Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,573 Lynryd Skynyrd - Second Helping

 

                                                    Yeah It's got Sweet Home Alabama on it.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 4 Kraftwerk - Computer World

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,096 Gold Dust

 

Gold Dust apparently are 'more than a band.They're a family. In a time of greater isolation and existential anxiety they form a vital community,' Certainly their lastest record, In The Shade of the Living Light is pretty vital though it works its way down established mineshafts.

Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, The traces of Gold Dust's record collection are scattered all over In The Shade of the Living Light like erm. You got it, Still it's  a more than passable 2025 retread through all our yesterdays. Off we go into the new week. 

101 Essential Rock Records # 66 Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief

 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 12 Helen O'Hara

 

             The main female player in the Dexys story. Kevin's muse for Don't Stand Me Down.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,574 Beck - Mutations

 

I listened to this quite a lot when it came out . Beck was one of those rare artists and treasurable artists who refused to make the same record twice. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 5 De La Soul - Three Feet High & Rising

 

Such an innovative and unprecedented album. It's rare that a record invents a new cp;pir, but that happened here. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,095 Mhaol

 

Irish 'post punk firebrands' Mhaol. Spotify Bios words not mine. But their new album Something Soft is more bruttle and abrasive than soft but hits the spot as Sunday morning becomes afternoon, It takes no prisoners. 

101 Essential Rock Records # 65 King Crimson - In The Court of The Crimson King

 

As the 60s began to wind down, psychedelic music galloped off in many directions  ... King Crimson were one of the first Britush groups out of the Prog gate.

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 11 Paul Speare - Liars A To E

 

Joined the band for the 1980 Christmas Edition and then permanently for a couple of years. Talks about the nature of the regime under Rowland between Young Soul Rebels and Too Rye Aye . Paul had a good career post Dexys on the TKO horns and later as a session musician.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,575 Four Tet - Rounds

 

This is alright as background noise after finishing a jacket potato for lunch. But I will never ever hear this record again. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 224 Simple Minds - Sons & Fascination

 

What's the best way to calm a momentary flash of rage. Make a cup of tea. Put a record on. Try to write about it Up. Clears the mood. Simple Minds , Sons & Facscination. Jim Kett and his sveldt gang rise from the record player and take shape in my living room on search of the Glittering Prize *. The red mist dissipates and is gone.

Simple Minds were a completely visionary force. Never mind 81, 82, 83, 84. Make that 78 to 84.  They came from Glasgow and dreamed of Europe. After New Gold Dream they made the wrong moves, lost Derek Forbes and decuded to head for the Americam Dream rather than the European one and lost their glow. Remember them this way.

* From New Gold Dream, forgive me. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 225 The Delgados - Peloton

 

From Belle & Sebastian to The Delgados. They're from the same set. Sensitive Glasgow types with good book and record collections for sensitive Indie types with good book and record collections. Albumz that are put together as loving, creative acts for like-minded souls.

Delgado take the lead to a greater degree from Punk than Pop than Belle & Sebastian. More Modern Lovers than Left Banke. And they didn't break so much from the Underground as Murdoch & Co did. But I'd imagine the bands would have shared bills and pints. A listen to the record just makes me want to buy more Delgados records and catch them live one day. The guitars and drums and lyrics on their songs seem to 'flap like little pages.'  The pages of Penguin Classics, Picador and Virago Press.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 6 Prince - Sign O' The Times

 

Prince was everywhere when I was 20. A true phenomenon on every level and a Pop Star you had to regard with the most astonished awe and wonder.  Sign O' The Times is an album the it's still difficult to process. Miles Davis working in the Pop Firmament. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,094 Paco Cathcart

 

Stillness is a very difficult state to achieve in music. Jazz, Brian Eno, Paul Simon, Cass McCombs, Red House Painters, Bill Withers, Al Green, Marvin Gaye. That's a complete random set of names. Add Paco Cathcart to that. His latest album Down On Them, us a wonderfully 'still' record. In motion but the 'still centre of the turning world.'

Paco works from NYC and has worked with the likes if Water From Your Eyes, Palberta and Open Eyes. Down On Them is a lilting, minimal record. Very light if touch and positive.Mindful of a sunny day  and stones skipping across the surface of  a lake. A great start to the weekend.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 226 Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister

 

'Nobody writes them like they used to so it might as well be me..' 

