Indie Folk Stalwarts Mountain Goats are nothing if not a set of safe hooves. Active since 1991 they've moved from their base in Calermont, California and are now based in North Carolina. Days is their twenty fourth album.
It works from a familiar foundation . They sing songs about the everyman. Are prone to concepts. Appreciate the funny and difficult ironies of life. Days is like a pair of shoes that you're not sure about when you first put them on in the store but which almost immediately themselves yourself to your contours and you realise that you were made for each other.
The essential characteristic of Days is its sagacity. It's Springsteen without the raised fist. It makes Life feel like a fairly nice idea.They vary the velocity and angle of their gentle approach. There's comfort and love and then Days is done, Life is sweet.
Ty Segall's album always feel a bit like indulgence projects to me. Albeit highly polished ones. So its apt his latest record is called Chrome. It's polished and highly proficient. Shiny. Straight in like a bullet at # 125.
Sunday Morning. White Fence. Tim Presle . Orange. The eighth album under this banner and the first since 2019. Produced as generally by Ty Segall. Orange has a novel and rather enchanting foundation . That of jingle jangle mornings. The Rickenbacker Road and the McGuinn, Clark and Crosby aah......
Sueded's slighly unexpected third. When they came when they weren't really expected to. And endured. It's a classy Pop record aimed purely at the Alternative Mainstream.
The title is deceptive. No European Sun are not Reform voters or Enoch Powell revivalists. Well they might be but by the sounds of the record I doubt it . Istead they're sweet Indie nostalgists and this is impossibly warm.
This is a Hard Call as it has 38 songs of easy going mysticism. Perhaps one to did in and dip out of. But he's always one to take heed of. Ezekiel one moment. Iisah the next. Job come along for the ride,
'Everybody's coming home for luch these days. Last night there were skinnheads on my lawn.... ' Never fret. Here comes the good news. Dinosaur Jr. albums seem to be coming round a little bit faster these days.Their latest is called There Near. I imagine you can surmise how it goes.
They're something you can trust in Dinosaur Jr. reecords. They're like the days in the week. Always have the letters D - A and Y in them. Always sound pretty much the same and project a similar approach and way of looking at the world . 'Rain' Always rhymes with 'Insane'
Here's a band that knows their audience's needs. And set our to to satisy them and make them come back the next time. There something rather effortless and lovely about this. But of course they were a band that never looked as if they were trying which was generally the Ace in their hand. .
Well before Andy Burnham became King of The North, there was Guy Garvey. This was something different. A little bit precious on occasion but it's earnest and heartfelt. Ambitious.and with a genuine pride in its sense of place and moment. Its sense that the mundane is extraordinary.
I've been listening to Roy Harper's Stormcock on repeat for the last week or so. It takes me back unerringly. To a favourite place. A safe one. 1993 -94 in Dortmund, Germany and the best music friend of my lifetime. I used to go to his flat on a Friday afternoon and we;d talk into the evening.and we'd drink beer and smoke dope and talk about life.
Listen to Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Kevin Coyne and Roy Harper. And Stormcock particularly . Listening to it now takes me back unerringly across the years and the continent like an arow. I'm sat on his armchair at the window and he's sat on his sofa rolling a joint on the cofee table and we're laughing . Talking about the night ahead. Meeting the others in town.
This is a beautiful record. I need a vinyl copy of my own. It's only got four tracks but they hint at remarkable wisdom and insight. The stuff of the ages. there's incredible weeping and remarkable dignity and majesty.Music does this !
Do drugs. Do drugs. Do Drugs in the country ! While you're at it. set the controls for erm, the heart of Drug Country. Richmond, Virginia's finest. And their latest album erm Country Drugs. They're nothing if not consistent. Dinosaur Jr and Whiskeytown's ragged feral children. They start by purloining the riff from Sweet Jane and riding their charabang out of town and onto the Road to Nowhere.Careering on and off the road. loose and inspired. Rarely in tune but that's just as it should be. Another cherrypick from Seabuck / Darren Jones and another winner.
There's something of the Mythic about a record like this at this distance. Live Double debut albums that start 'Wake up mama. Turn your lamp down low...' and proceed with astonishingly fluid duelling guitars may be worth sticking with.This is an album for lazy days.
