‘Green’ by R.E.M.

R.E.M. A band I’ve consistently liked without ever quite managing to love. And yet, when I stop and make myself listen to an album, I always enjoy it. ‘Green’ is a particular pleasure to listen to. As the transition between their early cult success, and their later world domination, the album walks a fine line between artistry and commercialism, and it therefore manages a very fine balance.

‘Pop Song ‘89’, ‘Get Up’, ‘Stand’, ‘Orange Crush’ – all are great. Slightly disposable and possibly meaningless, perhaps, but still great. ‘World Leader Pretend’, whilst far more downbeat and introspective, is also great. Only a couple of tracks – ‘Turn You Inside Out’ and ‘I Remember California’ – are less successful. Since they’re the louder, more rock-heavy tracks on the album, that would suggest that, to my mind at least, R.E.M. are at their best when they’re writing pop songs and having a good time. This in turn suggests that when I reach their 90’s output, I’m not going to enjoy it quite so much.

‘Good Feeling’ by Travis

It’s a curious thing, Travis’ album number one. Like most people who own it, I bought it after ‘The Man Who’ had conquered the world, to see whether their debut had been similar. In some ways, it is. In others…

‘Good Feeling’ seems very much an album of two halves. The first half is very much the sound of a band flexing their muscles for the first time. ‘All I Want To Do Is Rock’, the opening track, is an exceptionally simple song, but shot through with a winning charm that somehow makes you overlook this. ‘U16 Girls’ is an extra-ordinary track about the dangers of relationships with underage girls. It’s almost impossible to imagine such a song being released today – was it really so different in 1997? The rest of the first half, from ‘The Line Is Fine’ to ‘Midsummer Night’s Dreaming’ is a continued collection of straightforward guitar indie.

In the second half, however, Travis as they would come to be begin to take shape. ‘Tied To The 90’s’, despite it’s lack of chorus, is the best-constructed track on the album up to that point, and ‘Happy’, whilst almost making a virtue of it’s simplicity, is infuriatingly catchy and loveable. It’s the last three tracks, however, that pave the way for Travis’ future career. ‘More Than Us’ in particular is delicate, tuneful and lovely.

After ‘The Man Who’ and ‘The Invisible Band’, there was a substantial amount of retrospective glory accorded to this album, a feeling amongst the worthy music press that Travis had abandoned their roots of greatness for a life in the middle of the road. Frankly, this is nonsense. There’s plenty to like about this album, but it’s ultimately a rough template, a first attempt at something they would go on to do much better.

‘Gold Against The Soul’ by The Manic Street Preachers

The second by The Manic Street Preachers wandered into my collection more or less by accident. As far as I can remember, I picked it up very cheaply in a sale somewhere around the time of ‘A Design For Life’, gave it a couple of cursory listens, and then ignored it forever. As a result, I’m listening properly now for more or less the first time. The surprise, for me at least, is how accessible quite a lot of it is. ‘La Tristesse Durera’ and ‘Roses In The Hospital’ especially are well written and orchestrated pop songs. Ironically, the band themselves dislike the album because of this approach, considering it some kind of corporate sell-out. Perhaps they’re right, but I’d rather listen to these tracks than the louder, angrier sounds of ‘Nostalgic Pushead’ or ‘Symphony of Tourette’.

It’s not an album I’m going to spend lots of time listening to – along this big listening process, I’ve confirmed to myself that I’m really not that fond of the Manics, but it has its qualities.

‘Glo’ by Delirious?

When Delirious? released Glo, I had high hopes. It was touted at the time as some sort of ‘Cutting Edge 5’, a return to the band’s routes after the moderate mainstream success of ‘King of Fools’ and ‘Mezzamorphis’. Ultimately, I remember finding the album something of a disappointment, and it’s not an album I’ve listened to much in the meantime.

I should be clear though – this is not a bad album. There are a number of very good songs on it, and nothing that’s worse than average. I think the album suffered, and still suffers, from high expectations, and a slight lack of direction. The idea of making an album more grounded in worship is hard to fault, but the albums preceding this one weren’t especially ambiguous, and the problem with ‘Glo’ is that it still isn’t written for a congregation. You couldn’t use these songs in a church, so all you really get is a slightly simpler version of what’s gone before. There’s no ‘Thank You For Saving Me’ on this record, no ‘Shout To The North’, not even a ‘Did You Feel The Mountains?’

‘God You Are My God’ is a case in point for the strengths and weaknesses of the album. It’s a confident performance with a solid production, and it has some lovely touches – the choir, and the chanting monks are both evidence of the band’s ambition, but there’s no real depth to the song, and it launches immediately into an improvised instrumental section that, for all its heart, doesn’t convey much of anything. ‘God’s Romance’ has more drive, and ‘Investigate’ more depth, though again, the extended musical outro is unnecessary. The middle of the album has some strong points. ‘My Glorious’ is the heart of the album, and a highlight track, but still a song that would sit awkwardly on the radio or in a church – the worst of both worlds, if you will. ‘Everything’ is a real standout, largely because it doesn’t try to straddle this line – it’s a song of worship, clearly, but it sounds like a mainstream hit until the end when the choir kicks in, but holding this trick back for the closing moments makes it work. ‘Hang On To You’ is a good listen, though it sounds like a closing track with six songs still to go. ‘Intimate Stranger’, in all honesty, is seven and a half minutes of tedium. ‘Awaken The Dawn’, on the other hand, is great – a classic Delirious anthem, and the only track from the album you could genuinely use in church. It would be a triumph, if not for the fact that it had been written several years before the rest of the album, and had already been released and made successful by Noel Richards. ‘Years Go By’ is Delirious by numbers, fine but unremarkable. ‘Jesus’ Blood’ is a brooding finisher, a kind of sequel to ‘Obsession’ from Cutting Edge 4.

So it really isn’t bad, but it was the first Delirious album not to represent a significant step forward, choosing instead to lurch sideways. Worse, the knock-on effect, in my opinion, had an impact on their next album, another attempt to break the mainstream market which was somewhat derailed by this. But out of context, and judged on its own merit, this was a decent listen.

‘Glass Spider’ by David Bowie

David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour in 1987 was his biggest and most ambitious ever. It was also such a soul destroying experience that it made him believe forming Tin Machine would be a good idea. There was a video released at the time, and it resurfaced on DVD and CD a couple of years ago, presumably a release intended to put a lid on Bowie’s reignited critical acclaim. I’m reviewing this off the CD rather than the DVD, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing. In it’s favour, it means I’m not distracted by the horribly garish visual imagery. On the downside, it means I’m not distracted from the horribly garish music. It also means that the music is periodically interrupted by seemingly random spoken gibberish, but in fairness, I’ve seen the DVD, and the visuals don’t help any of that make any sense.

‘Glass Spider’ begins with enormous self indulgence. A ridiculous electric guitar solo opens the album, interrupted by a shouted ‘shut up’ (words that any listener would choose at various points to follow) before Bowie’s dancers launch into an a-cappella segment of ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ which is an intriguing idea, though one that doesn’t really go anywhere. From here, the band launch into the absurd ‘Glass Spider’, a track that works far better as a concert introduction than as a song in its own right. Over a wash of synthesizers and guitar wailing, Bowie delivers a spoken monologue about the eponymous glass spider which must have been as inexplicable then as it is now. It’s worth noting, however, that when he actually sings his first line, his voice is in fine form. Glass Spider, for all its faults is far more interesting than ‘Day In, Day Out’, the next track, which is a two chord dirge that seems to go on for decades. It’s depressing to think that, at the time, ‘Day In, Day Out’ counted as one of his better songs. Almost as bad is ‘Bang Bang’ which follows, a track utterly unremarkable aside from the drum breaks and guitar squeals in the chorus which seem desperate to suggest that ‘Bang Bang’ is somehow an exciting piece of music. It isn’t, and it becomes painfully obvious as the song comes to a close that, four tracks in, we’ve yet to hear anything that’s actually good.

Happily, Bowie himself seems to have realised this as well, as the next run of tracks is a series of hits – ‘Absolute Beginners’, one of his finest 80’s tracks, ‘Loving The Alien’, one of his most interesting, ‘China Girl’, one of his most catchy, the much loved ‘Rebel Rebel’, and a genuinely good version of ‘Fashion’, the only ‘old’ track so far to gain anything from the eighties gloss slathered all over it. ‘Scary Monsters’ brings the big hitters section to an end, and is a perfectly decent rendition of a track that’s always seemed a bit middling to me. Disc one ends with a slightly odd version of ‘All The Madmen’, and a straight-down-the-line performance of ‘Never Let Me Down’, a track that really isn’t that bad, though a chorus would have improved it no end.

