Reviews by ikejiri

Truth
Had no idea what to expect from this, and had no idea Rod was the vocalist when his voice kicked in on Shapes of Things. Rod’s voice is great on that track, not just the rasp but the tenderness and delicateness he peppers in, particularly in the falsetto parts.

The guitar tone is pretty interesting on it too, it sounds much more 70s/80s than late 60s. I can see why a lot of the 80s rock and metal bands idolise Beck, based on this track alone.

Let Me Love You is not great in comparison to Shapes of Things, a plodding, pedestrian, uninspired and rather woeful slice of late 60s blues rock. Morning Dew is more interesting, it’s folk origin giving it a different slant, and with the wah wah, droning Indian influences and that nice galloping bassline it adds up to a little bit of a gem, pointing to where Rod and Ronnie would head with the Faces and Rod’s early country and folk flecked solo albums.

Why did every blues band in the UK in the 60s and 70s cover You Shook Me? I know it’s cast in iron as a cornerstone of the blues, but I’ve never quite understood why everyone just kept doing it, despite everyone else doing it. This is a particularly bad version, Beck's guitar is egregiously showy and the whole thing just feels like a pointless addition to the wheelie bin full of covers of this song.

Ol’ Man River is a bit of a curio, the orchestral timpani and kettle drum al teals give it a different flavour, and I get that they were going for a big echoey feel, but it feels a bit half baked (if you can bake an echo?). Nice vocal though, the style of this does suit Rod well.

Greensleeves is actually very pleasant, but you can understand why Beck was such a big influence for the character of Nigel Tufnell just from this. Rock my Plimsoul returns to the staid and lumpen blues rock well, and pulls up another bucket of plod.

Beck’s Bolero at least tries for something different with it’s rhythmic foundation, but is largely unexciting. While he is obviously a very good guitarist, and despite the technical proficiency I find his playing particularly unmoving, lacking a visceral sense of excitement I get from other guitarists in this period.

Blues Deluxe disappears into the morass of blues rock, despite listening to it 3 times today I don’t think I’d recognise it if I heard it on the radio again. Finally a more dynamic and enjoyable heavy blues track shakes off the treacle and emerges in, I Ain’t Superstitious. Nice rhythmic propulsion, good licks and a nice vocal make this one good.

Shapes of Things and Morning Dew gave me hope this might be a charming if uneven ragtag bag of late 60s blue rock, but unfortunately the moments that do work, like the above, are undermined somewhat by most of the remaining songs, rather dull exercises in showcasing Beck’s cold virtuosity and him and Rod’s ability to cover/nick/rip off blues classics. Not even Rod’s voice, which is approaching his peak, can make up for the lead booted nature of most of the songs. I guess it was influential on the nascent Cream and Led Zep (I know Page et al feature on here), but they produced more interesting versions of this type of thing.

Kind of stuck between 2 and 3 with this, it has its moments, Rod’s voice is strong throughout, but I’m unlikely to really come back to it. Hmm, I’ll go against type and settle on the lower score.
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Playlist submission: Morning Dew

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
I had this when it came out, there was a lot of critical acclaim for it, but I struggled to really get into it, aside from the big singles like I Like the Way You Move, Hey Ya! And Roses. I think that’s because It felt very dense with too much going on, particularly The Love Below.

Listening now though I can really appreciate it - it still is very dense and there still is a lot going on, but I can see now it's that over the topness that makes it great. I love the feeling that on Andre 3000s disc, he’s just splurged out everything, thrown all his influences and ideas at it, and while it may not always work, the ambition and willingness to go all out is very compelling.

That’s no to diminish Speakerboxx though. On the surface it may be more conventional and less schizophrenic than The Love Below, but it’s an excellently constructed, subtly subversive and brilliant sounding record. Lots of recognisable hip hop elements; breakbeats, soul and jazz etc, but imaginatively and kaleidoscopically cut up and put back together to make it a great, energetic fun listen.

There are gems of songs and moments scattered throughout, with some great, interesting instrumentation on The Love Below in Particular, the synth line on GhettoMusick, the New Orleans horns and guitar on Bowtie, the cartoonish The Rooster, the vaguely ominous Bust, War, Tomb of the Boom, the organic feel of Knowing, Killer Mike’s cameo on Flip Flop Rock with its skittery percussion, Reste, Last Call, the jazzy Love Hater, Happy Valentine’s Day, the slow jam-ish Prototype She Lives in My Lap, Hey Ya, Roses, the early 80s sparseness of Pink & Blue, the fuzzing synth on Dracula’s Wedding, the country blues-ish of Take Off Your Coat. Great stuff.

135 mins is long, but Speakerboxxx is actually ‘only’ 55 mins or so and doesn’t feel that lengthy, whereas Andre’s is nearly 80 mins, which is essentially a double album itself. And while The Love Below can feel long, it doesn’t feel self indulgent, more like there’s a sense of urgency and an explosion of ideas. And while they aren’t always successful there’s always the feeling that something interesting or a great idea is just around the corner. And that sense I think is what stops the length becoming too much of an issue.

Purely musically Speakerboxxx on it’s own is probably a 5 and The Love Below is closer to 4, but the widescreen, open armed, ambition and Beatles-eque sense of imagination and self expression and why not-ness is exciting and intoxicating for me, just about making it a 5 overall.
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Playlist submission: GhettoMusick

Back in Black
Hard for this to be anything other than a 5. It has no pretension, no swords or dwarves, no parental angst and it is entirely successful in executing exactly what it set out to do - riffs, grooves, booze and sex.

But don’t mistake simplicity for basicness - underneath that apparent simplicity they have a very smart and canny understanding of what works and what doesn't, and they also have their secret weapon; in Malcolm, Cliff and Phil they have a great rhythm section, not particularly ostentatious and obviously capably steady, but they have the ability to give the songs groove and an element of slipperiness that belies the plodding headbanging reputation. And Angus understands exactly what he should do, never overlong or self indulgent, punctuating things with excellent white man overbite air guitar style riffs and runs.