A record which came out in 2009. I saw the band shortly afterwards. They're a band apart and this is an album apart. It's one that understands light and proportion, understanding and literature. It has a rare poise and beauty.
I started listening to this this afternoon. I found I could not stop even though I know the album well. Sometime you have to pay something its due.
Shredded Sun come motoring out of Chicago, Illinois with waterpistols blazing on latest album Never Odd Or Even. They trip through the tulips, unpack their hamper of Indie tricks and picnic in a field. Another suggestion of loveliness from Darren Jones / First Mate Starbuck. Thanks Darren.
One moment the Velvet Underground , (who provide the essence and base ingredients and moral and artistic compass for projects like these) are chugging in the slowlane. Next C-86 pick up the batons and press down on the accelerator. Never Odd Or Even. strike a good balance and lasts the course.
Drive By Truckers records strike me as a long night out with someone you don't really care for who's intent on paimting the town red and then proceeding at a certain point to itemise exactly what he doesn't like about you.
Neu ! Is an unbeatable concept and record. An album that presents itself as a brand. A name that describes exactly what it want to be. A sound that's is pretty much an intercity speeding between Dussledorf and Cologne. A record that must be climbing the charts. Into the Top Ten !
Hovvdy are a Texan Independent duo who have popped up intemittently on It Starts with a Birthstone over the years but I've finally found the album I'd nail to my mast with latest release, their sixth in all, Big World.
All their ingredients and influences seem to have fallen into place this time round and no mistake. Breathy laid back relaxed ballads and mid tempo chuggers that assimilate and triangulate The Shins, Elliot Smith and Alex G.
But the key spirit of this , at least to my ears, is that of Simon & Garfunkel. An interesting essay could be rewritten on these mavens of melody. As important in many respects as Beatles, Velvets, Love, and Byrds for the post millennial independent sound.
I just dig this kind of record. One that doesn't really make the slightest effort to be modern or contemporary or clever because it's got a sound and attitute to burrow into for firty minutes or so.
This is a particularly personal choice for the author of this list. It's i,portant to me to in terms of my personal life narrative. I was supposed to be seeing Elvis Costello & The Attractions during my second year . I was supposed to be going to see them at the LCR university venue with a friend I was not getting on with as well as I'd have liked. The band pulled the gig and I've still never seen them or him. A great regret.
As to the record. It covers a lot of bases. You can't help thinking Dylan, There's plenty of invective. Plenty of pain. Plenty of barely checked aggression and rage . Confusion. Wordplay. But lots of wordplay anditwisted nvective. A very good innings and everyone concerned carry their bats back to the pavilion.
'Got a good reason....' No good reason is required for a riff and momentum that would have done any Stax Atlantic artist proud. Well plenty of them went on to cover this....
You have to wonder or maybe you don't whether a laconic Alternative C&W album released in 2026 called Punching the Clown is alluding to anyone in particular. Every American artistic statement has to be these days.
Lambchop's latest is a set of riddles within riddles,almost fifty minutes of sly, wisecracking epiphanies. Sporadic bursts of military cadences and Russian Orthodox choir routines. Every track offers fresh pleasures. It wiles away an afternoon and early evening like a favourite Coen brothers film. So I've put it on again this morning as I'm preparing for my day.
We're on our way to the pearly gates. Heaven. The place where something always happens. This record is genuinely cinematic and quite as good as it gets ! Another great advert for the vinyl format if further evidence is needed.
Not the Deep Purple album you might expect in a rundown of greatest ever albums but this aligns to its author's taste more than their best known and celebrated records. This is limbs flying night on the town ago go.
Florida Water Blues by Twisted Teens like most records thee days is another one which reminds me of way back when. Quite a lot reminds me of the first few terms of University in Autumn 1985 when I was harvesting experience with no little appetite.
Twisted Teens are certainly twisted, possibly not teens, but seem to be at least sligtly akin to American bands of these days in that they have a tangible craving for life that's highly memorable. They have a songwriter and vocalist who basks under the name of Caspian Holywell.
They hail from New Orleans which is even better and their sound is somewhere between Death of Samantha, Pixies and Gun Club. They're depraved and possibly cursed. I couldn't recommend them more highly.
Best listened to as night falls. Preferably on a Swamp. Speaks of a world that most of us will never know. This is an album that flows seamlessly as a voodoo suite.
