The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 12 The Trashmen

Far too good a record to be on here. As The Cramps and The Ramones knew.

Song of the Day # 2,376 Les Thugs

Alternative guitar heroics from French band who ended up on Sub Pop and being produced by Steve Albini.

The Go! Team - Cookie Scene

The return of Go! Team is always very welcome. And here they are with their first new product since 2018's Semicircle. This, all two minutes and forty two seconds is a positive buzz. You can almost hear the skipping ropes!

Songs About People # 1,143 Empedokles

Momus's latest album, a concept about Lockdown is out today. My review of that might have to wait but it is a record worth listening to. In the meantime, here's a song from way back from for Empedokles, a misguided Ancient Greek, who fancied that he was a god, and ended ended up getting squashed by the cyclops. A lesson for us all.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 17 Fall On Me

In some ways this was a transitional song in the R.E.M, canon. Recognisably melodic, mysterious and romantic as was the waywith their early albums, yet also pointing forward to the more upfront, politically and personally engaged songs of their mid-period records.

An obvious and necessary single, the band had one on each of their first few albums and they seemed to be refining their songwriting to the requirements of the marketplace as they went from one to the next. I'd draw a line from Talk About The Passion, through So.Central Rain, Driver 8, Fall On Me to The One I Love where they began to come across as slightly more troubled and possibly compromised though they still had some very good work ahead of them. Carrying the weight of the world, to quote Passion.

Fall On Me was initially written in the sessions for Fables and was originally more recognisably old school R.E.M. See the in concert version from Germany posted above. Enigmatic and slightly oblique. Unfinished lyrics. Check the 'statues in the park' line which Stipe later jettisoned. When they came to record in for Pageant, they worked on it, honed it down. Smoothed off some of its edges. The song made more sense. But old school fans maybe liked it slightly less. I'd probably count myself in that number.

The third version here is from their MTV Unplugged sessions, recorded when they were on the cusp of becoming arguably the biggest band in the world. It was different still but pointed towards Automatic, the next album they made and possibly their grand statement. I like all three versions. It's a fine, emotive song after all. Emotion was essentially what attracted me to the band in the first place and this is absolutely drenched in it.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 11 Jess Conrad

Jess Conrad. The only artist who gets two songs here.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,375 Coriky

Now this feels like a throwback. But a highly welcome one. The eponymous debut album by a Washington DC trio composed of Ian Mackay, formerly of Minor Threat, Fugazi and The Evens, Amy Farina of The Warmers and The Evens and Joe Lally also of Fugazi and The Messethetics. This is sure to excite a lot of cooler than cool kids making their way towards or through middle age.

The record is oozing with unflappable, underground suss from its opening notes. This is a band made up of musicians with impeccable testimonials of lives spent on the frontline of Punk, DIY experience, and they're all far too good to make a bad record here. It's a lean quite excellent record without an ounce of fat on it, showing the kids that sometimes, just sometimes, mom and dad know best.

I'm not particularly an expert on the bands Mackay, Farina and Laly played in formerly though I have listened to a fair few Minor Threat and Fugazi records in my time. This seethes with plenty of their righteous disquiet. It also minded me of several of their precursors, or in Minor Threat's case contemporary or near contemporaries; Gang of Four, Wire, Mission of Burma and .Minutemen.

Mackay and Farina, who are also husband and wife, take turns on the mic, (can't verify whether or not Laly does), and all in all this feels like a genuine communitarian statement. Each song here hums with a palpable, nervous tension. There's no dip in quality control from starter's gun to finishing tape. Wire themselves already proved that age is no impediment for authentic urgency with their wonderful album Mind Hive at the beginning of the year and Coriky mine a similar seam of inspiration with equal purpose here. 

Listening through to this has led me to take my copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerad's essential chronicle of the stories of the pioneers of this particular American ethic, down from the shelf. I'll make my way through that over the coming days. Coriky makes an excellent soundtrack to the read. Punk's not dead. Why would anyone imagine that it should be, particularly in these pressing times, Coriky. Age shall not wither them.