The big and famous songs are thrillingly fun of course, Hells Bells, Shoot to Thrill and the timeless and excellent Back in Black and You Shook Me All Night Long, and while the other songs don’t quite hit those peaks they are still brilliant bits of good time party rock’n’roll, What Do You Do For Money and Have a Drink on Me in particular are great.

Overall it’s an irresistibly fun 40 minutes of head nodding, toe tapping good time rock music, and in that category they are unmatched. Easy 5.
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Playlist submission: You Shook Me All Night Long

Beautiful Freak
More Proustian nostalgia with this, taking me right back to the 2nd year of A-Levels. This along with Blur by Blur puts me right back in my bedroom in the middle of A-Level mocks, listening to Radio 1 as well, and taking my driving test, and then on to Uni. Also think Mackie was a big fan.

Anyway, interesting to revisit it as I have really listened to it since that time, although I remember liking the album after this, particularly Mr E’s Beautiful Blues.

Novocaine for the Soul really does stand out, as it did back in 1997, the plinky piano and strings in the intro set a suitably spooky, eccentric tone ahead of the marriage of a catchy pop melody with a despairing lyric. Still a great track. Susan’s House is similar, a pretty, delicate melody and piano motif in the chorus with the offbeat and slightly sad spoken word verses. Like Novocaine this still sounds
great. As Does Your Lucky Day in Hell, another track that still sounds great, an excellent atmosphere and another catchy hook.

In fact I’d forgotten how many great little hooks and melodies there are on here, there’s a lot of pop classicism behind the quirky arrangements, subject matter and approach, which probably makes it endure better than some other albums in the same vein and sets it apart from a lot of other angsty american alt rock.

Beautiful Freak, My Beloved Monster, Guest List, Mental are all examples of this, some great melodies and musical hooks and textures, the bass, organ and guitar on Guest List in particular are really good.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but this is a lot more enjoyable than I thought it might be, there’s a lot more of interest than I remember, and the combination of quirky post grunge angst with some charming melodies and offbeat instrumentation elevates it above a being a late 90s curio and shades it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: Guest List

Kiwanuka
I’m pretty familiar with this, although I think I listened to the previous album a bit more.

I'm very into the style and sound on this, the Bondian/John Barry guitar breaks , the cinematic 60s style backing vocals and the indie, pop, soul, rock and jazz influences. I also really like the lyrical themes and ideas, identity, self doubt, self confidence, history and the future all weaved together to make a fascinating and engaging whole.

It really is excellent up to Hard to Say Goodbye. You Ain’t The Problem, Rolling and I’ve Been Dazed is a superb opening run, highlighting all the great parts of the album, those backing vocals, some great guitar and fantastic songcraft. Piano Joint, Living in Denial and Hero are also excellent.

It does dip a bit for me after Final Days, the last 10 or 15 minutes do drag a little, particularly in comparison to the previous tracks - Final Days definitely sounds like it should be the last song.

Despite it being a very good album, I think it's that drag and, and also that I get a slight nagging sense of Radio-2-ness that stops it being a 5.
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Playlist submission: Rolling

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
It’s one of the obvious things that you don’t think much about, but doing this list you realise that pretty much every British band is influenced either by The Beatles or Bowie, or both. The 80s synth/new wave albums we’ve had in particular have been clearly Bowie influenced, and this is the same.

It grew on me a lot over repeated listens. Initially I was struck by the overall hazy and dreamy atmosphere of songscapes, rather than the catchy tunes their pop rock pomp later in the decade. Along with Bowie there seems to be quite a bit of Cure and ABC - a not uniteresting mix.

As I listened more, more melodies and moments emerged and I realised what superb bass playing there is on here, and how many of the songs are both melodically and rhythmically driven by the bass, with guitar and keyboard providing texture and embellishment.

Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) sets the tone with its insistent groove and atmosphere, the guitar riff sounding a lot like Echo and the Bunnymen. Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel is great, excellent bass with a nagging groove and a nice chorus. A real grower.

Promised You a Miracle I know as the single, and it’s definitely the most immediately catchy, although it does sound very ABC. Some great synthesiser parts though. Big Sleep, again some great bass and another grower with its slightly edgy but delicate atmosphere. More atmosphere on Somebody Up There Likes You, this time more hypnotic and mesmeric. I like this one.

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) is probably the 2nd most immediately catchy track. Up to now it doesn’t seem obvious that this is the same band as Don’t You Forget About Me and Alive and Kicking, but you can hear the genes of those songs in this, a sense that a massive stadium song is about to burst into life, but is being held back, a great bit of tension making a great track.

Glittering Prize is very reminiscent of The Cure, and it sounds slightly odd after New Gold Dream, flatter and less atmospheric, poppier but not as catchy, despite some great bass. Alex James must have heard the bass in the intro to Hunter and the Hunted, a definite Boys and Girls-ness to it. It’s another atmospheric and moody track. Big big Bowie vibes to King is White and in the Crowd, the bass as always is great, and yet more spectral atmospherics.

After the first couple of listens I liked this, but found it hard to pick individual tracks, and I felt I couldn’t remember it, but then it started to get its hooks into me, and I found it’s slightly nervy dream-like quality quite seductive, finding new little interesting parts and moments in it with further listens. I don’t think I would have listened to this without doing the list, but I’m very glad it came up. Not quite sure it’s a 5 (yet), so I’ll go for a solid and intriguing 4.
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Playlist submission: New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)

White Ladder
Say hello to Ireland’s best selling album of all time. Say hello to 2001, say hello to Bridget Jones’s Diary, say hello your mum’s CD collection, say hello to Sven Goran Eriksson, say hello to Foot and Mouth, say hello to a 2nd term for Tony, say hello to the coughing major, say hello Al Qaeda, say hello to Popstars, say hello to Phil’s shooter, say hello to David Brent, wave goodbye to Richard Madely and Judy Finnegan, wave goodbye to The Premiership at 7pm, wave goodbye to any credibility if you liked this album, wave goodbye to its time to share or to shaft, wave goodbye to Live and Kicking, wave goodbye to Harry Secombe…wave goodbye to George 🥺

I don’t think this really deserves the amount of opprobrium it gets. It's by no means a great album of course, but it’s a perfectly serviceable folkish pop album with some very early 2000s electronic touches. I remember having it on CD and quite liking it at the time, but the problem is its ubiquity, and it's frankly insane commercial success. And of course there’s nothing like the massive popularity of something so middle of the road to rile up the snob in a 22 year old me.