Philadelphia's Labrador's first album for four years The Rosy Red World has a wonderful sleeve. An image of unwashed plates and cups in a sink. The scene that greets most of us at some point every day. Also a wonderful opening song 'It's mine all mine.' The resounding sound of clanging chords. Crazy Horse reborn.
Labrador are an American Bar Band im excelsis. You can hear the sound of the left of the dial AOR Alternative Classics echoing in every song . Creedence. Sir Douglas Quintet , Replacements, Reigning Sound. Labrador keep it simple. And bring home the bacon for breakfast.
I like Bright Eyes. I like their ambition and their sense of history and the conviction that now is the time to make our own history.Even though inevitably it often feels like a Sixties dream.
Worth listening to the commentary for this, The guitar of Eddie Hazel. George Clinton told him to play the guitar solo in this when his mother died. It's quite a solo. In general quite an extraordinary statement. It eases you into a mindset and headspace that is sly, inventive and funky as any record you will ever hear. It comes from and angle you never knew existed.
Wild Pink are a band from the districts of Brooklyn and Queens. I suspect they wish were The Band. They're not really. Who could be. But they have a gently rolling and quietly majestic sound which talks about the wear and tear of life and how it wizens us but how we get back up and return to the office or the bar or the road.
Still Coming Down is their sixth album. But it sounds like their sixteenth. They sing of Sirhan Sirhan shooting Robert Kennedy in a hotel kitchen. Jack Ruby killing a patsy. They tell of the lies we're told and keep on being told and will surely always be told and how we grit our teeth and wake and ride to each day determined to make the best of it.
This is a well worn furrow but it needs to be ploughed and Wild Pink are more than up to the task. Nine songs without a chorus to speak of but a dogged, earnest engaging spirit. Thick with energy, memory, nostalgia and widescreen but somehow modest Americana 'melodrama,
A record you can listen to sixty years on and more and feel we're still catching up. This came out when I was one and I bought it when I was 24 because it was one of those records I felt I ought to buy. It's a damaged and frantic record. Incredibly exciting but also slightly frightening. The music is only half the message. You need to read the sleevenotes and visualise the times and their tenor. As with all great albums of this era this is a matter of choice. The imaginations and energy which fuel it are genuinely inspiring. It's a pleasurable album but the dread, pleading and craving in its grooves are genuinely palpable..
Johanna Samuels has a safe pair of hands. Sorry Kids, is another assured set of stories and arrangements. There are always stories to me told. There are guitar breaks and choirs which drag you back to the Seventies and wonder if George Harrison is playing in the band.
The Knife, The Needle the debut album by Elanor Moss on Merge Records is the kind of Retro Folk record that is becoming more common and more frequent. And more welcome. It takes you back to 1972 whether you were there or you just wish you were. The land of Nick Drake and Bridget St John, Of knitted pullovers and open fires and the modern world a distant dream.
It's lyrical and sweet. Memorable. Played by musicians who make every effort to listen to one another first and foremost Domestic drams are relayed in sensitive tones. The best trick a record can pull is slow down the hands of the clock to a measured tread
The author of this countdown has been on a crisis enforced sabbatical since early June but he's back. And I'm back with him to document the second half of his descent from 50 to 1. He starts again with a record I listen to a lot . Remain in Light. It's an extraordinary document from an extraordinary band of musicians and their assembled cast. This is an impossibly rhythmic, lyrical and ambitious record. It ranges over continents.
I was struggling to write bout what makes it so special. What makes Talking Heads so special and this album extra-special. So I looked to the Pitchfork review of the album for inspiration. The opening paragraph helped things to click into place immediately. Remain In Light makes artistic activity visceral and danceable. Listening to the record is one of the best ways I know to circumnavigate the globe without moving from the armchair in your living room.
'What Goes On in your mind ?' One of the eternal mysteries . What indeed . This piece will not even attempt to answer that one. It's just intended as a lead in to a record review first and foremost. For a very good record by a very good young band called Westside Cowboy . They're on tour this Autumn as the evenings darken daily and we rush towards another Christmas.
There's always someone heading up a slope pushing a boulder . Ask Sysyphus.You know what generally happens? The boulder you're pushing invariably slides down the other slope just as soon as you get there. Just relax and listentothe music and go where it takes you is the best advice I can offer. You could do worse than listening to this one next.