Songs About People # 1,142 Frances Farmer

Notorious American actress, brought back to general notice by Nirvana on In Utero. I supect Courtney Love's hand at play.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 18 World Leader Pretend

A song I never cared for, I realised recently largely for its title which for some reason I wrote off as Michael Stipe at his least likeably navel gazing. However, I listened again recently and re-assessed. It's one of their finest mid-period songs. A genuine and skilfully evoked sadness at the pitiful state of the world. Beautiful atmospherics.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 10 Ferlin Husky

Song(s) of the Day # 2,374 Sven Wunder

Neat and simple concept from Swedish guitarist Sven Wunder. Twelve songs. Twelve flowers. Eastern flavours.

Buffalo Springfield

50 Days of R.E.M. # 19 Pilgrimage

In a fabulous essay on the importance of Murmur to so many people in the UK when it came out, the late and much missed Rock journalist David Cavanagh describes the impact of  this song thus:

'One moment in Pilgrimage seemed to blow the decade wide open. It came in the second chorus when Stipe, (who had sung the first chorus alone) and was joined by a harmony, a high counterpoint and a low counterpoint, all within a second of each other, woven together into a call-and -response pattern both poignant and ecstatic.'

I'm glad that Cavanagh has put it into words for me in a way that I could not. Because I had any one of those moments listening to Murmur in late 1983 and early 1984 and many of them seemed to come together around what was happening in Pilgrimage, the album's second track. It was a call to follow even though it was entirely unclear who to follow or where to  .

Elsewhere in the article Cavanagh nails what made the record so special to so many people when it came out. Because it went so much against the grain of the times in so many ways. Pilgrimage was emblematic of that. 

I listened to it so many times, as with the rest of the record in the first year that I owned it. I heard something different every time I played it. It wormed its way into my DNA. As with the rest of the record I still feel that I owe it and the people that made it a debt that cannot be repaid.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 9 Mrs. Miller

 

In some ways it seems unfair to choose just one Mrs.Mills in this particular category.

Song of the Day # 2,373 Ma Polaine's Great Decline

Paint - Spiritual Vegas

I'm pretty much a sucker for whatever trots out of The Allah Las stable. They're one of the most distinctive bands going. Not that there aren't any other similar groups out there, there are possibly far too many, but everything that any one of these Californian hippie slackers puts out seems to be distinctively theirs.

One of the offshoot projects they indulge in is PAINT, which customarily allows lead guitarist Pedrum Siadatian to truly unleash his inner '66 West Coast love child. Not a million miles away from what the Las do anyway but so determinedly laidback and gently frazzled in this case  it's almost horizontal. As if Syd Barrett and Skip Spence had paired up inadvisably in the late Sixties.

There's very little on PAINT's latest Spiritual Vegas, that you might call essential really. At least on the surface. It's all far too self-consciously, almost artfully throwaway for that. Each of the sixteen tracks here is come and gone before you know it.

That doesn't mean there isn't quite a lot worthy of a second glance. Quite the opposite really. It's highly more-ish for fans of these things. Some things really stand out. Land Man for example has already been posted on my end of year run down list.

Siadatian is a considerable talent, even though he is far too self effacing to present himself as such. Several of the songs on Spiritual Vegas would easily grace an Allah Las album.I'm curious to see how much I come back to this despite the fact that it seems uneccesarily to draw its own disposability. I supect it's actually more accomplished than that. Only repeated plays will tell.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 20 Nightswimming

Nightswimming feels like the awareness of encroaching age and the way that memory begins to haunt your perspective at a certain stage in life. Looking back on the early days of the Athens scene and skinny dipping late at night with friends. In Michael Stipe's words, 'a kind of innocence that's either desperately clung onto or obviously lost.'

Just Michael Stipe and Mike Mills from the band on this one. Written originally in preparation for Out of Time by Mills, he never thought it amounted to much being essentially circular and non-developed in structure. But something about it inspired Stipe and the string arrangement by John Paul Jones and the oboe coda played by Deborah Workman make this altogether satisfying, almost literary in terms of its texture.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 8 Dickie Lee

Song(s) of the Day # 2,372 House Lords

Halfway 2020 album lists show music to be in reasonably rude health. I won't post mine but there's been plenty of great stuff from varied sources that I've really enjoyed thus far. The Quietus rundown is always interesting. If nothing else to remind you of how much there is around which you haven't even heard never mind heard of.

