00’s music

Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of… mid week spins

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Yeah, they’ll pass you by…

Been a while, again. Life, health, work, marking another year around the sun… things get busy.

Still, ahead of ploughing into a coupe of post series it feels like getting a good toe back in the water by going for another recap of recent acquisitions and spins. In anticipation of the one of those series, let’s start with Mr Springsteen…

Bruce Springsteen – Losin’ Kind

What a year to be a Springsteen fan – Tracks II: The Lost Albums, confirmation that Tracks 3 is on the way and, now, we get Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition. Seemingly released to tie in with ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ hitting the screen, this is the one that’s been waited for as hungrily as the fabled ‘loops’ album as it contains ‘Electric Nebraska‘. As powerful as the E Street ‘power trio’ takes on ‘Atlantic City’ and ‘Born In The USA’ are, and subtly tasteful the renditions of ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Reason to Believe’ may be, the decision to can in favour of the original’s stark beauty isn’t questioned by these. Just as worth the price of admission though is the disc of ‘Nebraska Outtakes’. Songs like ‘Losin’ Kind’, ‘Gun In Every Home’ and ‘On The Prowl’ rank among his finest and, as with Tracks – raise a lot of ‘how the hell did this end up on the floor?’ style questions.

Elliott – Carry On

Mazzy Star – Bells Ring

There’s a surprising number of records sat in front of my shelves that are new purchases still awaiting to be filed away – which itself is always a bit of High Fidelity style fun.* Amongst which are lot of recent reissues that have meant some long-time favourites are now in rotation including two albums from Elliott which were barely out of my cd player back in the day. Once pigeon-holed as ’emo’ there’s a lot more to their atmospheric and sweeping tunes that make me think of them more as an ‘ambient Sunny Day Real Estate’.

Mazzy Star’s sumptuous sophomore album, So Tonight That I May See, was propelled along by the surprise dominance of ‘Fade Into You’. Beyond that opening track’s hypnotic charms though are the album’s real beauty and strengths.

Air – Playground Love (with Gordon Tracks)

While I spent a bit of time last summer hunting around Lyon’s record shops and scooping up the first three Air albums it’s only now that I’ve been able to get hold of their soundtrack – and, apparently, second album, The Virgin Suicides – in this instance the ‘Redux’ version. I’ve got no memory of the film, the book is on the shelves though, yet while this doesn’t really work as a second album in the truest sense it’s a lot closer to Moon Safari than 10,000 Hz Legend was and I’ve always got time for an Air album. I just wish they’d rerelease Pocket Symphony and Love 2.

BORIS – Korosu

Turnstile – Never Enough

We were in Third Man Records up in London a week or so back and walked in to the always-welcome thunderous delight of BORIS’ fourth album Heavy Rocks being played out at sufficiently high volume.

Turnstile’s Never Enough album caught me be surprise earlier in the year and has been on frequent rotation since, I can genuinely get behind all the plaudits its been getting. Easily one of the year’s finest albums. Which brings me to Mogwai…

Mogwai – Lion Rumpus

Having been given the recent ‘If The Stars Had a Sound’ Mogwai doc I’ve been hungrily absorbing it when I’m able to get sufficient time with the TV to do so. I forget how many years I’ve fucking loved this band but watching the documentary it’s a wonderfully warm feeling to see just how much love there is for them and to revisit the strange period in time (face masks, social distancing etc) when their The Love Continues album hit number one in the charts and the sense of jubilation it created. As they have a knack for releasing their albums early in the year these days it’s easy to forget that they dropped The Bad Fire in January but it’s been a regular play for me and another of those highlights of 2025’s albums. 

*strictly alphabetical by artist for the main with separate Post-Rock and Soundtracks/Comps sections if you’re curious.

