Play To Z: Mono Beatles to Odd Blood

It's been another long gap, but hey, there was Christmas and all kinds of shenanigans in that time, so what do you want from me?

  I'm aiming to get some standard "end of year" posts done over this weekend, including my "Person of the Year", which will pop up first on Alex Spencer's blog as part of his own, far superior annual review.

Random Observations

  I've mentioned this before, but it is a sign of The Beatles' enduring appeal that Iistened to 60 of their tracks in a row at the start of this batch of albums, and never once thought "this is nice and everything, but I'm getting bored of The Beatles". I can't think of many other musical acts that could match that level of innovation and variety.

  The first 68 seconds of Rafael Casal's "Bay Area Slang Top 100" is pretty much perfect, which makes it all the sadder when the rest of it quickly loses hold of the beat and descends into clumsiness.

  I hadn't really listened to Rilo Kiley before about 18 months ago, but "Portions for Foxes" has rapidly become one of my favourite songs of all time. Witty, sexy, incisive and beautifully constructed, it's a true marvel.

  Speaking of perfect songs, the Motown 50 collection contains some of the best songwriting and vocal performances of the 20th century, but let's single "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" out for special attention. There's that opening build-up, like a transition from another song, telling you to stop and pay attention to what's happening without announcing itself too boastfully. There's that first vocal harmony, like the song is opening up it's arms to greet you. Then it stands back and lets Diana Ross' angelic, irresistible voice talk for a while, easing you in even further. The structure isn't shackled to verse-chorus-verse; it builds and fades, relying on harmonies and Ross' charisma as a performer, and the iconic chorus doesn't appear until the last quarter of the song, when it hits like an atom bomb going off. Simply masterful.

  This set of albums included My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I've started to write about several times, but it feels a little bit to big for my brain. It's a work of tremendous ambition that actually lives up to the promise, and cements Kanye West as one of the primary musical talents of today. It goes without saying that he has an uncontrollable ego, but the album addresses that, along with various other personal issues, with an honesty and forthrightness that's admirable. I could probably fill the rest of this post talking about it, but people a lot wiser than I have already pulled it apart with considerable critical gusto, so I'll spare you.

  I got officially diagnosed with depression in May 2011, but it's been haunting me for a lot longer. At the time, I was attempting to complete a post-graduate degree in Early Years Childcare, a pretty high-stakes, high pressure environment that, a few months into, I started worrying I didn't actually want to do. What I initially thought was laziness or lack of motivation grew into something heavy and crippling that left me in bed for days on end, paralysed by both the fear of failure and anxiety at my own lack of action. Eventually, I sought help, left the course, and thanks to medication and therapy, I'm a hell of a lot healthier than I was. Part of what inspired me to seek action was a line on Patton Oswalt's My Weakness Is Strong album, where he describes his depression making him "watch The Princess Bride eleven times in a row". I'd always associated depression with sadness, but at the time I wasn't feeling sad - I was feeling nothing in particular. Even the thought of failing my course wasn't stirring me into action, it was just making me worry. Realising that this absence of emotion was as bad, if not worse, than true despair finally made me do something about it. I actually e-mailed Patton to thank him for his part in turning my life around before things got too bad, and he graciously replied, wishing me well. What a swell guy.

  On a lighter note, do you know how hard it is to listen to "Never Forget" by Take That without a) singing along and b) doing the hands in the air bit in the chorus? Stupid office job stifling my groove...

  I like the Futureheads - in my opinion they were the best of the bands to come out of the post-Franz Ferdinand guitar pop explosion of 2004/5 (see Kaiser Chiefs, Hard-Fi, Maximo Park, Editors), but every time I've been to see them I've ended up having a miserable night. The first time, they were supporting the Zutons and afterwards I ended up at a party where I knew one other person who was nowhere to be seen, and people were launching fireworks out of the arseholes. The second time, off the album News And Tributes, I got semi-mugged by a crackhead and his 9 year old son on the way home (he punched me in the face, but I didn't give him any money). I'm not going to risk a third gig.

Rediscovered Gem

"SWATE" by HEEMS

Play To Z: Lost In Space to The Moldy Peaches

Some Observations

Listening through Love & Happiness, the Al Green best of compilation, you realise how many fantastic songs the man has given the world, but I don't think anything will ever compare with "Let's Stay Together", which manages to stand head and shoulders above an impressive discography.

I'm still waiting for the Justice League film/TV show I have in my head to be made, which features Florence and the Machine's "Kiss With A Fist" sound-tracking Batman and Wonder Woman having a sparring session that turns into a make-out session. Warner Bros, I'm here when you need me.

Because I have no money but a plentiful supply of blank CDs and cardboard, I'm making mix CDs for my two nephews and niece this Christmas. My niece's is a ladies-only mix, ranging from Nina Simone and Taylor Swift to The Breeders and X-Ray Spex. One artist I couldn't fit on there was Kate Nash, but after re-listening to Made Of Bricks, I'm hoping my niece catches the music bug enough to come to me for more recommendations, because this will be high on my list.

An Internal Dialogue
Tim: Eugh, why do you still have The Magic Numbers album, self? It's by-the-numbers folk pop. Walking down this road will only lead you to Mumford & Sons.
Tim: But listen to the vocal harmonies! They're so pretty!
Tim: I don't know how I put up with you.
Tim: *too busy dancing to respond*

I'm very lucky to have wonderful friends who occasionally send me mixes of their own. One I listened to recently was from university friend Tom (who's been mentioned on here before) called Make Sure You Know What An Off-Colour Sea Lion Looks Like (named for a Blue Jam sketch that was included on there), which is a wonderful selection of tunes from artists like Stars, The Hold Steady, Beirut and The National. It also included on of the oddest songs I own, "The Centaur" by Buck 65. It's well worth a listen.

Sitting at my desk at work and listening to Passion Pit's Manners without jumping up and starting a one-person dance party was extremely hard.

One off my all time ultimate party tunes will always be "Sweet Home Country Grammar", a mash-up of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Nelly's "Country Grammar" by DJ Mei-Lwun. It hits the perfect balance of laid-back summer cool and hyped-up party starter.

Ssshhhh...apart from "My Girls", I don't actually like Merriweather Post Pavilion that much. Don't tell any of the cool kids, or they'll kick me out of their club.

Midnite Vultures wasn't the most well-received of Beck's albums, with a lot of people dismissing it as a featherweight homage to Prince shot through with Beck's typical genre-fusing madcappery. What people failed to appreciate how goddamn fun it was; a bizarro electric cyclone ripping through a sci-fi orgy. It's a masterpiece of both lyrical gymnastics and musical artistry.

Getting Lost In Space

I wrote last time about my period of finding wonderful new artists through rather circuitous routes, and Aimee Mann was no different. Two of her songs were featured on an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (in fact she performed live at The Bronze and mentions that she "hates playing vampire towns") and at around the same time, I saw Magnolia for the first time, my introduction to the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and one of my favourite films. Mann worked extensively with Anderson on the film's soundtrack and the centrepiece of the film's second act sees the cast breaking the fourth wall to perform a version of Mann's "Wise Up".