Disc two falls into a pretty obvious pattern of old songs good, new songs bad. ‘Big Brother’ sounds great, ‘’87 And Cry’ sounds terrible. ‘Heroes’ sounds good, because it can’t not sound good, and ‘Sons Of The Silent Age’ is a rare moment of actual artistry, even if it is somewhat overblown. ‘Time Will Crawl’ is rubbish. ‘Young Americans’ is a little anaemic, but it’s such a great song, you can forgive it its faults. ‘Beat Of Your Drum’ is forgettable, ‘The Jean Genie’ is fine, but played by numbers, ‘Let’s Dance’ is a perfectly good version of a track you may or may not be fond of. ‘Fame’ is less good – a hugely self indulgent performance that only seems to be included so Bowie can announce he wrote it with John Lennon. For unfathomable reasons, he segues it into ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’, which suggests to me that he’s finding the whole experience as tiring as the listener must be. ‘Time’ comes next, and it stands out like a sore thumb. It’s a great performance though, let down only by the horrible synth horns towards the end. The record ends with ‘Blue Jean’ and ‘Modern Love’, two of the shallowest tracks in the Bowie catalogue, but tracks that are at least catchy and fun.

It would be wrong to label the whole Glass Spider experience as bad. There are good bits, even great bits, though they’re rarely sustained over even the length of a track. But alongside the highlights, there are great depths to the album as well, and you can’t help but think that even if you pruned these out and made a single disc, you’d still be left with a slightly crummy product. So, unless you’re a big Bowie fan, this is probably one to actively avoid.

'Giggle' by Why?

It was with a certain amount of trepidation I listened to this. As a teenager, I loved Why?, but I found it hard to believe that affection would be unchanged. As a result, this was a very pleasant surprise.

Musically, this is better than you might think. It’s played well, and the production is fairly good (though at times, the violin dominates like a buzz saw). There are also inventive flourishes throughout the album – unexpected shifts in tempo and key which generally work very well. The album’s vocal duties are shared by Ant and Nick Parker, and they complement each other well. Ant’s vocals are warmer, Nick’s are perhaps more ambitious, but with a certain degree of tongue in cheek.

Lyrically, the album is a curious mix. A deliberate amount of nonsense is on show, but the band were never afraid to display their faith openly, either through serious references to God, or in-jokes – you have to love a band who start a song with the line ‘every year, Steve Chalke brings out a video’.

Throughout it all, there’s a sense of fun and enjoyment that you can’t help but be sucked in by, even if that comes despite your better judgement.

‘Garbage’ by Garbage

As I continue to work through my collection, occasionally, I throw up a record I can’t quite explain. I’m not entirely sure why this is an album I own – I certainly didn’t own it on its release, so it must have been something I picked up at a later date, presumably in some sort of offer. It’s also not an album I’m especially familiar with, barring the more obvious big hits.

Still, having said all that, I’ve let this album play on rotation for the best part of a week, and I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot. I think you have to adjust your mindset slightly to get the most out of it – it’s not the cheeriest of records, and every now and again, the angsty lyrics and vaguely industrial backing tracks are a little wearing, but the album on the whole is underpinned by a good understanding of what makes good pop music. It does have strong melodies, and it is played, and sung, well. The big hits deserved their status – ‘Only Happy When It Rains’, ‘Queer’ and ‘Stupid Girl’ are particularly fine, but there are other good moments as well – ‘Supervixen’ is a strong opening, ‘Fix Me Now’ is good, ‘Milk’ is a well-crafted ending. It doesn’t all lodge in the memory so strongly – even after repeated listenings, I remain a bit vague about quite a lot of the record, but none of it stands out as bad. So, all in all, pretty enjoyable.

‘Fuzzy Logic’ by Super Furry Animals

Released in 1996 at the height of the Britpop era, the triumph of ‘Fuzzy Logic’ is that it still sounds fresh now. As a debut album, it contains the odd misfire, but on the whole, this album holds up really well fourteen years on.

‘God! Show Me Magic’ is a blisteringly energetic beginning, the beginning of a vein which runs through tracks like ‘Frisbee’ and ‘Bad Behaviour’. Better still, though, are the mid-tempo tracks – ‘Fuzzy Birds’, ‘Hometown Unicorn’, ‘If You Don’t Want Me To Destroy You’, ‘Mario Man’ – which allow the bands harmonies to shine through, as though band are creating a Californian corner of Wales. Other notable points include the circular and evocative ‘Gathering Moss’, the gentle ambient ‘Long Gone’, and extraordinarily confident ‘For Now And Ever’, a track which shows the band had no reservations about creating anthems, even at such an early stage in their career. A very fine listen indeed.

'Funeral' by Arcade Fire

There are lots of average albums out there, and there are plenty of good ones. Every now and again, however, comes an album so special you wonder how music as a whole got by without it. ‘Funeral’ is one of those albums. There is nothing, literally nothing, I would change about this album. From start to finish, it’s utterly glorious. Shambolic, chaotic, energetic, rough around the edges but wonderful all the same.

I can remember listening to the album for the first time on my journey to work after buying it on the strength of a Jools Holland performance. As ‘Neighbourhood #1’ began, I was intrigued. By the time the tempo had noticeably started to accelerate, I was hooked. By the time ‘Neighbourhood #2’ had played out, with its shouty vocals and accordion riffs, I knew there was no way I wasn’t going to love what followed. Sure enough came ‘Neighbourhood #3’, ‘Crown Of Love’, ‘Wake Up’, and the utterly brilliant ‘Rebellion’ – track after track of goodness.

This is hardly a controversial view – Arcade Fire had nothing but praise from virtually the whole world when this album was released, and the positive reception lasted almost unscathed though the release of their follow-up as well, but no matter. There are no inherent points in thinking differently to everyone else. Sometimes, the hype is justified.

‘From Every Sphere’ by Ed Harcourt

Released in 2003, Ed Harcourt’s second album was a pretty obvious follow up to his first. There were no radical new directions on display, just a solid consolidation of the previous record. Sometimes, however, that’s all you need, and this record is a pleasure to listen to from start to… well, almost finish, but we’ll come to that.

The highlights, then, are packed slightly towards the beginning. ‘Bittersweetheart’ is a curiously understated opening, but lovely – an indrawn breath before the exhalation of ‘All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed’, the lead single (and, tragically, the only Ed Harcourt song ever to grace the top forty). ‘Ghost Writer’ changes tempo, though it’s impact is dulled by its similarity to ‘God Protects Your Soul’ from the previous album, a track that sounds similar but is much better. ‘The Birds Will Sing For Us’ puts things back on track. A sweet song until the ‘all die in the end’ ending, which is unexpected, but somehow works brilliantly. ‘Sister Renee’ is the sort of woozy piano ballad that Harcourt excels in. The middle section of the album dips a little – none of the tracks are bad, but they don’t hang around in your consciousness for two long. The final four tracks, however, are a structural problem. Each of them are good, and each would make a great ending song, but put together in a row, their impact is seriously blunted. ‘Watching The Sun Comes Up’ suffers the worst from this – it should be a climactic anthem, but by the time three more songs have played, its impact is lost. The fact that the title track, and actual last song, is seven and a half minutes long doesn’t help the situation either. It brings the album as a whole to fifty-six minutes, so cutting a track, or even two tracks, from the running order wouldn’t have hurt.

However, it seems harsh to quibble about this, and really, I’m nitpicking. The album is a good one.

‘Friends’ by The Beach Boys

‘Friends’ was the fourteenth album by The Beach Boys. By the time of its release, ‘Pet Sounds’ had been and gone, and the band were fumbling through records attempting to find greatness again. Following the oddness of ‘Smiley Smile’ and the more basic R ‘n’ B style of ‘Wild Honey’, ‘Friends’ seems to have no idea of what to aim for. It’s like a music collage of half formed ideas, and if you were so inclined, you could rip it to shreds more easily than virtually any other record in their catalogue so far.

Despite all this, it’s a strangely charming album that I’ve always enjoyed. It has enormous flaws, but some real highlights. ‘Meant For You’ is barely worth mentioning – it’s barely a minute long, and is really little more than an intro. ‘Friends’, the title track, is next. It was the only single from the album (and really, the only track that could have conceivably been one), and it’s a rather gentle and understated track, but a lovely one all the same. It’s followed by ‘Wake The World’ and ‘Be Here In The Morning’, a pair of tracks which should have been brilliant, and probably would have been if the band had finished them. ‘When A Man Needs A Woman’ is next, and it’s a song that encapsulates the album brilliantly. On the surface, it’s rubbish, a shoddy backing track with ropey (and in some places, clearly unfinished) lyrics, and a pointless out-of-place Wurlitzer solo in the middle, but I defy you to listen to it without smiling. I can’t. ‘Passing By’ ends the first half with a forgettable, if pleasant Wilson-penned instrumental.

