Reviews by ikejiri

Ray of Light
Another album that has a certain feel to the sound, this time of the late 90s, and while not all of it fully stands up there are some belters on here and a decent number of very good supporting album tracks.

Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Frozen, The Power of Goodbye and Ray of Light are superb, particularly the latter, the Cure-esque guitar intro giving way to some still great sounding pre millennial electronic squiggles, as it builds an irresistible momentum. And Drowned World/Substitute for Love’s hazy gurgling and bleeping work brilliantly as it expands into a more conventional bit of widescreen rock/pop. Frozen’s crackling ghostliness is also still superbly evocative nearly 30 years later.

Elsewhere Swim is great and I like Candy Perfume Girls Garbage-esque dancey rock oddness, and I kind of came round to Skin’s slightly over egged tribal beats. Nothing Really Matters is another nice burbling track, and I liked the mystical bollocks and Bollywood touches of Shanti/Ashtangi as well as the skittery pseudo lullaby of Little Star

It might be one of her best albums vocally. She doesn’t have the most technical of voices, but it's full of personality and character, and on here she affects a lovely delicate tone and delivery, amplifying the etherealness to match William Orbit’s trip hop inflected ambient electronica production.

It does however suffer from CD bloat, with a few too many songs hanging around unnecessarily to the 5 minute mark, stretching the whole thing to a slightly unnecessary 66 minutes. Combined with a few songs that aren’t as engaging as others I think puts this in the 4s.
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Playlist submission: Ray of Light

Whatever
I only really know Aimee Mann through the Magnolia soundtrack, but have never listened to any of her albums.

It certainly has an early mid 90s feel to the production and overall style, but it's clear she has a great melodic sensibility as well as a winning turn of phrase.

Whether that is sustained across the whole album is arguable, but overall I enjoyed it. I Should Have Known is a great rollicking opener, and Fifty Years After the Fair continues the polished 70s singer songwriter feel. Could Have Been Anyone is another great melody, and Put Me on Top has a pleasing Byrdsian feel. Stupid Thing is yet another excellent melody, a really lovely song and I really like Jacob Marley’s Chain’s acoustic guitar, harmonium, martial percussion and Dickensian metaphors.

I think it starts to run out of steam a little after that, but I really like the strings on I Know There’s a Word, and it has a nice pared back arrangement compared to some of the more obviously ‘rocking’ songs and I’ve Had it has nice low key melancholy to it.

It’s between a 3 and a 4, I’ll go for a 4, I love her sense for melody and the her assured songwriting.
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Playlist submission: Stupid Thing

Lost Souls
I didn’t particularly enjoy the Last Broadcast when it came up, so I wasn’t really expecting to go back and like this. I certainly preferred it to The Last Broadcast, even if my overall feeling is probably one of ambivalence.

Despite the lack of standout tracks like The Fear or Pounding, it seems to eschew a lot of the mid tempo gloom for a more melodic, slightly psychedelic feel, with elements of The Las and The Verve. Oasis is an obvious touchstone, but oddly it sounds very much like Standing on the Shoulder of Giants in some places, even though they were both released at pretty much the same time.

I do like the waltzy and atmospheric Sea Song, Melody Calls has a nice cosmic catchiness and I like Cedar Room a lot, as it succeeds in reaching for an anthemic psychedelic indie feel. Elsewhere much of it does pass me by, although I do like some of the vocal and instrumental touches, with female voices and more prominent piano, as on Here it Comes.

I gave The Last Broadcast a 2, this is in similar territory. I did like it more but I’m not sure I’ll listen again so I’ll go for a 2 again.
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Playlist submission: The Cedar Room

White Blood Cells
Another great nostalgilisten, along with Is This It and Gold this is a pure recorded onto minidisc album. Indeed if I was still listening to cassettes on my walkman in 2001/02 this would have been on one side and Is This It on the other.

Elephant is great, but is essentially a more polished version of what's on here, so the fuzzed up and thumping, rough cornered directness of this in comparison is great, and for a consciously backwards looking record it still sounds fresh and exciting.

