Play To Z: 1977 to 8701

Random Observations

  I've heard some recent commentary on The-Dream AKA Terius Nash's career, claiming that 1977, the album length free EP he put out in 2011, was half-baked and thrown out to keep his name afloat in critical circles. I haven't listened to half as much of his earlier stuff as I'd like to, but if there's any truth in that it must be some of the best music out there, because I love 1977. Songs like "Used To Be", "Ghetto" and "Wish You Were Mine" are all astonishing works of confessional RnB, with the infectious "Wedding Crasher" serving as a centrepiece to the album, all wounded pride and self-conscious self-destruction.

  When I was young and ignorant, I was clueless about a lot of music, but even though I only knew their poppier stuff, I was aware that The Beatles had transformed modern music and were incredibly innovative. When I finally made the effort to listen to their discography, it's clear how truly groundbreaking they were. But in terms of their legacy and how they are viewed in modern culture, it feels like the Beach Boys should be spoken of in the same breath. The Beatles have acknowledged how much Pet Sounds impacted their own music, and Brian Wilson is often held up as a tragic genius figure. Still, listening to 20 Golden Greats, the Beach Boys compilation that is the sole piece of music I've taken from my father's meager collection, it seems like the minds behind such complex, multi-levelled songs as "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations" showed be treated with the same regard.

  I'm going to need some more time with Justin Timberlake's newest album. JT is one of the finest contemporary purveyors of danceable, disposable pop music, so his decision to fill his latest album with slower songs that average out at six and a half minutes is a puzzling one. It's a sign that he didn't just return to music to shoot out a barely-considered album on autopilot, but it's still a curious choice. Still, with songs like "Mirrors" and "Strawberry Bubblegum", I'm happy to give it time to grow on me.

  It's a couple of years old now, but Azealia Banks' "212" remains electric. So far, she's shown no signs of being able to move beyond it's eclipse, but it's a hell of an act to follow.

  If you've enjoyed reading these blogs and you haven't seen 24 Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom's biopic of Factory Records, stop reading now and go find a copy. The soundtrack alone is worth your effort and time, even without the fantastic performances and thrilling portrait of England in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

  Listening to 4, Beyoncé's most recent album, it feels like she's moving closer and closer to her own genre-defining work. Like the aforementioned Pet Sounds, Revolver, Nevermind or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (to name but a few), Beyoncé's next album could well be one that will truly stand the test of time. Every album she's produced has pushed her sound further and harder, and brought with it singles that will help define this time period, musically. It will be harder for her, of course, because she is a woman, an unapologetically commercial pop artist and co-writer at best on most of her songs, but looking at where she stands right now in the cultural landscape, she absolutely deserves to be remembered alongside the great artists of our time. Listen to songs like "Countdown", "End Of Time" and "Run The World (Girls)" and tell me she doesn't.

  It feels somehow appropriate that my last few songs should include John Cage's "4'33". You better believe I listened to the whole damn thing.

  Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreaks was obviously divisive, but it feels like the step he needed to take, both as a producer and a lyricist. He never exactly shied away from speaking his mind, but this album strips away a lot of the bombast and reveals a more intimate portrait of West, just in time for the surge in confessional hip-hop he helped start to reach its crest. Musically, it takes him into a new direction, again stripping back and finding his core, ready for the next album to build layer upon layer on that core. It's got less hits that the previous three albums, but it was a shock of honesty at a time when his own myth was threatening to swallow him whole.

  And what was the final song of this whole endeavour?



Rediscovered Gem

"Heroes and Villains" by The Beach Boys



What Now?

I'll be back shortly with a directory post that makes it easy to chart this whole project from start to finish, plus a conclusion post where I sum up whether I actually learned anything from doing this. I hope I did, otherwise it's been a hell of a way to waste 10 months...

Play To Z: What's Poppin' Vol 1 to 1972

Random Observations

  Being a teenager is an awful, horrible experience. It's tortures are innumerable, but large among them is the weight of peer pressure. I am only thankful that I was out of my high school years by the time social networking truly exploded - I cannot imagine the experience magnified through the privacy-denying world of Facebook and Twitter. Anyway, as I've written previously, I didn't really forge any kind of musical taste or identity for myself until I hit 18, so high school consisted largely of agreeing with whatever my friends liked.
  I can remember sneering in adolescent derision at Girls Aloud as they emerged from Popstars: The Rivals. I can remember seeing Cheryl Cole (then Tweedy) arrested for her racist assault in a night club and making what I thought was an oh-so-zeitgeisty observation that with accelerated stardom came an accelerated decline. I can remember deriding their songs and going back to listen to Tenacious D.
  But all the time, a little voice in the back of my head was saying "But their first single...it was really catchy...it was doing interesting things..." When What Will The Neighbours Say came out I was out of high school's pressure cooker and growing into myself. The videos for "The Show" and "Love Machine" were on regular rotation on the two Freeview music channels, and by then, I was willing to accept the irresistible lure of Xenomania's dancefloor ready beats and clever, subversive lyrics, channeled through Girls Aloud's obvious talent.

  Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not would be an impressive album even stripped of context. Knowing that it was a debut album written by a band when most of the members hadn't turned 20 makes it a marvel. It carries such assurance, in both the instrumentation and the songwriting. There is no sloppiness disguised as punk-rock intention - this is a precise beast, stopping and starting and turning on a dime, humming along with a well-engineered purr. The topics of the lyrics may not vary, but Alex Turner engages them with such fine observation that it doesn't wear. In fact, by taking a universe and exploring it so thoroughly from multiple viewpoints and with a true sense of place, it could almost be a concept album. The fact that the Arctic Monkeys didn't rest on their laurels and simply try to recreate this album, musically or thematically, is the cherry on the already delicious cake.

  "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell is one of the songs I want played at my funeral. His voice is beautiful - rich and simple, carrying loneliness and longing. The song balances a sort of country/Americana aesthetic with a sweet, Burt Bacharach kind of melody, and there's that iconic synthesizer Morse Code tapping out into the night. It's been called "the first existential country song" and there are many who proclaim it one of the best pop songs ever. Listening to it now, it's easy to see how.

  Witching Hour by Ladytron is like carving a passage into a glacier only to discover that it's got the world's coolest nightclub inside.

  As I mentioned near the beginning of this whole escapade (sometime in October I believe), We Are Scientists are one of those straightforward bands that aren't trying to reinvent the wheel, they're just trying to make some great pop music. With Love And Squalor, their first album, is a blueprint for their subsequent ones, producing song after song that you want to be hearing in the slightly dive-y back room of a bar in New York as you dance with your friends at 3am.

  I have no idea what "Lisztomania" by Phoenix is actually about (I'm pretty sure it's not actually about Franz Liszt) but I don't particularly care. I just wanna dance to it.

  Whenever I hear "Joker & The Thief" by Wolfmother, I feel sad that it wasn't around in the late 80s and early 90s, so it could inevitably be used in a Schwarzenegger vehicle. Imagine that spiraling guitar riff being played over the gearing up sequence in Commando and you will share my pain.

  Yeah So by Slow Club is a great album, topped off by a truly amazing song. "Our Most Brilliant Friends" became a touchstone of mine a couple of years ago when it felt like every friend of mine was lurching from tragedy to tragedy. It's hard to watch those you care about dealing with things that they have little control over, and the only help you can really offer is a shoulder to cry on and the distracting power of alcohol. To me, this song will always be about the strength my friends have, strength I didn't even know about, to endure and to triumph even when life is shitting on them from the greatest of heights.

  Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People moved them beyond the ambient sounds of their first record into the expansive post-rock collectivism that would come to define them. Released in 2002, it was bought in 2007 at Amoeba Records in San Francisco by Tim Maytom, who proclaimed it "the tits".

  I have 100 songs left to listen to. The next post will talk about them, and the post after will look back at this whole glorious endeavor.

Rediscovered Gem

"Tapas" by Action Bronson

Play To Z: Under The Blacklight to What's Going On

Random Observations

A lot of people don't like Rilo Kiley's Under The Blacklight. I get it, I really do. Simultaneously their major label debut and final album, it's a departure from their previous sound towards a more commercially viable one, after a three year wait for a new album, and was followed by the band's split. But that's all tied in with following the band as that all unfolded. As someone who came to the band late and discovered all their material more or less at the same time, songs like "Breakin' Up" and "The Angels Hung Around" still stand out as fantastic songwriting, and great showcases for Jenny Lewis' wonderfully smoky voice.
 

I hadn't heard any Vampire Weekend before I bought their eponymous first album; I did so on a recommendation from some website or magazine so glowing that I felt fairly confident I wasn't wasting my money. I remember placing the CD into the stereo, pressing play and within about 30 seconds thinking "Oh, well I've found the album I'm going to be listening to all summer". The rest of it didn't disappoint, with barely a misstep and a fully formed voice that felt different to anything I was listening to at the time.

The terrible local radio station I listened to as a kid was the sort that still played Sting's "Englishman In New York" every couple of days, even though at that point it was already 10 years old. I'm not saying it's a bad song - far from it. I'm just saying, listening to it now, I wonder how much of my own image of manhood was influenced by Sting telling me that "a gentleman will walk but never run". That said, I don't like tea and love coffee, so maybe I'm talking nonsense.

At this point, we had reached the "Very Best of..." section of the alphabet, so I got to listened to a selection of The Jam, The Smiths and The Stone Roses in short succession. That was a good day.