‘Anna Lee, the Healer’ has exceptionally clucky lyrics, and the verses are dreadful, but it’s redeemed by the harmonies in the chorus. ‘Little Bird’, Dennis Wilson’s first major writing contribution to the band’s output is a real highlight. It’s well crafted, and it suits his voice perfectly. The fact that Brian Wilson made major un-credited contributions to it don’t diminish its greatness. ‘Be Still’, also by Dennis, is less good, but a fascinating premonition of the direction of his writing. ‘Busy Doin’ Nothin’’ is Brian’s most overt contribution to the record. It’s a fascinating one, and more complex than it seems at first. Over a jazzy bossa-nova beat, Wilson outlines the contents of an uneventful day. Your first impression is that he’s coasting, almost insultingly, but actually, he fits his lyrics to the melody brilliantly, and there are some lovely lyrical touches sprinkled throughout. Compared to ‘Anna Lee’, for instance, it’s a work of lyrics genius. Then the woozy instrumental ‘Diamond Head’ brings the album to a close. Except it doesn’t. The final track on the album is ‘Transcendental Meditation’ Mike Love’s first attempt at using the band to advertise his passions. It’s inexcusably awful – a horrible discordant mess that has no business on any album, let alone one so delicate. I had to force myself to listen to it for this experience – normally, I don’t let the album play this far.

Somehow, despite it all, ‘Friends’ is one of my favourite Beach Boys albums, but if you’re not a fan, I’d approach it with extreme caution. You never know, though – perhaps you’ll love it…

‘Free All Angels’ by Ash

Ash are a funny old band. They’re a band with real strengths, but they never seem quite sure of what to do with them. Throughout their career, they’ve alternated between writing outstanding pop songs, and slightly middling rock – it’s as though they’ve never considered the pop stuff legitimate.

‘Free All Angels’ saw them swing in the pop direction, and as such, it’s an excellent album. Tracks like ‘Walking Barefoot’ and ‘Shining Light’ may seem lightweight to some, but they’re incredibly well written infectious tracks that you can’t fail to enjoy. From there on in, the album is sprinkled with tracks that maintain the standard – ‘Submission’, ‘Someday’, ‘Sometimes’ and ‘There’s A Star’ in particular. Of the lighter stuff, only ‘Candy’ doesn’t quite measure up – as a song, it’s fine, but the Bacharach sample doesn’t sit very comfortably with it, and the song as a whole would probably have worked better standing on its own two feet.

Elsewhere, the band aim for heaver territory with less impressive results. ‘Burn Baby Burn’ is good and ‘Cherry Bomb’, ‘Pacific Palisades’ and ‘World Domination’ are fine, but ‘Shark’ and ‘Nicole’ add nothing to their surroundings.

None-the-less, the album as a whole works well, and stands the test of time comfortably.

‘Franz Ferdinand’ by Franz Ferdinand

It’s been a while since I listened to this, and it was a pleasure to do so. After the somewhat mixed ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’ and the downright disappointing ‘Tonight’, it’s easy to forget how excellent Franz Ferdinand’s debut was, and still is.

Track after track is played out with accessible ease. There are highlights – ‘Take Me Out’, ‘Dark Of The Matinee’, ‘Darts Of Pleasure’ and so on, but the rest of the songs maintain the quality they set. Even the more forgettable, or disposable tracks – ‘Cheating On You’, ‘Tell Her Tonight’ – earn their place by being tremendous fun, and almost revelling in their underdog status. A great album.

‘For Tinkerbell’ by Catatonia

One of those items that’s in my collection more or less by chance. I picked this up in Wales just as Catatonia were on the ascent in the rest of the UK. ‘For Tinkerbell’ was an early EP which I vaguely thought might turn into a collector’s item. It’s probably fair to say that that isn’t now the case.

In and of itself, it’s alright, in a ‘stretching your wings’ kind of way. ‘For Tinkberbell’ itself is a pleasant enough song, ‘New Mercurial Heights’ is a better one (though whether it’s good enough to sustain two versions within five tracks is debateable) and ‘Dimbran’ is also fine. All are a bit similar – a slightly murky backing track layered in jangly guitar, with Cerys Matthew’s voice providing the main point of interest. ‘Sweet Catatonia’ is the low point. The song itself is fine, but this version is slow to the point of tedium, lacking any energy that would make it worthwhile.

Three of these tracks would find their way onto Catatonia’s debut album, all re-recorded and improved, thus rendering this record entirely pointless. I guess you win some, you lose some.

‘Folklore’ by Nelly Furtardo

‘Folklore’ is an interesting album. Sandwiched between Furtardo’s fist album of pop and third album of R and B, ‘Folklore’ fits into neither category. It also struggles to fit into a category of it’s own. It starts brilliantly – ‘One Trick Pony’ is a riotous blend of fiddle, mandolin, banjo, layered vocals, and who knows what else, ‘Powerless’ continues in a similar vein, and ‘Explode’ adds a thumping rhythm. By the end of the anthemic ‘Try’, the fourth track, everything seems set for a classic album. Even the lesser ‘Fresh Off The Boat’ and ‘Forca’ can be excused – they’re not as good, but they’re still ambitious.

The tone changes after this, however. ‘The Grass Is Green’ and ‘Picture Perfect’ are well written, performed and produced, but they cast aside the interesting flourishes and replace them with all-out mainstream gloss. They’re good, but in a very different way. ‘Saturdays’ is very different – more of an impromptu skit than a song, it’s a good antidote to the tracks before it, but it’s a bit grating on repeated listens. After this, the album dribbles unsatisfactorily to an end. ‘Build You Up’ is dull, ‘Island Of Wonder’ is an culture classh many times more awkward than the first few tracks, and ‘Childhood Dreams’ is an anticlimactic ending. A shame – stick to the beginning, and the album seems much better.

‘Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant’ by Belle and Sebastian

By album number four, the early Belle and Sebastian formula feels a little strained. The songs on ‘Fold Your Hands’ are still good, and they’re being performed well enough, but somehow, it doesn’t quite feel enough.

So, the problem isn’t the quality of songs. Some of them – ‘I Fought In A War’, ‘The Model’, ‘The Wrong Girl’ – are excellent, but they need an extra sparkle. ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’, their next proper album would contain that sparkle, matching the ambition of this album to a producer who could handle it. It would have been great to know what Trevor Horn could have done with a track like the closing ‘There’s Too Much Love’ – a track which has a good song buried within it, but which sounds slightly messy all in all.

However, fans of Belle and Sebastian should find enough in this album to make it a worthwhile listen. Only ‘The Chalet Lines’ really doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s possible to place a song about rape onto a light hearted pop album without sounding horribly crass, but not on this evidence.

'Flying Low EP' by Bell Jar

Bell Jar were the highlight of my one and only trip to the Greenbelt festival. As the band that rose from the ashes of Eden Burning, I had high hopes, and I wasn’t disappointed. The band had, by that point, released one album, and this, a follow-up EP, both of which I bought there and then.

This EP, then, acts as a taster for the album they were preparing at the time. It consists of four tracks, all of which are great. ‘Cage The Bird Up’ is a low-level anthem enhanced by a simple but effective brass section. ‘It Hurts’ is a downbeat but heartfelt song which shows demonstrates the key characteristics of a Paul Northup lyric – based on faith, but ambiguous enough to feel accessible without being preachy. ‘One Needle’ is a well constructed groove-based song with a muted lead trumpet line – the song least likely to have been recorded by Eden Burning. ‘The Longer The Better’ is a fitting close – bigger, more sprawling, and with just a hint of funk towards the end.

I imagine this is pretty rare – Bell Jar never hit the comparative heights Eden Burning managed, and I’m not sure whether or not they still exist – but it’s a little gem.

‘Flight Of The Conchords’ by Flight Of The Conchords

Comedy records really are a risky business. Even the funniest comedy gets stale when it’s heard too often, and if the comedy is bolted on to a wobbly musical foundation, you’re on very shaky ground indeed. ‘Flight Of The Conchords’ avoid these pitfalls for two reasons. Firstly, the humour is funny, without being too obvious, and secondly, their musical foundations are strong. This album, largely but not exclusively a soundtrack to the first season of their TV show, meanders around pastiches of all sorts of genres – Gallic easy listening, electro-pop, hip-hop, soul – all within the first four tracks. I could go on – the band do, ending the album with ‘Bowie’, a track that effortlessly mimics three distinct phases in Bowie’s career while still holding together a complete piece of music.

Lyrically, the songs are packed with enough humour to keep you smiling throughout, and there’s plenty to pick up on through repeated listening. ‘Inner City Pressure’, ‘Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros’, ‘Ladies Of The World’ and ‘Robots’ are particular highlights, though these will vary depending on mood. Only a handful of songs miss the mark – ‘Prince of Parties’ and ‘Boom’ are pretty forgettable, and ‘Leggy Blonde’ struggles to cope outside the context of its sitcom roots (the lyrics are very funny, but probably won’t be if you haven’t seen the show). Wisely, the band try not to let any song outstay its welcome – most of the songs are finished after two and a half minutes, some don’t even get that far. It’s surely no co-incidence that the longer songs are also the better ones.