I don’t think there is a weak track really. But one minor criticism is that, despite it being a nice 40 minutes, it feels like 16 tracks is two or three too many. Expecting and Aluminium feel like similar exercises and I Can Learn, relative to the rest of the tracks, feels slightly forgettable.

But outside that it is of course stellar, particularly the first half with Dead Leaves, Hotel Yorba, I’m Finding it Harder and Fell in Love with a Girl making a brilliant opening four songs. Little Room, The Union Forever and The Same Boy make another excellent run to finish the first side. Then We’re Going to Be Friends, Offend in Every Way and I Think I Smell a Rat open the second side brilliantly and I absolutely love This Protector, a kind of Exile influenced gospely bluesy track.

Obviously blues, punk and classic rock are the touchstones, but it struck me that there are some clear Nirvana influences, I Can’t Wait’s opening guitar feels very Kurt Cobain, and there is a slight grunge-iness to some of the guitar sound throughout.

Easily a 5, a brilliant album that reminds me of brilliant times.
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Playlist submission: The Same Boy You’ve Always Known

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira George Gershwin Songbook
There’s such a lovely economy and purity to the Gershwin's songwriting, and they are arranged beautifully by Nelson Riddle, as well as played wonderfully here and it sounds fantastic, with brightness and subtlety. And of course her voice is superb, singing the songs brilliantly, with control, elegance, sweetness, joyfulness and melancholy, bringing out the delicate bittersweet shades of their songwriting.

Obviously it’s a huge amount to digest, and hard to pick out too many specifics even of a couple of listens. I listened each time in chunks, as finding 4 uninterrupted hours is a bit of a task, and as it is a box set rather than an album it’s quite hard to get a handle on it as one reviewable piece of work. But ultimately I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, and looked forward to the next parcel of it each time, and with the songs, arrangements, playing, production and vocals being so great I’m happy to go for a 4.
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Playlist submission: Things Are Looking Up

Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading was one of my dad’s favourites, and I do remember this being in my parents vinyl collection, but I’ve never listened to her.

Bearing in mind he was a fan of Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell you can see a through line to this, and you can also then see a through line from this to some of the singer songwriters of the 80s and 90s.
Down to Zero has a vague echo of Into the Mystic, as well as a bit of Elton John to the rhythmic piano and steel guitar, and it's an excellent mid 70s singer songwriter song. That quality continues over the rest of the album in a superb collection of tasteful and sure footed rock-folk-pop. Help Yourself’s rippling Piano, the bluesy verses and catchy choruses of Water with the Wine, the excellent soulfulness of the fantastic Love and Affection, the jazzy, Joni-esque Save Me.

Join the Boys blues-funk shadings could be a recipe for soft rock disaster, but the steel sounding guitar and shuffle give it a nice Dire Straits vibe. Again People could be cheesy, but the assured nature of her vocals, the tune and the playing make it another enjoyable track. Somebody Who Loves You is a great song, a lovely floating Joni-esque feel to it. Like Fire returns to a bit of a Dire Straits feel, again her confident vocals and melody making it a nice track. Tall in the Saddle is perhaps the only misstep for me, the languid bluesiness of the intro feeling far more heavy legged than the light touch elsewhere on the album.

Alongside some great melodies and songs the playing is excellent, but Glyn Johns production is stellar - the 70s analogue warmth complementary her voice and songs brilliantly. Soundwise it reminds me of Rough Mix, an album he produced for Pete Townsend and Ronnie Lane a few years later.

Initially it went straight in as a 4, but on repeat listens I think its a five, an exemplar of a brilliantly produced mid 70s singer songwriter album, that traces a line from the late 60s right through to the 90s.
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Playlist submission: Love and Affection

Pump
‘Masturbating with a noose’...Oh Stephen Milligan why did you have to listen to this album?

I remember a friend of mine at school loved this album around the early to mid 90s, and it’s easy to why it would appeal to a 12 year old in its basic directness and catchy simplicity.

It’s less appealing as a 47 year old, even though I do really like Love in and Elevator and Janie’s Got a Gun. As everyone knows Tyler is dodge, and Young Lust feels particularly grubby - I wasn’t particularly enamoured with his letchiness on Rocks and Toys in the Attic, but at least he had the excuse of being a mid 20s horn dog in a different time.