My very good friend Jason (whose music taste I trust wholeheartedly) and I have a running joke/argument about which is the better Stone Roses song. I say "I Am The Resurrection", he says "Fools Gold", and whenever we happen to be at a 90s night and either of them is played, we will stand there shouting the song titles at each other until we get bored and start dancing instead.

I'm pretty sure Brian Ritchie, the bassist for the Violent Femmes, has extra fingers, or possibly some kind of telekinetic power over his guitar. Listen to the bass line on half of their songs and you'll be left wondering "How the hell did he do that?"

Cibo Matto's "Birthday Cake", an insane slice of Japanese mash-up hip-hop, will forever remind me of being 18 years old, of house parties and watching borderline incomprehensible anime while hungover.

"U-Mass" by the Pixies is possibly the best advert for a university that exists or ever will exist.

I've already written extensively about why "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed" is my favourite song here, so I'll just say that nothing has changed, and it remains, to me, perfect.

Tim Fact of the Day:We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Bruce Springsteen's album of American folksong covers, includes his version of "John Henry", who was one of the folk heroes I wrote my dissertation about. Enjoy that little morsel, fact fans.

When I was a kid, I used to get these weird...attacks, I guess? Looking back now, I'd say they were some form of panic attack, or at least some kind of anxiety, but back then I didn't know what they were. They were never serious enough to warrant mentioning them to anyone, and seemed to only happen when I was trying to get to sleep. It felt like the world had been slowed down, but I was processing it at double speed, like I was being overwhelmed by the wealth of information inherent in everything. I was clearly a very existential child. I mention all of this because there is something about "Impacilla Carpisung" by The Tings Tings that harkens back to that feeling - the way the vocals layer in the chorus, the slightly off persussion, the lyrics that linger on the border of nonsense. It's an uncomfortable song for me to listen to, and I somehow doubt it's the emotional resonance that the band was going for when they wrote it.

I suck at video games. I never played enough as a kid to develop the right mindset, mainly because my dad was convinced that plugging a Megadrive into the television would somehow destroy it, despite the fact it was DESIGNED FOR THAT VERY PURPOSE (I'm not bitter). Even games like Guitar Hero, which don't use a conventional controller, I struggle with. That said, I can rock "My Name Is Jonas" by Weezer flawlessly on Medium difficulty. Be impressed.

Rediscovered Gem

"Slick" by Chew Lips

Play To Z: Them Crooked Vultures to Under Construction

Random Observations

  They might have found their sound with The Color And The Shape, but There Is Nothing Left To Lose was where the Foo Fighters truly locked in onto what they wanted their albums to sound like. There's the obvious single "Learn To Fly", a couple of rockier songs, a couple of softer ones, and the rest is just a bland soup for the ears. The whole album slips by like a dull afternoon or a midseason episode of a crime procedural. It is a Sonic Tuesday.

  This Is Happening arrived like a balm after a long period of not very good albums. They weren't bad. They just were just unmemorable. This Is Happening is memorable. It is memories. Places and time layered upon each other. Amongst James Murphy's wide-ranging and impressive skill set is an ability to balance a very specific sense of location with a universal accessibility. Each song creates a small world that feels real and familiar, like visiting an old haunt. It's a talent you find in the best novelists (and holy shit, take a moment to consider how great a novel by James Murphy would inevitably be) and a few great musicians.

  Ahh...The Three EPs. The Beta Band's first album, constructed from three previous EPs (as you might gather from the name). I got into The Beta Band because of that scene in High Fidelity where Rob says he will sell five copies of The Three EPs, puts on "Dry The Rain" and watches the customers in the store groove along to the emerging melody. I'd estimate that that scene sold a hell of a lot more than five copies of that particular album. I can remember buying it alongside some other records and while everything else got played upstairs on my shitty little Asda stereo while I studied or read, I somehow knew to wait for The Three EPs. I put aside time to listen to it. I played it on the good stereo downstairs in the living room. And it rewarded it me immensely.

  Oh hey, Thriller is still a great album.

  I've written in previous posts about my unending affection for The Go! Team, but it's worth drawing your attention to "Junior Kickstart" from Thunder, Lightning, Strike as quite possibly the best chase music ever, as evidenced by this video.



  Being an old country, England has a lot of odd laws that remain in force from earlier generations. Many of these are completely redundant and woefully out of date (things like all men having to practice archery on a Sunday) but I think it's safe to say the legislation that states that no couple are truly married until "Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners is played at their reception is still relevant.

  To my future biopic's director - please soundtrack any fight scenes with "Crown On The Ground" by Sleigh Bells.