After this one-two punch of an introduction, I couldn't help but check out one of her albums, and Lost In Space was where I started. It's a hell of an album, a set of perfectly constructed songs written with a novelist's eye for detail, and built around a series of simple but effective melodies that carry the emotional weight of the songs. Mann's voice is wry and intelligent, and can run the gamut from heartbroken to hopeful.

My favourite of Mann's albums, however, is The Forgotten Arm, which I was going to write about at the time I listened to it on this run (a couple of months back, I reckon) but wasn't able to, so we'll talk about it here. The Forgotten Arm is every bit as brilliant as Lost In Space, with the added layer of a story that runs through the album, telling the tale of two star-crossed lovers dealing with addiction and heartbreak.

Mann isn't well known either side of the pond beyond the Magnolia soundtrack, which was over ten years ago now. She's well-connected with the LA comedy scene and has been putting out albums regularly (including a Christmas record of both original songs and classics that's festive without getting treacly) but deserves a much wider audience. I suggest checking out her song "Little Bombs" here - it's one of my favourites and a great introduction to her work.

Rediscovered Gem

"Soul Of A Man" by Beck

Play To Z: Where Does It All Come From?

We're halfway through my music collection now (baring any sudden donations or downloading sprees) and as I was writing up my last few entries I began thinking about a very fundamental question - where did my music taste come from?

I didn't grow up in a musical house. Neither of my parents care much about music; I think between them they own perhaps 40 albums, and rarely listen to any of them, and as far as radio goes, the dial moves between Radio 4 and Radio Norfolk with little deviation. Back in her youth, my mum saw bands like The Rolling Stones and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich live but never spoke a great deal about them, and my dad grew up in a pre-pop music era.

My sister did listen to music, but she was (and remains) seven years older than me, and we've always had very different taste in pretty much everything. My memories of her musical taste in my formative years go East 17 -> Guns 'n' Roses -> Anything the Ministry of Sound recommended. None of them exactly exploded my young mind with the possibilities of music.

One of the biggest impacts on my young brain was the radio. I remember getting a clock radio when I was about 8 and tuning it in for the first time, looking for the first station that played anything "modern". I ended up on Broadland 102.4, our local commercial radio station (who knows how life would have been if I'd turned the dial the other way and ended up on Radio 1) and stuck with them for several years. They played a pretty standard mix of chart pop and 80s/early 90s hits, and laid the foundations for me coming back to pop music several years later after some misguided teenage rockism.

My love of music only really took off in sixth form (that's 16-18 for non-Brits). Before that, I'd listened to what friends said was good or mainstream rock without really ever giving it any thought, or feeling inspired by it (this was the age of nu-metal, so there wasn't exactly anything inspiring out there).

Once I'd escaped my old high school and some not-exactly-healthy friendships, I started exploring music a little. I went through a phase of buying albums by artists I didn't know on the strength of one song. I watched High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank, both of which informed my taste a lot. I started going to gigs, mainly thanks to friends who knew more than me, and discovered the joys of live music.

Still, my taste has ended up very different to a lot of my friends, even though I take their recommendations to heart. Some of my favourite bands and artists were discovered in most unusual ways. I found Broken Social Scene based on a webcartoonist's recommendation; Beck came from watching the Futurama episode he was in; Death Cab For Cutie was due to, I think, hearing their name mentioned in The OC. It's not exactly the opening scene to Almost Famous.

I can only say that my taste in music matches my taste in most other things: I like emotional honesty that doesn't stray too far into melodrama or naked exhibitionism. I like intelligent writing that thinks about themes and patterns. I like people who don't take themselves too seriously. And I think you can make something exciting, accessible and popular without sacrificing any of those things.

And I'll never stop looking for new things to love.

Play To Z: Kitsuné Maison Compilation 9 to Lost Horizons

There was gonna be an essay-style portion to this post, but it got too long so I've separated it out. Enjoy some other good stuff though!

Some Observations

The Klaxon's cover of "No Diggity" isn't as good as the original (what is?) but damn if they don't give it their best show and come up with a new spin on it.

Portico Quartet's album Knee Deep In The North Sea is one of the more left-field records that I own (contemporary jazz, anyone?) and is a helpful reminded that although you might not think it, cello, clarinet and kettle drums go together surprisingly well.

Holy Fuck are a good band, but their live show is something else. Live electronica can too often be a guy pressing buttons and trying to make a show out of it, but watching these guys play instruments as they pull magnetic tape through machinery was brillo pads.

Ladyhawke's eponymous first album is one of those records that I always forget I really enjoy. Part of it is the slightly disposable nature of the electro-pop she makes (please note, I do not use "disposable" as a bad term - it's just some things are made to make you dance, not think about) and part of it is that there's no strong themes or emotions that come through in her songs, at least not enough to hang them onto my own experiences. Still, there's some great danceable songs in there.

One of my favourite things about Kanye West is that when he learned some of the facts behind the conflict diamond trade, he re-recorded "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" with an aim towards raising awareness about the issue, but he still included the original version, which features a typically materialistic approach towards diamonds, because hey, it's a damn good song.

Lazerproof is an album of La Roux remixes by Major Lazer, and is far better than anything by La Roux or Major Lazer by themselves.

"The Staunton Lick" remains one of my favourite songs, indelibly linked to both the end of Spaced and the end of my time in America (I played it as I left our house, and by extension San Francisco, for the final time in a deliberate homage to Spaced) and one of those songs that instantly makes me calm, happy and tranquil. It's like aural Prozac.

Hey, "Gimme Shelter" is a pretty good song, isn't it?

It's a perfect coincidence of the alphabet that puts "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" from the Lilo & Stitch soundtrack right next to "Circle of Life" from The Lion King. That's a one-two punch of happy-making energisers right there.

I've already trumpeted Solange's "Losing You" around the Internet as a borderline perfect pop song, and I'm not sure there's much more I can say about it (beyond GO LISTEN TO IT) but I have just noticed that what initially appears to be solid yellow artwork for the single in fact hides yellow-on-yellow writing that you can only see from certain angles. I approve of such creative trickiness.

Rediscovered Gem

"Saints" by The Breeders

Play To Z: The Hazards of Love to Kings & Queens

Holy crap, it's been a while. I'm gonna stick with just observations on this one, because there's a lot of ground to make up. However, I'll aim to A) be more regular and B) do an actual "topic" post ASAP, 'cos there's stuff I wanna write about

Some Observations

Listening to "I L U" by School of Seven Bells has a weird gut punch effect on me. It's not a song I associate with a particular moment, or that I came across at an especially difficult moment in my life, but as soon as I hear that first ethereal note, I get this weird romantic stomach ache. It's like a mainline to heartbreak.

"Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys was perhaps the third single I bought (on cassette, natch) and is one of the foundations of my musical taste. I listened to a few Beasties albums in this selection, and every one was tinged with a little sadness at Adam Yauch's passing. I think he may be the first "celebrity" death to have had a real emotional impact on me, and I can only point to the long shadow the Beastie Boys cast over my life as the reason for this.

Remember before Mark Ronson put horns on everything?* Remember when he made dancefloor fillers like "Ooh Wee" with Ghostface Killah, Nate Dogg, Trife and Saigon? Sigh

"Higher and Higher" by Jackie Wilson will forever be the song that animates the Statue of Liberty in Ghostbusters 2, which I must have seen at least 4 times before I got around to seeing the first Ghostbusters. I know most people look down on the sequel, and perhaps it's just nostalgia talking, but I honestly rate them equally.

I've never been a huge of The Killers, but if you don't sing along to "Mr Brightside", you're made of stone. There should be more songs about jealousy. It's an underrated emotion.

I'm pretty sure The Weeknd has brought out his full album now, but I'm not sure anything will compare to the dark icy majesty of House of Balloons. Such a perfectly formed EP; at once a mission statement, a portrait, a confession and a memoir.

David Bowie's description of Bob Dylan's voice as "sand and glue" on Hunky Dory is basically spot on.

If you're a drummer in need of inspiration, go listen to Those Dancing Days' self titled song (helpfully linked right here) and go slack-jawed in awe at Cissi Efraimsson's astonishing skills.

People with far greater skill and knowledge have written at length about why In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel is so very good. I'm not sure I'm even capable of articulating this album's brilliance. Jeff Mangum's dream-like lyrics touch on family, faith, death, destiny and the weight of history, articulating meaning through a swirl of imagery and the tremulous power of his voice, so heavy with emotion. It's one of the outstanding achievements in pop music in the last 20 years.

I think I've shared this story before, but it's worth repeating. When I was in Sixth Form (I'm not sure if I was 17 or 18 when this happened) I worked at a newsagents in Norwich's train station. I basically ran the shop with another similarly-aged boy or girl on weekend afternoons. To get home in the evenings, I would walk up Prince of Wales Road, a dirty street that hosts numerous low rent night clubs and takeaways, essentially the hub of Norwich's nightlife if your aim is to get slaughtered and swap infections. One night, late in the winter, I was walking up this filthy road that to me represented a side of youth culture I felt I would never understand, let alone want to mix with. Usually quiet on a Sunday, it was especially dead today. It was cold, and it was snowing, and In Time, REM's greatest hits, was playing on my Discman. As I approached the top of Prince of Wales (the street slopes uphill towards Norwich Castle, where my bus stop awaited), "Nightswimming" came on, and something changed in me. It's a simple constructed song, but one with a lot of power. Something made me turn back, and look down this street that I so associated with drunken idiots and the trudge to a job I hated. The snow had transformed it, made it clean and new and beautiful. I felt something electric pass through me and stood frozen in that moment, confronted with this striking metamorphosis as Michael Stipe sang softly of still lakes and stolen moments. In that eternal second, I knew how magical music was.

Hey, I'd forgotten that the first four tracks on It's Not Me, It's You by Lily Allen are basically perfect. Come back and make another album, Lily. Music is weaker without you.

I think "The Prowl" by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys would be a pretty sexy song anyway, but I came across it because of this (sort of NSFW), so that's pretty much cemented it as boneriffic.

*I realise he's put out another album that's less horn-filled and so this jokes a little old, but the point remains

Rediscovered Gem

"She's A Rejector" by Of Montreal

The Broken City: Political Realities

In my last post about my role-playing game, The Broken City, I talked a lot about the in-game mechanics for determining character and background, and how these two basic choices (Path and Order) have a big impact on the player characters. I also made a brief mention of the fact that I altered the background slightly for my game, and here I'll explore what I changed, and how it affects the game world.

  I talked a lot about Paths and Orders in my last post, but there's one further category the players and other characters get sorted into in the game - their cabal. If your Path is roughly analogous to something like your race or your star-sign, and your Order is where you work or study, your Cabal is your group of friends. Your players can easily belong to different Paths and Orders in a Mage game (in fact, it's encouraged) but having them in different Cabals is a whole other matter - it essentially means your player's characters don't like to hang out with each other. No-one cares if Thor is a Norse god while Iron Man uses technology, or Willow studies at university while Giles works at the magic shop, as long as they still hang out and kick ass.

  In most Mage games, the superhero comparison is fairly apt when describing the relationships between different Cabals (the one made up by your players, and the others you create to fill up the world). The Avengers and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four might get into conflict occasionally, or have different agendas, but they're mostly content to take care of their own business and leave each other alone. However, my initial conception of the game, and in fact the thing that first made me want to run it, was a very different world.

  When I was thinking about the game in the early stages of planning, and describing it to potential players, my pitch was "Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones meets Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere", and the final, unspoken part of that equation was "...meets The Warriors". I wanted the cabals that the players encountered to be at minimum rivals, or at worst bitter enemies.

  Cabals are usually kept in line by the "Consilium" - a sort of ruling council of mages made up of representatives from all the cabals in the area, but for the purposes of my game, I decided that the Consilium had fallen apart due to rivalries, grudges and infighting, so London was sort of a magical Wild West, with very few people there enforcing the laws, and groups of mages fighting over territory and magical resources.

  This obviously immediately ups the stakes considerably for the players - instead of being welcomed into a stable environment where most people are trust-worthy and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, they're instead dropped into a world where everyone is out for themselves and there is little safe ground to go to.

  Because the Orders are made up of the local mages, this also affects them - it's hard to keep an organisation running when the members all want to fight each other. This meant I shrank the Orders down to a few core members each who gave up their cabal affiliation, making the Orders less about large training facilities and more about one-on-one mentorship and developing a few key characters for each one.

  My players haven't encountered the cabals much yet - I introduced a sort of grace period when they couldn't be approached by other cabals to give the players a chance to get used to being mages and develop relationships with each other and the orders. However, that will soon end, and it will be interesting to see how they cope with suddenly being plunged into what is a very political aspect of the game, dealing with alliances, deals and betrayal. I'm hoping they're up for the challenge, and find the whole thing fun, because it's a large part of what makes up this particular world, and how this game functions.

  In my next post, I'll provide some more details about the world I've created, and the characters who populate it...

Play To Z: Get Awkward to Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate

Some Observations

Get Happy!! by Elvis Costello and the Attractions is another 50 track beast of an album, consisting of around 22 songs, then 28 live, alternate and demo versions of the same tracks. It's a sign of what great pop music the man writes that they album flew by with relative speed.

  You can hate on me all you want, but the Apollo 440 theme for the terrible 1998 film version of Lost In Space is great. It's very much of its time, but that doesn't stop it from being a brass-fueled triumphant stonker.