The Quietus represents the eternally cooler than thou kid at your school who drops names to make a statement to everyone else as much as to extol what he really likes. In some repects the list is slightly arbitrary, the common demonitaor being that it must be 'out there.'. Browsing through some of the records yesterday I found some of it quite unlistenable.

Nevertheless, there's plenty of interesting stuff out there. Like The Common Task, the latest album from Baltimore Noisniks House Lords. An essentially instrumental band, they hit and maintain good grooves. Pere Ubu seem to be some kind of starting point from where they come from. You may have run out of energy by the time the final, eighteen minute track kicks in, but there's much to enjoy here/

Judy Dyble 1949-2020

Songs About People # 1,141 Carl Jung

Interesting track.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 21 Orange Crush

Always find Orange Crush one of the most truly exhilarating songs on an utterly horrendous theme ever recorded. Focused on the Agent Orange napalm gas deployed by the US military in Vietnam it's a shocking indictment on their government policy of the time.

Still, it did lead to R.E.M. being on Top of the Pops. Actual Top of the Pops. I remember watching this in Norwich in my university days and not believing that 'my band' were on Top of the Pops at last. Good performance too. All wearing shades. Michael without a shirt and dancing around with his megaphone. The presenter at the end says something about 'orange crush being nice on a hot day. Wouldn't try it mate.' 

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 7 Mel & Dave

Not entirely sure why this is here. It's not a great record but I don't really see why it's such a terrible one either except perhaps for some rather dodgy singing.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,371 White Manna

Californian Psych band. In advance of a new album in August.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 22 Life & How To Live It

One of my favourite of all R.E.M. guitar refrains and this was a band that excelled in them. There's something of the lucid fluency of Peter Buck's work throughout the song, the constant sense of movement that conjurs up the texture of a waking dream.

The song is typical of the album it comes from. Fables in many ways is one of the most fascinating records the band made. Life, like all of the songs on the record, focuses on murky, eccentric and deeply idiosyncratic quirks of the Deep American South and the places, people and landscape that characterise it.

This was the house in Athens, where local eccentric, (or more explicitly, schizophrenia sufferer), Brev Mekis lived. Michael Stipe, who wrote the song's lyric, generally took up the story before the band played the song on the Fables tour: 

'He took his house and he built a wall right in the middle of the house. He had an apartment on one side with clothes, furniture, food, books, a radio. He had an apartment on the other side. Different clothes, different books, different furniture, different food. TV set.

He’d live on this side for a while, until he got tired of it. He’d put his book down, take his clothes off, walk over to this side and he’d live over here for a while until he got tired of it. And he’d flip-flop to this side and live over here for a while until he got tired of it, and he did this back and forth until he died.

After he died, they went in to clean out the house so they could rent it out to college students. These people went back to the closet in the very back of this apartment, and they opened the door and the whole closet was filled up with these books.

And each book was exactly the same, and this man had written these books, and had them all published, and all stacked his closet. He’d never sold one, or given one away. And the name of the book was Life and How to Live It.'

One of the band's most evocative and enduring songs, it was one they came back to regularly live in their concerts towards the end of their career.

'Burn bright through the night, two pockets lead the way
Two doors to go between the wall was raised today
Two doors, two names to call your other and your own
Keep these books well stocked away and take your happy home

My carpenter's out and running about and talking to the street
My pockets are out and running about and barking in the street
To tell what I have hidden there

Burn bright through the night, two pockets lead the way
Two doors to go between the wall was raised today
Raise the walls to hide these flaws, the carpenter should rest
So that when you tire of one side the other serves you best

My carpenter's out and running about, talking to the street
My pockets are out and running about and barking in the street
To tell what I have hidden there

The hills ringing hear the words in time, listen to the holler
Listen to my walls within my tongue
Can't you see you made my ears go tin
The air quicken tension building inference suddenly
Life and how to live it

Raise the walls to hide these flaws, the carpenter should rest
So that when you tire of one side the other serves you best
Read about the wisdom wall, the knock-knock-knock
A secret knock, one hammer's locked, the other wisdom's lost

My carpenter's out and running about and talking to the street
My pockets are out and running about and barking in the street
To tell what I have hidden there

My carpenter's out and running about, walking the
Listen to the holler
My pockets are out and running about, barking in the street
To tell what I have hidden there

Listen, listen to the holler
If I write a book it will be called
Life and how to live it.'