Some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks… revisiting Rockin’ The Suburbs

/ Tony / 7 Comments
Background: I’ve had the Ben Folds song ‘Fred Jones Part 2’ in my head on repeat recently thanks to using the phrase ‘it’s time’ a little too often and it got me thinking back to how bloody good an album it came from and that, maybe, it was time to dust off both my copy of Rockin’ The Suburbs and this format. Ben Folds was, of course, previously of the Ben Folds of Ben Folds Five, the band that became one of the defining indie alt-rock acts of the ’90s despite the fact that there were only two other members (“I think it sounds better than Ben Folds Three.”). Their first self-titled album in 1995 was a bit of a slow burn but got them noticed and established as the kind of band Pitchfork wanted you to like (Pitchfork back then, not now). They had a knack for writing songs that felt immediately catchy and singable but with a bit more emotional weight than expected ‘Underground’ and ‘Philosophy’ became cult hits, but it wasn’t until their 1997 follow-up, the brilliant Whatever and Ever Amen, that the train pulled out of the station.
Toward the end of 2000, after a particularly gruelling tour behind 1999’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner – a period which Folds later recalled as “financially and career-wise a disaster” – and the few recording sessions for a new album went nowhere, Ben Folds Five took a break. At the time, I was aware of none of this. While I’d hear the band’s name from time to time and may have even caught ‘Brick’ on MTV or MTV2 it wasn’t until 2001 – V2001 in fact – when I caught Ben Folds’ act at a festival that I got hooked. Rockin’ The Suburbs: When Ben Folds released Rockin’ the Suburbs in the fall of 2001, it felt like a sharp, sardonic commentary on everything that was wrong—and right—with the then modern world. He was stepping out of the shadow of Ben Folds Five and looking to establish himself as a solo artist, and while there’s not a huge amount of distance between this and his records with the band,  it’s fair to say that this album is as much about his personal evolution as it is about the cultural moment it was released in. >Now, almost 25 years later, Rockin’ the Suburbs remains a fascinating artefact. Listening to it again in 2025 gives me the strange feeling I get when – per this weekend – I see examples of my early mobile phones and iPod behind glass in the Science Museum. The songs are still great but there’s something very much of a time capsule about the album. In many ways, it feels like a bridge between two eras: the post-grunge hangover of the late ’90s and the digitalised, millennial angst of the early 2000s. For all of that, though, there’s something curiously timeless about its blend of sharp piano lines, quirky pop structures, and deeply personal yet universally relatable lyrics. Take the title track, a brash declaration of suburban boredom that captures a distinctly white-collar angst. But, while his tongue is very much in cheek with his complaints of ‘being male, middle-class, and white’ could “I can feel that someone’s blasting me with hate, and bass, Sendin’ dirty vibes my way, ‘cause my great, great, great, great granddad made someone’s great, great, great, great, granddaddies slaves” make the grade in 2025 even if they are dripping in sarcasm? Possibly not – let alone the mention of ‘my new CD’ – but it’s still a fucking great song.
But while it’s a title track, it’s not indicative of the whole, it’s not all sarcasm and irony. Beneath the punchy, piano-driven hooks, there’s a vulnerability that permeates songs like “The Luckiest” —a deeply heartfelt ballad about love and fate. It’s a perfect example of Folds’ ability to balance the playful with the profound that’s most definitely soundtracked a few hundred first dances at weddings around the world.
The album’s strength, in fact, lies in its ability to walk that razor-thin line between comedy and pathos. Tracks like ‘Not the Same’ and ‘Zak and Sara’ (a favourite then and a favourite now) combine the lightheartedness of pop music with deeper, more introspective themes: loss, longing, and self-realisation. Nor is there any denying Ben Folds owns a copy of Billy Joel’s The Stranger.
Looking back, Rockin’ the Suburbs was too quirky for mainstream radio and too accessible for the alt scene that was ditching pianos for turntables. In the years since, it’s become one of those cult classics that many of us – judging by what I’ve picked up around the likes of Reddit etc – still find ourselves coming back to. It’s both a snapshot of early-2000s indie-pop sensibilities and a timeless reflection on the confusion of early adulthood. Yes, you could say there’s perhaps too much reliance on the “quirky piano guy” trope. But that’s also part of the charm; Folds was, and is, the guy who could craft a song about a mental breakdown (‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’) and then immediately follow it up with a melodic love song that feels both grand and intimate (‘The Luckiest’) or a very touching lament on the quiet, inescapability of time (‘Fred Jones Part 2’)
Maybe that’s the beauty of Rockin’ the Suburbs—it was, and remains, an album about the tension between the mundane and the extraordinary, the painful and the funny, the personal and the universal.
After Rockin’ the Suburbs, Ben Folds continued his musical journey, though the road he traveled became a bit more unpredictable. In 2005, he returned to the piano-driven pop world with Songs for Silverman, an album that was a bit more stripped-back and introspective compared to its predecessor and felt like a deep dive into Folds’ own psyche. Tracks like “Gracie” (a sweet, melancholic ode to his daughter) and “Landed” displayed his growing maturity as a songwriter, and the album itself felt more polished, with fewer of the snarky edges that defined his earlier work. 2011 saw Ben Folds Five reunite for a short period, culminating in the release of The Sound of the Life of the Mind in 2012. The chemistry of the original trio was still intact but didn’t get as much traction as their previous records had. Since then, Folds has embraced a variety of musical projects. He’s dipped into classical music (his piano concerto, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, premiered in 2015), collaborated with artists like Amanda Palmer and Nick Hornby, and even found himself dabbling in pop culture commentary. In 2017, Folds took on a more public role as the artistic director for the prestigious National Symphony Orchestra, from which he’d resign in 2025 thanks to a certain orange, pubic-hair doodling, fascist felon. While I’ve drifted in and out of his catalogue at times, it’s clear his knack for deeply personal storytelling and biting humour remains ever-present. His later works may lack the youthful anger or suburban frustration of Rockin’ the Suburbs and that of the ..Five’s initial albums, but there’s still that same dedication to blending raw emotion with melodic ingenuity—whether he’s writing about parenthood, the disillusionment of aging, or his various collaborations with the orchestral world.