  "Drinking In LA" by Bran Van 3000 and "Steal My Sunshine" by Len are seperated by one song on my iTunes (the former is from their album Glee, the latter from the soundtrack to the film Go) which is appropriate, because they are forever linked in my mind as a premier examples of 90s power-pop (see also "Get What You Give" by The New Radicals).

   As I previously noted, mixtapes are a big thing with me, and creative projects I undertake often get a soundtrack built for them. The role-playing game I'm currently running (and have been chronicling here in all the posts that aren't about music) was no exception, and a CD of said mix was given to all 5 players as a sort of "mood piece" to get their brains in the right space. "The Good, The Bad and The Queen", the self-titled song from the self-titled album, was the conclusion to the mix, but in truth, the whole album could have served as a soundtrack to the game. I find it incredibly evocative of London, using a fantastic mix of ancient tradition and symbolism combined with more contemporary rhythms that reflect the diversity of our nation's capital. It's a great album that seemed to fail to capture people's attention when it came out, which is a great shame.

  When I was around 19, my "hangover" routine was solid (I use quotation marks because I now know you don't start getting true hangovers until you're at least 22). I would wake up, usually after a night at The Waterfront (Norwich's alternative club), wander into the city, and have a black Americano and a blueberry muffin while listening to "Where I'm Calling From" by Charlotte Hatherley. It served me pretty well.

  The memory I associate with the Beck album Guero is far too long and too potentially incriminating to go into here. If you get me a little drunk, I may divulge it.

Getting By With Help

  Let's talk about my friends.

  They are a pretty wonderful bunch of human beings, and I owe them too much to even comprehend, but large chunks of my musical taste is included in that. I've lost count of the number of bands or songs I've been introduced to by people I know, not to mention the number of truly indelible memories that have music associated with them, whether it's gigs, moments soundtracked by music or simply dancing down Magdalen Street singing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" while drunk as hell.

  This chunk of music proved particularly fertile for friend connections, both "real life" and web-based, so let's briefly dissect it...

• Husky Rescue first appeared on my radar thanks to a mixtape from Catherine, who then lent me their album Ghost Is Not Real.
• My knowledge of K-Pop is entirely thanks to Mary on Tumblr, hence "Hoot" by Girls Generation.
• "Glitter Shower" is a great 50-minute mix of self-proclaimed makeout music by Internet acquaintance Miles.
• Similarly, Charlie, who I met through friends in San Francisco, makes wonderful electronica under the name Ring Trick, and put out a perfectly chilled hour-long mash-up called "Greetings From Paris".
• Housemate, BFF and solid gold pal Bret produced a fantastic mixtape of alcohol-based songs for his birthday a couple of years back, which shares it's name with his WoW guild, The Guild of Drunkards. He even commissioned an original song to serve as the guild's anthem.
• Stone cold hustla and Caballero Joey, who I met via the Brian K Vaughan message board back in the day then met in person when I was in the States, is most generous. After sending him a few mixtapes in dribs and drabs, he returned the favour with a jumbo pack: h Destruction, a selection of hits ranging from The Clash to The Bloody Beetroots; h Remixed, with remixes from some of house and electronica's masters; and h YYY/BIG, an inspired mixtape of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Notorious BIG, which work surprisingly well placed up against each other.
• Sweetest gent in the world Nick provided me with a Happy Christmas Trivia Lad album, using the song title's to form the mixtape's name. For this thoughtful act, I will forgive him including "Young At Heart" by The Bluebells on there.
• Finally, the earlier mentioned Miles is in a great band called LookiMakeMusic, and the final songs in this slice come from their EP Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate. You can find it on their Bandcamp page here.

Rediscovered Gem

"Remedy" by Little Boots

Play To Z: Fever To Tell to Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue

Hey there, pop fans. It's been a while since the last entry, but my slackness in writing has been matched by my slackness in listening, so I haven't got a huge breadth of material to wade through. Anyway, on with the show...

Some Observations

  I wasn't involved enough with the music scene to know of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as an up-and-coming band. I presume there were demos and EPs and buzz, but without all that preamble, it's remarkable listening to Fever To Tell and seeing just how fully formed they were when they truly "arrived". It helps, I'm sure, to have such a dynamic, iconic frontperson in Karen O, someone who truly embodies the band and so articulates their vision and aesthetic on another level, but still - their sound is right there, without hesitation or faltering steps. It's the kind of record that pushes open the double doors and walks into the room like it owns it.

  Electric Six are a curious beast, seemingly dedicated to recreating a period that I'm not sure ever existed. The belong in a universe where the porn-y sleaze of the 70s, the pulsing synths of the 80s and the freedom of sexual identity of the 90s all happened simultaneously, probably while John Waters was President. It's a credit to their purity of vision that one can vividly picture this parallel dimension when listening to them. I'm not sure I'd want to live in it, but I'd be happy to spend a wild weekend there.

  The Fountain was one of the most profound cinematic experiences I've had, and the astonishing soundtrack by Clint Mansell is a huge part of that. Like many great soundtracks, it takes a strong central theme and builds a score around explorations of that core melody. Mansell moves from heartbreaking to oppressive to terrifying to tragic to glorious apotheosis effortlessly, blending piano and string movements into a cohesive whole. The album reaches its climax with "Death Is The Road To Awe", which soundtracks the film's conclusion. It's a piece that punches straight through your chest. I heartily recommend both the film and soundtrack to everyone.

  Most of the music I own falls squarely into the "pop" category, or at least that's where you'd find it in HMV. Folk, world, jazz and classical don't get much of a show in my iTunes library, but one of the notable exceptions is George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. It sits in the sweet spot between jazz and classical, taking the pace and passion of the former and the structure and discipline of the latter. It's an incredibly evocative piece that cannot help but say "New York" to anyone who listens to it. The record I own containing it also has Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, the main theme from "An American In Paris" and Variations on "I Got Rhythm", a fantastic sampler of one of the great American composers.

You Gotta Hear 'Em Live

  While this little project may be a comprehensive look at all the music I own, it only tells half the story when it comes to my musical life. Gigs and live music are a big part of how we experience music, and I'm no different. I don't get to see as much as I'd like, due to Norwich's relative isolation from the rest of England and the attendant costs of live music, and I always feel guilty that I'm not more in tune with our local music scene, which seems pretty thriving. That said, I thought I'd take a break from analysing my records to go over my favourite gigs.

Those Dancing Days at XOYO, London - Some bands impress with their ability to take familiar songs and turn them into entirely new creatures when they perform them live. Those Dancing Days simply take their songs and make them more so. As a band they are tighter than tight, never putting a foot wrong, but rather than being soulless reproductions of the studio albums, the live atmosphere and electrifying passion of the band ramped the songs up to a whole other level.

The Go! Team at The Waterfront, Norwich - The Go! Team are one of those bands that work extremely well live, thanks to their catchy, cheerleader style songs that get the crowd moving with almost cult-like efficiency and the fact that every member of the band is a multi-instrumentalist, so they have a hilarious tendency to swap instruments between or even during songs. But what really made this gig was being beside my friend Jason, dancing from the second the band hit the stage until the last note hummed to a finish.

