'BBC Radio Theatre, June 2000' by David Bowie

Back around the turn of the milennium, Bowie underwent something of a revival. 'Hours' was released to positive reviews, and he headlined Glastonbury, and as a result, the cash-ins began. The best of these was a double disc set of BBC sessions from the early seventies, and tucked away as a bonus disc came this, a recording from a tiny gig at the BBC Radio Theatre. It's never been released on its own, so it's currently unavaliable, which is a real shame, as it's excellent.

In keeping with his 'singer-songwriter' persona of the time, there's nothing flash about this - just Bowie, his band, and fifteen songs from his past and present. The band is excellent, a mix of old hands (Mike Garson and Earl Slick, who both played with Bowie in the 70s), 90s stalwarts (Sterling Campbell and Gail Anne Dorsey who'd been knocking around since 'Outside' and a sprinkling of fresh blood. Between them, they faithfully recreate songs from as far back as 'The Man Who Sold The World', right through to 'Survive' and 'Seven'. They gel together fantastically - the piano and guitar both get to shine without over-dominating the other.

The great strength of the album is its variety. Bowie doesn't depend on the big hits here - well known stuff like 'Ashes To Ashes' and 'Lets Down' sit comfortably along lesser known tracks like 'This Is Not America' and 'Cracked Actor', and even the less loved nineties era is well represented, which shows admirable pride in his most recent work. The only real criticism is the exclusion of the half-dozen other tracks performed at the same gig.

‘Bambu’ by Dennis Wilson

‘Bambu’ isn’t a real album. Before the death of Dennis Wilson, he was working on a follow up to his only real album, ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’. Last year, when this album was re-released, it came with a second disc containing the tracks that had been recorded as part of this process. As such, it’s not really fair to think of it as an album in its own right. But I’ll do it anyway.

For a solo album from the drummer of a band long past their best, ‘Bambu’ isn’t a bad listen. It’s a mix of rockier tracks and slower, quieter tracks. The latter are generally the best bits – Wilson sings with a fragile voice, but a very evocative one when the material suits it. The rockier tracks aren’t bad – they’re often enlivened by some excellent use of a horn section and other accompaniments, but they’re let down by their lyrics which are only really traditional rock ‘n’ roll clichés – attractive girls at parties are good, being a rock star is fun, and so forth. ‘School Girl’ is particularly cringe-worthy, being horribly inappropriate for a man in his mid-thirties, especially given Wilson’s somewhat tangled web of personal relationships to that point.

So it’s an interesting listen, and it probably would have made a good album had it been tightened up, trimmed down and generally finished. Certainly for a bonus disc of material on another record, it holds its own pretty well.

‘Automatic For The People’ by R.E.M.

Released in 1992, ‘Automatic For The People’ was R.E.M.’s eighth studio album, and a continuation of the predominantly acoustic style of ‘Out of Time’. As such, it’s a gentle album of well constructed songs with only a few up-tempo tracks to vary the mood.

‘Drive’ starts the album off in subdued form, based around a repeating pattern of acoustic guitar over which the track swells and fades throughout. Repeating patterns are something of a trademark of this album - ‘Try Not To Breathe’ and ‘Nightswimming’ being other prime examples. The first half of the album is dominated by the singles ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’ and ‘Everybody Hurts’, both instantly recognisable, but both very different. ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’ has a melody that meanders from chorus to chorus via any means necessary, and a set of lyrics that are virtually indecipherable, and obtuse even by Michael Stipe’s standards. ‘Everybody Hurts’, on the other hand, is a beacon of clarity – a simple but beautiful backing track with an instantly accessible set of words. It’s a song that’s been dulled by familiarity over time, but it deserves to be listened to properly, as it’s lovely.

The second half of the album is more of the same, but this is no bad thing. ‘Monty Got A Raw Deal’ and ‘Man On The Moon’ are the rockier tracks on the album, though this is a relative state, ‘Nightswimming’ is a wonderful example of how to construct a great song out of very few components, and ‘Find The River’ allows the album to drift to a close.

‘Automatic For The People’ is generally regarded as the archetype R.E.M. album, and it’s hard to argue with this view. There are other great albums in their back catalogue, but this is pretty special.

'Audio Lessonover' by Delirious?