Berry / Buck / Mills / Stipe

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 6 Jess Conrad

Song(s) of the Day # 2,370 Bo Ningen

I'm late off the mark with this particular band. But then again, I've never really considered myself to be a really top ranking musical hipster, despite the amount of stuff that I post on here. Anyhow, better late than never. Because London based Japanese quartet, Bo Ningen, are certainly worthy of consideration. Not least with their latest album Sudden Fictions, their fourth conventional album in all by my reckoning, since their eponymous debut came out in 2010.

Bo Ningen have many of the qualities that attract fellow artists who see themselves as seekers and explorers. They've done so continuously over their career and have gathered the approval of the likes of The Fall, Damo Suzuki, Faust, Savages, Bobby Gillespie and Franz Ferdinand over the years.

If you're not a fan of the first generation Kraut and Japrock bedrock that the band so evidently build their work upon, then you're unlikely to go for this. If you do relate to this stuff on the other hand , there should be plenty on Sudden Fictions to pique your interest.

Bo Ningen understand innately that the original source material of bands like Can, Faust, Flower Travellin' Band and Les Rallizes Denudes are not museum pieces,and never should be allowed to be. Instead they use them as they should be used, as genuinely inspirational launchpads for their own journeys of exploration.

I won't resort to the flights of fancy that some music critics tend to indulge in when reviewing this band's records. Just make a basic Google search to see what I mean. I wouldn't begin to speculate on what the songs on Sudden Fictions are actually about. Most of the lyrics are in Japanese after all.  But the record fascinates me, and I can fully understand why Bo Ningen so readily adored by groovers and shakers naturally inclined to the margins.

From here I think I'll work my way back, to listen to and I imagine enjoy their earlier records. For now this is more than enough. Respect to the band for carving out such a brave yet at the same time accessible statement. This isn't really a 'difficult' record on any level and is all the more commendable for managing not to be. Back to the Future with Bo Ningen.

Songs About People # 1,140 Jackie Charlton

Along with music and literature, football is probably my third cultural love, if you care to class it in that category. A great English football legend, Jackie Charlton, has just passed. In his honour, here's a song from Liverpool's Those Naughty Lumps. Something of a precursor in that city for Half Man, Half Biscuit and  best known for their Zoo Single, Iggy Pop's Jacket.

Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow The Rules

Rufus Wainwright is one of those artists that will always take me back to the first time I ever heard their voice and experienced their musical vision. Nick Drake, Big Star and Elliot Smith particularly have a similar effect on me. People whose work shifted the conversation in my head in small, almost imperceptible but definite ways and that you are glad are just there. 

In Wainwright's case, for me that Road to Damascus moment was when I first heard the songs from his second album Want One on its release in 2003. It was a remarkable statement, and perhaps remains his definitive one, though he had done plenty before and has done plenty since to add and enrich his legacy.

So here we are, almost twenty years on from that, and the release of his latest album Unfollow The Rules, a record with much that reminds you of what he's done before, yet one that also stands in its own space. In  a way it's best experienced on its own merits rather than compared and ranked against former glories. It's a record certainly worthy of consideration on these terms.

Wainwright is a highly versatile and accomplished songwriter, singer, lyricist and arranger. Versed in classical, operatic, musical and literate tropes, his songs often have the remarkable quality of seeming to take actual flight and escape earthbound cares and woes, and many of the songs on Unfollow The Rules do just that. I've been experiencing it over the last twenty four hours with immense pleasure and satisfaction and look forward to getting to know these fine songs better.

This is an essentially romantic vision. But also a realistic one, aware of the contradictions of living in a world hellbent on nosedive and seething in hatred and reactionary impulse. Wainwright's very much a Twenty First Century artist.  Finding plenty of small, but perfectly formed consolations on the twelve tracks gathered together here. Love, beauty, humour, family, compassion, peace, it's all here..A record to immerse yourself in and experience the moment. To distract you from bad things going on elsewhere.