Eli's Coming

  I have written in the past, in various places across the Internet, of my long-standing affection for Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's first venture into television before The West Wing. It's not a perfect beast, hampered as it was by network intervention and Sorkin's sometimes ham-fisted politicking, but it still holds a myriad of pleasures. One of these was introducing me to "Eli's Coming" by Three Dog Night, which serves as both the title and a recurring idea for the 19th episode of the first season.

(SPOILERS FOR SPORTS NIGHT AND THE WEST WING FOLLOW)

  Dan Rydell, one of the lead characters and one my all-time favourite fictional characters, uses the phrase to mean "something bad" is approaching, "a darkness", having misunderstood the song when he first heard it. Even when corrected (the song is actually about a scoundrel and a womaniser), he continues to mutter it throughout the episode, as omens of tragedy appear. When, in the closing moments and in the middle of a live broadcast, they find out Isaac, the show's Managing Editor, has suffered a stroke, the song plays as they are forced to hide their concerns and carry on with the show.

Robert Guillaume as Isaac Jaffe

  The plot of the show mirrored real life - Robert Guillaume, who played Isaac Jaffe, had himself suffered a minor stroke and the show had to find a way to write him out for a period. Isaac's return and rehabilitation on the show all played out as Robert himself was undergoing the same thing, and watching as the cast reacts to this fictional news, one can only think that they must have reacted similarly in real life. It is a situation that tragically repeated itself on The West Wing when, in the final season, founding cast member John Spencer died of a heart attack and his character, Leo McGarry, is killed off in the same way. If you want to watch me cry like a baby, show me the episode "Requiem", revolving around his funeral. I will blub like an infant.

  The use of "Eli's Coming" in the episode is perfect. By foreshadowing not just Isaac's stroke but the song's significance so boldly, viewers are already set for something terrible happening. When it appears at the episode's close, it's like a well-executed reveal of a monster that has before simply hidden in the shadows. The song starts sparse, with little more than the wailed warning of "Eli's coming...girl you better hide you heart" before the instrumentation kicks in after 30 seconds, the song suddenly exploding with pace and life. It serves as a perfect auditory recreation of that stomach-dropping moment of bad news, followed by life rushing back in and reminding you that you are still here, in this moment, with things to do. It's an unconventional song to use, but it does a magnificent job.

Rediscovered Gem

"Get Off" by The Dandy Warhols

Play To Z: Standing In The Way Of Control to Their Satanic Majesties Request

Random Observations

  I've always struggled with OutKast. I know they're great. I can listen to them and appreciate the skill of their arrangements, the way they flawlessly blend styles and genres, their incisive, creative lyrics. But it's always been an intellectual connection, rather than an emotional one. Listening to Stankonia, the singles stand out, as does "Bombs Over Baghdad", but everything else sort of blurs together.

  Hey, Solange's version of "Stillness Is The Move" is pretty much amazing, isn't it?

  Strange Mercy, St. Vincent's latest album, is a glorious thing, a crystalline construction that's both delicate and strong. It makes sense that Annie Clark and David Byrne ended up working together, because they have a similar talent for building whole worlds within one song. Also, she gets sounds out of a guitar that few other people can.

  It took me a while to get a grip on The Suburbs, Arcade Fire's third album. It was released in August 2010 and I excitedly purchased it, but on first listen, something didn't click. There were great songs, but the album as a whole didn't slot into place in the way previous ones did. I put it aside for a while, and came back to it in November, when it suddenly all made sense. I was walking through the city listening to it and I literally said out loud "Oh...it's a winter album" because it totally is. Something about it works so well with walking around in the darkness, pulling yourself close inside your coat.

  Perhaps the iconic record of my high school years, Take Off Your Pants And Jacket by Blink 182 still has a direct line to certain areas of my brain. I was a pretty sedate teenager, so songs like "Roller Coaster" and "Reckless Abandon" conjured images of a world of carefree adventure and freedom that was beyond my anxious, shy reach. Listening back to it now, it makes me nostalgic for a past I never had, an odd experience that probably doesn't do my maturity level any good, but who needs maturity when you have pop-punk guitars?

  I was late coming to The Mountain Goats, only discovering them about two years ago. My discography is scattered, with chunks from various albums and only Transcendental Youth as a complete record. At some point when I am less broke, I will trawl through Amazon completing my collection. Until then, I will console myself with the fact that my sporadic assortment includes "No Children". I know it's everyone's favourite Mountain Goats song, but there's a reason for that. It's a beautifully simple expression of a seldom recognised emotion with a nice line in iconic lyrics.

  I mentioned the doldrums I found myself in when listening to this particular patch of albums, and no section represents it better than listening to Temple Of The Dog's self-titled album followed by Pearl Jam's Ten. I would have been around at exactly the right time for grunge, had I listened to anything beyond local radio at that time, which wasn't known for it's "alternative" bent. Listening to these albums now, I'm glad they hold no nostalgic affection for me, because they're awful. Self-indulgent, monotonous and glum, there's no albums that have made me ask myself "Why do I own this?" more.