There’s another Conchords album around that I don’t have. It’d be interesting to see whether a second album would be sustainable, but this is, and it’s to their credit.

‘Fleet Foxes’ by Fleet Foxes

‘Fleet Foxes’ are on of those bands I’d love to claim I heard early. Sadly, this wasn’t the case, and if anything, by the time I’d bought myself a copy of their debut album, it was already a bona-fide hit. Deservedly so, as it’s wonderful on more or less every level.

From beginning to end, ‘Fleet Foxes’ oozes confidence and quality that most bands could only dream of one day exhibiting. They make the kind of records the Beach Boys would have made throughout the seventies if Brian Wilson hasn’t lost his mind – there is pretty much no higher praise I can give. The combination of folky musicianship and exquisite vocal harmony is welcoming and spirit lifting, and some of the individual tracks the album offers – ‘Ragged Wood’ and ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’ in particular – are as good as anything you’ll hear on any other album by any other artist. Brilliantly, the band also look exactly like you’d expect them to – every member looks like the kind of bearded yokel you’d run away from if you met them up a mountain, with the exception of lead guitarist Skyler Skjelset who looks like an innocent traveller the rest of the band have kidnapped. Glorious.

‘Final Straw’ by Snow Patrol

As it was with most people, ‘Final Straw’ was the first real exposure I had to Snow Patrol, barring regular mentions in the music press. I can’t even claim I found the album earlier than the world at large – I too heard ‘Run’ and decided to buy the album off the back of its success.

In fairness, though, sometimes the time is just right for a band. I still haven’t heard either of the albums which preceded this one, and perhaps I never will, but ‘Final Straw’ had to be a success – it’s too good not to be one.

There’s nothing earth-shatteringly original across the album as a whole, just a solid collection of songs with enough quirks to keep things interesting. Most of these quirks would be gradually ironed out over the next two albums, to the detriment of the band as a whole, but this album is full of them – the programming in ‘How To Be Dead’, the break in ‘Gleaming Auction’, the end of ‘Spitting Games’, the vocal interplay in ‘Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking’. ‘Same’ brings the album to a close in suitably low-key anthemic style. And sitting in the middle of the album is ‘Run’, the track that made everything afterwards possible. It’s a little blunted by familiarity now, but it’s a great song, far better than ‘Chasing Cars’ would go on to be.

I’d love to know how this album fits into the story. Every Snow Patrol album from this point has depicted a gradual slide into mediocrity, so I’d like to know whether the first two albums are brilliant, or whether this is a genuine peak. Perhaps one day I’ll find out.

'Fin de Siècle' by The Divine Comedy

Only a few days ago, I listened to The Divine Comedy’s ‘Fanfare Of The Comic News’. ‘Fin De Siecle’ couldn’t be any more different. Album number six was written recorded when the band were at their commercial peak. They weren’t house-hold names, but they’d had a run of modest hits singles, and a couple of albums that had sold reasonably well. As a result, the budget for this album was higher, and the ambition was wider. It was the first album by the band that I ever bought, so it holds a special significance to me, though having said that, as I worked my way through the rest of the band’s back catalogue, it slipped very much down the list of my favourites. As such, it’s been a while since I properly listened to it.

Interestingly, although the album is very familiar, it sounds surprisingly different from the image I had in my head. I remember the album as being quite dark, almost oppressive. There is truth in that – the arrangements throughout the album are a touch excessive, and there is a great deal of angst throughout many of the lyrics, but there’s also a great deal of humour, even in the depths.

Commercially, this album came close to breaking the band into a new level of success. ‘Generation Sex’, the first single, did pretty well, and at around the time of its release, the band were given a support slot for Robbie Williams, exposing them to huge audiences. Second single, ‘The Certainty of Chance’ was almost certainly a massive own goal. It’s a great track if you’ve listened to the album build up to it, but it was never going to fit on the radio and be a hit. The third single, ‘National Express’ was their biggest hit to date, and it’s probably still the song most associated with the band, but leaving it until third single meant there was nothing to follow it with, and the momentum died away. There are lots of other great songs – the pounding ‘Thrillseeker’, the mournful but rather lovely ‘Commuter Love’, the delicate ‘Life On Earth’, and the soaring climax of ‘Sunrise’ all spring to mind.

The most unusual tracks deserve a special mention to. ‘Here Comes The Flood’ is a track from a musical that doesn’t exist. Here, Hannon pulls out all the stops – a full orchestra, a choir (two choirs?), explosions, and narration by Dexter Fletcher. It’s as if he knew he’d never have the money to do something like this ever again. The result is a beast of a track – difficult to relate to, almost impossible to play live, yet brilliant in its own way. Tucked away in the middle of the album is ‘Eric The Gardener’, an odd lyric set to a simple five-four pattern which builds into a swooning mix of strings and electronica. It’s the longest track on the album, and the most divisive amongst fans of the band, but it’s really rather lovely.

I went back through the catalogue after buying this album, and ‘Fin de Siecle’ stopped being my favourite. I stand by this change of mind, but this is a great record, and a clear reminder of why I started to love the band so much in the first place.

‘Figure 8’ by Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith is an artist I’ve come to with little sense of order. I don’t have all his albums, and those that I have were acquired as and when the opportunity arose. Because of this, I’d paid little attention to the development of his music before this listening project. However, ‘Either/Or’, one of his early albums, was a recent listen, and the contrast between that and ‘Figure 8’ is very apparent.

Released on a major label, and with all the budgetary implications that this brings, ‘Figure 8’ is a brilliant record. The familiar aspects of Smith’s work – the fragile solo voice, the luscious Beatles-esque harmonies, the wonderfully constructed melodies – are all present, and displayed fully, but ‘Figure 8’ has a depth to its arrangement that simply wasn’t possible on his earlier records. ‘Son Of Sam’ may start the album with a fairly conventional, if great, slice of acoustic indie, but mixed in amongst the conventional tracks (‘Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud’, ‘Stupidity Tries’, ‘Junk Bond Trader’) are the wonderfully simple (‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, ‘Everything Reminds Me Of Her’) and the more ambitious. ‘Everything Means Nothing To Me’ makes very effective use of a tumbling piano line and a layered vocal track before exploding into waves of strings at the end. ‘In The Lost And Found’ is built entirely around a honky-tonk piano line – presumably played by Smith – that is hugely more impressive than any of the keyboard parts in his early work, and a real testament to his growth and development as a musician.

You could make a case for saying that ‘Figure 8’ is less immediate, less intimate, than Smith’s earlier records, and this would be a justifiable criticism, but anything it lacks in these areas is more than compensated for by its sheer quality.

‘Feeler’ by Pete Murray

‘Feeler’ is the first real album by Australian artist Pete Murray. A singer, songwriter and guitarist, it would be tempting and easy to dismiss Murray as part of an already-crowded area of music, but to do so would be to overlook a real talent.

The most obvious reference point for those unfamiliar with Murray’s work would be Jack Johnson. Both artists write straightforward pop-rock songs predominantly based around the acoustic guitar, and washed with lashings of sun. However, Murray’s music is, by production if nothing else, a little more layered than Johnsons, giving a stronger role to other instruments. Despite this, the comparison is fair – fans of one will certainly find something to enjoy in the other.

The first track, ‘Feeler’, is enough to draw you into this album. By the time track two, ‘Bail Me Out’, is half way through, you’re hooked. From there on in, you pretty much know what to expect, but not in a bad way. ‘So Beautiful’ is, as you would imagine, the slow album’s key romantic track, and it tends very slightly towards over-sentimentality, but it’s balanced well by ‘Lines’ which has much more bite. ‘Freedom’ is an effective solo piece, good in its own right, but valuably demonstrating some diversity of sound at the album’s mid-point.

From this point onwards, there are no real surprises, but the quality holds out to the end, making this a thoroughly decent album.

‘Fashion Rocks EP’ by David Bowie & Arcade Fire

Here’s a little curio that’s too short to get much attention. Recorded a couple of years ago at some glitzy fashion do, the ‘Fashion Rocks EP’ brings together two great acts over three short tracks.

It begins with ‘Life On Mars?’, performed by Bowie more-or-less alone, backed only by Mike Garson’s piano. It’s a tough one. Bowie’s voice is a long way off being able to hit those high notes now, and the songs transposition does rob it of a lot of its magic, but at the same time, it’s such a great song, it can’t fail to be good, and the songs re-arrangement makes the best of the job.

Arcade Fire join for the next two songs, their own ‘Wake Up’, and Bowie’s ‘Five Years’. Both of these are great, though it’s the latter that’s most interesting. Because the band are so big, and produce so much sound, Bowie’s contribution struggles to make much impact during ‘Wake Up’. They do, however, bring a ramshackle energy to ‘Five Years’ that complements Bowie’s part brilliantly.