Now’s the time to resurface… Five from Pearl Jam written by Matt Cameron

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Like all Pearl Jam fans, I was taken by surprise by Matt Cameron’s announcement yesterday that “after 27 fantastic years, I have taken my final steps down the drum riser for the mighty Pearl Jam.” While the decision seems to be amicable and Pearl Jam offered a similarly brotherly message, it’s a shocker.

Since joining the band in 1998 after Jack Irons left ahead of the Yield tour, Matt’s been a steady presence behind the drum kit as, per Pearl Jam’s own statement, a “true powerhouse of a musician and drummer… [that] propelled the last 27 years of Pearl Jam live shows and studio recordings.”

Pearl Jam have often referred to themselves as a band of five songwriters and, so, while we await to hear what’s next for both band and drummer, I thought it a fitting time to have a quick look at five of those Pearl Jam songs to bear Matt Cameron’s name on the writing credits.

You Are
Riot Act (2002)

While Binaural -an oft-overlooked gem in the band’s career – was the band’s first to feature Matt Cameron as their drummer, that album’s sole Cameron credit (‘Evacuation’) has never been a favourite so let’s move forward to Riot Act.

‘You Are’ – one of the band’s softer, more inwardly reflective pieces, sits one one of Pearl Jam’s most over-looked albums. While many of the album’s songs bristle with post-9/11 and Bush-era anger and urgency, ‘You Are’ – to which Cameron contributed lyrics as well as music – is a meditation on personal responsibility and connection with an almost dream-like atmosphere which highlights both the subtle persistency of his drumming and his love for an odd time signature and hypnotic groove.

Cropduster
Riot Act (2002)

There’s a certain eerie, almost cinematic quality to “Cropduster,” a song that feels like it’s crawling through the underbrush of disillusionment. With music by Cameron and lyrics by Vedder, the track blends paranoia, frustration, and an unsettling sense of impending doom. The lyrics—mysterious and fragmented—pair perfectly with Cameron’s drum work, which shifts from a steady pulse to a disorienting, almost jittery rhythm.

Unemployable
Pearl Jam (2006)


Encapsulating the feeling of being both trapped by and liberated from the grind of modern life, what I love about ‘Unemployable’ is the combination of McCready and Cameron. It’s a rare one for Pearl Jam songs but Mike’s guitar lines paired with Matt’s off-kilter rhythms is fucking gold.