Rediscovered Gem

"Wires and Waves" by Rilo Kiley

Play To Z: Shut Up, You F*cking Baby to The Stage Names

Random Observations

"Signs" by Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg and Charlie Wilson is one of those perfect party songs. The opening is just spot on, Timberlake's falsetto sliding in before the playful drum beat begins and the horns start to bubble underneath. Plus listening to Snoop Dogg rhyme "Venus and Serena" with "Wimbledon arena" is just a juicy pop pleasure.

  Bloc Party's Silent Alarm and The Knife's Silent Shout make wonderful neighbours,with Bloc Party's spiky, angular, pulsing rock giving way effortlessly to The Knife's vocal-driven, otherworldly electronica. Listening to these two albums back-to-back was a dream.

  If you ever want a group of people of our generation (mid-Eighties to early-Nineties) to drunkenly sing along to something, you could do a lot worse than "Don't Speak" by No Doubt.

  People don't give The Buzzcocks enough love. They were huge influences on the British punk scene (and therefore the British indie scene) from the very beginning of the movement (if you haven't already, go watch 24 Hour Party People) and they produced iconic, masterful, insightful songs, most of which came in under the magic 4 minute mark.

  It's a shame I didn't manage to tackle both of Das Racist's mixtapes, Shut Up, Man and Sit Down, Dude, in one blogging session. I still haven't gotten around to their album, Relax, but frankly the two mixtapes are 37 tracks between them, longer than most full albums. The fact that they won't be making music together anymore is such a shame - there was so much truth and humour in their rhymes, and we need more of that, in music and in life.

  The Social Network soundtrack is a great, atmospheric piece. It matches the tone of the film so perfectly without resorting to any of the cliches of film scoring. There are no sweeping overtures, no hushed variations for emotional scenes. Instead, there are a series of intricate, well-constructed pieces that fit together like elaborate clockwork, a machine designed to build dread and tension.

  Someone To Drive You Home by The Long Blondes is one of those albums that can take over your life. I discovered it at a point in my life when I was particularly open to that kind of infectious worldview and for two or three months, that album owned me. Like a sermon, like a manifesto, it constructs a perspective on life and romance that you can't help but pour yourself into. The characters in the songs are so well drawn, so true to life that you connect with them as well as you might with any protagonist from a novel or hero in a film. Kate Jackson's voice is a siren song, pulling you into the cynical, wearied waters of her world. From that place, all romance is a power game, a maneuvering of players where the men are selfish predators and the women are cruel and tragic. It's a dangerous world, filled with the allure of old films and danger of illicit liaisons. If you let it, it will take you over, and never let you go.

  Eels' Souljacker, like Shootenanny after it, bridges the gap between Daisies of the Galaxy's optimism and Blinking Lights and Other Revelations' ambitious melancholy with a harder, rougher sound. Where earlier records were like an open wound, this is the scab - toughened skin that tells a tale of an earlier injury. Mark Everett steps outside his own head a little, with tales of circus freaks and ghosts, but the evidence of his heartbreak is still there, in the anger of "Bus Stop Boxer" and the bruised vulnerability of "That's Not Really Funny". The ramshackle production matches the tone of the songs perfectly, and like all Eels albums it creates a wonderfully complete package.

  I know I'm meant to be sticking to the whole "each song gets one listen" rule, but I may have cheated a little when it comes to "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem. You know why? Because it's the best song this millennium has produced so far. Because it's a perfect cocktail of triumph and loss. Because it makes me want to run from door to door, pulling people out on to the street to scream into the sky. Because it makes me want to see all my friends tonight.

  The Stage Names was one of those albums I mentioned rediscovering in my last post. If you'd have asked me before this listen through what I could remember from it, I would have been able to talk about the spot on homage/sampling of The Beach Boys "Sloop John B" in "John Allyn Smith Sails" and nothing much beyond that. Now, I could talk about the building wail of "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe", the pulsing thrum of the guitar hook on "Unless It's Kicks" and the oh-so-clever workplay of "Plus Ones" that manages to add, rather than detract, from the song.

  It was about this time in proceedings that I was gifted a selection of music by my friend Georgie, mostly new stuff that I hadn't got my hands on yet. Chief among the pleasures were Haim's Forever EP and Holy Fire, the new album from Foals. Forever is like a delicious slice of cake; sweet, tantalizing and leaves you aching for more. Holy Fire is filled with leap-out-of-speakers energy and brings together so much of Foals' earlier sounds into one cohesive whole.

