Reviews by ikejiri

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory
Over 22 million copies sold. That’s one for every man, woman and child in Sri Lanka

Although Definitely Maybe is my favourite Oasis album, there is a whole different level of nostalgia to this, as well as a quite mind bending level of ubiquity and popularity, that I find it hard to extricate myself from. Roll With It is pure summer after GCSEs battle of the bands, and the whole thing has an intensely pervasive 1995/1996/1997ness to it. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven; A-levels, TFI Friday, button down shirts, UCAS forms, Radio 1, round sunglasses, Euro 96, Britpop, learning to drive, The Beatles Anthology, Soldier Soldier.

While things like Roll With It, Hello and Hey Now are catchy enough, I perhaps don’t find them as satisfying as the DM album tracks. However the big songs, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Some Might Say, Cast No Shadow, Morning Glory and Champagne Supernova are absolute powerhouses, megalithic distillations of all Noel’s borrowed influences, compounded into transcendently memorable, undeniable, arm round the shoulder drunken communal singalongs.

Also listening back now there seems to be a slight undertow of introspection that I didn’t pick up on as a teenager. Whereas DM was about escape, and I’m sure part of their appeal at the time was how much they relished and enjoyed their fame and success, there seems to be a sense of a slightly sad goodbye. Not a self indulgent treatise on the hollowness of fame, more a feeling of things will never be the same.

While he may not be a hugely innovative musician or songwriter, and he still clunks his way through lyrics, there’s no doubt Noel is an extremely emotionally expressive melody and hook writer, and, similar to Definitely Maybe, that gift is to the fore. And like Definitely Maybe he never shies away from the obvious and the stolen, but again his melodic skill and brazen shamelessness carries them through - the ‘yeaheah’ into the ‘I’ve been standing at the station’ part of Some Might Say is cheesy and straightforward for example, but it works brilliantly, a great moment.

Liam's voice is also excellent compared to Definitely Maybe (apart from Slide Away perhaps). It’s better recorded, but he also seems to have much more nuance in his tone, on Cast No Shadow he gives it a nice sense of defiant melancholy and on Champagne Supernova he has a lovely sweetness, adding a kind of restive wistfulness.

I also find the change in drumming fascinating, Alan White is clearly a much much more skilled drummer, and songs like Wonderwall, Cast No Shadow, Don’t Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova wouldn’t have worked at all with Tony McCaroll, and rhythmically this is much more interesting, but I do think his lumpen simplicity added something intangible to the mix. Some Might Say, which he drums on, has this slightly treacly feel that I find very appealing, not so much that he’s playing behind the beat, more that his tempo is slightly at odds with the rest of the track, and it’s a song I’ve really started to love in recent years.

Similar to DM there are some cracking B-sides from this period - Acquiesce, Round Are Way, Talk Tonight, Rockin’ Chair, Underneath the Sky, Step Out, The Masterplan. I know not all of them were written when they recorded the album, but Acquiesce, Talk Tonight, Underneath the Sky and The Masterplan instead of say Hello, Roll With It, Hey Now and the Swamp Song, would undoubtedly improve the overall quality.

Coming into this, and part way through Hey Now I was thinking it’s probably a 4, but by the time Some Might Say wallops you in the head, followed by the excellent Cast No Shadow, and then by the time Morning Glory and Champagne Supernova have played out, and adding in Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger it surely has to be a 5.

I also don’t think the 16 year old me, who thought this was one of the best things ever, would understand me giving it 4, which, devoid of any emotion you could argue it might be. But I don’t want to remove the nostalgia and I want to be nice to teenage me. 5.
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Playlist submission: Some Might Say

Rid of Me
This was a real grower, it took a few listens to get into the scuzzy, grungey intensity and rawness but after a while I really started to appreciate its twisting, abrasiveness and uneasiness. It also definitely benefits from being played loud, where you can really feel the snarl in the guitar and the thump of the drums and bass.

I love some of the guitar sounds that she and Steve Albini conjure up, the prowling opening to Rid of Me before it kicks in (love the unsettling backing vocals on this too), the solo on 50 ft Queenie, the break on Dry and the slide on Ecstacy in particular.