And looking back at it now, while he is certainly at a superior level, it’s clear that this album opened the door for the James Blunts, Ed Sheerans and Lewis Capaldis of the world. It’s not David Gray’s fault he birthed them of course, but that soggy legacy of sad boy self-absorbed performative sensitivity does remain and does hover over the album today.

At the core of it though, while there are good songs on here, there’s no doubt that in many places it feels rather insipid, partly to do with the production, you can definitely tell that he made it in his flat. While not sounding totally terrible it does have some not particularly charming wonkiness in places and has quite a thin sound, contributing to that rather insipid lack of oomph.

Also songs often have the habit of feeling like they are building up to something, before flatlining somewhat. Babylon is a good example, it's a good song, with a nice hook and nice melody, but it really feels like it needs a climax or crescendo, some sense of resolution or release, but instead it just stays on one level.

Lyrically he’s capable of some nice lines and sentiments, Babylon does have some good imagery, but he’s also guilty of rather prosaic and generic turns of phrase, often in the same song - ‘sail away with me, what will be, will be’ etc. It’s probably telling that the best lyric on the album is the cover of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.

The strongest songs are the bigger singles - Please Forgive Me, This Year’s Love and Babylon are all perfectly well constructed catchy bits of middle of the road folk-ish pop music. My Oh My, White Ladder and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye are decent too, and despite the lack of dynamism I wouldn’t say any of the songs are terrible - the whole thing is just a fine, if slightly snoozy listen. Taking that into account a 3 feels fair.
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Playlist submission: Babylon

Red Dirt Girl
I’m a sucker for late career albums like this, when commercial and career expectations are low and there’s a sense of nothing to prove. Having said that, there are some absolute stinkers in that field, but thankfully this is not a stinker at all, rather it hits all the right marks - tasteful, restrained, and with a melancholic sense of lives lived and experience gained - a combination that works for me.

And it particularly works when it's in the country/folk/rock genre like this, and it especially works with someone like Emmylou Harris with her fantastic, gentle, evocative voice and slightly spectral presence. The only danger with this could be whether the late 90s production and drum loops are too prominent and distracting, but for the most part that’s not an issue, aside from the odd guitar part here and there.

In fact the drum loops give it a nice shuffley and ethereal rhythmic sense, and I really like how they have woven in middle eastern textures, sounds and instruments with those drum loops and the country folk guitars to make a very immersive and atmospheric listen.

The Pearl is a lovely ruminative opener about hardship and endurance. The christian imagery may be a bit on the nose but it's a great track hinting at the themes and sounds of the album. Michelangelo’s country folkness and vivid imagery are great, but her voice really elevates it. I Don’t Want to Talk About it Now is excellent, notwithstanding the slightly egregious wah wah/guitar effects, a great groove, melody and atmosphere. Tragedy has a lovely melody and another great vocal, as well as a very delicate and sensitive piano part helping echo the feelings of lost love. More loss and sadness permeates Red Dirt Girl, one of the more obviously country tracks, but again it’s a great little track.
More religiousness on My Baby Needs a Shepherd, and I like the interpolation of Too ra loo, giving it a hymnal, lullaby quality and Ethan John’s baritone guitar is very tasteful too.

Further spectral and ethereal atmospherics on Bang the Drum Slowly. The echoing percussion could be cheesy, but it works with the floating piano and musical texture.
Some of it reminds me of The Rising, the Springsteen album, from a year or two after, which makes sense considering he appears on Tragedy and shares some of the middle eastern sounds.

I love that Kate McGarrigle makes an appearance on J’Ai Fait Tout, it definitely has a very folk inspired melodic sense. The skittering drums work well, again they could easily feel out of place and too dated, but they are sympathetically arranged, giving it a nice tumbling rhythmic pattern.

One Big Love is a great track, an excellent catchy melody and I love the organ in the intro. The lyric about letting go and taking chances is great, apart from the Monkey/Funky rhyme, which feels bad in a particularly middle aged way. Hour of Gold is excellent too, her gentle and evocative vocal is especially great with the longing and loss described in the words.

My Antonia I’m not totally sure about, it’s a decent song but I don’t think Dave Matthews voice really suits the folk-ishness of the song or complements her voice that well, and is probably the one time the production moves from tasteful into vaguely distracting blandness. Fortunately Boy From Tupelo follows, a great track with nicely atmospheric guitar and a little tack piano part, the rolling percussion illustrating the keep on moving theme of the words.

You could argue that there is a similarity to a lot of the tracks, perhaps feeling a little samey. I think that’s a fair argument, although its a sound and style I’m very on board with, and it also might be a consequence of it suffering from a bit of CD bloat. 55 mins is pretty long for 12 songs, a bit of judicious editing of song length to tighten it up would probably be beneficial.

But overall it is delicately haunting and atmospheric listen, with her clear, beautiful, gentle and expressive voice, and it is a great example of a mature, late career album, similar to some of Springsteen’s later albums or something like Oh Mercy, with it’s reverb heavy production and slowed down tempos.