Rediscovered Gem

"In The Mouth A Desert" by Pavement

Play To Z: Hitting The Wall

Two months is a long time between posts; long in normal time and even longer in Internet Time. Whole memes have been born, bloomed, withered and died in that time. The blog has rested, untouched while Margaret Thatcher jokes pinged back and forth across Twitter and people on Facebook spoiled Game of Thrones twists for their less up-to-date friends.

  So why so long without a post? Well, because now, as I near the end of the project (less than 1000 songs to go at current count), I hit the wall. Like a marathon runner in the final third of the race, I suddenly slacked, and listening to music became an effort. So many great albums lay behind me, now unlistenable until I had reached my finish line. So many new releases floated out there on Spotify and YouTube, tempting me. And worse of all, I hit a fallow patch in my album collection, with long stretches of albums that I had little passion for, with those that I did serving as only brief oases in a desert of mediocrity.

What This Is Happening looks like after 200 songs worth of "eh"

  It is, of course, my own fault. If I kept my music collection trimmed of any fat, this project would have been absent these sort of patches and noticeably shorter. I'd probably even be done by now. But I can't beat myself up too much - every album I own is a window into a period of my life, even the bad ones. It could be a band I once loved who I have now turned sour on, an album I bought out of curiousity and never listened to again, or something lent to me by a friend on the promise that I would love it that I now keep only as evidence that, yes I have listened to it.

  The whole point of this project was to both reconnect with these albums that had fallen to the wayside and to challenge the memories I had of them. In pushing through the wall, I've discovered some albums that I had cast aside prematurely. Coming back to listen to them, I've found new depths to their sound, new meaning in their lyrics. Certain songs have popped in ways they never did before. It's a nice way to measure myself as a person, knowing that I can come to the same song I merely tolerated two or three years ago and now find deeper purpose to it.

  All that said, there's a hell of a lot of material to cover here - over a thousand songs, more than three days of music. I'm going to parcel the random observations out between a few posts in the next couple of days, sometimes going into more depth where something merits a closer look.

Play To Z: Remix After All to Shut Up, Dude

Some Observations

No central thesis at the end of this series of observations, in part because this run of albums was so fantastic that narrowing down to one artist would be impossible. That said, there's a common theme that emerges through the observations...

  Return To Cookie Mountain was my introduction to TV On The Radio. Well, I say it was my introduction - my real introduction was seeing them perform live at a one-day festival in Mountain View, California (home of Google). It wasn't the perfect introduction: we were far back from the stage, they were on early in the day, and I think they're one of those bands that are better suited to a venue than a festival (The Shins also played, and their sound was lost in the larger arena). That said, they made enough of an impact with their performance that I went out and bought the album, and it didn't disappoint. Their sound was unlike anything else I was listening to at that time, fusing electro, funk, blues and rock and making something new from them. They're one of those bands that's not afraid to push their sound in new directions, and that's always rewarding.

  Talking of pushing your sound...Revolver. What can I write about Revolver (that hasn't been written already, by people much smarter than me)? It's a truly remarkable album, my favourite of the Beatles' discography, and really shows the band as they transition from their original Merseybeat pop sound to something a lot more experimental.

  And from Revolver, we move on to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, with Bowie going full blown concept-album space opera and embracing one of his most iconic personas. Again, it sees an artist pushing themselves to create something wholly new but still powered by a pop sensibility.

  And leaping forward in time, we have Robyn, with everyone's favourite batshit insane Swede fusing her pop heritage with electronica and hip-hop and crafting something fierce and angular but still run through with warmth and humour. Robyn is one of those artists who has constantly evolved over time, moving from prepackaged pop starlet to an iconic pop mistress for the new millennium, all while playing entirely by her own rules. We need more pop stars like her.



  "Bust-Out Brigade" by The Go! Team does strange things to my head. It's one of those songs I can listen to 10 times in a row and never grow bored of. It transports me to a different world, one where marching bands move in synchronised patterns around double dutch teams as blaxploitation detectives and kung fu fighters leap from fireballs. It makes me feel invincible.

  And we come to Romance Is Boring, my favourite album by my favourite band, Los Campesinos! If we ignore the EEP released in between, the leap from Hold On Now, Youngster to this album is considerable. Romance... is a much more adult, serious record, leaving behind a lot of the twee conceits of their first album but retaining their incisive observations and lyrical flourishes. Their sound is expanded, adding horns and a richer palette of instruments. It manages to move from rollicking anthems of romantic cynicism to heartbreaking hymns of young death easily. It is a wonder.

  Beck's Sea Change is his most personal record, a heartfelt collection of slow, haunting songs after several albums drenched in ironic distance. It's like mainlining melancholy; a brave choice for a artist most wouldn't have associated with this kind of work before, but it pays off. It shows a whole other side of Beck's songwriting talent, and gives us songs of breath-taking beauty.