Eels at the Royal Festival Hall, London - Seeing the Eels at the Royal Festival Hall was an experience unlike any other gig before or since. We were seated, which can be the death knell at a gig, but worked wonderfully here. The night was billed as "An Evening with the Eels" and that's what it was - rather than a opening act, we watched a BBC4 documentary about Mark "E" Everett investigating his late father's scientific research (he developed the idea of parallel universes), and thanks to his easygoing, hypnotic stage presence and talent for storytelling, the audience was kept entranced the whole night.

Bruce Springsteen at Hyde Park, London - Bruce Springsteen turned 60 the year I saw him, but you wouldn't know from the 3 1/2 hour long show he put on in Hyde Park, showing the kind of energy and charisma that only true rock stars have. Seeing such an iconic artist perform in the festival-like surroundings of the park in the midst of summer created a wonderful atmosphere, with every audience member singing along to the triumphant anthems but respectfully quiet during his more melancholic numbers.

Arcade Fire at Greek Theatre, Berkeley - The atmosphere at Hyde Park was great, but nothing will ever equal the amazing crowd at the Greek Theatre. The sense of camaraderie and shared joy amongst the concert-goers was infectious and all-consuming - the wave of positive energy filled up the venue even before Arcade Fire took to the stage. And when they did, they performed like men and women possessed, climbing the scaffolding while drumming, leading the crowd through megaphones and generally kicking every kind of musical ass. We were lucky enough to be perhaps three or four rows back from the front, roughly 10ft from the stage, and when the final surge forward happened as "Rebellion (Lies)" started playing, it wasn't the aggressive, macho shove I've experienced at other gigs, but somehow as inclusive and comforting as a friendly bear hug. It was a truly unique gig, and I doubt anything will ever match it.

Rediscovered Gem

"Submission" by Ash

Play To Z: Drastic Fantastic to Feel Good Lost

This is the first time I've managed to cover an entire letter in one of these posts, and it's not even the biggest chunk of music I've covered. "E" proved to be the shortest letter so far, but that's not to say it's been bereft of great music.

Some Observations

"Dueling Banjos" from Deliverance has so successfully lodged itself into popular culture as an indicator of redneck, backwoods locations that I'd wager most would recognise it, but few will have actually listened to the blistering skill displayed by the two musicians. It's one of those songs you're tempted to keep rewinding because you can't quite believe the talent on display.

Blondie's "Atomic" remains an essential piece of new wave beauty. One of the most flawless songs of its era, it doesn't put a foot wrong, weaving the propulsive beat and bass line with Debbie Harry's almost gospel-like delivery of the lyrics and that instantly recognisable guitar riff.

The Weeknd's trilogy of mixtapes peaked early with House of Balloons, but Echoes of Silence still has plenty of great songs on it, especially his slow, paranoia-infused cover of "Dirty Diana" by Michael Jackson.

"A Better Son-Daughter" is one of the best and most accurate portraits of depression I can think of. There's a weird catharsis in listening to someone explain how you're feeling more precisely than you ever could yourself.

Fantastic Playroom by New Young Pony Club is a great album that I always forget to listen to more. It's kind of weightless, but it's sexy electro-pop fun, so you don't exactly want it diving into existentialism, and it's short enough that it doesn't repeat itself or outweigh it's welcome. It's a perfectly formed sly little treat.

Intention, Meaning and the Five Star Rating

I was listening to Feel Good Lost today, Broken Social Scene's 2001 debut, from back when they were at their most ambient and instrumental and it got me thinking about intention in music, and applying Barthes' "Death of the Author" thesis to music.

  Rather than give everything on iTunes a star rating, which sounds exhausting and doesn't allow for a lot of factors, I simply give things no stars or 5 stars. 5 stars means a song meets a loose set of ill-formed criteria; am I happy to listen to this song no matter my mood? Does it have enough of a musical identity to make it easy to recognise? Does it have some emotional connection or effect on me? Is it, for want of a better term, great?

  Some albums manage to be great but lack in 5 star tracks. For example, Electro-Shock Blues by Eels is an album I would point to as being fantastic, but only about half the songs merit 5 stars. The rest, while no means bad, don't stick in my mind enough to warrant 5 stars, but help make up the overall meaning and atmosphere of the album. Some songs can be the key to understanding a record or even an artist, but fail to tick some box somewhere in my brain.

  The problem Feel Good Lost presented is that, as a piece of largely instrumental, ambient post-rock, it sort of blends together and fades into the background, but that is, I'd imagine, the intention. As an album, it's meant to create this sort of dreamlike, meandering etherium, and it does so entirely successfully, but few individual tracks stand out. It's a good album, but that doesn't translate to great tracks.

  So, when I'm thinking about marking a track down as "great" in my own personal tally system, do I take into account where a track sits in the wider context of an album? Do I allow for an artists' intention? For how they want the track to be consumed? If I do, then how? And if I don't, then that album will, in all likelihood, be listened to less. It's a tricky proposition, and one without an easy answer.

Ho hum.

Rediscovered Gem

"Can't Do Nuttin' For You Man" by Public Enemy

The Broken City: Background Goes Splat

Different game systems have different strengths and weaknesses. Some are easy to pick up and play with no preparation. Some have rules that cover every scenario you could want. Some give you a set of tools that are flexible. Some are written in friendly, accessible language. To me, the biggest strength of the World of Darkness games is the depth of background they provide for players and games masters. From the Corebook to the most obscure supplement, every book is packed with story elements to inspire you.

  However, the problem with this is there is so much to learn, and you have to know what to pick and what to leave. It's important to remember as a GM that you get to spend 6 months or however long learning and memorising this stuff, but you'll have to roll it out to your players in game and big chunks of exposition are dull when really everyone wants to be having arguments and blowing things up.

  A big portion of this is how you utilise character classes (what in traditional fantasy games might be things like fighter, thief, wizard, etc) These are sometimes referred to Splats, for reasons too complicated to go into, and World of Darkness games use what we'll call a "dual-axis splat system".

  Okay, here is your warning: this post is about to dive deep into the Mage: The Awakening background and setting. If you thought things were already nerdy and complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet.

  The "dual-axis splat system" basically means a large part of your character is defined by two choices. For Mage, these are Path and Order. Path is what type of mage you are and what type of magic you are strongest at. Each Path has certain personality traits that are associated with it, and archetypes they fit into. Choosing your Path is a meta-game decision, meaning the players pick it, but their characters have no say. It's a bit like being sorted into a House in Harry Potter - JK Rowling decided Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff; Cedric didn't.

