And pleased to spread the word further.

Here's Jo's latest suggestion. Callum Easter an Edinburgh based maverick who she caught in his support slot for Nadine Shah few days ago. I've been listening through to his latest record Get Forever .... Delete Don't Want since. It's idiosyncratic stuff which shares some DNA with early Beck and early Baxter Dury I'd say.. I like it.

It's a protest record of the best sort. There's a lot to make a stand against these days. We appear to living through unhinged times. But there are also plenty of good times to be had here too. An eccentric and cherishable vision. Out now on Lost Map Records. Nice work Jo.

  

May