It's no great revelation to say that much of the best Rock & Roll focuses on the glorious years of adolescence and the late teenage years. The moments in life when you experience the great revelations and change and from which point things are destined to never be the same. This is what Belle & Sebastian came into being to document and continue to obssess over. They did what the best bands do. They created a small minutely detailed and descriptive world. One that people could lose themselves in. .   

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 10 Steve Wynne & Mick 'Giorgio Kilkenny' Galic - Celtic Soul Brothers

 

                                              Two bassists in Dexys. Not much happening here. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,093 Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke

 

Thom Yorke's records are best heard late at night these days. As darkness encloses all around I'm listening to Tall Tales his latest release. A collaboration with Mark Pritchard. Another nervous and skittery album undepinned by sturdy electro pulses and melodies. With Yorke voice soaring occasionally in the centre of the mix like a strident Cassandra. The role he's inhabited in varuois guises for over thirty years now.

I'm not a completist Yorke or Radiohead follower by any means. I just find  whenever I catch any record that he's involved in these days I  think ummediately that his work is sheer quality. Authoritative without ever being authoritarian. A voice in the wilderness. 

A kneejerk counter response might be that his work is depressing but I don't think that applies.The world is depressing and haunting and scary in many, many respects. Especially these days. It's increasingly difficult to avert your eyes from the absolute carnage that meets the eye almost everywhere you look.

But I never find Yorke's work exploitative of misery. Quite the contrary. This is support. Succour. This is more great work.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 7 The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

 

'Life is very long.... when you're lonely....'

Cheers Mozza. This song will forever take me back in time to when it came out. In June 1986. I was in my third year at university staying in university residences with three of the most important friends of my life, Rod, Ben and James. Lost Boys. Setting off on the first and most important relationships of my life, with a girl I'd met the previous term and who had already set off for the hills with my heart.

'Keats and Yeats are on your side.'

The four of us listened to The Queen Is Dead together as boys do. Trying to place it within a broader context. We were no nothings really . Lost boys. Who thought we knew everything, The record was clearly monumental. The copy we were listening to was Rod's but I'm now listening to my own which I bought shortly afterwards. Eating my breakfast, making my way to  my half seven with medical professionals onlne in Dussledorf. What were my thoughts then. I was probably wishing I was with my honey. I'm doing the same now. Forty years on. Differnt times. Different honey. Same soundtrack. Despite Morrissey's ennui. Love is a tide that can't be denoed. 'There is a light...'

101 Essential Rock Records # 64 The Stooges - The Stooges

 

'four insolent looking post teens. a cache of monosyllabic song title and just over half an hour's worth of stripped down rock 'n' roll.' 

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 5 Thin Lizzy

 

Television weren't the only band sporting a remarkable twin guitar attack strategy in 1975.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 227 XTC - Drums & Wires

 

In some ways I must be like an elephant. I never seem to forget. Memory is one of the primary driving factors that inspire me to and keep me writing this blog. It's an incredibly interesting thing to me memory. I used to have a byline on the top of this page from Nick Cave; 'memory is what we are. Your very soul and your reason to believe are tied up in memory.' I've taken it down now but I still stand by the principle.

XTC's Black Sea was one of the first albums I bought.. I still have and still play it, the memory factor being a contributing  driver. It's also just a wonderful record. Over the years since I've bought most of the band's early albums. Including Drums & Wires their third. This came out in 1979 when I was 14 and it was the record when they first came to my attention. They were quirky and oddball, but becoming poppy and approachable. They were getting the tunes. Beefheart and Zappa down in the mix. Beatles and Kinks up.

Making Plans For Nigel was their breakthrough single. It was everywhere for months and my schoolmates were starting to notice them. Just as I was. 'I like that Ecstasy' I said at one point. This innocent comment in a class one day was greeted by a cruel snigger from a classmate who I grew to dislike and others who I went to school with have expressed their disdain for since. 

Snide, unkind sort. A refugee from the Lord of the Flies pack of hunters. Roger, who levers the rock onto Piggy at the end of the novel. This guy's since become an artist of some repute but I'll not publish his name here. It's all a long, long time ago. But like I say I don't forget.