Mage Paths
Acanthus - Free-wheeling, easygoing enchanters, strongest in Time and Fate magic
Mastigos - Ambitious, driven warlocks, with dominion over Space and Mind magic
Moros - Grim, stern necromancers specialising in Death and Matter magic
Obrimos - Devout, bold theurgists with power over Forces and Prime magic
Thyrsus - Passionate, wild shamans most capable with Spirit and Life magic

  The second splat is Order, which is what sort of role your character plays within the Mage world. Joining an Order means you get trained and carries both benefits and obligations. Choosing an Order is an in-game decision, meaning your character is the one who decides where they're going, and it can produce some in-game drama and intrigue. It's like picking a career, or a university. My players are at this point in their game - 4 out of 5 have picked Orders and have just started training.

Mage Orders
The Adamantine Arrow - Warrior wizards focused on action and betterment through conflict
The Silver Ladder - Ambassadors and advisers, determined to help Mage and non-Mage alike
The Guardians of the Veil - Spies and secret police responsible for keeping magic hidden
The Mysterium - Scholars and explorers gathering and preserving ancient knowledge
The Free Council - Modern upstart Order of activists and inventors, finding magic in the modern world

  It's easy to see how these two decisions can go a long way to defining your character within the game - you're essentially deciding your personality and your role in the world. Within a group of players, there's usually a fairly even split of choices, but there doesn't have to be. There can be duplicates or omissions, and players can emphasise different aspects of Paths or different roles within Orders.

  As there are five players in my game, I decided that each Path had to represented. There are in-game reasons for this I won't go into, but it also ensures balance in gameplay. Each Path has certain specialties, and if you miss one out, it's harder to tell certain stories, especially early in the game. If no-one is Moros, you're less likely to have someone who can deal with ghosts. If there's no Acanthus, stories about destiny or prophecy are trickier. Forcing players into a "no duplicates" policy restricts them slightly, but I think it pays off.

  The players themselves have decided to split themselves between Orders. There was a lot of in-game discussion about this subject, and as each Order has their own magical traditions and secrets, the group decided to try and game the system and share this information between themselves. We'll see how this works out for them... (cue evil GM laughter)

  Of course, this is the standard background for the Mage game. If you decide to mess with it, things get even more complicated, which is what I'll get to next time...

Play To Z: Cross to Doolittle

Some Observations

Holy Playlist Interruptions, Batman! This chunk of albums saw my first shift off the alphabetical order due to a new addition to the discography. I downloaded Talib Kweli's fantastic mixtape Attack The Block (inspired by the movie of the same name) and, having listened to Stereogum's Cruel Summer 2011 Mixtape, realised I didn't have their 2012 one, so downloaded that to.

I also finally borrowed a copy of Camp by Childish Gambino off a friend - I've got all his mixtapes but hadn't got round to buying the album, and having finally given it a good listen, I think I'm going to be one of those awful people saying "I preferred his earlier stuff". Camp seems weighed down with his preoccupation with how he is viewed by the rest of rap culture, but doesn't offer any huge insights or truly unique perspectives. A couple of tracks dealing with this topic would have been interesting, but giving over so much of the album to it dilutes the potency of the message.

Listening to just under two hours of Crystal Castles non-stop does strange things to your brain. I felt like I'd slipped into some weird 16-bit nightmare inside a vast haunted cathedral. It made doing photocopying at work a lot more interesting.

Daisies of the Galaxy was the first Eels album I owned, and remains one of my favourites. It's arguably the most positive, radio-friendly of his albums, but still run through with a deep vein of melancholy and despair that serves to heighten the happy moments. I have a very vivid memory from about 7 years ago of walking down St Benedict's Street in Norwich on a warm, sunny St Patrick's Day, bag full of comics and headed to the pub to celebrate my now-housemate Bret's birthday, with "Packing Blankets" on my iPod (or possibly Discman at the time). It was a transcendentally happy moment, one of those perfect instants when music helps crystalise an experience in your mind.

TV On The Radio's Dear Science is a pretty much flawless album. To my mind, it's their strongest record, a fantastic blend of danceable beats, triumphant horns and lyrical mastery. It feels very much "of it's time" (end of the Bush administration, beginning of Obama) but it doesn't let that weigh it down the way other records sometimes do when aiming to comment on modern society. There's enough about it that's timeless to not feel like a time capsule.

Definitely Maybe, Oasis' debut record, is filled with mostly decent tunes that are, without exception, about a minute too long.

In the ultimate karaoke bar, where you have access to every song imaginable, my pick will always be the live version of "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies that is included on Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits. The energy of the performance really adds a whole other layer of urgency to the song, and the big bellowing chorus is a classic power ballad wrapped around a portrait of depression.

"Debaser" by the Pixies is one of my all-time favourite songs. I could, and have, listened to it a dozen times on repeat and not got bored. It's a flawless song, beautiful in it's power and economy. It's a little piece of magic.

The Subtle And Mysterious Art of the Mixtape

Among the albums I listened to in this batch were two mixtapes by the music website Stereogum, as well as two film soundtracks (as opposed to scores), Dazed and Confused and Deathproof. Soundtracks and mixtapes have a lot in common, although obviously soundtracks are also beholden to the events of the film they support. They are about creating a mood, and conveying some kind of meaning, sometimes a story, sometimes a sentiment, all of it using someone else's music.

Among my various skills with little real-world application, I consider myself a proficient maker of mixtapes (or whatever you want to call the CD equivalent). For a while, I posted a bunch of friends a new mix every 3 months, sometimes simply a collection of songs I enjoyed, sometimes built around a theme (one was the soundtrack to a film that didn't exist, a nice little link back to my earlier point). I've made soundtracks for role-playing games I've been involved with, created mixes for friends, lovers and acquaintances.

I learned my skills from some of the basic rules delivered in High Fidelity and found I had a good ear for transitions. I often wish I could go back to my teenaged self and tell him not to spend so much money on plastic Space Marines and instead invest in a pair of decks and some speakers - I think I would have made an alright DJ. Instead, I'm limited to mixes and the occasional party playlist (the mixtape's grown-up, meaner brother).

A good mixtape takes you on a journey, like any good album, but it also uses the mix of artists to create a dialogue, a conversation between the changing sound of the album and the listener. Audience is important to bear in mind, as is what effect. Lyrical themes can be carried from song to song, and if your lucky, images can recur and evolve. Put in enough work, and it's like constructing a sonnet from a dozen broken-up haiku.

Rediscovered Gem

"Destroy Rock And Roll" by Mylo

Play To Z: Cinderella's Eyes To Crosby, Stills & Nash

I've been busy, ill and my mind has been on mundane troubles, so I don't have a big central thesis for this post. Nonetheless, it's been a great chunk of albums, which I'll detail below...

Some Observations

Nicola Roberts' album is great, of course, and if you haven't listened to it, you're a fool, but her cover of "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" is surprisingly nuanced. Her voice suits the song very well, and the 80s electronica-sheen her version adds works well.

Codes And Keys is a bit of a disappointing show for Death Cab For Cutie. Apart from the title track and "Doors Unlocked And Opened", there's no real standout songs, and the whole album slid by without me really noticing.