Musically, apart from the excellent pop of Love in an Elevator and the pleasing oddness of Janie’s Got a Gun, it’s all pretty rote, a succession of bluesy riffs and shuffles and some not particularly well formed songs. Fortunately the late 80s rock sound does a fair bit of heavy lifting, the largeness and echo-iness helping cover the lack of good songs.

It’s not awful, but it’s not that essential so I’ll go 2.
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Playlist submission: Love in an Elevator

Kollaps
I found this interesting, not necessarily the actual music itself, more about what it made me think about. Why do I listen to music, what’s its purpose, and why do I like certain music and dislike others? And what goes into liking something, what combination of melody, rhythm, harmony, historical context, intent, instrumentation, virtuosity or production makes me like something and what combination of those things doesn’t.

On the one hand this is catnip for people who like music that makes them feel superior to people who like ‘conventional’ music, that ‘difficult’ music makes them a more interesting person. And on the other hand you can say this is pointless, making music abrasive, obtuse and amelodic as an end in itself is just a dead end - anyone can bang a few pipes and make some noise and call it music.

And actually, structurally is this that different from say Music for Airports? Tonally of course it’s very different, caustic and rough vs gentle and soporific, but it is similarly an exercise in repetition, texture and atmosphere.

I suppose whether this is a ‘good’ music or not is kind of beside the point, like art across different mediums, it seems to me to be more about why it sounds like this and to think about why I react to it the way I do. And ultimately I would say it's much more artistically interesting and satisfying than another creatively moribund metal or US punk album, and I would rather listen to this than say And Justice for All again.

So it’s tricky to rate. I’m very glad it came up, I found the whole thing fascinating, with a couple of tracks like Kollaps, Negativ Nein Futuristischer Dub and Gastarbeitdub that I did like. But on a pure musicality level, for someone with my tastes, it’s obviously not that satisfying. But then I do have the urge to say it’s actually good as a deliberately contrarian look how open minded I am bit of reverse snobbery.

So, based on a scale relistenability it’s probably a 2, but I’ll nudge it to a 3, as I liked how it made me think about it.
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Playlist submission: Kollaps

The Stooges
The Stooges albums are a little bit of a blind spot for me, and as their debut I don’t think I was expecting this to be as great as it is. 1969, I Wanna Be Your Dog and No Fun are obviously great, but alongside that there are some superb songs.

I really love We Will Fall, it’s droning, dirge-like feel accented by the mournful strings is superb, feeling well ahead of its time and atypical for what I would expect from a Stooges album, although it does make sense from a John Cale production point of view.

Real Cool Time, Not Right and Little Doll are more what I expected, and I particularly like Little Doll, the relentlessness of the bass and tom toms is excellent. But Ann is another outlier, sounding quite like The Doors for most of, but with a more heroin-y density and sense of foreboding.

I’m not sure it quite reaches the heights of Fun House, and as good as Real Cool Time, Not Right and Little Doll are they aren’t at the level of 1969, I Wanna Be Your Dog, Will Fall, No Fun and Ann, so I’ll go for a high 4.
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Playlist submission: We Will Fall

Welcome to the Afterfuture
Mike Ladd cleans your gutters, Mike Ladd works in logistics, Mike Ladd was a 3rd division right back in the mid to late 80s, Mike Ladd is the life and soul of the golf club Christmas dinner, maybe Mike Ladd plays keyboards in a band with friends doing the odd gig in a pub. Mike Ladd does not make oddball alternative sci-fi accented hip hop.

I really liked this, it feels idiosyncratic while having a few great touchstones, a bit of Dan the Automator, a bit of Wu Tang, a bit of Doctor Octagon, a bit of Mos Def, with a slightly askew point of view and take on some of the standard hip hop tropes and themes.

It has a cracking start, 5000 Miles is excellent, the main riff is a great hook, I love the squelchy synths and the lyrics about a promised future. And the Bollywood samples alongside the synths give Airwave Hysteria a great atmosphere, and it has some great lyrics and turns of phrase like ‘its a magical macrame tapestry cornucopia’. The atmospherics continue with the almost ambient Planet 10.