As for Drums & Wires, it marks a transitional phase for the band;I'm listening to it now. Off hand and arty but moving towards the sleeker pop sound that they realised so well with Black Sea. Not quite there yet, the primary instinct is still angular but they're ironing out some crumples. There's also clearly a competitive dynamic building. A twin attack. Partridge and Moulding.

Twin attacks were the order of the day in British football in the Seventies. Latchford and Francis. McDonald and Tudor. Keegan and Toshack. There was also another contributing twin attack behind the mixing desk with producer Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham. Frankly the record sounds incredible. There's a definite Dub quality to proceedings which is haunting. Extraordinary. 

Drums & Wires saw XTC cut in from the wing like Trevor Francis hurdling the legs of the last defender and zeroing in on goal with a minute to play. Brushing hemselves down in readiness for Top of The Pops and Magazine covers.   

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 9 Micky Billingham - Plan B

 

Keyboardist in Dexys MK 2 & 3. Outlines the regulations and the demand to be totally committed and to sign up for the whole Dexys intense experience. He has no regrets. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 228 Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

 

Sometimes it makes sense to listen to the drummer's album. Dennis Wilson. Beach Boys heart throb Friend of laughing Charlie Manson. Almost a character out of the Big Lebowski. The Dude's Surfer Cousin.

 Pacific Ocean Blue is some record. Before Dennis took his fateful late night swim and sank to the ocean bed. A fitting way for the man to go. This is a companion piece to the great Beach Boy records. It might as well be a Beach Boy record. 

They had fun, fun, fun, and then it wasn't so much fun anymore. The beer and drugs settled in their bellies. It became heavier, and wistful. But the sun kept coming up. And the waves kept rolling in. Lapping against the boats prow. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,576 Queen - The Works

 

Queen I will always think of as an older brother band as my older brother had Queen, Led Zep and Black Sabbath albums. I now have his Led Zep and Black Sabbath records and I'm grateful. I don't have his Queen records and I'm not bothered. They're OK. They have their moments. But if I was choosing to listen to one of their albums, it wouldn't be the one that kicked off with Radio Ga Ga. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 8 My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything

 

I've sold my copy of Loveless. I realised it had always made me feel sick and I wouldn't miss it . I have no plans to sell my copy of - Isn't Anything. That was a gamechanger when it was needed. That's what it felt like at the time. I went to see the band at round about this time wuth a good friend. It was a special experience, not quite like any gig I've been to before or since, You felt like you were in a sea of blissed out noise.I've seen them since. But it's a great and enduring feeling seeing a band at the time when you know they should be seen.   

Song(s) of the Day # 4,092 Jeffrey Lewis

 

Jeffrey Lewis, New York's Anti Folk Poet rolls on with The Even More Free Wheelin Jeffrey Lewis another referential and sly album of stream of consciousness strum.

It's comforting listening. The comparisons with Dylan are forwarded by the artist himself with the cover and elsehwere. He is happy to see himself in a line , a tradition. Let's face it we all are. This is rather a nice way to kick off my Thursday morning,

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 229 The Four Tops - The Best of the Four Tops

 

I have the Best of The Four Tops on my record player. It's half past seven in the morning. I suspect I'll keep listening to it until nine o'clock when I have a lesson. I might just keep listening to it. I'll do what I want to. The one thing I have at the moment is time. 

Every good record collection is made up of Greatest Hits. Best Ofs. Compilations. I find music comparisons and lists of music increasingly spurious although I'm obliged to fall back on them and find myself using the language I'm trying to get away from myself unwittingly. I like writing. We all need basic organising principles or the world would fall apart. My fridge would decombust and I would have no milk to pour on my corn flakes.

But increasingly I despair of the human need to do this. It's the competitive urge I'd say and very much a male thing. I much prefer talking to women than men about music these days.Would you want to compare The Four Tops, The Temptations or The Miracles? Or compare them to The Supremes or The Vandellas. What would be the point. Why not just listen to music without turning to these ridiculous kneejerk comparisons. Try listening with your ears. It's fun. 

So to expand the argument, why compare Tom Waits and The Smiths. .Chart positions are an interesting thing to think about but ultimately it's the song you return to. Golden Brown reached Number Two but it sounds like a Number One to me. Vienna reached Number Two as well. I didn't buy it. It means nothing to me. 