The performance was released as a straightforward download, and in fairness, didn’t deserve anything more than that. Nevertheless, it’s a good listen for a fan of Bowie or Arcade Fire, so well worth hearing if you like both.

‘Fanfare For The Comic Muse’ by The Divine Comedy

Long before The Divine Comedy achieved any kind of success, they released ‘Fanfare For The Comic Muse’. Not only is this their debut album, it is a complete anomaly in terms of their back catalogue, recorded when the band was a three piece. Neil Hannon would start from scratch after this, recording on his own, then eventually building a band around him.

As a result of this historical manoeuvring, ‘Fanfare’ is more or less disowned by Hannon now, and it’s easy to hear why. It’s not that great. It’s a much rougher affair than anything which would follow, and it lacks both the subtlety and flair that ‘Liberation’ and then ‘Promenade’ would have.

Despite that, it has some worthwhile elements. Even at this stage, Hannon’s talents as both a lyricist and composer are starting to emerge. Though there are no classics on this album, there are a number of tracks that indicate that better things were to follow. And so there were.

‘Facedown’ by Matt Redman

Reviewing worship albums is always tricky. Live ones, even more so. The atmosphere that accompanies the recording of such albums can’t really translate to your experience when listening after the event. At the same time, it’s not really fair to judge it purely as a recording.

‘Facedown’, then, falls into the cracks between live album, worship album and performance. It has its work cut out, then, in succeeding on any these levels, and its to Matt Redman’s credit that it is largely successful. There are some excellent songs here, from the upbeat ‘Praise Awaits You’ to the anthemic ‘Mission’s Flame’ to the singalong ‘Worthy, You Are Worthy’. The last of these is perhaps the most congregational-friendly. ‘Nothing But The Blood’ should be, but it’s octave jumping chorus limits it severely, and the title track’s melody is too complicated to pull off in most settings. This is a shame – they’re arguably the best two songs on the album.

If I were to make one criticism of the record, it’s the fact that a lot of the arrangements are a bit samey – the downside, I suppose, of recording it live. Some variety wouldn’t have hurt...

‘Eyes Open’ by Snow Patrol

The phrase ‘difficult second album’ is widely recognised in the world of music. It refers to the problems a band can have when they’re attempting to follow up a successful first album, usually in a shorter space of time, and usually with a considerably higher degree of pressure. ‘Eyes Open’ is the fourth album by Snow Patrol, but as their first two albums failed to be noticed by more or less anyone, it feels like a second album, and it carries with it all the associated baggage.

It’s a very confident record from start to finish, and generally, the songs themselves are good, but somewhere along the way, some of the individual sparkle still on display for ‘Final Straw’ has started to vanish. ‘You’re All I Have’ opens the record in fairly standard and familiar form, ‘Hands Open’ is louder but less worthwhile. The third track, ‘Chasing Cars’ is the albums focal point – a huge hit single, and a genuine anthem, but one that’s never quite rung true for me. I’ve never really worked out way, as it’s obviously a good song, but it just feels a little too much like it was written to order, designed to be this album’s ‘Run’. That said, I’m not sure why it would matter, even if that were true. Track four, ‘Shut Your Eyes’, has always been my preference, as it doesn’t seem to have any such agenda. It’s a straightforward song, but with enough twists – notably the choral section at the end – to give it a lift were necessary. ‘It’s Beginning To Get To Me’, in contrast, has no such twists. Like track one, it’s a decent enough song, but the sort of song you imagine Gary Lightbody could write in his sleep. In the middle of the album are three songs – ‘You Could Be Happy’, ‘Make This Go On For Ever’ and ‘Set The Fire To The Third Bar’ which, between them, give the album its soul. The first and last of these three are the albums quietest moments, the first backed predominantly by glockenspiel, and the last given focus by Martha Wainright’s guest vocals. The middle is louder, and almost relentless by the end, but without the empty bluster that Snow Patrol’s noisier tracks have a tendency to suffer from – track nine, ‘Headlights On Dark Roads’, being an obvious example. The album ends well. ‘Open Your Eyes’ starts quietly and builds up to suitable ending climax, and ‘The Finish Line’ acts as a gentle epilogue to a record that, to all intents and purposes, has finished.

Overall, this album is a triumph for the band, but it’s a triumph that carries with it warning signs for the future. There is a clear progression between this album and its follow up, and not in a good way. ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ would ignore all the good things about this album, and instead, amplify all its weaker points. Time will tell whether this would be an irreversible slide.

‘Eye To The Telescope’ by KT Tunstall

KT Tunstall’s debut album is a slightly curious affair. In many ways, it’s really good. Tunstall writes great songs, plays them well, and has a good voice – so pretty much all you could want in an album, particularly a debut. Somehow, though, it just doesn’t sound quite as good as it should. Not bad, not by a long way, but mildly frustrating.

Opening track ‘Other Side Of The World’ embodies the album as a whole. A lovely song, but covered in so much studio gloss, the soul of the song is slightly buried. ‘Another Place To Fall’ has a bit more edge, to its benefit, and ‘Under The Weather’, which is far more stripped back, also sounds better. ‘Black Horse And The Cherry Tree’ is the first great track, a stitched-together collage of Tunstall’s vocal and guitar with little backing necessary.

The middle section then flags a minute. All the songs on their own are good, but the sequencing lets them down. ‘False Alarm’ especially suffers from its proximity to ‘Universe & U’ – it’s too similar in pitch and tempo, and is robbed of its value as a result.

The end to the album is great, however, and this is the point where the album could have really gone downhill. The final four songs each have their own distinctive styles, and the contrast is very effective. As a result, the album has more than enough strengths to be good – it just could have been better. Her next album, the ‘Acoustic Extravaganza’ shows what might have been if she’d only been able to record the songs as written.

‘Expecting To Fly’ by The Bluetones

A few days ago, I was listening to ‘Everything Must Go’, the Manic Street Preachers album which played a significant role in the development of music in the nineties. At a similar time, The Bluetones were at the height of their career. They would never have anything like the impact that the Manics had, and as such, they’re largely forgotten now, but because expectations of this record are so much lower a decade and a half on, it comes out pretty well.

At their best, The Bluetones wrote great pop songs. ‘Bluetonic’, ‘Cut Some Rug’, ‘The Fountainhead’ and especially ‘Slight Return’ are a joy to listen to. Mark Morriss isn’t a brilliant singer, but he’s equal to the task, and Adam Devlin’s guitar work is light and fluid enough to keep you engaged throughout.

The album becomes less of a pleasure when the band stray further from the pop-song mould. Tracks like ‘Things Change’, ‘Putting Out Fires’ and closing track ‘Time & Again’ are all reasonably good attempts to produce more substantial songs, but the band don’t seem quite up to carrying their weight.

It holds up fine. At the time, you’d have been hard pushed to find anyone who would identify The Bluetones as their favourite band, and time won’t have enhanced their standing, but anyone who enjoyed their music at the time almost certainly still would.

‘Excerpts From The Diary of Todd Zilla’ by Grandaddy

There must be lots of ways to see the end in sight when you’re in a band. Financial difficulties, a dwindling fan-base, increasingly negative reviews – all of these are frequent occurrences. Watching your lead singer record an album by himself and then release it under the band name, however, must be a bit awkward. So it was with Grandaddy who released this short album as a prelude to their last proper album. Was it a cause, or an effect of their parting, I wonder…

‘Excerpts’ is both familiar ground and new territory for Jason Lytle. It’s a definite turn away from the more complicated and polished work of ‘The Sophtware Slump’ and ‘Sumday’, but at the same time, it captures the feel of the band’s earlier work very thoroughly. Pretty much every trick in the Grandaddy repertoire is on display here. Burbling keyboards? ‘Pull The Curtains’. Slightly bizarre lyrical references to the contrasts of nature and technology? ‘At My Post’. Gently fragile acoustic tracks? ‘A Valley Son’. Dense layers of woozy sound? ‘Cinderland’. Wavering vocals over a piano that sounds like it was recorded in another room? The unnecessarily profane ‘F**k The Valley Fudge’. Exuberant noise that careers all over the place? ‘Florida’. Acoustic strum-along that turns into a slow-burning epic closer? ‘Goodbye’. And we’re done.

If you’re a fan of their other work, you’ll enjoy this. Certainly, as it was released, it was enough to give you confidence that future solo work from Lytle would be worth following. Not an album to start with, though.

‘Everything Must Go’ by the Manic Street Preachers

Here’s an album that lurks away in the collection, largely ignored, possibly misunderstood. In all honesty, it’s there because of peer pressure. Not heavy-handed actual peer pressure – no-one forced me to buy it, but the kind of ‘everyone says it’s good, so it must be’ kind of peer pressure that makes you buy records as a teenager. Thankfully, I’d passed out of that stage by the time the Stereophonics came along, or I’d have to suffer them to.