Bladerunners’ jazzy bass and 50s film score strings accentuate the sci-fi references of the lyrics. I really like the 10 minute odyssey of To the Moon’s Contractor, it's got a kind of slowed down drum and bass beat and a great hazy, unhurried flow, like a hip-hop/electronica take on Music for Airports, particularly with string arrangement towards the end. I Feel Like $100 is excellent, with a nice Strawberry Fields reference, and again a sort of synthy jazziness, reminding me a little of Money Mark. I like the Casio keyboard freakout at the back end of The Animist, and the fraught tension of Red Eye to Jupiter, and the stylophone riff of Welcome to the Afterfuture. Wipe Out on the Wave of Armageddon has a slight Outkast feel to it, with a very Questlove drum pattern. Feb 4 ‘99 has a solemn frustration to it that is very affecting, a great closing track, the strings echoing the Sci-fi-ness of the rest of the album, but with a frank real world set of lyrics.

This is a great discovery and is easily a high 4. I’ll definitely come back to it and am interested in listening to more of his back catalogue.
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Playlist submission: I Feel Like $100

Technique
This is a bit of a funny one for me, arguably their commercial peak, containing some great songs with a winning combination of rock, dance and acid house, but it feels a little like an end point and slightly past their peak artistically, not quite hitting the same levels as Power, Corruption and Lies or Low-Life.

I’ve always felt the breakdown in Fine Time sounds a little like Saturday Night by Whigfield. It’s a great track, one their best and is probably the highlight of the album. All The Way is another strong track, unmistakably New Order in tone and sound. Round Round is also excellent, a very acid influenced intro with a great Bernard Sumner vocal and chorus melody, with some very enjoyable synth noises. Run is another classic NO song, eschewing too much house for a great slice of shiny technopop. I really like the emulator on Mr Disco, and Vanishing Point is a late album highlight, combining acid squelchyness with a detached vocal and a little hint at some of their previous sounds, a bit Blue Monday and a bit of Elegia.

Although its not my favourite of their albums its still great, it often strikes me how many hooks and melodic runs and moments they incorporate, obviously with Peter Hooks bass, but also with the synths and emulators, with guitars used more rhythmically, with only some melodic moments, as on Run or on Dream Attack.

It's on the cusp of 4 and 5, and I’ll settle at a high 4, sitting just below Low Life and P,C&L.
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Playlist submission: Fine Time.

The Suburbs
I think I enjoyed this the most of the AF albums we’ve had, but I’m still not sold on them. Although this seemed to have a bit of verve, pep and pizazz compared to the other two albums it still all feels quite samey to me, and that it’s ultimately they are just repeating a rather pedestrian synthesis of a lot of music I do actually like, for each song.

Having said that there were a few songs that did stand out. Suburban War’s Springsteenian feel followed by the urgent Month of May is a great combination and I really like We Used to Wait, I love the synth part and the backing vocals.

For a band I find rather repetitive and hard to connect with, it does feel very long at an hour, especially as We Used to Wait feels like a natural endpoint, making the Sprawl suite, despite the great synthy perkiness of Sprawl II, and the Suburbs reprieve feel a bit redundant.

It’s an odd one, there are plenty of bands I like who amalgamate musical styles in the same way that I like, but with AF I just struggle, I think it might partially be the lack of character in his voice and a slight fussiness to it. Still though I did like it much more than Funeral and more than Neon Bible, and I genuinely liked a few of the songs so I’ll go for a solid 3.
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Playlist submission: We Used to Wait

Ill Communication
Pure 1st year of Durham vibes with this. Not listened to it in a while, so great to revisit and enjoy the inventiveness, eclecticism and sense of playfulness once again.

Sure Shot, Sabotage and Get it Together are obviously excellent, but there are gems littered throughout. B-Boys Makin’ With the Freaky Freak’s jazzy feel is great, Bobo on the Corner may only be a minute or so but it's a great little groove and Root Down is superb, great drums and bass and wah wah, and it segues brilliantly into Sabotage. Sabrosa is great instrumental, jazzy and loungy, predating and doing it better than a lot of bands later in the decade, the same goes for Ricky’s Theme later on. The Update, Futterman’s Rule, Alright Hear This and Eugene’s Lament are another nice run of jazzy percussion and samples, particularly the latter two.