The Four Tops is still spinning. We're still on Side One. This band was on Motown but I have the K-Tel Best Of. I also have a Motown Best Of. It has a better cover but this has more songs. Which one would you play? A great book could be written about the emotions and the cultural experience that these songs concern themselves with.. The struggle. The strife. The love. The quest. A good start to the day.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 230 Oscar Peterson - exclusively for my friends

 

I just had a rather golden forty five minutes with this album. My work was done by lunchtime and the day was mine.  I've just reconnected with someone who is incredibly important to me and my life has taken.on a magical quality It's a glorious day in Newcastle. I'm feeling. happy and calm. It almost feels as if my heart is filling like a tank of an engine being pumped with warm blood 

So I've put on one of the series of  exclusively for my friends the set of album recorded by The Oscar Peterson Trio, thrown open the windows of my flat to allow the thin and balmy air to fill my flat and the music is filling my senses.

Recorded between 1963 and 1968 these records are inspired exercises in time and space. They communicate a sense of stillness and calm that I can't derive from anything else and allow the listener to connect to the moment in an indescribably rich and consuming manner. Surely the whole purpose of being alive. .

101 Essential Rock Records # 63 Jethro Tull - Stand Up

 

'where Jethro Tull grew into one of the 70s most popular groups...'

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 8 Seb Shelton - Let's Make this Precious

Shelton, a driving factor in Mark II Dexys came from Secret Affair and fitted snugly into their ranks as an abstainer from drink and drugs. He left the band after conflicts with Rowland and resisted entreaties from Tassell to discuss his experiences.

 

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 4 Nazareth

 

Nazareth seemed like Tartan marauders to an unschooled, no nothing pup like me. In front of afternoon kid's TV shows. . 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 9 Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden

 

I saw Talk Talk walking across Leicester Square in the mid Eighties. It's a nice and very special memory. I've put Spirit Of Eden on and it will take me to my lessons. Nobody made music like they did.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,091 Suzanne Vega

 

It's difficult to distance music appreciation from personal experience.That's inevutably what we wrap oir tastes and judgements aroind. It's virtually impossible to disentangle perseptions and associations and why would we even want to.  Suzanne Vega reminds me of a girlfriend I went through university with who really liked Marlene on the Wall when we started going out and so I have an association of her and that song in particular. which is related unextricably to the time when we were falling in love. I love that first album still.I could make a reasonable argument as to why I rate it but to what degree is my appreciation related to rose tinted spectacles of an incredibly special moment in my life ?

We went to see Vega when she played the university we were at in the second year. It's a slightly darker memory for a number of reasons. Vega was touring her second album Solitude Standing and it wasn't a particularly memorable gig or pleasant evening for reasons I won't trouble you with.. As a result I find it difficult to play the second album now without my memory banks clouding the experience although there's nothing wrong with  Solitude Standing. But I just can't view it objectively. It has bad associations so I'd rather play the first.

Never mind all that. Suzanne's back and she has new ware to flog Flying With Angels. .It's her tenth album and by now you know pretty much what it's going to sound like. She found her groove right from the off and has stuck to her path. She was once a waif like poetic sould with a bit of an edge who made you want to move to Greenwich Village and find a similar type to move into a loft with. 

She's still a craftswoman, an artisan. Some songs here work better than others. When she starts to rock out on Witch I felt she could rein it in a little, At times the rhymes are slightly glib. The songs where she appreciates the moment and goes in with the surgeon's knife there are some gentle affecting flashes of inspiration,, Chambermaid was a particularly affecting twist on Dylan's I Want You, Last Train From Mariupol is an indication that romance will never be dead. I had a nice forty minutes with this last nighr. It's an accomplished and dignified record worthy of her name,  Her name is Suzanne...

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,577 Grace Jones - Nightclubbing

 

Sleek. State of the Art. The musical equivalent of Total Football. Teamwork.

 

101 Essential Rock Records # 62 Blind Faith - Blind Faith

 

                                                      Great record. Highly unfortinate cover.

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 4 Slade

 

Slade do the gentle romantic smut that served them so well.