Really not sure whether its 4 or 5 - I listened all day yesterday and this morning and didn’t really want to turn it off, and it will definitely go into rotation. As always I’ll go with the higher score - lifes too short to be parsimonious with an entirely arbitrary and subjective scoring system
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Playlist submission: One Big Love

Pretzel Logic
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number kicks things off with a classic SD pop song, the piano riff, the jazzy acoustic underneath, the rippling jazz inflected piano in the verses before ceding to a great soft rock chorus with interesting melodic lines - like a lot of their great songs it just feels right, meticulously constructed, crafted and considered. There are 70s cop show theme vibes to Night by Night with the chugging guitar, but it's better than that, again their sense of easy melody elevating it and the acerbic lyric taking it to a different space.

Any Major Dude Will Tell You is a lovely track, the unhurried melody and beautifully soft arrangement giving it charm and poignancy. A clear SD classic. Barrytown shares some similarities in the verses with Tell Me What You See, but its a great track, rolling along with the piano line with a great middle eight. Apparently it’s a backhanded compliment to Dylan, but I don’t quite get that.

East St. Louis Toodle-Oo feels like a vague misstep, as if they wanted to highlight their already clear jazz influence. It’s not necessarily terrible, but if it wasn’t on the album you wouldn’t miss it.

Jim Gordon’s drumming is excellent on Parker’s Band and that repeating hook is great, giving a sense of release, echoing the joy found in Charlie Parker’s music in the lyrics. I like the switch to a more orchestral arrangement on Through with Buzz, you can hear bits of Eleanor Rigby, but filtered through their hands it gives it its own unique feel, and at 90 seconds long it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Along with Rikki and Any Major Dude, Pretzel Logic is the other ‘big’ song on here. Again one of those songs where every decision feels right, from arrangement to instrumentation, feeling like a classic from the first time you hear it. The horns giving a bit of rhythmic propulsion are great.

Love the country-jazz guitar on With a Gun, and there are some great harmonics on the transitions between the verses and the refrain. That piano line in Charlie Freak moving around the vocal line is lovely, catching the ear, but not distracting from the song's structure. Monkey in your Soul is great in how it pulls the rug from under you, as from the opening notes you might feel like it would be a standard blues rock song, but its stabbing rhythm and electric piano gives it an unexpected quirkiness. Great track.

The 34 minutes breeze by and if you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be handing out 5 stars willy-nilly for Steely Dan albums and all the associated jazziness of them I would have looked ASKANCE, but here we are.

As much as I love Can’t Buy A Thrill, I think this is a step above, the arrangements tightened and the craftsthemship dialled up, and it sounds great, that 70s analogue warmth to the production. It can only be a 5.
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Playlist submission: Any Major Dude Will Tell You

Darkdancer
It’s been a long time since Les Rhythmes Digitales happened to drift across my transom. I remember liking the song Jacques Your Body back at Uni, as it was on that Citroen advert. I think I also had it on a free CD from Q or Select or something.

Aside from that song I don’t know a great deal about LRD, and didn’t realise until today that he’s not French and that his real name is Stuart Price.

And I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. It has some of that Chicago House influence as on Jacques Your Body, but also has lots of great 80s synth, funk and disco influences too. It may not have quite the naked pop ambition of say Fatboy Slim, or be as interesting or as consistent as the Chemical Brothers, but it probably sits at the Venn diagram of those two - a great, fun, danceable and catchy electronica record. It made me think of the Basement Jaxx record we had last month too, with some similar disco and funk touches, but this I think is much better - the grooves are catchier and the energetic and infectious charm keeps it driving it forward.

Dreamin’ kicks things off with a burst of squelchy synth and a soulful vocal/sample hinting at Chicago House but with added 80s-ness. I love that little riff on Music Makes You Lose Control, reminds me of Barbarism Begins at Home a bit, but it’s great, it’s circularity feeding the groove, bit of a banger

Soft Machine feels like a slight misstep, the vocal doesn’t quite suit it, but it does feel a bit like something from the Contino Sessions by Death in Vegas, which came out later the same year.

Hypnotise is a great return to form though - Dr Who by way of the Eurythmics with a great repetitive insistent groove, excellent track. I vaguely remember (Hey You) What’s that Sound?, taking Skee-lo’s interpolation of For What it’s Worth and turning it into a synth laden electro dance bop. Great track.

Take a Little Time is a banging early 80s throwback, feeling like something the Pointer Sisters or Chaka Khan might have done. ‘Wahahahahahahah’ - love that keyboard sound on From: Disco to: Disco, another hypnotic banger. Brothers goes back to the Chicago House/techno well, may not be as strong as some of the other tracks but the bass is great and it still gets your head nodding.

Jacques Your Body is still great, that slap/funk bassline is very catchy and very air ‘thumbable’. About Funk is interesting, the synth hook that appears halfway through takes it into a different world, more ethereal and spacey, making it more interesting than the first minute or so might indicate

Sometimes is unexpectedly great. He’s obviously a very skilled arranger writer to make very listenable tracks out of repeating motifs and phrases, but this shows a degree of songwriting craft and is an excellent track, with the perfect throwback vocalist. Damaged People, with the same vocalist as Soft Machine, is slightly better than that track, although still not quite sure it works that well.

Overall though, this feels like a bit of an energetic, infectious, overlooked gem from the late 90s - other bands ploughing a similar furrow might have been more successful, but this is a great listen. It also feels ahead of its time, pre-saging a lot of the mid to late 00s electroclash and house stuff like Simian Mobile Disco, Mylo, Justice and all those Kitsune Maison compilations, taking influences from the history of electronic and synth driven music and making a great dance album. Easily a 4.
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Playlist submission: Jacques Your Body

Chris
I’m aware of a few of Christine & The Queens songs, as he is a bit of a 6 Music darling and I love Girlfriend, but I’ve never ventured into one of his albums.

I really liked the French language version, I think the vocals sound better in his native tongue, but the mixed English/French version is, obviously, easier to understand and much more accessible.

Comme Si is kind of what I’d expected from being familiar with Girlfriend, a very 80s MJ influenced synth pop song, with the keyboard bass, disco-ish guitar and electronic drum kit sound. Great opener.