I say, suffer, but that’s not really what I mean at all. ‘Everything Must Go’ is fine. It has some really good bits: ‘A Design For Life’ is as good as it ever was, the perfect combination of the written song and the great arrangement, that bit where the strings and the guitar play out the instrumental break together is spine-tingling. And there are other good bits to. ‘Elvis Impersonator’ is a good mix of sparse opening and heavy conclusion, ‘Kevin Carter’ and ‘Removables’ bounce along nicely, and ‘Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky’ is the sort of delicate song the Manics don’t do nearly as often as they should. Elsewhere, however, the album feels slightly oppressive. I think it’s mostly down to James Dean Bradfield’s voice, which is great in the songs I’ve just said I liked, but hard to listen to during the louder tracks. He has a real habit of writing melodies that sound like they’re just too high for his voice to reach, giving the songs a sense of strain that doesn’t do them any favours.

A decade and a half on, the Manics are still going, though to a much-dwindled group of people who are interesting. They’re generally considered a band who’s best days are behind them, and most would consider this to have been the high point of those days. True enough, it stands up fine, and has plenty going for it, but it doesn’t feel like the classic it was portrayed as at the time.

‘Europop EP’ by The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy have a new album out in May, and the official press release regards it as their tenth. This is interesting – count back ten, and you are lost in the murky pre-history of the band in their pre-‘Liberation’ days. Album one would be the long deleted and largely ignored ‘Fanfare of the Comic Muse’, an album which Neil Hannon has done all he can to disown.

This EP comes from the slightly odd period between ‘Fanfare’ and ‘Liberation’, the second of two such records. It’s main point of interest is in the line up. For reasons best known to himself, Hannon stepped back from being front-man for this release, choosing to act as songwriter, musician and shadowy-backing-vocalist. Lead vocals on the ‘Europop EP’ were sung by John Allen, a man destined to be the smallest of footnotes in musical history. He’s not a terrible vocalist, though if someone told you he was, you probably wouldn’t bother to argue the case, but he adds little value. Hannon, of course, has a tremendous voice, and though it was still developing at this point, even his ‘Fanfare’ vocals were far better than this. As for the material, the songs on ‘Europop’ all sound like they were axed from ‘Fanfare’ for not being good enough, and ‘Fanfare isn’t that great. The early-REM influences are very much on display here, but there’s little in the way of quality. Of most interest, naturally, is the title track, which would go on to be re-recorded for ‘Liberation’. It’s an interesting listen from a historic point of view, and it’s intriguing to see how some of the more familiar arrangements were already in place – the backing vocals and the organ part in the bridge would be virtually unchanged in later versions, though the vocal delivery would be dramatically different, and the ‘Liberation’ ending is missing entirely, presumably unwritten at this point.

In all, the ‘Europop’ EP was a step backwards, not forwards. ‘Fanfare’ showed some promise, this doesn’t. Hannon’s decision to ditch the band and go it alone may have seemed harsh at the time, but there was no future in this. As such, it’s the only Divine Comedy record that can genuinely be regarded as rubbish, and it certainly isn’t worth tracking down for the ludicrous prices it now fetches on the second hand market. A curio, nothing more.

‘Equally Cursed and Blessed’ by Catatonia

Time can be cruel to albums. It can take what seemed to be a great album and reduce it to mediocre, or it can take what seemed a mediocre album and make it seem pretty poor. ‘Equally Cursed and Blessed’ suffers as a result of this. I remember considering it the weakest Catatonia album at the time – it’ll be interesting to see at a later point whether I still think this, or whether their other albums will have suffered as badly.

The album came from an awkward point in the band’s career. Their previous album ‘International Velvet’ had been very successful, and there was no real warning that that would happen. As a result, the band weren’t really ready for it, and it was the next album which paid the price. Its biggest problem, is that it adopted the media construct of the band. The band were talked about because they were Welsh, and because of Cerys Matthews. This album plays up both of these factors to the detriment of everything else. The opener, ‘Dead From The Waist Down’ was one step away from being a very brave first single, but it doesn’t sound like the recording of a band – it just sounds like Matthews singing over a session orchestra. It’s also a bit irritating. ‘Londinium’ is more band-like, but it’s let down by a whinging set of lyrics that seem to cry ‘we don’t like London, because we’re from Wales’. Everyone knew this already. ‘She’s A Millionaire’ is better, but it, and so many other songs, are still let down by the emphasis on Matthews, and in particular, her increasing habit of over-Welshing her accent. Compared to her vocals on ‘Way Beyond Blue’, which combined a Welsh heritage with a genuinely nice singing voice, listening to the vocals on this album is like being bludgeoned to death with leeks. When the rest of the band really do get to demonstrate the fact that they’re still around, the result is tracks like ‘Storm The Palace’, a pointless noisy rant about the monarchy which suffers from such a poor mix, that any actual lyrical message is lost in a sea of reverb.

There are some good bits sprinkled through the album. ‘Karaoke Queen’ is a decent pop song, ‘Nothing Hurts’ is quietly lovely, and ‘Dazed, Beautiful And Bruised’ has just the right level of epic, but it’s not enough to set this album free from the bargain bin of history.

‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ by Jamiroqaui

The thing I find most interesting about ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ is how successful it was. Think of Jamiroquai, and it’s almost certain that you’ll think predominantly of the ‘Travelling Without Moving Album’. However, that never made number one, and this did. The other interesting thing is how different this album is from his later ones. Jamiroquai have developed something of a reputation for churning out the same stuff again and again, but this really isn’t fair. This record is much looser and more organic than what would follow, and this is both a strength and a weakness.

The biggest problem with this album is its lack of discernable melodies. Once you’ve passed the first few tracks – ‘When You Gonna Learn’, ‘Too Young To Die’, and so forth – the album runs through a series of meandering tracks which just play along with little apparent structure. On the positive side, this doesn’t really seem to matter, as the music remains a joy to listen to. Picking out the obvious hooks is hard, but the weaving together of instruments from track to track is a delight. There are seventeen credited musicians on the album, as well as an undefined string section, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The strings in particular are far more prominent here than they would go on to be, and there’s a world-music feel which later albums would loose (though when I say ‘world-music’, I’m really only talking about didjeridoo and percussion).

After a couple of days letting this album play and play (I hadn’t listened to it for a good while), I couldn’t tell you much about the songs on the second half, but I did enjoy it. Worth coming back to.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' by Eels

As well as their regular album discography, Eels have released a whole collection of live albums via their website. This wasn't the first, but it was the first one I got, as a result of my brother's inadverdant criminality - he ordered an album, it arrived, it got hidden under a pile of stuff, he mistakenly asked for a replacement which ended up being mine.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' was recorded in 1998 during the 'Electro-Shock Blues' tour, and released four years later. At the time, the Eels act consisted of only E, drummer Butch and and bassist Adam Siegel. This three piece version of the band leads to a very stark set of arrangements - bass, drums and organ or guitar. This gives the songs a real punch, but if anything, ups their intensity. It's great stuff. The vast majority of the songs are taken from 'Electro-Shock Blues', and Eels show no real sign of pandering to the crowd with the more popular stuff - 'Novocaine For The Soul' and 'My Beloved Monster' are both here, but in radically reworked form, and 'Not Ready Yet' is blown out to a hugely indulgent thirteen minutes. Seasonal track 'Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas' is hugley incongrous, but a welcome spot of light relief.

It's easy to see why this wasn't released in shops - a hard sell to the average consumer, but a good listen for the fanbase.

‘Electro-Shock Blues’ by Eels

There are melancholic albums, there are miserable albums, and there are very miserable albums. Then there’s ‘Electro-Shock Blues’.

In a sense, this should be no massive surprise. ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ was conceived and written as a response to Mark Everett’s sister’s suicide, and his mother’s death from lung cancer, so it was never going to be especially cheerful. Right from the word go, the listener is plunged into a sad and fragile world – ‘Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor’ and ‘Going To Your Funeral Part 1’ are as a bleak a way as you can imagine to open an album, and when an album’s most upbeat track is called ‘Cancer For The Cure’, you get a pretty good sense of what to expect from the rest of the record.

At the same time, the emotional intensity of this album remains surprising. His previous album, ‘Beautiful Freak’ had dark moments, but was commercially-orientated enough to supply three hit singles and win a Brit award, something which would have been unthinkable with this album. It would be fair to say, therefore, that this record set the path that E, and whatever forms Eels have taken since, have followed ever since. He has remained an individual – full of surprises, and never willing to make an album that just sounds like the last one.

There are glimmers of hope through the album – ‘Last Stop: This Town’ is all about death, but it’s sung with a smile, ‘Ant Farm’ is kind of sweet, in its own way, and ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ is some kind of attempt to finish on a note of optimism. Even in the bleaker moments, however, there are some wonderful moments on the album – ‘Efil’s God’ has a pleasant breeziness, and ‘Climbing To The Moon’ is a truly wonderful song.

So ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ isn’t for the faint hearted, and it wouldn’t work for all moods, but it’s a great record despite, and perhaps even because of those things.

‘Elastica’ by Elastica

Elastica were one of those bands that really caught the moment. This, their debut album, was a major success on its release, just as Britpop was sweeping the musical world. Five years later, after numerous line up changes, their second album would limp from the studio to enormous public indifference, and the band broke up a year later. Generally in these circumstances, you’d tend to look back at the debut album and realise that actually, it wasn’t that good in the first place, thus consigning the band to a forgotten status.

Actually, despite the numerous controversies surrounding it at the time, ‘Elastica’ still stands up as a really good album. More than one other band accused them of plagiarism, and rumours abounded that Damon Albarn, partner of Justine Frischmann, the band’s frontman, wrote some or all of the record. However, even if all these rumours are true, the finished result is great.

At fifteen tracks and 38 minutes long, the album hurtles along, ensuring that any weaker tracks are soon forgotten about. At their best, the songs are catchy, punchy, and played with enough rough edges to sound exciting. I’ve no idea how much production work went into making these songs sound ‘as live’, but it works. Take the fifth track, ‘Smile’ as an example of all of this. The bass and guitar parts work almost in competition with each other, the bass in particular flares in volume frequently, but the melody is strong, the short and snappy harmony pieces fit perfectly, and after 100 seconds, it’s finished. (By contrast, ‘Hold Me Now, the following track, is two and a half minutes long, and it risks outstaying its welcome).

This isn’t an album you’d think to play that often – Elastic left behind no real further legacy, so once the Britpop era fizzled out, they faded away like so many other bands of the era, but this record does remain, an achievement to be proud of, and a very good listen even now.

‘Either/Or’ by Elliott Smith

The solo career of Elliot Smith can be divided into two fairly clear sections. Part one consisted of three albums, of which this is the third. Part two began with his ‘best song’ oscar nomination and finished with his tragic early death. As his career picked up more attention, his albums production became more ambitious. At the time of ‘Either/Or’, however, an Elliot Smith album was still a very low key affair. Smith would play all the instruments on the album himself, giving the record a very home-made feel. This would be pretty effective. Smith was a much better guitarist than he was, say, a drummer, but his skills in other instruments were certainly adequate to the task.

‘Either/Or’, then, is a lovely album of music. Every one of its twelve tracks is a delicately assembled piece of songwriting, and there’s just enough range between its gentler songs and its more upbeat ones to give the album the breadth it needs. Smith’s voice is an extra-ordinary thing. On its own, it’s slightly thin and fragile on its own, but when he layers it up to sing in unison or harmony with himself, it makes for a Beatles-esque collage of richness, worth the purchase price on its own.

It’s this kind of record that makes this project worthwhile. I got it as a Christmas present a few years ago having come to Elliot Smith through his later work, and although I’d listened to it, I’d not paid it much attention. This time round, I’ve been listening to it solidly for almost a week, and loving it. I will definitely come back to it.

‘Earthling’ by David Bowie

Throughout the nineties, Bowie released five solo albums, a slower work rate than his seventies peak, put an impressive tally for an artist so far into his career. ‘Earthling’ was the fourth album of the decade. It sits slightly awkwardly between the more ambitious and experimental ‘Outside’ and the back to basics approach of ‘Hours’. As a result, it tends to be somewhat dismissed, though on its release it had a reasonably warm reception.

‘Earthling’ is often referred to as Bowie’s drum and bass album, and this is fair to a degree. Certainly the album has one foot firmly planted in the world of dance. There is an awful lot of fast, programmed percussion throughout Earthling, and the album received a certain amount of criticism for jumping the bandwagon. This criticism is, I think, unfair on two counts. For a start, drum and bass was never really a dominant genre outside the world of the music press – Bowie’s flirtation with it was never going to be an over-populist gimmick, so he deserves credit for it on that basis. Secondly, despite the rhythmic dominance of the record, the quality of song writing is never sacrificed. In fact, there are some excellent songs on ‘Earthling’, comparable to the number on ‘Outside’, but without so much of the filler. ‘Little Wonder’, ‘Battle For Britain’, ‘Dead Man Walking’ and ‘Seven Years In Tibet’ could have all been stripped of their programming, and still worked. ‘Earthling’ also contains a number of musical flourishes from Bowie’s own history, demonstrating an increasing awareness and willingness to plunder his own roots – ‘Dead Man Walking’ is built around the same riff as ‘The Supermen’, Mike Garson’s piano outro to ‘Battle For Britain’ could have come from ‘Aladdin Sane’, and Bowie’s cockney vocals on ‘Little Wonder’ could have been recorded at the end of the sixties. Amongst these familiar touches are lots of new things – ‘Satellites’ and ‘Telling Lies’ are both pretty different from anything he’d previously recorded, and ‘Law’ is virtually unrecognisable as Bowie (and perhaps, therefore, not the best choice for a closing track).

All in all, it’s a fine album in its own right, and more than a decade on, it looks increasingly likely that it’ll remain as Bowie’s final new direction. The three albums he’s released so far have been good, or great – better than this, maybe – but all of them have been comparatively safe. It’s very unlikely he’ll do something like this again.

A - D

'Drill EP' by Radiohead

Pre-dating their debut album by a year, the 'Drill EP' was the first opportunity to listen to Radiohead ever presented to the world at large. The world at large wasn't especially bothered, and looking back with eighteen year's hind-sight, it's easy to see why. It's not a bad record, but it contains little indication of just how brilliant Radiohead were eventually going to be.

There are four tracks here in all, none of which are of much interest to anyone except die-hard fans of the band. 'Prove Yourself' and 'You' would go on to be re-recorded and tightened up for 'Pablo Honey'. 'Thinking About You' would be re-worked more radically. It would eventually become a gentle moment on the debut album - an acoustic interlude amongst the indie-rock. Here, it's a pretty straightforward race to a finish. The final track (not that it comes at the end) is 'Stupid Cars'. It should be the most interesting track on the record, being the only one to never re-appear in any form, but it's actually pretty forgettable. The band would revisit this subject with the far superior 'Killer Cars', but even this wouldn't be good enough to make it as an album track.

So it's okay. As part of the Radiohead back catalogue, it's worth a listen, but if they hadn't gone on to create so many better records, this would be an unremembered footnote to musical history.

'Drawn From Memory' by Embrace

‘Drawn From Memory’ was the second album from Embrace, and it marks the point where the wheels began to fall off the band. After the hype and bluster of ‘The Good Will Out’, the band needed an excellent second album to justify themselves. This wasn’t it.

That’s not to say it’s a bad album. Bits of it are great – ‘The Love It Takes’, ‘You’re Not Alone’ and ‘Save Me’ are all very effective. Sadly, they’re all done in the first three tracks. All three are examples of Embrace’s strong point – the mid-tempo indie sub-anthem. They genuinely do this very well. The trouble is, the rest of the album swerves too far from this template in either direction. When they slow down to a ballad (‘Drawn From Memory’ and ‘Liar’s Tears’), they never achieve anything more than boring. When they turn things up and attempt genuine rock, the results are mildly embarrassing. ‘Yeah You’ is the nadir – a shouty belligerent slice of pointlessness. ‘New Adam New Eve’ is better, but only by default. The only real point of bravery on the album is ‘Hooligan’ which is both intriguing and irritating in equal measure – a brave choice for a first single, but rather too dependent on the listener loving the kazoo. Embrace managed one more album after this before being dropped. They had a resurgence due to a Coldplay act of charity, but where are they now? No-one really seems to care.

'Draw' by Matthew Jay

I tend to carry around a lot of trivia in my head about artists and bands that I like. When I came to listened to this, however, I remembered very little about Matthew Jay. It took wikipedia to remind me that he’s dead now. The album itself, however, is a real treat.

Over its twelve tracks, Jay treats the listener to a collection of delicately constructed acoustic based songs, but with a real pop sheen that fits them perfectly. Though the opener, ‘Four Minute Rebellion’ hints at a record of angst, this is an album full of joy, even in its more melancholic moments. It portrays Jay as a kind of British Elliot Smith. Though it was largely ignored on its release, it still sounds great. Particular highlights are ‘Let Your Shoulder Fall’, ‘Only Meant To Say’ and ‘Meteorology’, but every track is a bit of a treat.

'Drastic Fantastic' by KT Tunstall

The second studio album from KT Tunstall, ‘Drastic Fantastic’ is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a follow up to ‘Eye To The Telescope’ – another set of well written pop songs with a dash of folk thrown in but struggling to be heard over the slightly too glossy production.