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 7 Andrew 'Stoker' Growcott - Respect

 

The youngest of the early Dexys, their drummer,  and the last man recruited. Formed a tight rhythm section and firm lifelong friendship with Pete Williams Since Dexys he's kepy moving forward and worked with General Public, Sting , Aretha and decamped to Fresno, California. 'I appreciate what the gods of Rock & Roll have given me.'

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 231 Kiwi Jr. - Cooler Returns

 

'There's no proof that Woodstick ever, hppened in the first place!'

What can you get for twelve quid these days. Well you could get a sealed copy of Cooler Runners,  Kiwi Jr's carefree and ebullient and inspired 2021. It Start's With a Birthstone's 55th favourite album of that year Pop Pickers. I'm kind of surprised I found 54 records I preffered. Back in the day Pavement had starlings of the slipstream. Now they'll find Kiwi Jr. coming up on the rails.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,578 Alice Cooper - Killer

 

                       You say Alice Cooper! I say thanks, but I'm quite happy with The New York Dolls !

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 10 The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow

 

This is a joy.  People don't realise. What it felt like to hear these songs as they came out. But listening to this as I prepare for my working day I realise that these are among the most quotable and enduring sing along anthems of my entire life. The insecurities and dark but reilient recesses of the human imagination.The human soul. Frailty and resolve. Self pity sure. But self pity as armour. Pride.Oh and they're funny ! The Smiths changed the game. As with Bowie, their influence and effect was indelible.Argue about their best record if you really need to. But lusten to them all.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,090 pencil

 

London quintet pencil's six track EP Bohemian Clutter's is conclusive evidence if it is needed that forming a band is one of the most creative and attractive options available to youth, Purely and simply because it offers you a blank canvas to create your own universe. Few respond to the challenge as compellingly as they do here.  

Labels are fatuous. Imagine is the key factor. This reminded me of Tapir ! who are covering similar territory. There is a freshness and youthful vigour that brought to mind the Go Betweens and the ground they covered in the early Eighties. There's lead in these pencils.

101 Essential Rock Records # 61 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

 

Don Van Vliet homed in on a single genre - Delata derived Chicago blues - which he remade and remodelled extensively.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,579 The Good The Bad & The Ugly

 

Evocative. It just feels intensely hot.Oblique and inspired. 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 6 Andy Leek - Breaking Down The Walls of Heartache

 

Keyboardist who replaced Pete Saunders when he left Dexy's to go to university. Not lacking in confidence. Leek worked with George Martin and had a Number One in Lebanon. Also sadly conducted Parkinsons.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 232 The Passions - Michael & Miranda

 

Last night I came in from  long day in the hit sun and listened to Suede's Suede before having my supper and turning in. Today I find myself enjoying Shepherd's Bush' finest The Passions Michael & Miranda . I must be having a funny turn.

Suede and The Passions are not disimilar in terms of sensibility and temperament. Gothy, highly wrought ashen types who had too much to dream last night and want to tell the world about it . I imagine the members of both wrote feverish poetry while they shoud have been contributing to Literature or History seminars at sixth form college.

 Michael & Miranda is a neglected classic of New Wave Cold War angst. Angular, jerky Alternative Pop that made me feel like I was eighteen again just now.  

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 3 Stealer's Wheel

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 11 R.E.M. - Murmur

 The first record I reviewed when I started this blog back in 2013 wben I began this journey unto the unknown.

      'The first thing you notice in looking at the sleeve and taking the record out to play is the attention to detail. These people really thought about what they wanted things to look like. The name of the album, the lettering, the tangled kudzu grass on the cover, the song titles, the photos of the band. A lot of thought had been put into this. This was an assured and confident group of people.

R.E.M had played scores of dates before this came out. They'd emerged out of the Athens, Georgia college scene which also produced such notables as The B52's, Pylon and Love Tractor amongst others. They'd worked in record shops, played in college bands, done cover versions and worked on half-baked underdeveloped originals while they developed their style and absorbed music and  culture to the point where they knew what they wanted to do and how to deliver.

They'd released a mini-album called Chronic Town with some cracking songs but an unrealised vision. Murmur meanwhile is incredibly sure-footed from the off. It kicks off with Radio Free Europe which is a statement of intent. It's pretty close to some Who stuff in terms of dynamics but offers something never heard before and builds and builds 'til the killer punch on the final chorus. Something's afoot.