I’ve always loved Flute Loop but I think I’ve often overlooked Do It, it's a great BB track, again built around some great bass and percussion and some fun lyrics. Even though it’s how they started out I’ve never particularly been a fan of their hardcore punk tracks like Heart Attack Man and Tough Guy, although I like how they add a different tone to an album full of jazzy and soulful bass and beats. The final three tracks round things off nicely, I particularly love the vibe of Transitions.

You could easily argue its 10-15 minutes too long, there are definitely tonal similarities to many of the tracks, but I do love this album, it’s a great listen with some standout tracks and a lot of gems. 5.
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Playlist submission: Sure Shot, Sabotage, Get it Together. It's probably Sabotage, but I have always loved Get it Together

Metal Box
The usual feelings around Lydon remain - insufferable personality capable of some truly excellent and unusual music.

Whereas the first album combined punkish squalls and song structures with some atmospheric dubbiness, this one ditches punkish immediacy almost completely, leaving bass, piercing guitars and sparse melodies with the freeform, cryptic/senseless lyrics.

As a whole listening experience it feels quite disorientating in a great way, with more obvious Bowie, Can and Krautrock atmospheric influences, with the bass of course taking centre stage and its relentless dubby snakingness really is superb.

Despite the cold, spartan feel to it and the tonal similarity across the whole album there are some excellent songs. I’ve always liked Albatross’ deliberate and eerie feel, it feels austere and ghostly as it develops over 10 excellent minutes. The following four tracks, Memories, Swan Lake, Poptones and Careering are also superb. I love the reverby squeekiness on Memories, the little guitar motifs on Poptones and Careering has a dramatic Low quality to it.

No Birds, Graveyard, The Suit and Bad Baby are also great, but a real highlight is the ‘suite’ of Socialist, Chant and Radio 3. I love the weird squelchy synths on Socialist before the buzzing, saw like guitars of Chant and then the rather stately and oddly beautiful Radio 4.

It’s not immediate and there is Lydon to contend with, but I love this album, its an easy 5 stars,
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Playlist submission: Careering

American IV: The Man Comes Around (CD release version)
I always get a bit mixed up with the various American recordings, but this is the one I know best, the towering version of Hurt and that it was the last one released before he died giving it greater prominence.

That version of Hurt is of course masterful. Doom laden and resigned, but hopeful and redemptive and it remains equally brilliant whether in parody or reverence, and given extra weight after his death.

It’s obviously principally composed of covers and interpretations and for the most part they are great, some excellent choices and backed up by superb musicians. Bridge over Troubled Water on first listen might feel a bit on the nose, and I’m not always convinced his and Fiona Apple’s voices work that well together, but it is actually a great version, the harmonium and cello are really rather magical. I’m not really aware of Sting’s original, and knowing it is on Mercury Falling I presume this is a better version, as it's a great track. I love the haunting solemnity of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and the stripped down countrified Personal Jesus is excellent. I don’t think In My Life quite works - it's certainly too on the nose lyrically and thematically and I don’t think it captures the wistfulness inherent in the song. Danny Boy I like though - it's a sentimental song and the gritty wear in his voice really suits it, supported by the church organ. Desperado is great as well, as is the slightly ramshackle pubby singalong of I’m So Lonesome. We’ll Meet Again could have turned into a saccharine misstep, but the country-folk jazz-oboe is a great combination that gives it a bounciness underneath the obviousness of the words.

Of his compositions The Man Comes Around is superb, a sparse arrangement of piano and guitars and a brilliantly biblified set of lyrics, and I really like Tear Stained Letter too.

I’m not sure it quite reaches 5 purely on its own merits - not everything works, there is a slight sense of knowingness with some of the choices and it is perhaps 2 or 3 songs too long. But it is great, the age in his voice and ensemble playing are all truly excellent, and the context of his death does elevate it. And the versions of Hurt and First Time Ever I Saw Your Face are more than enough to nudge it to a 5.
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Playlist submission: There’s a few it could be, but it’s Hurt, obviously.