So, best not to look back to Posies, Want One, Want Two, or indeed any of the records that Wainwright  made back in the day. Unfollow The Rules is not a mid-career reinvention on any level. Just an articulate and consumate statement of who the man is is and what he stands for, as he makes his way into middle age in a world we never imagined coming into being when we were starting out. Rufus doing what Rufus does best here. Already destined I'd say to be one of my favourite albums of the year.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 23 E-Bow The Letter

The best thing on the last Bill album New Adventures. This had the added bonus of a guest contribution  from the inimitable Patti Smith which takes an already beautiful track towards the realms of the sublime. The band, and Michael Stipe had always been quite upfront about the importance of Patti as a fundamental formative influence. This is a tender and moving meeting of minds. Remarkably a single release, it made # 4 in the UK Singles Chart, the highest placing the band achieved.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 5 Nervous Norvus

Song(s) of the Day # 2,369 Mr Ben & The Bens

Simple pleasures for strange days, espoused by Lancashire outfit Mr Ben & the Bens new album Life Drawing out now via Bella Union.

Never straying far from a sparse formula, established back in the day by the likes of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Belle & Sebastian, and worked on more recently by Peter & the Pirates, the band evoke romantic small town atmospheres on each of the twelve songs here.

Sunlit, yearning melodies that sound just right for Summer months. Even ones spent largely indoors, and apart from the ones you would like to be with, as may be the case for many this year.

Drawing on the teenage experience of first loves and first heartbreak. Mr Ben & the Bens don't establish new templates, but carve out fresh pleasures from existing ones. Like an hour spent in front of a TV reliving personal childhood family favourites, or a walk in a local park with friends,  Life Drawing is a collection of small but perfectly formed moments.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 24 Perfect Circle

It says something about my love for R.E.M. and my feelings about the songs still to come that a song as good as Perfect Circle is as low as this in the rundown. It could easily be Top Ten if I thought about it more but it's always best to stop thinking about non essential things like these at some point. An early marker of how special they were and could become, it stands slightly apart from the other songs on Murmur which can often be more readily classed together.

Largely written by Bill Berry and brought back as a regular live performance song as tribute to him after his departure in 1997. Interpretaions vof the song vary, even within the band. Peter Buck says it refers to seeing a group of kids playing football one evening in New Jersey. Michael Stipe about the longing for a relationship. In any case, an intensely personal song.  Like the very best ones it rewards repeated plays.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 4 Pat Campbell

Marooned - The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs # 20 Iron Maiden - Killers - Chosen by - Ian Christie

Song(s) of the Day # 2,368 The Buttertones

I've long had a problem with bands with lead singers who remind me of Ian Curtis. This goes years back to Interpol and Editors and others and I thought this basic sticking point of mine would be a problem when I first started listening to LA's Buttertones latest album Jazzhound.

Because in the opening track of the record, Phantom Eyes, frontman Richard Araiza did sound enormously like Ian Curtis. It's not something I ever really enjoy much. Ian Curtis sounds like Ian Curtis. The way he sings is essentially a mannerism but with Curtis it works. What's the point in encroaching on that territory!

Fortunately from this point onwards things get enormously better. Araiza sheds his fascination with the Macclesfield Rilke and becomes one bit Morrissey, one bit Edwyn Collins, one bit Paul Quinn, one bit Billy McKenzie over the next few songs. 

It's a winning and endearing formula and musically The Buttertones keep up the momentum. Clearly rampant Anglophiles, they ransack the pleasures of giddy Eighties British Indie Pop with reckless abandon. Particularly indebted to the early Smiths, they shimmy up and down the scales with thrilling energy, never sitting still for a moment and the record is a constant diversion..

If I can't quite give it top marks because the debts it owes are all too obvious Jazzhound is nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable album. With Denial You Win Again, particularly standing out from the pack as one of my favourite songs of the year thus far. Buttertones aren't innovators on any level but they're certainly gifted impressionists.

X - Alphabetland

Doughty West Coast Punks stalwarts X are back with a new album Alphabetland (released back in April), and it's really not a bad record at all. In fact quite the opposite. It's always difficult to gauge exactly where to place a record like this in a legendary band's back catalogue, decades after they were considered relevant and hip but this is one that punches considerably above its weight. There's life in the old dogs yet.