She’s such a characterful singer and performer too, that she manages to sell every song, even if they are all broadly in the same ballpark, and is great at creating some memorable melodies like 50ft Queenie and Yuri-G amongst the caustic sonic attack and biting lyrics.

I didn’t find it as fascinating and as stellar as Let England Shake, and I probably prefer the slightly softer edged Stories from the City, but as a singular album of scratching, sludgey, punky, bluesy grit it's very good. I’m keen to come back again so I’ll go 4.
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Playlist submission: Dry

Warehouse: Songs & Stories
I’m quite partial to a bit of Hüsker Dü, but I’m not quite sure why. They don’t do anything particularly differently to bands in this style I don’t particularly like, and they do only have a few furrows they plough. Maybe it’s something to do with Bob Mould's particular melodic style or their uncomplicated musical template.

I found this a very decent listen, but there’s no way it needs to be a double album, even if they weren’t getting on and had 10 songs each. There’s nothing that’s particularly filler, it’s more that it’s 2 or 3 types of song done 20 times. Pick the 10 best tracks and this would be an easy 4 and something I’d thrown on when I want a nice quick hit of REM adjacent punk-power-pop, but as it is I’m only likely to come back infrequently, meaning a 3.
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Playlist submission: Ice Cold Ice

It’s Blitz
I’ve not listened to this album before. The first four tracks are excellent, Zero and Heads Will Roll are fantastic disco-garage-indie-punk bangers, Soft Shock has a synthy Maps vibe and Skeletons is a superbly catchy bit of atmosphere and mood. I love the synthesiser addition to their sound and the general idea of adding some dancefloor to their garage style.

It does dip a little after that stellar start, but it's always listenable and there are some great tracks - I like the back half of Shame and Fortune, the riff/hook is great and the synthy spacey funkiness of Dragon Queen is excellent, and Faces is great as well.

It’s a very enjoyable dancey, indie-garage album, elevated by the synthiness, some great melodies and Karen O’s charismatic voice and presence, tipping it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: Skeletons

Bandwagonesque
I loved Songs From Northern Britain from a few years after this, and really liked Grand Prix too - they’re one of those bands I always assume I like, without ever really properly listening beyond those two albums.

I do know The Concept and What You Do To Me, but everything else on here is unfamiliar. I wasn’t expecting there to be so much My Bloody Valentine/Jesus & Mary Chain and so much fuzzy distorted guitar, but it makes sense for 1991 and also as a Creation band in the early 90s.

On first listen I found the noise-ness a bit distracting, and things like Satan sound a bit unconvincing, but I grew into it, and some of the sunny pop melodies emerging through the haze of distortion really are fantastic. The Concept, December, What You Do To Me, I Don’t Know, Star Sign, Pet Rock are all great songs.

That mix of fuzz and melody, although perhaps a little unbalanced in favour of noise, does give the album quite a distinct character, but it does drag a little towards the end. I know this is regarded as their best album, but I do prefer those subsequent albums when everything’s a bit tighter and more focused on melodic jangle pop.

Tricky one to score, on the edge of 3 and 4. I really like them as a band and there are some great tracks on here, but I’m more likely to go to Grand Prix or SFNB, so I’ll go high 3.
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Playlist submission: What You Do

Live 1966 (The Royal Albert Hall Concert)
The fact that the Judas moment is missing has thrown me for a bit of a loop with this.

I started writing that it’s hard for some things to live up to the myth, especially when the myth is Bob Dylan and the people creating the myth are Dylanheads and 60s rock journalists, and that the ‘Judas’ moment does genuinely crackle, Dylan’s sneer of ‘I don’t believe you, play it fuckin’ loud’, the hit of the snare, the energy of it all is palpable, you can feel it 59 years on.

But that’s not on the streaming version, and I can’t remember from when I had the CD whether there was more talking between other songs too. I don’t think there was, and it was as presented here, with no audience interaction, giving it a characteristic Dylan aloofness and otherworldliness.

And as great as the Judas moment is, and whether the streaming version is missing in between song chatter, it’s not the greatest thing about this album. The acoustic set is stunning, utterly captivating in its crystalline, glassily mesmeric simplicity and starkness. His pin sharp, spectral, alien charisma is tangible, how just guitar, harmonica and voice can freeze time and hold an audience in stillness is remarkable.