Girlfriend is still excellent, a brilliant bit of 80s revisionism, very catchy with a great hook and sound. I really like the verse melody on The Walker and its simple arrangement is very nice. Doesn’t Matter, while fine, doesn’t quite elevate itself from its 80s derivative-nes in the way the other songs do

5 Dollars is great though, the melody and the piano work really well together. Goya Soda is excellent as well, I love the ‘big’ synth riff and it has a great atmosphere and melody. Very nice track.

Damn (What Must a Woman Do) is another good track, the synth riff is hypnotic, although it's probably missing a catchier chorus. What’s Her Face feels like rather generic 2010s synth pop, too close to the likes of Lorde, pulling the album out of its largely successful 80s groove. Feel So Good is a return to form, a nice modernised 80s pop song.

Make Some Sense is excellent though, I can’t place what the synth line reminds me of, but it’s a big 80s song. Anyway it’s a great atmosphere with a nice floating and delicate vocal. The Stranger really grew on me, the halting synth pattern and very 80s percussion is great and another really good vocal

It’s kind of what I expected that Lorde album to be, but better and much more listenable - this is superior modern 80s influenced synth pop, with some great hooks and more substance than the obvious inspirations might indicate. Her take and observations on how he is perceived and how she sees her own gender is really interesting and makes for some great music. It’s right on the boundary of 3 and 4, but looking back at what I’ve written above there are more songs I liked than not, so I’ll go 4.
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Playlist submission: Girlfriend

Sound of Silver
I’m very familiar with this album, one of my favourites by one of my favourite ‘modern’ bands. I listened to it A LOT when it came out and I still return to it pretty regularly. I cannot believe it's actually 17 years old.

Its influences are worn very obviously on its sleeves, with James Murphy clearly magpie-ing from Bowie, Can, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, dance, disco, house, new wave, punk. And while those influences are easily identifiable, they are shepherded together to make something that, although not totally unique, is definitely a great synthesis of all of the above in its own nice

The triumvirate of North American Scum, Someone Great and All My Friends is superb, the cornerstone and heartbeat of the album, and encapsulates what I love about LCD Soundsystem. The new wave/punk edged North American Scum with its wryly amusing lyric, the hypnotic drive and build around the rhythmic and pounding keyboard and sincerity of the lyric of All My Friends. But best of all, Someone Great, which I absolutely love, with its pulsing keyboards and noises and its vaguely cryptic lyric about loss, emotionally resonant yet slightly out of touch.

Either side of that, I love the layering of Get Innocuous! and the insistency of the groove and drum pattern. I love the drum sound on Time to Get Away, and again the groove is great, with the little riff/break for the chorus and angular/new wave guitar.

Brilliant bass groove on Us V Them, I love the cowbell and the breakout into the ‘Block out the sun’ part. Watch the Tapes is yet another great, mesmeric groove with a great beat and another sardonic lyric - 2 new wave dance bangers.

I’ve always liked the lyric of Sound of Silver and the song is a great dazed and moodily atmospheric track built around those words and some excellent keyboard noises. New York I Love You is a great closing track after all the dance driven grooves, with it’s more conventional arrangement and almost doo-wop verses.

I love this album, from the sound of the drums and keyboards to the vocal style, the wry lyrics and the fantastic danceable grooves interspersed with genuinely emotionally impactful moments. It’s very easy for this type of album to fall into the trap of hipsterish imitation, but the fact that James Murphy is a bit older than his peers and his undoubted skill as a synthesist of his influences makes this a cut above, and one of my favourite albums of the last 20 years. Easy peasy 5.
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Playlist submission: Someone Great
Ps, the album after this, This Is Happening is also excellent, and if you like it it’s worth checking out their other 2 albums. The first one is a little rough around the edges but has some great tracks and American Dream, their last one, has a slightly older, more mature feel to it. The 45:33 mix is also good, some of the musical moments and parts in that got pulled into Sound of Silver.

Apple Venus Volume 1
I do quite like XTC, but am only really familiar with Drums and Wires because of Making Plans for Nigel, so this was a new one on me.

It’s a genuinely fascinating listen. And in fact I think it’s a bit of a gem, with some undoubted high points, and a very singular and engaging sensibility. You can hear echoes of people like Vaughan Williams and Elgar, and The Beatles and Brian Wilson in the orchestral arrangements and ambition. I really like the folklore-ish themes running through it, and it feels very connected to its Englishness, similar to Let England Shake, although obviously musically very different. I guess one sticking point might be the thin, nasally tone of the vocals on some tracks. It feels like sometimes a richer, fuller voice might work better with the themes and ideas here.

River of Orchids has a bit of that - I love the almost pizzicato strings and the horns, the melody is great and the overall feel is very English and idiosyncratic, however that nasal quality is a bit distracting in parts.

I’d Like That is a very nice bit of acoustic folkiness, building on the pastoral theme with an added touch of romantic excitement. Easter Theatre is excellent, a great example of combining a paganistic sense of Englishness with those orchestral arrangements. The horns are superb, very George Martin-eque

Knights in Shining Karma has some strong White Album vibes, particularly in the intro, evoking Dear Prudence and Julia with its folk guitar pattern, but I really like the atmosphere of gentle melancholy it conjures. Frivolous Tonight, although the upbeatness is welcome it does have a strong 80s TV sitcom theme feel to it, and it’s one of the weaker tracks for me.

Greenman, however, is my highlight, the eastern-esque strings with the folkish triplets and flute, and the lyric about one of the cornerstones of folklore is very evocative and overall it’s a superb song. Your Dictionary is a great bit of caustic bitterness tacked onto a spare and thoughtful arrangement of guitar, piano and strings, before blossoming into that fully fleshed out outro. It’s a nice contrast to some of the more outward looking and pastoral themes and lyrics elsewhere.

A lot of Sgt Pepper era vibes to Fruit Nut, and a great track, the upbeat nature working really well, in the way Frivolous Tonight’s doesn’t. I Can’t Own Her really does suffer from the nasal vocal thing, even if musically it’s good, with an interesting layering of instruments.