This is a tricky one. From 'Cutting Edge' onwards, I was a big Delirious fan, but this was the last album of theirs I ever bought. Not a good sign. Actually, it was very interesting listening back to this - it's not as bad as I remembered it being, but it has some pretty major flaws.

Up until this album, Delirious had been on an interesting journey. Every album had seen them edge slightly closer to the mainstream until their album 'Glo', the one before this, which was a firm step back towards their worship roots. It's almost as though they thought they needed to balance this out, as 'Audio Lessonover' is as mainstream friendly as they ever went.

For the first time, the album contained songs that were not explicitly Christian in their outlook. Some people found this difficult to take, though I don't think it bothered me at the time. I've never quite understood the view that Christians should only write 'Christian music'. Having said that, it does give the album a slightly muddled outlook, especially because a lot of the songs use language that sounds quasi-worshippy - lots of references to 'all you need is love', and 'your love' and 'angels' - it's as though they didn't quite have the courage of their convictions. It's therefore hard to see who they're trying to appeal to, and how. Even the album title is confused - much was made of it being an ironic anagram of 'Radio One Love Us', but even if that's true, it doesn't mean a lot.

The main problem with this album, however, is musical. In fairness, this is quite a brave album - there are lots of musical ideas and production tricks that the band hadn't tried before. Some of them work, lots of them come close to working, and some of them just don't. 'Waiting For The Summer' and 'Take Me Away' are both decent enough slabs of pop, then 'Love Is The Compass' comes really close to being the best yet before its clunker of a middle eight lets it down. 'Angel In Disguise' is good, but 'Rollercoaster' doesn't really work, despite its modular approach to construction - the bits just don't really fit together. 'Bicycle Gasoline' has a nice tune, but it doesn't seem to mean anything, 'A Little Love' and 'Heaven' are fine, but nothing that hasn't been done before, and better. 'Angel' is a mawkish mess of nothingness. 'Stealing Time' is good - the best example of finishing with a big brooding track since 'Obsession'. But it doesn't add up to enough good bits.

The band, I believer, returned to form after this, though I didn't follow them particularly. The trouble is, they went back to being a successful worship band, and it seemed to regressive to me, however well it was done. It's a shame the world didn't give them a bit more of a chance to work these ideas through - maybe a real follow up to 'Audio Lessonover' would have been great? Sadly, the album just sticks out as a missed opportunity.

'At War With The Mystics' by The Flaming Lips

This is an album I had as a Christmas present a couple of years back. It was given to me along with their previous album, both of which I'd asked for, but it was this one that stuck. The Flaming Lips are a somewhat experimental band, and this album shows them at their most conventional. That said, all things are relative.

It's album you can more or less pass judgement on immediately. The first track, 'The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song' is a catchy, slightly riotous and vaguely unhinged song. You can love it, or you can hate it, but I don't think there's a lot of space between those two positions. If you don't enjoy it, there's little point in continuing - all the adjectives I've just used pretty much apply to the album as a whole. Even when the tempo drops, as it frequently does, there's still a lot going on.

If I had to guess, I'd say big Flaming Lips fans would be a bit sniffy about this record - they'd probably judge it to be too commercial, and too far from the band's anarchic spirit. Well, it isn't - it's the sound of The Flaming Lips learning to produce something with some focus, and as a result, it's great.

'Asleep In The Back' by Elbow

Glory. It took until last year's 'The Seldom Seen Kid' for Elbow to finally get a bit of public recognition. 'Asleep In The Back' was released seven years earlier than this, and frankly, it should have given them the respect they have now. The band had already existed, in some form, for 11 years before the release of their debut album, and they'd already been forced to scrap one record due to label negotiations. As a result of this, 'Asleep In The Back' is incredibly well constructed.

'Any Day Now' starts the album on a dark and claustrophobic note, but it's a perfect introduction to the album, and the band. It shows all the instrumental ingredients that Elbow love to use, and it showcases Guy Harvey's extraordinary voice - the man can sing melancholy like no-one else. Even more upbeat numbers like 'Red', the second track, sound wounded, but in the most beautiful way. Other highlights to the album include the dense and heavy 'Coming Second', the contrasting airy and dreamlike 'Scattered Black And Whites', and the sublime 'Newborn'. Only Elbow would aim for chart success with the line 'I'll be the corpse in your bathtub'. Amazingly, it failed to chart. Newborn starts gently, but ends in a squalling storm of prog-rock. It's worth every second of its seven and a half minutes. Only 'Don't Mix Your Drinks' and 'Presuming Ed' are less convincing, and the styles used in both tracks would be improved upon in subsequent albums. My copy of the album is missing the title track - the 'Asleep In The Back' single was added to later pressings. It's a shame, as it's also a lovely track.