The electric set is great in a different way, the Band/Hawks really is excellent, feeding off the sense of confrontation and creating a roughshod brilliance, especially on the version of Baby Let Me Follow You Down, which I love, and of course on Like A Rolling Stone.

But it's the acoustic set that lingers and that I keep coming back to, both for its magnetic, ghostly magnificence and as a snapshot of someone at the peak of their artistry, while close to a physical and mental breaking point.

The electric side has historical significance of course, and is worth a high mark on its own, but combined with the first set this is an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Desolation Row

Blackstar
Where The Fuck Did Monday Go?

I don’t think I’ve listened to this since it appeared, and then when he orchestrated his death as part of the artistic statement. I remember thinking it was a great album, but I’ve only rarely revisited since, as it all feels a bit sad.

So it’s great listening 9 and a bit years on, and it's clear at this remove that this is a truly excellent album in its own right, irrespective of the sadness and death and legacy. And it’s probably worth 5 stars for the opening track alone (and another 5 for track 2, and trac 3, and so on). But when you do factor in his death and how and when he recorded it, it gives the album a genuinely affecting resonance and fall of light.

References to death and existence and mortality are everywhere in the lyrics and, I think, in the celestial harp sound at the very start of and throughout Blackstar. But it’s never maudlin or self indulgent, and neither is it cold or detached, it seems to tread the line between the two, balancing introspection and playful curiosity.

Musically it’s dense and weighty but simultaneously ephemeral, it glides and skims as well as anchoring itself, and it feels like there are musical references to his past too, some drum and bass, some Station to Station-ness. The percussion is also incredible throughout, and I love the jazziness, it really suits some of the sombre and discordant tones.

The title track is superb, maybe one of his best songs, the skitteriness and synth bass before it moves into the second part with the ‘Something happened’ lyric and nagging refrain. ‘Tis A Pity She Was a Whore is incredible too, it feels strangely disconcerting and creepy, and the agitated playing is fantastic. Lazarus has a slight Roxy Music-ness to it, and a great, mesmeric groove and superb, moving lyric. I like how it shifts slightly with the gritty, funk guitar and slightly echoey, ecclesiastical sounding vocal of Sue, the combination creates a great bit of tension and strain. Girl Loves Me is another amazing song, the hook is extremely catchy and I love the James Murphy assisted funereal-synth feel. Dollar Days of course has the dying to/too pun and despite the melancholy lyrics has a slightly hopeful feel to me, flowing fantastically into the serenity of I Can’t Give Everything Away. It’s a brilliantly sequenced album, moving gracefully from anxiety and restlessness into acceptance and a sense of stillness and peace.

I’ve listened to this a lot over the past couple of days, I just kept wanting to come back to it, and to be able to orchestrate this as his swansong is unbelievable, knowing he was dying and making one of his best albums is absurd really, and to make an album about mortality that is so full of life, that makes you want to come back to it. It’s probably only really matched as a eulogy to en ending by Abbey Road.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
Playlist submission: Blackstar

The Coral
I loved this album when it came out and although I never totally stuck with them after Magic and Medicine I love the song Lover Undiscovered from the Coral Island album a few years ago, and I really like Bill Ryder-Jones solo stuff.

I still really like the kitchen sink approach, all their influences all jammed together. Rather than selectively magpieing what they like, I get the sense they thought this might be their only record so just chucked everything in - Beefheart, Love, 60s psychedelia, Madness, Beatles, sea shanties, the Doors, folk. How you feel about the end result probably depends on how much charm you find in that approach, but do find it very wonkily engaging, never stopping in one place, and all tied together with open mindedness, some great rough hewn musicality and some lovely psychedelic-indie guitar.

I like how Spanish Main frames the album as a psychedelic cosmic voyage through all their influences, and while not every song works totally, none of them are boring and some of them are absolutely fantastic. I Remember When’s Doors-eque croon moving into the uptempo is excellent and Shadows Fall’s psychedelic ska is woozily great. Dreaming of You is still superb, the bass and organ are superb together and it's a great melody with lovely harmonies.

I love the S&G lifting folky vibe of Simon Diamond, the reverb slide and seaside organ give it a great atmosphere, along with the amusing lyrics. Goodbye is superb, Bill Ryder-Jones late 60s riffing and tremolo parts are lovely and it’s another great melody and set of backing vocals.