Harvest Festival perhaps falls a bit close to being something you’d have to sing at a primary school Harvest Festival, because your slightly hippy-ish teacher loves XTC and because it’s very literally about going to a school Harvest Festival. I’m not as keen on The Last Balloon’s melody, even if it does cast a suitably atmospheric climax to the album.

It’s a bit annoying having to listen on YouTube with adverts disrupting the flow, and if this was on streaming properly I’d put it into rotation as I thought it was a great album and a real grower. Musically and thematically ambitious with a strong sense of its own vision, but it does have a bit of unevenness in places, and the nasal vocals do just nag away - I can’t quite help but think the album is diminished somewhat by them. It’s close to a 5, but I’ll settle on a solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Green Man

I’m Your Man
I’ve listened to this 4 times today and I can’t work out if I like it or not. Lyrically I know I like it, there are some superb lines, couplets or whole songs, like Everybody Knows (a song I was previously aware of from its use in Palm Springs) or First We Take Manhattan. And vocally he sounds great, that older more gravelly tone with a nice hint of creepy sleaziness is excellent. But musically I just don’t know what's going on. Kudos to him for trying something different to update his sound, but in the way that Graceland sounds of its time but timeless, this sounds of its time but very dated. On some listens the hyper 80s keyboards and stacked backing vocals sound great against his voice, a nice, pleasingly odd contrast. And then on the next listen the whole thing sounds cheesy as all balls.

I suppose it really comes down to whether the songs that work outweigh the ones that don’t. First We Take Manhattan, I think this is just about on the right side of the line. I like the Pet Shop Boys feel of it and keyboards, despite being a bit cliche, I like alot. The melody and vocal is great, very Nick Cave, but the backing vocals are pretty cheesy and rather obtrusive. I’m not entirely sure about Ain’t No Cure for Love. It has that egregious sax in the intro and a structure lifted almost completely from Every Breath You Take, but I do like the chorus and the lyric. Could go either way, this one.

Everybody Knows, I think is great though, excellent lyric and melody and nice pulsing rhythm and keyboard and string riff. The oud is great and the backing vocals work well with the song. I’m Your Man is pretty successful too, despite the keyboard solo.

Take this Waltz I don’t think is great. He does some waltz time stuff on his first album and its nice, but this doesn’t sound good. But its not as bad as Jazz Police, an almost Partridgean level exercise in terribleness, with its pitch shifted keyboards and awful backing vocals.

I like I Can’t Forget, the pedal steel giving it a nice touch of human warmth and country edge working well with the chorus and backing vocals. Tower of Song is great, the more restrained instrumentation and nicely arranged backing vocals give it an excellently off kilter atmosphere, again with a great vocal and lyric.

So overall it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. When it works well like on Everybody Knows and Tower of Song its excellent, but when it’s bad, as with Jazz Police, it’s pretty awful. But, despite that, I still found it fascinating and I certainly didn’t get bored of listening to it. Therefore it’s a bit tricky to rate, it’s inconsistency would make it a 3, but it is weirdly intriguing and I admire him jumping wholeheartedly into a new sound. And the lyrics and vocals are great, and there are a couple of very good songs. I’ll just tip it into a 4 on that basis.
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Playlist submission: Everybody Knows

Revolver
What can you say that hasn’t been said a hundred times before and a hundred times more artfully? It’s much a perfect Beatles album and therefore just a perfect album. I’ve heard it so many times but I can pretty much listen to it on repeat endlessly, like I have all day today.

Like all of their albums it's amazing how it can sound different every time you listen, and songs you'd previously only liked suddenly become your favourites. For a long time I wasn’t keen on Yellow Submarine, but hearing its genesis on the box set a couple of years back has changed my perspective. For some reason I didn’t appreciate She Said, She Said for a long while, but again, now it's one of my favourites on the album (and I didn’t realise until recently that Paul doesn’t play on it at all)

It’s kind of interesting that this is the start of the fracturing of the 4 headed monster, pre-empting what happened on the White Album, with each person’s song very much their own thing. You can feel George wanting to get his songs heard, Paul is at the start of his man about town supremely confident songwriting period, and while John is descending into LSD befuddlement, he still comes up for air occasionally to deliver some incredible songs that really make the album what it is. He only has 5 or 6 songs, but I’m Only Sleeping, She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows are absolute cornerstones of the album, and without them the whole atmosphere and quality of the record would be hugely diminished.

I’m also constantly amazed by their ability to synthesise sounds with the ideas and themes of the songs, without heavy-handedness or gaucheness or literalness, as on how the piano is slightly off-key on I Want to Tell You, signifying George’s uncertainty in the words, and the horn on For No One encompassing the wistfulness and realism of people drifting apart. Also George’s backing vocals on the chorus, singing Yellow Submarine on one note (in the right channel on the 220 stereo mix), giving a very welcome air of vague cynical detachment, as a counterpoint to the exuberance of the song. There are countless examples of this throughout the album, and it’s surely one of those things that consistently sets them apart from their peers.

I know this is also when George started to fall out of love with the guitar, but some of his parts on here are incredible, not necessarily just for technical complexity, but for feel and most importantly for unusualness, some of the stuff hes does on She Said She Said and Dr Robert are quite odd in a brilliant way. Paul’s bass playing on Rubber Soul is fantastic, but this is at another level. That little groove behind the ‘if you drive too far…’ lines, and the whole of I’m Only Sleeping is just unbelievably good, great in it’s own right but the bass floating around the upper register suits the songs superbly. And Ringo of course is as ever superb - Tomorrow Never Knows (and Rain as part of the sessions) are incredible bits of futuristic drumming, but he’s amazing throughout, I love the deceptively simple pattern on I’m Only Sleeping, the gentle rolls and jazzy feel on Here, There and Everywhere. The into roll and slightly disjointed pattern on She Said She Said is so good, both technically and as a service to the song. He also has that brilliantly tight Stax/Al Jackson pattern and sound on Dr Robert.