The Fixer
Backspacer (2009)


Backspacer, Pearl Jam’s shift to a leaner, more streamlined sound contains the song that perfectly captures Cameron’s importance in the band. Credited to Cameron, Gossard and McCready, ‘The Fixer’ is based on a riff and basic song that Cameron had written in 2008 called ‘Need to Know.‘ Listening to that version vs the orgiinal two things are clear – how strong a writer Matt is but also how much more powerful it becomes in the hand of the whole band.

Take the Long Way
Gigaton (2020)

Is Gigaton another Pearl Jam album destined to be over-looked? It’s ridiculous how many people seem to have a gut-reaction to their experimental shifts and would probably only be happy if they only played Ten and Vs. in concert. Gigaton is a beautifully experimental album with a really warm and organic feel that sounds like a lush bath when compared to Watt’s production of Dark Matter. ‘Take The Long Way’ – with words and music by Cameron – feels hard, flirts with sugary pop on the choruses, and reveals more layers with each listen.

Monday Tunes: Scorchio

/ Tony / 6 Comments

Boy it’s a hot one – 32 degrees and more to come. While I try desperately to limit the typical ‘hot enough for you?’ comments and moaning about it being too hot that usually pervades conversation in this country (I fucking love it, any weather that means my thermostat isn’t kicking in and letting the electric company bend me over and shaft me like I’m in prison is a boon), I figured it time to ask, once again, to borrow your ears and mutter about that which has been filling mine of late.

PJ Harvey – The Glorious Land

I went back and forth with PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake album but recently something about it clicked, perhaps it was hearing this song afresh, perhaps it was feeling a similarly scathing view of the country, perhaps it was just one of those things where your ears are just ‘open’ to something at the right time. Either way, I’ve been enjoying ‘The Glorious Land’ a fair bit recently.

Regina Spektor – Better

Lola Young – Messy

Picking up the recent repress of Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope felt like an ‘orange flame’ time machine back to hearing it for the first time in 2006 and seeing her shortly thereafter in a venue since torn-down for London’s Crossrail project.

Lola Young’s ‘Messy’ is one of those that kept popping up lately in the background – probably because she played that big festival that everyone talks about this time of year. It’s another one of those where I’m forever saying ‘ohh, what’s that song?’ because I’m enjoying it. Although I’m reliably informed I’m a year out of date with this, probably even more so with those I’ve been hearing by Chappell Roan, but at least I’m still managing not to shut myself off to new music.

Omertà – Kremer & Bergeret

Stereolab – Lo Boob Oscillator

Not the South Italian mafia’s code of silence… but an underground French band that manage to combine a two-bass-driven funk groove with post-rock like keyboards for a psychedelic vibe that ticks all my boxes and, for reasons I can’t explain, feels like a natural fit next to the recently-reunited Stereolab tune from 1993. Despite being on a compilation of tunes rather than an album proper, it’s probably their best-known song.

Bruce Springsteen – Maybe I Don’t Know You

It was inevitable that, since Friday, most of my listening has been Springsteen-flavoured. The release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums is as big a drop of new music from Bruce as there’s ever been. Most of my attention, though, was reserved for The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions – the lost album from the early ’90s that had long been rumoured. It feels like a missing link has been found for me, like a favourite album that I’d been waiting to hear. It’s a brooding, bruised but gorgeous vibe with just the right sound mixing. The balance between the synths and loops and the occasional piercing guitar is just spot-on. That he’s been sitting on this for more than 30 years is shocking. Was it the tepid response to Human Touch / Lucky Town? Was it still not being sure of his own ‘solo’ voice? Was it that he thought another relationships album would be one too many right then? Who knows, I’m just glad we finally have it.

We don’t want the loonies taking over – Five from Radiohead

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Another brief deviation from Springsteen…. having spent a couple of days out and about last week including a day revisiting Oxford, I thought it fitting to put together a few of my favourite songs from that city’s most famous – though of course, not its only – bands: Radiohead. Having already pontificated about OK Computer plenty of times here, I’m putting this one together in Hard Mode* and not including anything from their finest.