Starting an album with a recording of an old b-side demonstrates either a great confidence in your work, or a real desperation. Happily, ‘Little Favours’ is a decent, breezy opening, though ‘If Only’, which follows, is more interesting. ‘White Bird’ is a tricky one – write an acoustic based track and name it after a bird, and you will be compared to Paul McCartney, and you will come off worse – but it’s a nice enough song on its own merit. Actually, ‘nice enough’ sums up the album pretty well. It’s all pretty good, but it’s pretty safe, and there’s little in the way of progression from album number one. This is a shame, as the ‘Acoustic Extravaganza’ album released in the interim had been really good, but it’s perhaps inevitable – the record company would presumably have wanted another big seller, and most of the songs on this album were written before or around the time of her debut.

Things are most interesting when Tunstall experiments. ‘Hold On’ is a riotous clatter of elements that only just holds together, but it’s all the better for it, and ‘Beauty of Uncertainty’ uses a dream-like backing track and echoey vocal line to good effect. It’s just a shame that the record doesn’t have more of such things.

‘Dog On Wheels’ by Belle & Sebastian

Only a few days ago, I listened again to ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’, the most polished, and perhaps the most successful of Belle and Sebastian records. From there, I go to here, Belle and Sebastian’s first EP. In reality, this barely counts as a real record. Released after the first two albums had made a bit of stir, this EP contains four demo tracks recorded before Belle and Sebastian were even a band. It is, shall we say, considerably less polished than their later work.

It’s better than you might expect, though. ‘Dog On Wheels’, the first track, has some convincing energy, and a nice trumpet line. ‘The State I Am In’, familiar through it’s ‘Tigermilk’ version is also pretty well formed here. The slower pace gives Stuart Murdoch’s lyrics space to breathe – it’s pretty clear that at this early stage, they are the bands main selling point. ‘String Bean Jean’ ups the tempo and adds some wild-west style guitar work and a harmony which, although slightly ropey, shows the promise of things to come. The final track, ‘Belle And Sebastian’ has some lovely arrangements, but the budgetary restraints are hard to escape. It also suffers from a vocal performance that only a mother could love. In later years, Murdoch would become a fine delicate vocalist – at this point, it would charitable to say he was still finding his feet.

I heard nothing of this when it was released, but I remember it being around. I was an avid reader of the music pages on teletext, and I remember this record being named their single of the year. In a sense, this is an inexplicable choice, but there is something about it that appeals, even if it’s just the knowledge of what was to come.

‘Document’ by REM

‘Document was the fifth album by REM, but on some level, it feels like a debut, probably only because it’s the earliest one I own, and I don’t think I know any songs that predate it. In addition to this, it sounds like a debut should – a bit rough and ready, a couple of really good songs, and a lot of potential. It’s hard to imagine a band getting to a fifth album these days without having passed this stage.

‘Finest Worksong’ begins the album with a decent amount of bluster before ‘Welcome To The Occupation’ serves up a more typical slice of folk-inspired vaguely political meandering, made great by it’s two part harmony, a feature that REM used a lot at the time. ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ is a jauntier track – like a prototype ‘Stand’ with allegedly weightier lyrics.

Variations on these three track types fill the rest of the album, to a generally high level of success. There are further standouts – ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ is successful as a result of its speed, and its determination to cram in as many lyrics as possible, ‘The One I Love’ succeeds through having a very strong (if simple) melody. The rest of the album just sort of chugs along happily until the end comes. A perfectly decent listen, but nothing to get wildly excited about.

‘Diamond Dogs’ by David Bowie

‘Diamond Dogs’ is one of the pivotal albums in Bowie’s career, though given the twists and turns on display through his recorded output, you could make that claim about virtually any of them. However, ‘Diamond Dogs’ was the last of Bowie’s run of glam-rock-type albums that established him as a major star in the early seventies. Having abandoned his Ziggy Stardust persona after ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘Diamond Dogs’ allowed him to work the remnants of Ziggy out of his system. As a result, bits of the album are an obvious continuation of earlier work, particularly the title track, and ‘Rebel Rebel’. ‘Rebel Rebel’, incidentally, is a song which contains such a condensed essence of glam, it more or less rendered glam obsolete. It was time for Bowie to move on.

This was the first Bowie album since ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ to feature no other members of the Spiders outfit. However, by retaining pianist Mike Garson, and re-recruiting Herbie Flowers as bassist and Tony Visconti as producer, Bowie demonstrated a willingness to mix and match elements of his own past which he would continue to do throughout his career. Mike Garson underpins much of the record. He has no standout pieces as he did on Aladdin Sane, but his piano flourishes through ‘Sweet Thing’ and ‘Candidate’ in particular are essential to the feel of the record. Because Bowie played most of the lead guitar on the album himself, there’s no other figure to dominate the album in quite such a way.

Away from the glam aspects of the album, Bowie develops a more soulful side. ‘Sweet Thing’ is an obvious example of this, but ‘When You Rock And Roll With Me’ is fairly different from all his previous output as well. It’s the conceptual stuff, however, that sticks from this album. It opens with ‘Future Legend’ a horribly disturbing (or ridiculous, if you like) monologue about ‘Hunger City’, the location for much of the albums descriptions. Bowie’s original plans to base a concept album around ‘1984’ were opposed by Orwell’s estate, but the influence is hardly hidden – naming your last two tracks ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ is less than subtle, though both tracks are excellent. ‘1984’ is the clearest signal of the ‘Young Americans’ which was to come, and ‘Big Brother’ is a suitable filling climax, descending as it does into the disorientating ‘Ever-Circling Chant of the Skeletal People’.

It would be easy to sneer at ‘Diamond Dogs’ as the sort of ridiculous concept album which made the seventies something of a joke, but to do so would be unfair for two reasons. Firstly, in making this his last album of type, making him well ahead of the pack. ‘Diamond Dogs’ came out in 1974. Within two years, he would have made ‘Young Americans’ and ‘Station To Station’, and be holed up in Berlin making ‘Low’. By contrast, it would take Queen until 1977 to attempt to abandon glam rock, and that was with the slightly uncomfortable ‘News of the World’. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s just really good.

‘Deserter’s Songs’ by Mercury Rev

‘Deserter’s Songs’ was the first album by Mercury Rev that I came across, and that’s true for most of the world. It was released to widespread critical acclaim, though mass commercial success wouldn’t be a side-effect of this. However, it did well enough for the band to change their mind about giving up, which was no bad thing in itself.

Apparently, suspecting it to be their last album, the band made a deliberate choice to make an album entirely for their own benefit, with no allowances made for others. It shows. From the beginning, the album throws you into a surreal dream-like world, a world where choruses don’t exist, strange theremin-like noises rule, and spelling is irrelevant. ‘Holes’, ‘Tonite It Shows’ and ‘Endlessly’, the albums first three tracks, are a mass of wobbly orchestrations, nonsensical lyrics, and Jonathan Donahue’s voice – beautiful, in its own way, but not for everyone.

Signs of relative normality appear as the album goes on. ‘Opus 40’ and ‘Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp’ all managed to nudge into the charts without sounding ridiculously out of place, but even ‘Goddess On A Highway’, the albums lead single and most identifiable track, doesn’t have ‘major hit single’ written all over it. Sitting in the middle of the album is ‘The Hudson Line’, perhaps the most conventional song on the record. Ironically, perhaps deliberately, it sounds somewhat out of place.

Like the Mercury Rev catalogue at larger, ‘Deserter’s Songs’ is not an album which would be to everyone’s tastes, and I imagine a number of those who sang its praises from the rooftops at the time would be somewhat less enthusiastic now. Nevertheless, it contains real beauty, and it’s unusualness as an album is something to be cherished.

'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' by Belle and Sebastian

Though they'd been around for a while, this was the first Belle and Sebastian album I heard all the way through, and then the first that I bought. Thanks to Matt for lending it to me first. I'd heard the name many times, and I'd read a lot about them. Through their early years, Belle and Sebastian were loved by a small number of dedicated fans, and spurned by a good number for being somewhat twee.

In fairness, having gone back through their discography, there's some validity to these claims. 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress', however, marked a turning point for the band. Perhaps in an attempt to prove their critics wrong, the band recruited producer Trevor Horn to make the album, and the result is their most solid album by far. It has a far more muscular and well-built style than all their previous albums, and happily, the quality of the songs themselves match this new-found confidence. The title track, 'I'm a Cuckoo', 'Roy Walker', 'If She Wants Me' - all are perfectly formed pieces of pop music.

The delicate nature of Belle and Sebastian still shines through, both in full tracks - 'Piazza, New York Catcher', 'Lord Anthony' - and in the flashes of other tracks: this may be a harder album than their others, but it still begins with a flute riff for 'Step Into My Office, Baby'.

The album as a whole is a joy - a pleasure to listen to, but complex and layered enough to stand up to repeated listening. It also manages the unusual feat of ending on a real high. 'Stay Loose', the albums closing track, is like nothing in the Belle and Sebastian catalogue up to that point (though something of an indicator towards the next album). It's a real treat.