There must be plenty of people out there who have bought an Elbow album in the last couple of years but who don't own this. They should do. I can't recommend it enough.

'Arcade Fire EP' by Arcade Fire

Released in 2003, then again in 2005 to follow the first proper album, this 7 track EP was the first release from Arcade Fire. You wouldn't expect a massive amount from it - recorded in a barn before the band had a record deal, it sounds a bit rough and ready, but it shows many of the hallmarks of Arcade Fire which they would go on to develop more fully. The instrumentation and the vocal signatures are all in place, and only the slightly ropey production lets it down. It's most notable for an early version of 'No Cars Go' which would later feature on Neon Bible in an almost identical form, which rather implies the band were happy with this record as it was - and fair enough, really. It's unlikely that many people would choose to listen to it instead of 'Funeral' which followed it, but it's a pretty good curio.

'Any Minute Now' by Soulwax

'Any Minute Now' was Soulwax's second UK release, and I'm fairly certain I bought it on its release. I'm also fairly certain I bought at least one other album at the same time, and then didn't really bother to listen to 'Any Minute Now' more than a couple of times before consigning it to the 'disappointing' category.

Before releasing this, Soulwax had a pecualiar dual identity -mild mannered indie band by day (the most successful indie band in Belgium, perhaps - what an honour), respected DJ artists by night. This album seems very much like an attempt to bring together these two areas of work. Whether it succeeds or not is debateable. It could be said that the album attempts to straddle the line between indie and dance without fitting comfortably into either camp. In some ways, that's perhaps a good thing - one in the eye for pigeon-holing. On the other hand, it obviously didn't convince me at the time, or I'd have remembered some of it. Honestly, I couldn't have hummed a single tune from it before listening this time round.

That said, I've been listening to it on repeat for four days, and I'd still be hard pressed to do so. The first half a dozen tracks are all cut from a similar template - loud, partly programmed drums, distorted guitar, heavily processed bass and vocals - it all adds up to quite an assault on the senses. I imagine if you played them in a club, they'd sound great. An empty classroom at 7:30 in the morning doesn't have quite the same effect. When 'A Ballad To Forget' (track seven) provides a gentle piano-based ballad, it's a blessed relief, frankly. It stays quiet for 'Accidents and Compliments', then plows into 'NY Excuse'. This is the most dance-based track on the album, but also one of the most effective, which adds weight to the idea that maybe the band should have made up their mind about what they were trying to achieve. Then the album plays out to a close in much the same way it opened.

This isn't an album I could love. Never-the-less, I've been interested enough to spend four days listening to it again and again, and actually, it's growing on me. I don't think I could describe it as successful, but it's a bold attempt to try something new as a band, and it has its moments.

'The Velvet Underground And Nico' by The Velvet Underground and Nico

The first album on this list to be dramatically out of sequence. This is incorrectly filed on my mp3 player as 'Andy Warhol', so it appears under A instead of V. Still, I've listened to it, aNnd here it is.

I bought this a few years back, incredibly cheap in an HMV sale. Not because I knew I wanted it, or I'd heard it before, simply because I knew that the Velvet Underground had been a big influence, directly or indirectly, on lots of bands I did like. It was an album I felt I should have.

Since then, it's languished on the shelf, pretty much unlistened to. Listening to it now reminds me why. Bits of it have a certain rough charm - 'Sunday Morning' sounds like a primitive Mercury Rev, 'Femme Fatale' works well as a sort of Bacharach-pastiche, and 'All Tomorrow's Parties' has a certain hypnotic quality. Sadly, too much of the album fails to match this, inhabiting the spectrum somewhere between 'hard work' and 'unlistenable'. Many of those artists that owe a debt of gratitude to the Velvet Underground have taken the ideas on display here and improved on them massively. For that, we can all be thankful

'Amnesiac' by Radiohead

Finally, some Radiohead. And while 'Amnesiac' might not come top of my list of Radiohead albums to listen to, it's still nice to come across it. I remember being very excited about the release of 'Amnesiac', having waited so long for 'Kid A', the previous album, and in fairness, when it was released, I loved it. It was only later that it fell from favour a little, and I hadn't listened to it as a whole album for quite some time.