It's interesting to go back to The College Dropout and find Kanye West more or less exactly how he is at the moment. He arrived almost fully formed (which for some reason has me picturing him taking Venus' place in Botticelli's The Birth Of Venus) and, although his sound has evolved, his lyrical skill, his personality and his ego were there from the very beginning. The album focuses heavily on his car accident and his experiences in college, and is a fairly stunning dissection of modern life for young, middle-class African-American men and women.

The Wallpaper remix of "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell" by Das Racist is a stunning, stunning party track. As Chief Playlist Wrangler at our house parties, I always make sure it drops at some point, but the only problem is very few people know it, so it doesn't get quite the reception it should. Ho hum.

I prefer MGMT's second album Congratulations to their first. I feel like I'm in the minority on this, but I don't know for sure.

My friend Alex, who's musical taste I respect immensely, hates The Fratellis. My friend Bret, who I live with and who is consider a brother, loves them. Where do I sit? Well, they're as subtle as a knee-capping, and their songs aren't about anything other than themselves (not that that discounts them from being great - "Groove Is In The Heart" isn't exactly deep and I've killed men for saying it's not wonderful). Their lyrics are often nonsensical and the melodies are hardly varied. But despite all that, even Alex can't deny that they are bloody catchy, and just like "Combination...", "Chelsea Dagger" is a frequent party tune because people know it, and it gets them moving. And isn't that the point?

The 2004 Pavement reissue Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a double album with 49 tracks. 49. It's the original album, B-sides, tracks from compilations, live BBC sessions and other unreleased treats. It weakens considerably as it goes on, but it's still a magnificent collection, and the original album is a classic.

Rediscovered Gem

"Heavy Metal" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

The Broken City: A Question of Rules

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the role-playing game I'm running, The Broken City. We're on a little bit of a hiatus at the moment, while various players are on holiday (the lucky dastards) so it seemed a good time to write a bit more about the game.

  Role-playing games can seem a bit of an odd duck to those who've never delved into them. They grew out of more traditional war-gaming (the type where two players line up armies on either side of a board and attempt to destroy each other) which, I suppose, grew out of games like chess, but to my mind, their real strength is as a way of telling stories together. Like improv comedy or a well-rehearsed anecdote amongst friends, role-playing games are about crafting a story that entertains everyone.

  However, your audience and your performers are the same people, which leads to some conflict of interest. Everyone wants the story to be filled with intrigue and adventure, betrayal and humour, bitter defeats and hard-fought victories. But when you have spent countless hours building up a character, it can be hard to watch them fail at something, even when it makes for a better story. That's where the rules come in.

  There's a huge range of rules systems out there, and the one you pick can hugely affect your style of play. Of course, if you want to run a space adventure game, you'll need a system that gives you rules for spaceships, zero gravity and alien races, but there whatever universe you want to create, there are probably at least a couple of systems you could use. Some are hyper detailed, with rules for deciding your characters height and charts mapping how range affects the accuracy of various weapons, while others can fit their rules on three sides of A4. They might use dice, cards or rock paper scissors to determine things.

  In The Broken City, I'm using the World of Darkness system, by White Wolf. World of Darkness is a flexible system meant for contemporary stories with a supernatural bent, usually in a world like ours, but a little worse (hence the name). Anything from Supernatural to Drive could work well within the World of Darkness. As a system, it strikes a nice balance between detail and game flow, which is the trade-off at the heart of most systems. The basic rulebook gives you the foundation for creating characters and running games, and there are various expansions for playing different games - vampires, werewolves, monster hunters and mages.

  Mages, or rather Mage: The Awakening, is the game I am using for The Broken City. The rule book is an intimidatingly thick tome, containing a wealth of background information and a huge section on spells and how to create them. But even with this surplus of rules and figures, there were some tweaks I wanted to make.

  The idea of certain objects or ingredients being necessary for spells is a fairly common one (think Buffy or Harry Potter) but isn't a huge part of Mage, where magic is a more internal force. However, spell ingredients create a sort of economy within the game - they are something to be traded, bartered for, stolen, or quested after. These are all great opportunities for stories, so I tweaked the rules for extended spells (ones cast over a long time, as opposed to in the heat of the moment) to be stronger if ingredients were used.

  There's other examples, but it's a brief glimpse into how changing the rules can change where the story can go. As for changing the background, well. that's a tale for a whole other post...

Play To Z: Bitter Melon Farm to Chutes Too Narrow

Some Observations

I will always favour the immediacy of the catchy pop hook over the intricacy of the artsy flourish. Well, maybe not always, but listening to Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces certainly made me feel that way. Any worthwhile melodies they happen to find always collapse quickly into sparse, spasmodic instrumentation and forced rhymes. Give me "Call Me Maybe" any day.

"Naked In The Rain" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is about Anthony Kiedis wanting to be able to talk to animals. How have I only just caught this? The chorus is "Doctor Doolittle, what's your secret?"

If you don't like "Dancing On My Own" by Robyn then I will disregard every opinion you ever had or have.

I missed out on a chance to see We Are Scientists at the Norwich Arts Centre last month by essentially being a forgetful goof, and listening to Brain Thrust Mastery makes me really regret that. They're one of those bands who don't do anything extraordinary, but they consistently put out great, danceable rock.

"Biology" by Girls Aloud continues to be the best pop song of the first decade of this millennium. I've written about this before, but if you don't trust me, go have a listen, then come back and try to argue against it.

Doubling Down On Greatness

Listening to my music in such a fixed, rigid order throws up odd patterns and connections. Sometimes the jumps between albums are natural (Milkman's Algorithms into Girl Talk's All Day), sometimes they create odd juxtapositions that work (Japandroids' Celebration Rock into Beastie Boys' Check Your Head) and sometimes they are just flat out jarring (Annie's Anniemal into Gang of Four's Another Day/Another Dollar). However, in the past week of listening, two artists have managed double bills - two albums that happened to sit next to each other alphabetically and compliment each other perfectly. And those two artists just happened to be fucking icons.

Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks come from very different periods in his career, separated by almost 10 years. Blonde on Blonde is part of a trilogy of albums (along with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited) produced in a 14-month period when Dylan had just "gone electric"; a trilogy and period that is viewed as more-or-less unparalleled by modern musical critics.

When I mentioned I was listening to Blonde on Blonde on Twitter, my friend Tom and I got into a discussion where he described the record as Dylan's "lion-with-the-cage-door-open moment, where he realised 'I'm Bob fucking Dylan! I can do what I want!'" I couldn't have put it better myself. There's an ambition to the arrangements and lyrics that shows an artist really reaching for something new and exciting, and pushing at what he was capable of.

Blood on the Tracks, from 1975, is a very different album. Although Dylan denies it, it is universally recognised to chart his divorce from his wife Sara in bittersweet, perfectly-realised detail. From the anger and superiority of "Idiot Wind" to "If You See Her, Say Hello", which positively swims in sadness, it's a portrait of a conflicted, heartbroken couple collapsing in on themselves, and it sets the bar for every confessional singer-songwriter to come.