Even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of that first half thereafter it’s still a very enjoyable and interesting listen, and I love Skeleton Key and Bad Man’s scouse Beefheart-ness, and Calendars and Clocks ends things in a suitably wide running way.

There is a definitely a touch of early 2000s to it but it has held up better than many of their peers in the post Britpop/early 2000s indie scene, not only does it have a pleasing scatterbrain eclecticism it also has a lovely eccentricity to it, which means it still sounds interesting and very loveable 23 years on. It does fade a bit in the back half but it’s still a great album and a mid-high 4.
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Playlist submission: Goodbye

Halcyon Digest
Some moments of sweetness in a hypnotic indie-shoegaze-sonic youth way, but it suffers from being cut from the same cloth as a lot of US alt/indie from that late 00s, Pitchfork, droney, tom-tom heavy era, a style I’ve never really got on that well with.

It’s perfectly adequate, but despite picking up over the last 3 songs it’s also perfectly unremarkable. While listening there were songs and parts I liked, but after I finished I couldn’t really recall anything, other than the very Jesus & Mary Chain Fountain Stairs and the synthy-bubbly He Would Have Laughed

It’s fine, but really I can’t ever see myself revisiting so I’ll go for a perhaps slightly harsh 2.
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Playlist submission: Fountain Stairs

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
It’s weird thinking back to the abrupt popularity of this album. It seemed to just suddenly be the album of the moment, coming out of nowhere. I suppose it hit the zeitgeist with its themes of humanity and technology, just after the millennium and right at the advent of the internet becoming a normal part of everyday life.

Being a very suggestible person of course I bought it at the time, being so easily swayed by critical opinion. I remember quite liking it, but aside from a few songs I never really loved it. Although I did really enjoy seeing them at Lowlands.

Listening now it starts off strongly, despite Fight Test being a direct copy of Father and Son. I must have realised this at the time with Boyzone’s cover being in the recent cultural past but I feel like I only noticed it now. One More Robot is great, lyrically and musically, and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1 is still excellent, a lovely dreamy/nightmarish bit of psychedelic pop.

It starts to lose me a bit after that - although I do like their hazy experimentalism, it sometimes feels like they aren’t always experimenting with particularly interesting ideas, or that the artfulness is slightly too deliberate, or that the songs aren’t always that strong, and the run from Yoshimi Pt 2 to Are You a Hypnotist?? feels very samey.

Do You Realize?? is superb though. As with the first few tracks, when their hazy soundscapes and squiggles combine with a great lyric and dreamy melody it is excellent and you can see why people latched on to this. I Like Approaching Pavonis Mons too, again the dreaminess and atmosphere come together and it creates a great track, and the horns are particularly great.

It’s been nice revisiting and I can see why it got picked up on, as some of the highs are great, but I don’t think it’s a particularly strong record overall, landing it as a solid 3.
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Playlist submission: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1

Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
I do like The Pharcyde, they are brilliantly skilled rappers and their jazzy post-golden age beats and samples are great. The live drum sound on this is also fantastic and the whole thing sounds superb.

Despite that I’ve always felt they aren’t quite at the same level as some of their peers from just before and just after. While bands like ATCQ, DLS, Digable Planets, The Roots and J5 combine thoughtfulness with playfulness and humour, The Pharcyde, for me, too frequently overdo the sex-obssesed humour, and on repeat listens, lyrically it can be a bit trying - while musically brilliant some of their songs do have the tenor of skit tracks. When they do steer away from that they produce some absolute classics, like On the DL and Passin’ Me By, with great hooks, beats and samples.

They are, of course, a great band and this is their best album, but through listening on repeat that lyrical overindulgence puts it a notch below things like 3 Feet High & Rising, Tribes first two albums or the JBs album the other week, which puts it at a solidly excellent 4.
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Playlist submission: Passin’ Me By

Hot Rats
Wow, I was not expecting this to be so great. I had vaguely heard of it but didn’t know anything about it. I was thinking it would be something in the vein of the MOI’s deliberately abrasive outsider contrariness, but I was very surprised that it was a relatively straightforward psychedelic jazz rock album, with a nice dash of eccentricity and a massive amount of improvised guitar high jinks.