Blow Out

Holy crap, a song from Pablo Honey that isn’t ‘Creep’?! Yup. While their first album wasn’t that strong a clue as to what they were capable of there are a few songs on it that really come together – the ever over-played ‘Creep’ being on of them, ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ and this track which I’m particularly fond of for its sheer volume and wall of guitar moments.

Fake Plastic Trees

The massive fucking leap to The Bends is amazing. This album is so far away from Pablo Honey it’s almost a different band. This song in particular is a highlight for me – one that initially gave the band trouble recording. Having started life as a “joke that wasn’t really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening and, well, a breakdown of sorts” and dealing with label pressure to follow up ‘Creep’, there was a ‘November Rain’ style, pompous version of it and then the band took a night off and saw Jeff Buckley performing alone at The Garage in London and Thom Yorke found the ‘key’ to unlock the arrangement, sang alone and played acoustic alone, collapsed into tears and the band recorded their parts over Yorke’s performance.

The Trickster

My Iron Long EP should really be considered a mini-album. I remember grabbing this in eagerness after OK Computer lead me to The Bends and being astonished that these were basically scraps from that album’s sessions. They really were on a tear and ‘The Trickster’ feels like it could fit on either The Bends or OK Computer.

Go To Sleep  (“Little Man Being Erased.”)

Hail To The Thief is one of those albums that seems to get overlooked. I can see why – it falls after the sonic experimentations of Kid A and Amnesiac and before the pricing and release experimentation of In Rainbows. It’s also a bit on the long side (their longest to date). This, their last for EMI, was billed as a ‘return’ to a more traditional sound at the time but it’s probably fairer to say that while it’s got enough of guitars that sound like guitars etc, it’s still got enough experimental bite to feel like forward momentum and it’s grown on me more as years go by.

Weird Fishes / Arpeggi

Cutting away all the hype and debate surrounding the pay-what-you-want method of release In Rainbows is one of Radiohead’s finest albums. There’s nothing on here I skip. It feels like a real song-oriented album for the first time in a while from the band, probably down to the fact that Nigel Godrich stepped in after protracted series of rudderless sessions and forced them to make decisions rather than constantly alter tracks.

*say no more, squire.

Least and Most: Working on a Dream

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Coming in hot off the back of writing for Magic, Springsteen dropped Working On A Dream a little over a year after that album – his shortest gap between albums for some time. ‘What Love Can Do’ was written toward the end of sessions for the former, but not fitting there and feeling like it was the start of something ‘else’, Brendan O’Brien encouraged Bruce to keep writing for a new album with another handful of songs arriving over the next week.

Working On A Dream is definitely a different beast to Magic. While there Springsteen’s approach to recording with O’Brien and the E Street Band – working with a core group of himself, Max Weinberg, Gary Tallent and Roy Bittan and with additional parts added on later – worked for the leaner, meaner sound that suited the theme of Magic, the songs on Working On A Dream are made for bigger stuff, a painting with more colours with Springsteen trying to use less of a ‘rock’ voice and while the E Street Band could make these songs sound as huge as they presumably were in the Boss’s head, the process here means that band has never sounded quite so constrained and tiny.

Least: Queen of the Supermarket

Not only does this song emphasis the above points of production flaws – all the tacked on layers sound too much like veneer when a big, unbridled band sound could’ve made it soar – it’s just a naff song: our hero has literally gone from singing songs of chrome-wheeled, fuel injected love with Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor to actually singing about pushing a fucking shopping cart and finding “a dream (that) awaits in aisle number two.” FFS, Bruce. And someone had the bright idea of having the fucking barcode scanner ‘bleeps’ in the fade out. Thunder Road has been swapped for a fucking Sainsburys.

Best: My Lucky Day

My Lucky Day is a relatively fast, blistering tune that sounds like a blast was had recording it. Plus, in the context of this album, its fast, rawer sound – at odds with the layers of overdubs etc that blight the aimed-for sound that drapes so much of the album – means its one of the songs on Working On A Dream that works from a production / sound perspective. It’s also surprisingly – given its faster tempo – a wonderful little love song complete with both a guitar and sax solo.