  In case you were wondering, the best Bond theme is "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and there is absolutely no contest.

Rediscovered Gem

"Honeybear" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Play To Z: Plug In, Plug Out to The Reminder

Some Observations

"Two Princes" by The Spin Doctors is a pretty fantastic example of early 90s college rock and is a damned fine song, but I will never, ever be able to separate it from Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" in my brain. The two are musical conjoined twins as far as I'm concerned.

  I don't own anything else by Madeon, the French DJ between this inspired mash-up, but if "Pop Culture" is anything to go by, he is a demon sent from Hell to make me dance.



  I've already mentioned my cheapskate decision to make my niece and nephews mixes this Christmas in lieu of the proper presents I couldn't afford, but to be honest I'm pretty damn happy with how they turned out, especially when they include introducing my 9 year-old manic-ball-of-energy nephew to "Fast Turtle" by Anamanguchi.

  If I had to pick a single band to soundtrack my life, I would without hesitation pick The Go! Team. Proof Of Youth saw them in fine form, not only expanding on their "70s car chase through Sesame Street with Sonic Youth in pursuit" sound, but also proving they could tackle the occasional smaller, quieter song. Still, it would be nice to have a life that consisted mostly of kung-fu action spectaculars and leaping off piers to avoid explosions.

  I've never had sex while listening to Purple Rain, but if you do, I'm pretty sure it counts as a threesome by every metric that counts.

Prince will sex you now

  "Ignition (Remix)" turned 10 years old last week. 10 years of being the best party song of all time. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats started a masterful post of 100 reasons why the song is so brilliant, which just shows that A) John Darnielle is great and B) "Ignition (Remix) crosses all boundaries. It is the Great Uniter, because everyone wants it to be the Best Party Ever, no matter what they're doing at the time.

  I bought the first two volumes of Radio One's Live Lounge collections back when my music taste wasn't as well-defined and I thought "Hey, maybe I want to hear The Kooks cover Gnarls Barkley", but there are a gems amongst the echoing void of personality. Lemar's soulful version of The Darkness' "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", Franz Ferdinand's take on Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?" that slides into Billy Idol's "White Wedding" and Corinne Bailey Rae's transformation of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback" into a 20's enfused jazz number are all worth a listen.

  I am not much of a rocker (I know you all just fell off your chairs in surprise) but "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine will always hold a special place in my heart. When it plays, I can almost feel the sticky floors and smell the thick air of our local "alternative" club, The Waterfront.

  I only recently picked up (i.e. rented from the library and burnt onto my laptop) Taylor Swift's masterful Red, and as such, I've only listened to most of the songs once. That said, the other day I listened to "I Knew You Were Trouble" maybe 30 times on repeat, so I feel fairly secure in saying it's a spectacular example of a pop album. There are some missteps, of course, but alongside "I Knew You Were Trouble" and the peerless "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", "State Of Grace", "All Too Well", "22" and "Begin Again" all leapt out on first listen as stellar examples of Swift's brand of country pop, managing to push the envelope of her sound while still feel classic and effortless.

  Sleigh Bells' sophomore effort Reign Of Terror wasn't quite as assured as Treats, and skewed a little harder towards the big stadium sound of bands like Slayer and Iron Maiden, but it stilled produced songs like "Born To Lose" and "Comeback Kid", and the way it moves from a big anthemic beginning to a more subdued ending feels like the hangover slowly creeping in as you wander home at 5 in the morning, watching the sun rise.

Coming Back To The Shins; or, Street Level Versus Cosmic

  Listening to Port Of Morrow, The Shins long-time-coming 2012 album, it never clicked in the same way their earlier records did. I could point the finger at the long gap between albums or the almost complete change in the band's line-up, but in truth I'm not the same listener as I was when I first discovered the band 10 years ago.

  To me, my defining Shins experience was indelibly linking the song "Turn A Square" to a girl I had a massive crush on in the second year of Sixth Form. When I heard the song, I pictured her, and when I saw her the song would be on the tip of my tongue. The crush ended up going nowhere - I harboured it through the rest of Sixth Form, and finally drunkenly confessed it to her towards the end of the first year of university, just before she left a club with another guy.

  As much as I can still appreciate the skill and artistry of The Shins' work, their songs have a certain amount of idealism and naivete to them, not just in the lyrics but in their whole atmosphere. It's not an exaggeration to say they were my favourite band at one point, but they've been replaced (with a few steps in between) by Los Campesinos!, a band you could never accuse of naivete. Their songs are filled with telling details that root them in real heartbreak, all bloodied knees and walking home in the cold, and when they aren't tragic, they're still founded in the knowledge that the happiness is fleeting.