There’s a recognisable little pattern in Peaches en Regalia from about 0.22 to 0.39, it sounds like it’s from Freak Out or We’re Only In It For The Money, but then the songs moves off gracefully into a different space, played absolutely fantastically with some brilliant refrains and passages. Love Willie the Pimp, Beefheart really suits it, and the fiddle and guitar riff is great on the first half before it branches out into the jam section with some excellent guitar. Like every song on here the rhythm section is superb, locking into a fantastic groove, and I’m not normally that into improvised guitar workouts but on here it is absolutely brilliant.

It’s the same story on Son of Mr Green Genes and the superb, mesmeric The Gumbo Variations. Another fantastic pocket that the rhythm section hit, and I love the reappearance of the fiddle. Little Umbrellas I like too, a more traditional jazz style song, but it’s got a vague feeling of underlying uneasiness to it, as does It Must Be a Camel, with its great piano and slightly frantic bass. Some great passages in that too.

I thought this was absolutely fantastic, one of the best surprises so far, hypnotic, graceful, a bit odd and full of great moments and passages. Can’t be anything but a 5.
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Playlist submission: The Gumbo Variations

Make Yourself
‘I’m not eating the bullshit that’s being fed to me’
You may not be eating the bullshit, but we’re all listening to it.

It’s not as abject as Linkin Park, which is a very low bar, and there are occasionally some vaguely interesting instrumentation and melodies, but it’s still just not very good. The utter unfunkiness of their funk-metal just absolutely reeks of ankle length jorts, wallet chains and soul patches, and the whole album starts to feel very stagnant after 3 or 4 songs, and is a slog to get through.

It's on the cusp of 1 and 2, I’ll go 2 as relative to some metal we’ve had it’s not horrifically terrible, but ultimately it is a very uninspiring collection of dated, re-hashed metal tropes, DJ noises, adolescent lyrics and whiny vocals.
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Playlist submission: I Miss You

Red Headed Stranger
This is a bit of a gem, if an album that's sold over 2m copies can be a gem. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a whole Willie Nelson album before, but I thought this was fantastic, a stripped down and spare concept album, with a gently evocative sombre charm.

As well as highlighting his laid back and understated delivery, there’s a pleasing unsentimentality to it all, the tale unfolds through his own compositions and his arrangement of other’s songs, complemented by some lovely instrumental embellishments - the harmonica on Just As I Am and the little bits of Mandolin on Denver, and the piano throughout. Some great bass too, both in tone and playing.

All the tracks contribute to the story, and even I’m not that keen on the ragtime of something like Down Yonder, there are some superb songs on here - Time of the Preacher (as it weaves in and out), Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Just As I Am, Denver, Can I Sleep In Your Arms and Bandera are all expressively brilliant, evoking a dusty time and place. I also love how clear the folk and blues elements that make up part of country music are in it, helping to emphasise that sense of place.

It’s a brilliantly performed and crafted narrative album and it gets better with each listen, right on the border of 4 and 5. I’ll stay with a very high 4 for now.
🧑‍🦰🧑‍🦰🧑‍🦰🧑‍🦰
Playlist submission: Time of the Preacher

First Band on the Moon
I was never into The Cardigans back in the 90s, I really disliked Lovefool back then, and although I do know it’s a good pop song I’m still not keen on it.

I really appreciate their gift for bullet proof Scandinavian pop melody, and I like the combination of sugary catchiness and acid tongued lyrics, but it too often falls too far into loungey, nouvelle vague kitsch for my taste. It’s all very skillfully played and crafted, there is some very nice guitar, drums and bass and it’s arranged brilliantly for what they are doing, but it sadly doesn’t really resonate that well with me.

I did really like Been It though, there's a bit of bite to the music, matching the acerbic words and the result is a great, lithe bit of pop. And Step on Me is nice too.

It’s obviously not bad and I didn’t dislike it, it is a listenable album, but it just doesn’t really land with me. I’m unlikely to seek it out again, but a 2 does feel too low, so I’ll go with a 3.
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Playlist submission: Been It

The Lexicon of Love
Banger after banger after banger. Apart from Theme from ‘Mantrap’, which isn’t great, even if it is in keeping with their vibe, but I’m not counting it as it wasn’t on the original release.