Devoid of its context, it holds its own pretty well. In fact, it has some real strengths. Almost every track, in its own right, is a good one. As with all Radiohead's work at that time (and now, really), it ranges from the accessible to the downright hard work, but there are things to enjoy across the spectrum. The most accessible points to this album are, I guess, the singles: 'Knives Out', and 'Pyramid Song' (the Top Of The Pops performace of which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television). The most difficult track is 'Pul/Pull Revolving Doors' which consists of a programmed drumbeat, a melody-free and heavily treated vocal line, and the occasional piano burble. It's more of an experiment than a song, but it's very atmospheric.

In between, there are all sorts of interesting moments. 'You And Whose Army?' is a highlight for me. It's the fourth track of the album, but the first one to really show off Yorke's voice, and it's a textbook example of how to start a song with nothing, and finish at a crescendo. 'Life In A Glasshouse', the final track, featuring Humphrey Littleton and friends on brass is also magnificent.

Despite all this, the album doesn't hang together in the way 'Kid A' does, and it does feel slightly like a rounded up collection of left-over tracks, somehow adding up to less than the sum of its parts. If it had been released before 'Kid A', it would probably now be viewed as a landmark record, but it's destined to sit always in the shadows, and it doesn't really deserve to.

'Amelie' (soundtrack) by Yann Tiersen

Yann Tiersen first came to my attention at the time of The Divine Comedy's greatest hits collection. A couple of bonus tracks at the time came from his collaborative radio session with Neil Hannon, and they were lovely, but nothing to get specifically excited about. A few years later, they collaborated again on a track called 'Les Jours Tristes', which would end up on Tiersen's 'L'Absente' album, and as a Divine Comedy b-side. Tiersen is big in France, but in the UK, that naturally means nothing.

Anyhow, the reason 'Les Jours Tristes' was important, was that it was also to be featured in the film 'Amelie', a film already gaining a bit of word-of-mouth appreciation at the time. I remember seeing an advert for the film, hearing the music, and being hooked. Since then, the film and the soundtrack have been completely entwined in my mind - I can't imagine one without the other.

The music on this album is quintessentially French, or at least I assume it is. To be honest, I'm no expert. Tiersen uses accordian, harpsichord, piano, tuned percussion and mandolin to great effect, backed with strings most of the time. It fits the mood of the film perfectly, and is a joy to listen to in its own right. Tiersen achieves this despite mining his own back catalogue for contributions to the record - it sounds remarkably like a complete piece of work, with this in mind. Even the two tracks which appear to stand out - 'Guilty', an English language song from the 30s, and 'Si tu n'étais pas là', a French tack from the same era - complement the slightly old-fashioned but homely feel of the record beautifully.

Because the vast majority of my music collection is from this country, or America, the work of Yann Tiersen is like a brief glimpse into what might be glibly referred to as world music. It always makes me feel mildly guilty that my knowledge of other types of music is so limited. Maybe one day I'll investigate further down one of these routes, but for now, this is a record to keep coming back to.

'Amazed' by Brown Bear Music

The first real mystery in this listening experience. I can't remember buying this, or where it came from. I don't know anything about the band, or the context the album was released in. The internet is not helping me here, suggesting it made little impact at the time. As a result of this, I listened to this with no pre-conceptions. I vaguely remembered the chorus of the title track, but that was it.

It's also the first worship album I've come across. They're always hard to be objective about, and difficult to appraise fairly. This album, though, is pretty good.

Musically, it is, at its core, a reasonably straight-forward indie-rock affair, but it's very well produced, with all sorts of loops and samples that enhance the songs without overpowering them. Lyrically, it's... fine. Not amazing, but solid enough. The trouble is, it's very obviouly worship music, but it's not especially congregational, putting the album solidly into a musical niche that always struggles to work. It's a shame - on this evidence, Brown Bear Music should have been able to carve out an identity as a slighlty more subtle Delirious - but it was always going to be the case. I'd listen again, though.

'All Summer Long' by The Beach Boys

‘All Summer Long’ was album number six from the Beach Boys, but to be honest, this was still the period at which they weren’t really making albums – just sticking some singles on a piece of 12” vinyl, then filling in the gaps with whatever they could find. You can’t blame them – this was the second album they’d done within the year, it was recorded in just six weeks.

