‘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.

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