Pilgrimage continues in pretty much the same vein. It's not clear what Michael Stipe is singing about. This is a consistent feature throughout and one of the main reasons I really fell in love with this album. Somebody suggested that Mumble might be a better album title than Murmur.The band responded that you wouldn't get the script of the film you were going to see when you went to the cinema so why should you be spoonfed here. The lyrics that are discernable - 'rest assured this will not last,' 'the pilgrimage has gained momentum' are about movement, change and growth. Just the stuff to appeal to pale, literate, teenage boys. The vocals from drummer Bill Berry and bassist Mike Mills here are extraordinary and to my mind unprecedented.

Laughing draws on Greek myth and Talk About the Passion talks about poverty. In a way it's the most conventional thing on here chiming like a post punk Byrds. Moral Kiosk is more urgent. Both of these songs are political but in an oblique way. R.E.M emerged at pretty much the same time as Reaganomics. They became more explicit on later albums in terms of their critique of what was going on. I'm not really sure if they became more effective.

Perfect Circle is often mentioned as one of the band's favourite songs. Quite rightly so. It's supposedly  inspired by Stipe watching a group of kids playing baseball. I imagine it also may be about being in a great band with a group of friends

Catapult starts the second side and may be the weakest song on the album but was once considered the potential break-out single and New Order's producer Stephen Hague was brought in for an ill-judged remix. Sitting Still which is up next is indescribably good. I think I almost cried on hearing it first. You'll do well to hear a whole line of coherent lyrics here. It's all emotion and youth.

9-9 is the least conventional song and it took me a while to come to terms with it. Again there are Who dynamics there and it's reputed to have a Gang of Four influence though I've never really heard it myself. Shaking Through is marginally the longest song on the album and one of the best. Like much of the album it's driven by a beat generation inspired optimism and fervour. Great use of piano here.

We Walk is truly Southern. The album draws on Southern fiction throughout. Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner are all there. We Walk is pure Harper Lee, pretty much hokum but the band is so assured that they pull it off. Even their jokey song is pretty much streets ahead of the competition. The Smiths were the only guitar band firing on this level for me at this point.

This leaves us with West of the Fields. A song that to all intents and purposes is about death, with more Greek myth in the mix. But despite the theme they gallop back for one more chorus to bring the album home.

I love this LP pretty much more than any other. It never tires or dates for me and if you're not familiar I suggest you give it a go. I used to listen to it time after time at the top of the house in Teddington. It cast a spell on me! I would listen through to it differently every time alternatively the vocals, the production, Peter Buck's guitar work, the bass or the backing vocals and hear something new every time. R.E.M produced several great albums and I'll write about them on here at some point but for now I'll just commend this album.

I've no idea how often I've listened to this record or how much I'll listen to it. I'm immersed in it. It's part of me. Everybody should have a record that means this much to them. When I put it on to listen to it today part of me wanted to go back to that time and space I listened to it first as an eighteen year old on the top floor of my parent's house in Teddington. But I can't go back there Nor do I want to. I'm in a different time and space and happy to be here. But I will always love and listen to that album. I will age while it won't.  Perhaps it's my Picture of Dorian Grey.'

Song(s) of the Day # 4,089 Saz'iso

 

'For the best part of the last century,  Albania was isolated in a brutal communist dictatorship. When Communism fell in 1990  people started to discover the country's unique iso-polyphonic style of folk mysuc, saze. One of these people happened to be legendary producer Joe Boyd who in 2016 assembled Saz'iso a saze sypergroup of virtuoso musicians and singers. Recorded in three days at the Marybi Film Academy in Turana, their albim, At Least Wave Your Handkerchief at me, is a work that is haunting, ancient, otherorldly and yet so human.

Going beyond kanguage, the music captures a universal understanding of joy and sorrow, love and loss, heroism and tragedy with an extraordinary mix of drones, polyphonic harmonies, and traditional instruments, such as the fuell brezi - an Albanian shepherd's flute. Masterfully produced and recorded, this is a beautiful preservation and celebration of Albanian folk music.'

Melanie Xulu Idler

The Yardbirds