The original release is superb though, not a duff moment or misstep. There’s Bowie, Eno, Roxy Music, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Motown, Stax, Disco and synth pop Britishness all put through the filter of some lads from early 80s Sheffield with the production genius of Trevor Horn and arranging brilliance of Anne Dudley, coming out as a archly sincere synth-art-soul-pop classic.

Poison Arrow and The Look of Love are obviously fantastic but It feels like every song could have been a single. The intro to Show Me with the strings and horns before the superb bassline kicks in is wonderful, and the bridge into the chorus is just fantastic. I love how it segues into the hook laden brilliance of Poison Arrow. More fantastic bass on Many Happy Returns and more great hooks too. The same goes for Tears Are Not Enough, a vaguely, but arguably better, Duran Duran-esque disco pop banger. I love the staccato pop melodrama of Valentine’s Day, another hook-laden song to end side 1.

The Look of Love, what a song, a great blend of crooning chic-disco-Roxy Music and Trevor Horn’s production, superb. It’s brilliant how an album track like Date Stamp keeps up the momentum, it’s another great disco-pop song, and you can hear the ideas and sounds that Trevor Horn would take into Relax a few years later. What a superb song All of My Heart is, a brilliant piano hook with excellent string embellishments and an effortlessly artful and dramatic vocal and vocal melody. I guess this is overshadowed by Poison Arrow and The Look of Love, but it’s just as good and has such a lovely musical sweetness to it. 4 Ever 2 Gether is yet another banger, with more excellent bass and another fantastic string arrangement, and I like the overdriven guitar giving it some tension. And the instrumental Look of Love is an excellent way to bookend the album and leads nicely back to the string intro to Show Me.

I love Martin Fry’s turn of phrase. I’ve seen reviews highlighting his lyrics have an advertising catchphrase quality to them and I think that’s true, little one liners and couplets that stick in the memory.

An assured, melodramatic, fantastic, joyful, sophisti-disco-pop banger from start to end. 5.
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Playlist submission: All of My Heart

Kid A
I’d been living in Japan for about 6 weeks when this came out, and I remember being extremely excited about it, the anticipation of their new direction (you are witnesses to the birth of Radiohead mark 2) and how different it would be. I think I bought it in the music section of the small department store above the station in Hanno (Don't look for it, it's not there anymore).

I was still a bit homesick and slightly dislocated, which, looking back, probably matched the tone of the album much more than I realised at the time. But I loved it immediately and I still love it now. I didn’t know many of the bands they were taking inspiration from back then but I’ve come to know some of them in subsequent years, so it doesn’t quite have the arrived out of nowhere mystique it had 25 years ago, you can piece together the influences more easily now, but it still holds up as a superb album, and the fact they made such a sharp turn after OKC I still love.

The surge of synthesisers and cut up noises in the build to the release at 2.51 in Everything in its Right Place is superb, but the whole song is excellent, I love the main riff and how it sounds claustrophobic but also like you are simultaneously standing on a glacier.

The National anthem is one of many great bass lines on the album, although I didn’t realise until now it’s Thom playing it, and along with Optimistic and How to Disappear Completely one of the most immediate tracks, despite the cacophony of horns and noises. Treefingers is very Eno, and after the tumult of the National Anthem and the spectral, sad How to Disappear and before the more traditional sounding Optimistic it’s a great little pause.

Idioteque I remember liking straight away and it’s still fantastic, the patchwork imagery in the lyrics and the drum pattern are superb together. Morning Bell feels quite OKC, and the skittery snares are great. It definitely seems like the foundation for quite a few of their songs after Amnesiac, and there is some great guitar and arpeggios in the last minute or so. Motion Picture Soundtrack I have always loved, the pedal organ, the bleak words and the disney-esque harps, strings and choral effects is a great pairing.

Although I was a massive fan of OKC, this is the point where I started to really love Radiohead, finding everything they did from this point on more interesting and exciting, even if there were some patchy moments to come here and there. Along with In Rainbows and possibly A Moon Shaped Pool this is my favourite of theirs, it really is a wonderful album.
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Playlist submission: Everything in its Right Place

Devotional Songs
I don’t know anything about qawwali or Pakistani music at all, but similar to the Call of the Valley album, there’s something about this type of music that really appeals to me.