Born in the USA and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen are separated by a similar amount of time, and a similar change in sound. While Dylan went from his creative peak to a critical resurgence, Springsteen moved from a breakthrough hit to an era-defining monster. Born To Run finds Springsteen as a young man, his lyrics still preoccupied with adolescent ideas of rebellion and romance. His songs are blue-collar soap operas of wild young racers, wilder first love and shady meetings with dubious characters. However, they're still tinged with sadness and cynicism, and an awareness of the inevitable destinies of his cast of small-town heroes.

Born in the USA was a move towards a more radio-friendly, pop sound for The Boss, and although the title track was adopted as a patriotic anthem, he managed to retain his realist's view of American life, taking in the heartbreak and the tragedy with the triumphs. Even though the album skews more towards universal sentiments and emotions, and less towards his earlier portraits of life, tracks like "My Hometown" and "Downbound Train" bring the album back home. The album works with a bigger palette of sound, introducing synthesised arrangements a world away from previous album Nebraska's stripped down acoustics. However, the young characters of Born to Run are now grown, reminiscing on their earlier days and reflecting on a life filled with hard work and turmoil. For an album making a deliberate attempt at mass commercialism, it manages to retain Springsteen's core themes astonishingly well.

Rediscovered Gem

"Cardiac Arrest" by Teddybears featuring Robyn

Play To Z: Away We Go to Bitches Brew

Some Observations

"One Thing" by Amerie remains one of the most irresistible slices of R&B pop this century. I know it owes a huge debt to "Crazy In Love", but that doesn't mean it isn't just as good (if not better - yeah I said it!) Just because The Magnificent Seven is Seven Samurai with cowboys doesn't mean it isn't a great film.

The Ting Tings first album was pretty good (I haven't checked out their new one) but their finest work remains "Patience" by Dear Eskiimo, their earlier incarnation. It's a fantastic, multi-structured duet that builds up layers and layers of instrumentation to a brilliant climax.

If you haven't listened to Beautiful Freak by Eels in the last month, it's time to go back and listen to it again. You won't regret it.

The Best Band Your Teenage Self Never Formed

Most people's formative experiences with pop music happen when they're teenagers (I'm no exception) and it's only inevitable that a thick slice of those people will swiftly move from the consumption to production side of music. The heightened emotions, attractiveness of rebellion and need for identity make adolescence a perfect storm for many a prospective rock god.

  Even since the legendary zine "Sideburns" published the iconic "Now Form A Band" picture, punk has been the genre of choice for the teenage garage band, the DIY ethos of the scene and the simple energy of the music complementing the teenage world-view perfectly. Most of these bands don't go anywhere, and the few that do often evolve into something different very quickly. Be Your Own Pet are the band all these other bands wish they could be.

  Be Your Own Pet's self-titled debut from 2006 (when all the band were in their teens, of course) has enough beautiful raucous energy to power a small town for a year. The songs are all about causing chaos, having fun, getting your heart broken and, in the final track, zombies. For the most part, the rhythms are simple and the melodies basic, all echoing drums and thrashing guitars, but by Jove they hammer at you until you're ready to run through the streets for the hell of it.

  It's all held together by the wailing voice of Jemina Pearl Abegg, all arsonist's soot and honey, screaming "I'm a independent motherfucker and I'm here to take your money" over "Bunk Trunk Skunk" like it's a warcry and a promise. She's Iggy Pop in a young Gwen Stefani's body with the Tasmanian Devil's energy - in fact, Iggy later guested on her solo album on the wonderfully named "I Hate People". In short, she's the kind of girl you wish you could have got to front your band in high school.

  Be Your Own Pet is one of those albums that I'll forever associate with the year I spent in America (I picked it up for cheap there in a closing-down Tower Records) and the sense of freedom and potential for adventure that year carried. The band's follow-up, Get Awkward, had some great songs, but struggled to capture the same sense of youthful exuberance their debut carried. The songs about food fights and teenage homicide felt a little forced, reaching for a place they no longer inhabited. They had left the perfect storm of youth, and couldn't quite find that magic again. But Be Your Own Pet remains a testament to the sheer fuck-you attitude of adolescence and the joy that comes from it.

Rediscovered Gem

"Hot Venom" by Miniature Tigers

Play To Z: All Summer to The Avalanche

Some Observations

Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" off Amnesiac makes life feel incredibly cinematic, and like I should be moving in slow motion while something very sad happens.

Equally, it's hard to listen to "Thou Shalt Always Kill" by Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip without feeling like you want to stop doing photocopying and instead start spitting truth like bullets and burn down the office to the ground.

I've only got a couple of tracks off of Annie's more recent album Don't Stop. Listening to her debut Anniemal makes me desperately want to rectify that before I get to the "D"s.

The "Be My Baby" drumbeat (BOOM BOOMBOOM TSSCH) makes it's first appearance on Kenickie's "Millionaire Sweeper". I'll try to spot it every time it kicks off a track.

In other Kenickie news, the opening of "Come Out 2Nite" will never not make me want to drum along.

At War With At War With The Mystics

  The Flaming Lips are less a band and more an experience. I'd love to see them live, if only to see front-man Wayne Coyne traverse the audience in a giant plastic bubble, or manifest from a swarm of butterflies, or climb inside his own beard, or whatever he feels like doing at that particular point in the evening.

Inside Wayne Coyne's beard

  They bring a sort of anarchistic big top feeling to their music, with absolutely everything thrown at the audience in a free-wheeling sensory overload.

  2006's At War With The Mystics feels, at it's best, like the soundtrack to a rock opera made by people who grew up on Sesame Street. The band have always had a deeply narrative approach to lyrics, and by weaving themes through various songs and creating consistent characters who appear more than once, they create the impression that a larger story is being told. I'm not sure it qualifies as a full blown concept album, but it straddles that divide quite comfortably without ever feeling awkward.

  Where awkwardness does sneak in is in the album's political content. I don't think anyone could deny that The Flaming Lips are a big bunch of hippies, and this album, released in the middle of President Bush's second term, before Barack Obama had emerged as an optimistic, uniting figurehead, is dripping with frustration with the Bush administration's neo-conservative agenda.

  The trouble is, there is very little subtlety or even depth to the politics contained within the record. It essentially amounts to "Hey man, you think you're so great, but what you're doing isn't groovy, and it'll bite you in the ass one day." The album's worst point is "You Haven't Got A Clue" which builds a chorus around the refrain "Every time you state your case/The more I want to punch your face", which is about the most un-nuanced political statement you can make.

  The political content of the record doesn't ruin it, and there's still a wealth of songs to enjoy, but I think it shows to merits of sticking to your strengths. As much as I'm an evangelist for bands pushing themselves musically, The Flaming Lips have never been low on innovation when it comes to their sound - perhaps it's worth them staying on safer ground with their lyrical content.

Rediscovered Gem

"Metrorail Thru Space" by Cut Chemist