As with all their albums is also sequenced brilliantly, the groove of Taxman followed by the deeply resonant Eleanor Rigby, followed by the dreamlike and hazy I’m Only Sleeping, then followed by the Indian sounds of Love You To. That must have been mindblowing in 1966. And then you get possibly Paul’s finest ballad, tender, warm, touching before the schoolyard singalong of Yellow Submarine. Then an Indian/LSD influenced guitar pop banger to finish off the first side.

A sunny bit of barrelhouse rolling piano kicks off side 2 before that great riffing with And Your Bird Can Sing, followed by the amazing For No One, running Here There and Everywhere close, not quite a ballad, but a quite incredible bit of baroque pop with a superb lyric, before we get some more drone influenced guitar pop and then part 2 of if I Needed Someone, with its uncertain and hesitant lyric counterpointing brilliantly with the declarative and unequivocal effusiveness and exuberance of Got to Get You Into My Life, which in turn acts as a brilliant bit of melodic rnb/pop before the experimental and psychedelic masterpiece of Tomorrow Never Knows. This is possibly my favourite Beatles song and I would love to go back to 1966 and hear this album for the first time and then hear this song at the end, what must that have been like?

I oscillate between Revolver, Sgt Pepper the White Album and Abbey Road as my favourites, but this is probably the one I listen to most and if I had a type of pistol to my head this would be my one Beatles album.

Something the Beatles music does, and this album in particular does, is make me think everything’s going to be ok, that if something like this can exist then the world is a good place. That four people made this album and brought so much joy, happiness, curiosity and colour to the world and to my life it makes me feel so incredibly hopeful and touched.

I’ll stop now, as this is more a patchwork of different thoughts than a review. Obviously a 5.
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Playlist submission: Tomorrow Never Knows

This Year’s Model
Nice to have this after My Aim is True last week, you can hear the development between the two and it really showcases what was great about Costello in this perido. The Attractions definitely have a rougher, more punk edge, eschewing some of the more 50s touches for a spikier and more aggressive, more angular new wave energy, which suits the mean spirited sentiments of the songs.

There’s some very good bass playing and I love the drum sound that Nick Lowe gets on here, that echoey tom is great, particularly on This Year’s Girl and Pump It Up. And Steve Nieve’s keyboards are excellent, and really make the album what it is, the organ on The Beat is fantastic and you can hear echoes of that almost seaside sound in Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife.

It’s a great set of songs too, although written around the same time as My Aim is True they feel more developed and considered with better arrangements and some great catchy melodies.

No Action has a similar function to Welcome to the Working Week on My Aim is True, a short sharp burst of energy, setting the snarky tone of the record. This Year’s Girl is great, with that Ringo-esque drum pattern and the taut angular guitar. I love The Beat, great chorus and that keyboard pattern.

Pump it Up is of course an absolute stomping banger, Subterranean Homesick Blues-esque in its rapid fire verses, great keyboard riff and just a great song. Little Triggers is another superb track, harking back to some of the doo-wop and 50s influences on My Aim is True, but another truly great song and highlight of the album.

You can hear The Beatles in the opening riff to You Belong To Me, before the keyboard kicks the pace up and it becomes a taut little rocker.

Hand in Hand had a nice gentleness to it’s opening, recalling Alison, before the drums kick in and it settles in with some great organ and guitar and catchy chorus.

I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea is another absolute banger, with that great spiky riff and rhythm echoing the lyric. Love the drums, bass and acoustic guitar on Lip Service, and that piano picking out the way to the chorus is great.

Living in Paradise has more fantastic keyboards, dripping between the lines like honey through the gaps in the floorboards. Excellent song. Lipstick Vogue is also great, with that almost East Asian sounding intro before the frantic bass driven edgy verses. I love the atmospheric intro to Night Rally, echoing the unseen oppressive theme of the song, some superb playing and and the abrupt cut out is great.

I know Big Tears and Radio Radio are additions on the re-issue but they are also great tracks, love Mick Jones’s guitar on Big Tears and Radio Radio of course is another classic early Costello single. Love the version from Saturday Night Live

My Aim is True was and is a 5 and this is better, so it can only be a 5. Great album, no weak tracks and right at the peak of the Attractions and Costello’s fraught, tense, energetic yet melodic powers. Have always loved the cover too.
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Playlist Submission: Pump it Up

Lady in Satin
Interesting reading about this after listening through it for the first time, as I don’t know much about her whole career outside the big songs, and it definitely felt like her voice didn’t have the sweetness and tone I’d expected. I guess drinking pints of neat vodka all day will do that.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that her voice sounds cracked and careworn in places, as it tells its own story and gives the album an edge and counterpoint to what could be a bit of a syrupy album, with its slightly Disney-esque arrangements.

Every song pretty much follows that pattern of slightly schmaltzy arrangements all elevated by her vocals, but, to my ear, there is a variance to the quality of the material, meaning that when the songs are good this is excellent, but when the songs are average it’s merely good.

I’m A Fool to Want You, You Don’t Know What Love Is, I Get Along Without You Very Well, You’ve Changed, But Beautiful all stand out as the highlights, particularly I’m A Fool to Want You’s vocals, and I Get Along Without You Very Well, which is just an excellent song.

Kind of tricky to rate, I enjoyed the whole thing, and her vocals are uniformly excellent, but some songs are definitely of lesser quality and the arrangements do get a bit cloying and repetitive. I’d love to give it a 4 for it’s vocal, but it’s really a high 3. Hmm, I’ll tip over to 4 just as her vocals deserve it and for those highlights.
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Playlist submission: I Get Along WIthout You Very Well

Meat is Murder
I do have a bit of a blind spot with The Smiths. Despite how great Johnny Marr is and how much I love a lot of their songs I’ve never actually listened to one of their albums, finding that, for me, Morrissey’s voice works better in small doses of 5 or 6 songs, so I’ve just stuck to listening to their greatest hits in chunks.