Odessa
I love the Bee Gees, excellent song writers and performers with that knack of writing melodies and arranging songs that just immediately sound right. I also like that they are a mix of shiny showbiz tits and teeth, stone cold classic songs and then weird albums like this, or like Idea or Trafalgar.

It's clearly made in the wake of Pepper and the Beach Boys, and it definitely feels like a double album in how slowly it unwinds itself, and there is more than a hint of Cups and Cakes era Spinal Tap to it. But it has a sense of woolly ambition that I admire, and it definitely rewards repeat listens even if it is never going to be a top tier album, and is realistically a notch below Trafalgar.

There’s a richness and density to the orchestrations, and for all the very 60s throwaway tracks like Suddenly or Whisper Whisper there are other excellent melodies and songs, some lush and proggy, like the title track, Edison and Seven Seas Symphony some nicely Baroque like Lamplight, some more straight ahead like Black Diamond and I Laugh in Your Face, some country tinted like the excellent Marley Purt Drive, Give Your Best, some more delicate like Melody Fair and the lovely First of May.

It’s really missing an absolute classic though, like How Can You Mend a Broken Heart on Traflagar, and as good as some of the songs on here are, it could do with a really big song to anchor it among the otherwise pleasant drift of songs.

It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4. I was close to giving Trafalgar a 5, and I’m tempted to give this a 4. It’s certainly flawed in its attempt to follow other concept albums, but I like the ambition and the charming sense of not quite meeting that ambition. Combined with some lovely songs and how much I like Barry’s voice I’ll nudge it to 4.
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Playlist submission: Marley Purt Drive

All Mod Cons
I’ve got a cousin called David Watts and I also occasionally play football with a different. I don’t know any Billy Hunts though.

Not only is this choc full of great songs, it's choc full of the typically fantastic and vivid lyrical imagery and phraseology of Weller in this period. Even though it’s just two words, the ‘cataclysmic overtones’ in A Bomb in Wardour Street immediately imprinted themselves on my mind when I first heard it, as does the line about cocaine and ground chalk in the superb To Be Someone. And the entirety of Down in the Tube Station at Midnight is a superb blend of imagery and narrative, the smell of pubs and wormwood scrubs, the cold curry and the flat wine, the warm home life and the cold, lonely tube station.

Musically its top notch too, a real step forward from This is the Modern World, really finding a sweet spot with their post-punk, 60s mod and pop amalgamation, and with Bruce Foxton's punk soul and funk influenced bass lines. And of course it also has the fantastic English Rose, a first indication of the folk and Traffic inspired stuff he’d do later. It’s a lovely melody and set of lyrics and I like the nasal delivery against that pastoral feel. I’ve always liked Mr Clean, lyrically and musically, the guitar line is incredibly catchy and it has a great atmosphere to it. In the Crowd is excellent too. Billy Hunt feels like a Kinks tribute, which is odd considering David Watts is on the album, but they make a great pair. Fly is another hint at Traffic, with its folkish first half and rockier outro, a great track. It’s Too Bad and The Place I Love may not reach the heights of the other songs but they are still excellent songs, The Place I Love an great modish track.

It’s a superb 37 minutes, containing three of their greatest songs in To Be Someone, English Rose and Down in the Tube Station, but also 9 other great songs. Easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Could be To Be Someone but its Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
I do remember being so thrilled when I bought the CD and came home to listen to it for the first time. I’d read and consumed so much about it, and with only 4 songs from it on the Blue album I was excited to hear the songs I had read about or only heard bits of through the Anthology doc. I’m not sure if I had the Anthology 2 album before Pepper, I think perhaps I had Pepper first.

Anyhow I do clearly recall being slightly underwhelmed, particularly compared to the immediacy of Rubber Soul and Revolver. I think that was partly due to the myth looming large in my legend and due to the nature of the songs - neither the pop and rock perfection of just prior or the oddness and weird shapes of the White Album. Some degree or artifice is part of the whole point of it and it took me a while to get attuned to it. And now I of course absolutely love it. I don’t think it ultimately quite supercedes Revolver, but on some occasions, often in Spring and early Summer it is often my go to Beatles album.