Least and Most: Magic

/ Tony / 6 Comments

There’s little competition for Magic as Springsteen’s finest ‘post reunion’ albums, in my opinion at least. Yes, The Rising has the joy of a rekindled E Street Band and more than many an album’s share of good tunes but Magic is the album that captures the sense of an artist and band now confident in their ‘second wind’ and an established relationship with produce Brendan O’Brien working at strength.

The other element that sells it for me is that while some dismissed this album as ‘just another collection of songs’ these songs are all tied together with a sense of foreboding, a distaste and often anger at the then-current state of America (which probably seem like the halcyon days now) with lines like “Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake/Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break” or “tell me is that rolling thunder or just the sinking sound of something righteous going under” – all backed by the muscular heft of the E Street Band.

Least: Girls In Their Summer Clothes

I know this is probably among the least popular of my ‘least’ takes – at least considering it’s the second most streamed track on the album by a long way – but there’s something about ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ that’s just never sat right with me. It feels too stodgy to be the lighter ‘fun’ song on the album -like ‘Mary’s Place’ or ‘Waitin’ On A Sunny Day’ on The Rising – and Springsteen’s vocal take sounds surprisingly flat or almost disinterested… with a little less heavy a sound it would probably fit better on Springsteen’s next album. Which in itself isn’t a good thing either…

Most: Gypsy Biker

In which Springsteen takes his Vietnam-vet song ‘Shut Out The Light’s “Bobby pulled his Ford out of the garage and they polished up the chrome” line and updates it for a more modern war. In keeping with the heavier-hitting bitterness with which Magic bristles against the decisions of the US, this time instead of the relief of “I’m so glad to have you back with me,” it’s a coffin that’s come home and the cycle is being pulled from the garage to be burnt in the foothills with the kiss-off ” now all that remains is my love for you brother, lying still and unchanged. To them that threw you away, you ain’t nothin’ but gone.”

Least and Most: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Left turn? More like a different road entirely. Springsteen, clearly relishing his career’s rebirth, released three studio albums that varied from each other more than at any other phase of his career. A new E Street Band album was surely on the cards after the success of The Rising but Bruce had a few things to tick off the list first and even that came about via a change in plan.

While putting together material for a planned second Tracks collection, Springsteen found a few songs that he’d cut for a Pete Seeger tribute album. Enthused by the quality and feel of these songs Bruce and Landau wanted to put them out as a stand alone album, except that there weren’t enough. So around the tour behind Devils & Dust, Bruce got the group of musicians that he’d used in ’97 back together for a couple of sessions and cut a shit load more tunes for what was not only his first collection of covers (of folk songs popularised by Seeger) but probably the least obsessed-over album of his career. A volley of great folk tunes – that manage to sound neither entirely Seeger or Springsteen in its approach – that’s not only rough and rowdy but actually sounds like a huge amount of fun was had in recording it.

Least: Froggie Went A Courtin’

‘Froggie Went A Courtin’ closes my copy of We Shall Overcome – as I picked mine up on day of release rather than the later ‘American Land’ version or bonus-track heavy one that’s on the streaming services. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s still imbued with the same loose-but-fun and solid vibe as the rest of the album but at the end of an album imbued with tunes that lean into work songs, protests tunes and narratives that not only fit in with the general Springsteen ouvre but could also be taken to be deliberately selected based on America’s then-current events… it feels out of place. That’s all. At least it’s not ‘The Frog Chorus’.

Most: Mrs McGrath

I can’t really judge any of these songs on anything other than their handling as ‘a Springsteen song’ – though I’ve heard a few versions of this one since – rather than against the originals. For my money ‘Mrs McGrath’ feels so suited to Bruce and his arrangement and handling of it is so total that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find he’d written it. Given that his own writing – both with ‘Devils & Dusht’ and the central theme of Magic was already pushing in the direction covered by this Irish folk song it shouldn’t really be that unexpected. He inhabits it and delivers it with more passion than anything else on here and I’ve often found myself wondering how it would be handled by him outside of the Seeger Sessions Band.

Least and Most: Devils and Dust

/ Tony / 5 Comments

If you look at Springsteen’s discography you’d think that every ten years or so he has an itch to go and write and release a more acoustic leaning, serious album of character-driven narrative. In that respect Devils & Dust – recorded following a short break after touring behind The Rising – fits right in on that schedule.