So because of that I’m not sure where this sits in their canon and how it compares to their other albums. I very much enjoyed listening today though, even though, despite there being some excellent songs, my sense is that it may not be their strongest collection of tracks?

The Headmaster Ritual is a great track, what I imagine when I think of them, great jangling guitar, superb rhythmic and melodic bass and an excellent lyric full of pithy observations of anc criticisms of the education system. Rusholme Ruffians is great too, love the rockabilly feel and the guitar figure.

Lovely guitar on I Want the One I Can’t Have, and although it's a solid track it perhaps feels a little Smiths by numbers. I like What She Said’s slightly more aggressive guitar, but like I Want the One I Can’t Have, while good, it isn’t perhaps as strong as some of the other tracks.

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore I know from the greatest hits and of course is a great track, probably the strongest on the album. Love the acoustic and the deeper resonating bass sound. Super lyric too.

Nowhere Fast, again a good song, but feels a level below the highlights on here. Well I Wonder is superb though, one of those great mournful sounding Smiths songs.

What a bassline on Barbarism Begins at Home and love the chugging disco/funk guitar. Very very catchy. Meat is Murder is a bit dirgey, I presume intentionally to match the tone of the lyric, but it’s not totally successful.

Like I say I’m not really aware how this sits in the arc of their discography, but it’s a very good album with some superb highlights, and as you’d expect its full of fantastic guitars and arrangements by Marr and excellent bass from Andy Rourke. However its perhaps not quite what I’d expect a 5 star Smiths album to be, so I’ll go for a 4.
Playlist submission: That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

Paranoid
Loud, heavy and swampy and bluesy but with grooves and melody - if all metal sounded like this it would be great, but it took this as a starting point and unfortunately ended up all dull and boring and generally a bit rubbish.

Obviously Tony Iommi rightly gets credit for his riffing style and guitar sound, but I didn’t really realise how great a bassist Geezer Butler is and also what a good drummer Bill Ward is. Underneath the riffing there are a lot of great bass lines and bass melodies, and I guess that combined with the drums is what gives the music a groove and slipperiness that sets it apart and makes it still sound good today. Also Ozzy has a very expressive voice at this point, with a bluesy edge and without too much over the top screaming.

War Pigs is excellent, that muddy groove and riffing keeping it moving ever onwards with a suitably daft and portentous lyric. Paranoid of course a classic, a superb riff and a great melody.

Planet Caravan is surprisingly supple, a kind of psychedelic groove but with a vaguely oppressive feeling sitting just out of picture. Iron Man the third of the classic 3 on here, again a brilliant riff, again daft lyrics, but again a catchy melody and it's a fun, moody rocker and you can hear its echoes in all the metal that came after it.

Electric Funeral doesn’t quite reach those heights but is another good song, great bass and a suitable ominous riff and hook. Hand of Doom is great, another atmospheric intro, with a bass that recalls both War Pigs and Iron Man and more great Iommi riffing. Again one that echoes what came after it. Rat Salad has more fun riffing and settles into a nice groove, even if it’s not quite as strong as other tracks. Fairies Wear Boots, I like a lot and it feels very emblematic of their style - long, time signature changes, great bass playing interspersed with heavy guitar riffing and a suitably fantastical lyric and title.

Overall I thought this was a great listen. War Pigs, Paranoid and Iron Man are toweringly good bits of heavy swampy blues rock/early metal, and while the rest of the tracks don’t quite reach that level its all still very good, ranging from atmospheric bluesy psychedelic jams like Planet Caravan, to genuinely enjoyable riffing like Fairies Wear Boots. Comfortable 4.
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Playlist submission: Any one of War Pigs, Paranoid or Iron Man, I’ll go War Pigs

Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
I listened to this a lot when it came out, mainly on the strength of This Mess We’re In, which I loved. It really reminds me of coming home from Japan for Christmas in 2000. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, so I’m glad it came up.

Big Exit, is a cracking start, great lyrics, kind of punkish and new wave but accessible. Good Fortune is similar, a bit less aggressive perhaps, but a great song with a great hook and an evocative lyric. A Place Called Home is excellent too, from relatively simple instrumentation and arrangements she manages to make very engaging and interesting songs.

One Line has a kinship with those first 3 songs, but again is great, with a vaguely unsettling atmosphere. Beautiful Feeling is fantastic, has a very folky feel, like the Unthanks, with those great backing vocals from Thome Yorke. Superb song.

The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore is the kind of spiritual centre of the album, a great melody with an undeniable edge and a searching, impressionistic lyric sketching loneliness and isolation in a big city. This Mess We’re In, still great, a lovely melody with a sad and resigned feeling and two great vocals from them both.

You Said Something is another great melody and hook - again the strummed guitar and minimal instrumentation conjures up an atmospheric and intriguing song. Kamikaze has that aggressive punky edge to it, and nice unhinged-ness suiting the title and coming after two pretty pop melodies

This is Love I really remember from when it came out, love the swooping riff and that great tinkly piano. Another great melody and lyric too. Horses in my Dream, feel like the title is nod to Patti Smith, who she obviously shares a commonality with, but it’s a great and haunting low tempo ballad, with an edgy folkiness to it. Her voice sounds great on this one too. We Float is great too, a sense of ending and coming to terms with the end of a relationship, with that hazy drifting chorus with that superb melody. Hidden tracks were such a CD thing, and This Wicked Tongue is a good aggressive and angry song, but feels kind of unnecessary now. Doesn’t detract from the quality of the album at all though.

This has reminded me what a great album this is, kind of amazing how engaging and interesting each song is, despite it in the main being relatively simple drums, strummed guitars and bass with minor additional instrumentation (although from my limited understanding there are some interesting chords happening). Like Let England Shake, I can see how she might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and how if you don’t buy into her style you probably wonder what all the fuss is about, but I think she’s fantastic and like Let England Shake this is an easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Still love This Mess We’re In, but I’ll go Beautiful Feeling