  This all sounds very bleak, but that's all a matter of perspective. Acknowledging that most relationships end and most people aren't perfect doesn't mean you can't enjoy the good times. After a particularly drama-filled Hallowe'en last year, I awoke with an almost Zen-like sense of enlightenment at the thought that I am friends with so many hot messes. Our beauty is in our imperfections, our glory is in our flaws.

  This line of thought ties closely to something my housemate and I have been discussing for some while (and several of our friends have been dragged into), which we call the Street Level/Cosmic Spectrum. In Marvel comics*, heroes run the gamut in power levels, from characters like The Punisher who are non-powered humans fighting muggers and drug dealers, up through Captain America and Iron Man to figures like the Silver Surfer and Nova, who fight epic space battles against foes like Annihilus and Ego The Living Planet.

Indeed he is

  As well as the difference in the power of their respective protagonists, these stories also have distinctly varying tones. When a reasonably mid-powered Spider-Woman showed up in the street level title Alias, it was because she was being used as a source of superpower-granting drugs. When a regular human appears in a cosmic level story, they become a Flash Gordan-style figure, holding their own against the aliens and abstract universal manifestations.

  We've started applying these distinctions to our outlooks on life, and more specifically relationships. Street level denotes a certain amount of realism and an embracing of life's scummier elements. It's about grabbing hold of the whole of life, dirty parts included, and diving in head first. Cosmic level means taking a slightly more romantic view on life (it doesn't necessarily mean idealistic - an entrenched cynic who sees the worst in everything can be just as cosmic) and a tendency to see your own life in narrative terms. Cosmic types get their heart broken more often, because they fall in love harder and more readily. Street level types take love's slings and arrows with a weary shrug and move on.

  Of course, the whole thing is a spectrum. Most of the superheroes in the Marvel universe are not purely street level or cosmic: they sit somewhere in between. It's the same with most people - we're a mix of hard-worn realism and starry-eyed romance (usually the latter kicks in during crushes, the start of relationships and break-ups). The whole theory is a work-in-progress, but my own move from cosmic level teen to street level adult is definitely reflected in my evolving music taste.

*To be fair, this also applies to DC, but their universe tends to be more "cosmic" overall, so the metaphor doesn't work as well

Rediscovered Gem

Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms (The Phenomenal Handclap Band Remix)

Play To Z: Odelay to Please Please Me

Random Observations

Odelay is one of my favourite albums, and one of the few where every track is considered a favourite. I love all of Beck's albums to some degree or another, but I'm not sure he'll ever surpass this one. It's a perfect realisation of his early "junkyard mash-up" sound that still carries a lot of heart underneath all the samples and white noise.

  I've talked about where my musical taste comes from, and how my family have had very little impact on my choices, but one figure who has is my half-brother Jeff. Almost 30 years my elder and seen for perhaps 4 or 5 days a year, he has nonetheless managed to steer me towards some great artists, such as Martin Grech, who's Open Heart Zoo I would describe as "a howl of rage and sadness by a robot conducting an orchestra in a metalwork factory".

  It's a stupid complaint, because in theory it's an easy fix, but I've always been annoyed at myself for not being more involved in our local music scene. I don't know why I'm not - Norwich has a pretty vibrant musical culture, and I've even got friends who dabble in it, but I've just never got into the swing of it. One of the bands I have come across is The Brownies, an excellent indie rock band following in the steps of the Riot Grrl movement. Their album, Ourknife Yourback, is a great record filled with fantastically spiky tunes.

  Jamie T's Panic Prevention is one of those albums that I'll forever associate with the time I spent in America, not that it's at all American. In fact, it's one of those albums that I find amazingly evocative of London. It's kind of the flip side to The Good, The Bad and The Queen, which feels rooted in London's history and mythology. Panic Prevention is about the reality - dance floors and minor tragedies and lap dancers and getting the last tube home. It feels like a good collection of short stories, giving momentary glances into people's lives, filled with rich detail and a lived-in quality.

  Parallel Lines. 'Nuff said.

  When I was around 8 or 9, my sister taped me a copy of Blur's Parklife with, inexplicably, "Gangsta's Paradise" added on before and after the album. It was one of the few albums from that time in my life that I still listen to, although unfortunately it's no longer on my turquoise Sony Walkman, sandwiched in between Coolio.

  Paul's Boutique. 'Nuff said.

  I find all The Decemberists' albums enjoyable to some extent, but I think Picaresque might be my favourite.  There's a wonderful seam of tragedy running through the whole thing, from the adolescent embarrassment of "The Sporting Life" to the grotesque vengeance of "The Mariner's Revenge Song". Perhaps the saddest of the lot, I would rate "On The Bus Mall" amongst my all-time favourite songs, even though it's the tale of two homeless teenage runaways forced into prostitution to survive.

Rediscovered Gem

"Vessel" by Zola Jesus

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