Forty years ago I was at university, On the way up my own slope of life. In the throes of my first important relationship and forming fundamental friendships . I was working on music. I always find i'm working on music. Begining to appreciate The Velvet Underground who I'd initially found 'difficult' while also harking the lessons of Andy's Babies. It was a B Side by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. About The Velvet Underground and their relentless, pervasive and slightly wearying influence on so much that was going on on the alternative side of culture. Lloyd knew. When Lou Reed died he said that without him he would probably have become a dentist
In 1986 I was also listening and finding out more about Andy's Babies; Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, R.E.M. The Smiths, Aztec Camera, The Triffids, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Echo & The Bunnymen. The Go Betweens, The Jesus & Mary Chain. David Bowie, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop and the rest. Have you got all day? Records that keep on blooming on a daily basis decades later.
But I realise now it all goes back essentially to The Velvet Underground more than anyone else. They ultimately, are probably the band that means the most to me if I think about wanting to play in a Rock & Roll band. Rock & Roll bands are important to me. It's an important spirit. An important idea that relates most fundamentally to me with the idea of freedom which Is an elusive thing but I'd say an important idea to try to keep an eye and ideals and pronciples set on.
The next best thing I realised to being in a Rock & Roll band is to listen to them ,. And I thought about it while I was at university. Plotted it. Tried it briefly with another important friend I met in the first year. Andy. The Velvet Underground were very important to him. But it was an idea I gave up on pretty quickly. We could never be as good as our heroes so I pursued other roads.I'm still pursuing them. Teaching is the best road for me I'd say. It's the best way I know to really learn.
I've never lost hold of the idea though.I like Rock & Roll bands. It seems a much more descriptive term than Indie which I find preposterous. The important matter I'd say is to discovered them listen to them, find out about them and go and see them The source for all this for me generally comes down to The Velvet Underground and The Beatles.
What goes on in your mind?!? It goes on. It's not over yet. Forty years on and more on for me. Sixty years and more on if you're talking about the big picture. Westside Cowboy are a band from Manchester. A city that knows of the centrality of the Velvets. Ask Joy Division. New Order. Happy Mondays. They were all weaned on Lou, John and Co. Bought their first guitars. Plugged in. Wrote their first songs. Struck their first record deals. Went out onto that great road. Joy Division after all signed to. Err Factory Records.
I'm listening to Westside Cowboy's debut. It's called It Goes On. On its sleeve there is a picture of a Manchester tenement building with a horse on the grassy slopes around it. You know 'Westside' 'Cowboys'. They seem a band aware of their heritage. Lonesome Cowboy Bills ! Riding the rodeo.
My nephew Oskar is at university. At the University of Sussex where I might have gone forty years ago. He listens to a lot of Hip Hop but he's heard the buzz about Westside Cowboy and we were chatting about them last time we met up. I might have gone to Sussex But everyone I knew was going to Brighton so I went to Norwich instead. I'm damned glad I did for any number of reasons. I went to UEA and lived my dreams. Fell in love with a wonderful woman. Learned a lot which I've been processing and building upon ever since.Lived in a room next to someone who played me Live '69 in my first term.
The four of us in that corridor Rod, James, Ben and I sat around late evenings, clasping our steaming cups of coffee those first two terms after filling our bellies with Snakebite and Black at the bar on the other side of the fields between the our former RAF Blocks where we slept. We talked and talked.. Talked and talked about girls and records and politics, literature and dreams.Talked about ourselves. Just writing these lines and listening to this record brings back the dreams and the talk. I'm pleased to find my fervour hasn't dimmed all these years down the line. I'm glad to have these memories..
University is for living dreams and chasing them. But we kid ourselves too. None of us really ever leave school. It Goes On is the latest piece of the puzzle. The puzzle will never be completed. Catch this bus. It might take you where you want to go. Or withdraw your outstretched arm and let it sail past you. There will be another one along in a minute......
It was difficult to know what Genesis were really wanting to do during these years. The album covers were ghastly, they'd lostall the wonder of the Gabriel incarnation and it was clear they wanted to make money. Phil Collins had some Pop nous but frankly it was all rather ghastly.