It sounds just like X, the band don't really mess with the formula they established at the end of the Seventies and into the early Eighties. Remarkably the release of this record is the first time the four original members of the band Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake have recorded together for 35 years and it's now over 40 since the band's debut Los Angeles was released.

Cervenka and Doe's classic, urgent call and response at the mic always made me think of X as something of a Punk Jefferson Airplane. They're up to their usual tricks here. Riffing on each other's energy with great abandon they recall all the Blank Generation, something dreadful this way comes atmospherics of their heyday, while Zoom and Bronebrake provide the classic Rockabilly Punk backdrop for Morticia and Gomez to live out every one of their 'every day is Halloween in Hollywood' fantasies.

X should really have been the West Coast Punk band who broke through first time round to  mass and commercial appeal. They always had the best tunes. For some reason it never quite happened and they had to watch Blondie sweep up from the East Coast and LA contemporaries The Go Gos steal their thunder chart wise. Never mind. X are back for what feels very much like a curtain call. It's to their credit that they avoid any cheap sentiment and just bash out the tunes.

There are ten of them here plus a spoken narrative from Cervenka to close the set and nothing sounds remotely out of place. Cervenka comes across more like Debbie Harry's younger sister than she once did but otherwise not much has changed. They sound as wryly cynical about the state of the world as they ever did. Frankly, it's just great! There are any number of bands over half their age who would give their eye teeth to sound half as good and relevant as this.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 25 Drive

Automatic was something new for R.E.M. and Drive was a great way to kick off the record. Bleak, virtually paranoid but utterly assured, it was a model lesson in how to shift to another level commercially but maintain your dignity and focus. Michael flailing on a sea of bodies said it all about the pressures about being as ubiquitous in popular culture as they were for a few years.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 3 The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

Marooned - The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs # 19 Sonny Rollins - A Night on the Village Vanguard - Chosen by Derek Taylor

Songs About People # 1,139 Steely Dan

More Prog workout, this time for Steely from Shaman Elephant.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,367 Elder

Full on Stoner guitar interplay from Massachussets band for anyone who thinks the early Seventies was the cradle of civilisation. Elder tend to like their workouts at a good ten minute stretch. These two come from Omens, their latest album released in April.

50 Days of R.E.M. # 26 Gardening At Night

Perhaps the first R.E.M. song that was genuinely their's which may be why they played it when they were inaugarated into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It has all of the characteristic mystery, enigma and contradiction that they worked on and honed in the albums that followed.

The version recorded on Chronic Town has Stipe's vocals almost completely buried in the mix. I prefer the more upfront recording released on the Best Of  IRS  compilation released a few years later. In any case, a thing of beauty. About a man who used to garden at night apparently. Here's the Hall of Fame performance. Bill Berry came back for the occasion.

The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 2 Zarah Leander

Marooned - The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs # 18 The Cars - The Cars - Chosen by Rob Harvilla

An essay not so much about this whole album as about the first sixty seconds of Just What I Needed and particularly its drumroll. Vert odd.

Song(s) of the Day # 2,366 A. A. Williams

Gloomy songs for funerals from A.A.Williams of the Anna Calvi on downers sensibility on her debut album Forever Blue. Apparently post-rock and post-classical according to her artist's page on Bella Union, though I have no idea what either of those terms actually mean, this is actually fairly generic music for people who like to dress in black and live in candle lit dwellings, but not without its small dark virtues.

Big on atmospherics but low on surprises, the record shifts onward at pallbearer's tread, occasionally letting out a primal wail to break the mood. I'm reluctant to give it a glowing review because it's not a remarkable record but it is an artfully constructed one. Certainly good enough to reserve Williams a seat on the pew along from Thom Yorke and P.J.Harvey, and in between Nice Cave and Morticia Adams at the next midnight mass, or better still full on wake.

Perhaps my tone is inappropriately glib. This is by no means a bad album, in fact it's a pretty good one . It's just unwilling to break the rules of many records of a similar stripe that we've heard already. Perhaps best dipped into than experienced at a single sitting. It has its pretty moments but is perhaps less profound and intense than it believes itself to be quite yet. Perhaps her next record will be the one to listen to. I'll give this seven.