One important factor to note here, though, is that this isn’t quite the case. While a couple of the songs on Devils & Dust had been heard on his Ghost of Tom Joad tour (often called the ‘Shut the fuck up tour’), the only confirmed new song on here is the title track, the rest had all been recorded by Springsteen between 1995 and 1997, so either during or immediately after Tom Joad but he’d not felt the time was right to drop another acoustic album straight away. Nor, though, did he want these songs to be resigned to the vault either. So Brendan O’Brien was on hand once again to add his enhancements and touches to the core material Springsteen had already recorded, and the new title track.

Whether we’ll ever find out what elements were added or recorded afresh is doubtful. What’s certainly true, though, is that the sonic touches added to the songs on Devils & Dust help it stand apart from Springsteen’s other such albums and lend it a fuller feeling.

So: twelve tracks, all gold? No. There’s a lot of good, solid song craft here as with all Springsteen albums but there are a few tracks that don’t hold up quite as well.

Least: Reno

There was way too much attention given to this song at the time. It’s a bland tune on the musical front and lyrically… well, if we ever wondered how miserable Springsteen thinks getting a hooker in a motel room somewhere would be at least we have the answer here. There’s no need for this song, it’s almost comical how he manages to combine references to the price of anal, blowjobs and a prostitute fingering herself with the oddest with ‘she had your ankles, I felt filled with grace.’ Guy gets a miserable experience with a hooker and distracts himself with reminisces of a former love. Not top of anyone’s wishlist for a Springsteen song.

Best: Devils & Dust

‘Long Time Comin’, ‘All I’m Thinkin’ About’, ‘All The Way Home’ are pretty strong tunes but for my money the newest song on the album is the strongest. The arrangement is probably that which benefits the most from O’Brien’s involvement and it works today as well as it did when the Iraq war was still Springsteen’s focus du jour and the song served as a signpost to wear his songwriting was heading (following a slight detour) on the next full band outing: combining his scathing view of then administration’s decision to lyrics that could be applied out of context and a great tune.

More midweek spinnage

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Here we are once again at the midway point of the week with the scale starting to tip toward the weekend and, for me, the beginning of holiday season.

With that in mind, here’s what’s been going in the ears this week.

Smashing Pumpkins – Goeth The Fall

I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a new Smashing Pumpkins album in the way I have Aghori Mhori Mei in years. Released last week and heralded as one that’ll please the fans of the ’90s stuff and a ‘rock’ record, I’ve gotta say that’s about right. It’s not that good but I’ve been surprised how much I’ve been listening to it and enjoyed to the point of pre-ordering the vinyl.

Air – Kelly Watch The Stars (Edit Version)

While I’m not usually one for picture discs (especially overpriced RSD ones), when this one appeared in my local store’s sale it was an easy decision. Moon Safari is unimpeachable but getting this meant getting hold of the version that was played on MTV back in the day.

The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds

With the exception of Smashing Pumpkins there seems to be a much more mellow edge to everything here. Maybe it’s the build up of CBD but that’s where I’m at lately. I actually caught this one on the radio this weekend and it’s gained a few spins since. I’ve also just discovered that it’s Rickie Lee Jones talking about clouds – the lads in The Orb heard her trippy response to “So what were the skies like when you were young?” in an interview (who the fuck asks that without smoking something first?) and sampled it. After paying her $5,000 for its use first.

Ben Howard – Time Is Dancing

Oh man I played this album so much when it came out I was surprised that the CD still held up when I chucked it in the car this week. It’s coming up for its tenth anniversary – with the prerequisite re-release in special colours / clear / etc – and for me marks the perfect point in Ben Howard’s sound; moving away from the ‘only love’ festival-pleasing acoustic work and embracing the more experimental elements that would enthuse the later albums while still retaining a focus song structure.

Pearl Jam – Force of Nature

Anyway, here’s some more Pearl Jam and another favourite deep(ish) cut from recent times. Backspacer is the only album I’m missing on my record shelves (for some reason it’s not as widely available as other albums) and while not my favourite it has some wonderful tunes on it and I love the shift in this song’s vibe.