I’ve probably heard Lucy in the Sky too many times, although I still love the crack of Ringo’s drums before the chorus, and Paul's bass is customarily excellent, and while Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite is an excellent recording, and is atmospherically appropriate for the old time music hall vibe, and I do still like it, it's probably the only song on the album I’m not sure about. Which on a Beatles record means it's still streets ahead of most bands' best output. It's a bit of pointless conjecture and what if-ery but it would certainly be a candidate for replacement by Strawberry Fields or Penny Lane as part of the original plans.

Highlights for me are Ringo’s drumming on With a Little Help From My Friends, the guitar sound on Getting Better, the music-hall-psychedelic swirl of Fixing a Hole, although Mike Leander’s string arrangement on She’s Leaving Home doesn’t have the deftness and taste of George Martin its a song I’ve come to love, the majesty of Within You Without You, Paul’s Scottish accent in the middle of When I’m 64, the absolute joyfulness of piano break in Lovely Rita, the bass and Paul’s solos in Good Morning Good Morning. And then the apogee of their songwriting partnership and studio production of A Day in the Life. It’s hardly an interesting or unique expression but it really is the most incredible song, John’s vocals, the aahs, Ringo's superb drumming and drum sound, the orchestral climbs, the horn motif, the bass, a monumental amalgamation of songwriting, inventiveness, collaboration, meaningfulness, production, arrangement, imagination and feeling, and is arguably the peak of 20th (and 21st century) popular culture.

The toppermost of the poppermost. 5.
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Playlist submission: A Day in the Life

Dog Man Star
Very similarly to their debut I enjoyed this without being fully sold. Bernard Butler is of course still superb, although I do get a slight sense of him going through the Suede motions on some tracks - but that is probably more a case of me imagining that as I know he left part way through.

There aren’t really any immediate standout songs like Animal Nitrate and Metal Mickey on the debut, and on The 2 of Us, Black and Blue and The Still the Bowie/Anthony Newley balladic idolatry really isn't very appealing, but elsewhere there are some very good songs and moments. We Are the Pigs started to really grow on me on repeat listens, it’s got a heavy moodiness with a lighter vocal tone and line that I like. The Wild Ones, Daddy’s Speeding and New Generation (with some Divine Comedy to it) are good, and the stompiness and scratchy, glam tone of the guitar on This Hollywood Life is great. But my standout is The Power, a lovely melody, snaking bassline, guitar touches and string arrangement, reminding me of latter day Manics a little.

I also like how the whole thing has a nice balance of drama and melodrama, at least musically and melodically, and I can see the appeal of its slightly squalid romanticism, even if I’m not hugely into it. Not sure it quite makes a 4, so I’ll go with a high 3.
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Playlist submission: The Power

Ananda Shankar
The version of Jumpin’ Jack Flash on here was a key track when I ‘used’ ‘to’ ‘DJ’, its absolutely superb in the way a good cover should be, by melding inessential ersatz quirkiness with a superb groove and feel. It always used to get a great reaction, especially when played alongside Merry Clayton’s version of Gimme Shelter. I think it was subsequently used on an advert and the element of surprise disappeared.

Anyhow I ended up buying the album on vinyl, but truthfully I never gave it much attention, although I do remember liking the version of Light My Fire, especially the swimmy sections. I still like that and I like the rest of it alot too. It has a slight novelty edge to it, but it is also pretty unique, and I really love the meld of Indian percussion and sitar, western song structures and instrumentation and early electronic sounds.

Alongside JJF and LMF there are some lovely tracks and sitar playing. Mamata has a lovely, peaceful feeling melody and Matamorphasis’s fraught and percussive Indo-Western psychedelia is excellent. Sagar’s long slow build to a squelchy electronic end is great as well and Raghupati is a superb closing track, feeling like a genuine compound of east and west folk melodies, wrapped up in a hippie sing along with added sitar freak out.

I liked it more and more each time I listened, enough to push it to a 4.
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Playlist submission: Jumpin’Jack Flash