I’m not saying I’m at Harrrison levels of reverence and devotion but I did think this was excellent. Maybe it’s the hypnotic and mesmeric feel to it with the vocal chanting and percussion, or that not understanding Urdu means it has a degree of mystery (although even with not understanding Urdu the themes of religious reverence are pretty obvious), or that there are some elements that feel familiarly folky or Western sounding, eg the guitar on Yaad-E-Nabi Gulshan Mehka or the Spanish sounding intro on Haq Ali Ali Haq (a song about Ali Ireland need to get rid of some phlegm) and the intro to Ali Maula Ali Maula Ali Dam Dam (a song about Ali Ireland playing Rugby and being quite vicious)

I would never have listened to this without the list, I’d never have heard of him or thought about listening to this type of music, but I’m really glad it did.
4.
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Playlist submission: Ni Main Jogi De Naal

Orbital 2
I really liked this. I only really have a patchy knowledge of the history of dance music and its various sub genres, but this kind of minimalistic, hypnotic, ambient (hypnombient?) techno is superb. You can hear the influence of Eno in the feel of much of it, and Kraftwerk in the percussive, rhythmic synths, but the added percussive energy of the dance beats gives it a mesmerising, kinetic groove. I found myself listening on repeat, where time becomes a loop, incredibly easily, noticing little moments and details each time.

Although there is some degree of variation between the songs; the atmospheric soundtrack mysticalness of Planet of the Shapes, the more thumping Lush 3-1 and Impact and the Balearic influenced Halcyon + On + On, it works best in one go as a brilliantly flowing 65 minute piece of music and atmosphere.

It’s a great album, easily a high 4, and will definitely come back to it
⭕⭕⭕⭕
Playlist submission: Monday

Definitely Maybe
There’s definitely nostalgia in the mix, but I do still love this album. Rudimentary thump thump drums, tons of shameless musical lifts and nicks and, a barely discernible low end, a thick nearly muddy sound and a confident, brazen embrace of cliche. All that made it exciting to me as a 14 year old in 1994 and I still find it great now. I guess songs about escaping your surroundings and circumstances and imagining something more exciting is a universally resonant theme, irrespective of where you come from or where you are in life.

It’s also interesting coming as another right after LK. While that was boringly imitative, this is derivative in a much more overpowering and interesting way, Cigarettes and Alcohol unashamedly nicks the Get it On riff, but the song isn’t a T-Rex copy, passing through the Noel filter and becoming something quite different.

The Beatles influence also seems a bit of a chimera on this album. Apart from Nole having a seemingly Macca-esque melodic facility, it’s much more like a psychedelic glam Sex Pistols. There’s a lot of Steve Jones to some of the licks and runs, and on things like the endings of Rock’n’Roll Star and Shakermaker and the whole of Columbia it has a real swampy, psychedelic groove to it.

But ultimately the imitations and plagiarisms don’t really matter when there are so many excellent songs. Rock’n’Roll Star, Live Forever, Up in the Sky, Columbia, Supersonic, Bring it On Down, Cigarettes & Alcohol and Slide Away are fantastic.

Slide Away is probably their greatest song, it’s got a kind of hooligan, roughhouse sensitivity, combing Liam’s snarl with Noel’s sentimentality, and the way the melody slides from the verse to the bridge to the chorus is fantastic, a kind of obvious allusion to the title, but as with so much of Noel’s best stuff it's the obvious done brilliantly and shamelessly.

The only misstep for me is Shakermaker, which I’ve never really liked that much. And while Digsy’s Dinner definitely has the whiff of filler, it at least has some charm and lightness that Shakermaker lacks and I presume they wanted something to break the heaviness between C&A and Slide Away. Married with Children also always felt like a bit of an afterthought, oddly placed at the end, but nowadays I do like that it’s a bit of a downbeat ending. It also seems a bit strange that they didn’t include Sad Song on the CD version but had it on the vinyl version. It's a great track, but maybe they didn’t want a Noel vocal on the album, who knows.

Great songs, universal themes, a brazenly pilfering swagger and a big dollop of remembering first getting into music makes it an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Slide Away