You can hear the effects though. ‘I Get Around’ and ‘All Summer Long’ are both magnificent. The latter, in particular, shows how good Wilson’s grasp of harmony was even then – try humming the melody line on it’s own, and you realise there’s nothing much there – add the accompaniment, and it’s wonderful. Sadly, these two tracks are the beginning of the record, and nothing else comes close.

It’s not all dreadful. ‘Wendy’, and ‘Girls On The Beach’ are both good to hear, and even songs like ‘Drive-In’ have a certain rough charm. ‘Our Favourite Recording Sessions’ is the very definition of pointlessness. It’s regrettable, to say the least, that the album is structured as it is – on repeat listens, there’s really not much point in listening beyond the first two songs. Happily, better stuff was to come.

'All Is Dream' by Mercury Rev

‘All Is Dream’ was my first Mercury Rev album. I’d first become aware of the band with the release of their previous album, but their appeal hadn’t really clicked. A few years on, when ‘The Dark Is Rising’ was getting airplay, I became intrigued enough to buy it’s parent album, and it’s been something a background favourite ever since.

‘The Dark Is Rising’ is the first track on the album, and it’s essentially the album in miniature. Sweeping strings, piano chords, and a falsetto voice that really only a mother could love. Jonathan Donahue, the band’s vocalist has one of those voices destined for cult appeal. It’s not bad, exactly, but it certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste. You need to like your singers with a bit of individuality.

The falsetto is very evident in the first few tracks, coming to the fore in both ‘Chains’ and ‘Lincoln’s Eyes’. The latter of these two tracks is perhaps the defining moment of the album, in that you could very easily hate it. If you enjoy ‘Lincoln’s Eyes’, you’ll like the rest of the album – simple. ‘Nite and Fog’, which follows it, is a perhaps necessary concession to writing a normal song – it even has a chorus. It also sounds effortlessly constructed – as if the band have thrown it into the record just to prove that they can.

The rest of the album is a fascinating, and at times, bewildering collection of soundscapes. ‘Tides Of The Moon’ drifts in and out like an excerpt from a song that never ends. ‘A Drop In Time’ sounds like a lullaby from a world of magic, ‘Spiders And Flies’ is a sad piano ballad about, apparently, flies and spiders, and ‘Hercules’ is a textbook example of how to build a song from nothing into a towering column of noise.

‘All Is Dream’ is not a conventional indie record. It’s aptly titled, and it genuinely feels like it occupies some strange position somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. It is, however, not quite like any other record, and that’s reason enough to listen to it.

'Aladdin Sane' by David Bowie

This is a great record. Often seen as a poor relation to 'Ziggy Stardust', I prefer this for all sorts of reasons. It may have been recorded in a rush during what must have seemed an endless tour, but Bowie is on such a roll here, that everything more or less comes out golden.

Stylistically, it's more muscular than it's predecessor. Not only had Bowie's performance skills continued to improve, but the support from his band is noticeably stronger. Mick Ronson, Bowie's guitarist and right-hand-man at the time earns his reputation as a great guitarist, but the real revelation is Mike Garson, Bowie's touring keyboard player, joining him on record for the first time. His contributions - sometimes bafflingly avant-garde, such as in the title track, and sometimes beautifully delicate, such as in 'Lady Grinning Soul' are utterly wonderful.

The two singles from this album are both brilliant. 'Drive In Saturday', often overlooked, is a perfectly created pop song. It's a measure of Bowie's confidence at the time that he was willing to give the song away to Mott the Hoople who happily turned it down. 'The Jean Genie', on the other hand, sounds like it was thrown together in a five minute window, but is no less fantastic for it. Other highlights include the powerful opener 'Watch That Man', the somewhat deranged 'Time', and a re-recorded version of 'The Prettiest Star' - formerly a fairly weak single, dramatically improved here.

The only weak spots are 'Panic In Detroit' which bumbles along pointlessly for its duration, and 'Let's Spend The Night Together' - a Rolling Stones cover that isn't bad, but goes to illustrate how far ahead of his contemporaries Bowie was operating. It's a shame he didn't drop it to give 'John, I'm Only Dancing' a well deserved good home.