90’s music

Least and Most: Somewhere North of Nashville

/ Tony / 1 Comment

Quick side note: I’m addressing these in their presumed chronological order were they to have been released as the albums they’ve been grouped as rather their ordering in the box.

Aside from being a fascinating look at Springsteen’s working process, Tracks II: The Lost Albums provides an insight into his archival management too. Somewhere North of Nashville is a prime example of both: work on the project that became Western Stars actually began in 2010. That places its genesis between Working on a Dream – his last album with Brendan O’Brien – and Wrecking Ball – his first with Ron Aniello. It’s also the period of time when he was rooting around in his vaults for The Promise and the archival box-set release of Darkness…

Given that theWestern Stars project didn’t reach full fruition until 2019 – the process for which we’ll get to in a few albums time – it’s indicative of how many different projects Bruce had (and, seemingly, has) on the go at anyone time. At the start of that project, in 2010, Springsteen told Aniello “come out here, we have plenty of material to work with” and handed over “a country record [that] was basically cut with musicians in LA – live with a tight band – in the 1990s.”

Quite a find I’d guess…. ish. If we go back again to the Bruce Springsteen Timeline and move the dial back to 1995 we’ll find a pretty busy period. Having popped his ‘loops’ album on the shelf, completed the Greatest Hits material and accompanying promotion, Bruce decided to leave the band to it once again and make a ‘country’ record. With two different recording setups in place and a backing band that included a couple of E Streeters, he’d work on the livelier stuff in the afternoon and save the more sombre material for the evening. The story goes that the Boss was originally making one album before the narrative voice and style of the Ghost of Tom Joad material became the more cohesive of the projects and while the ‘other’ material remained a good way to get the band warmed up, it remained in the vault instead.

All we had, until now, was a smattering of track names that were known to have been recorded at the time like ‘Tiger Rose’ and ‘Poor Side of Town’ that were presumed in the same mould as the ..Joad material. Turns out, they’re very much not. Somewhere North of Nashville wasn’t a complete album. It couldn’t have been, really, given that …Joad soon took other focus. Instead, as part of the archival process, Bruce and Aniello recruited the same players that featured on the original material – including Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar (if you’re ever wondering ‘how much pedal steel guitar is too much pedal steel guitar?’ this album has your answer) – and added some songs to the mix that matched the initial clutch. Songs such as ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone’ and ‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ (which would be revisited and retooled again for Western Stars) are among the ‘new’ songs.

This isn’t one of the strongest albums in the set. In fact, there’s a lot of material here that could, really should, have stayed in the vaults and nobody would have minded. While it certainly fleshes out the picture of Springsteen’s output during that era and, again, gives a revealing look at his working process, this isn’t a ‘holy crap, Ghost of Tom Joad should’ve been a double album’ revelation. I don’t have to wrack my mind to chose a weak moment here, I’m afraid….

Least: Detail Man

I could’ve gone with any of the three ‘man’ songs on this set to be honest but ‘Delivery Man’ is perhaps the most redundant thematically and, as the third of the set the prospect of an over-active pedal-steel accompanied “baby I’m a double glazing selling man” or “here comes a British Gas boiler repair man baby” arrives there’s no denying the skip button comes in to play. At least ‘Delivery Man’ is funny.

The other element here is that this plays to the weakest link on the album: a few too many of these songs lean into a very particular style of ‘country tonk’ that would sound more at home soundtracking a film with Clint Eastwood and an orang-utan than they do on an album made in 1995.

But….. but, but but. This is still a Bruce Springsteen album and – as I’ve often pointed out – some of his finest songwriting occurred during this decade so beyond the dross, there’s some real gold here and – once you get past the aforementioned ‘country tonk’ – there’s the inescapable sound of a strong, tight band letting rip. You can practically picture Bruce pulling out his notebook of songs and counting them off as they tear into great versions of older material like ‘Janey Don’t You Lose Heart’ or ‘Stand On It’ (the former working beautifully) and the exquisite ‘Under A Big Sky’ which, though dating back to the ’80s as a song, is wonderful highlight.

Having initially binged through Tracks II: The Lost Albums like an addictive Netflix series, I’ve since been spending more time with them on an album by album basis and letting each one breath in its own right and asking myself ‘would I still want to buy this one if it was a stand-alone release?’

Obviously, while that’s usually a given with Bruce I’ve become a bit more selective of late, which is probably why his soul karaoke album still isn’t on my shelves. The quality of his songwriting is usually enough of a reason to pay the price of admission – even if that price is this much pedal steel guitar – and the ’90s were still fertile ground.

Having initially binged through Tracks II: The Lost Albums like an addictive Netflix series, I’ve since been spending more time with them on an album by album basis and letting each one breath in its own right and asking myself ‘would I still want to buy this one if it was a stand-alone release?’

Obviously, while that’s usually a given with Bruce I’ve become a bit more selective of late, which is probably why his soul karaoke album still isn’t on my shelves. The quality of his songwriting is usually enough of a reason to pay the price of admission – even if that price is this much pedal steel guitar – and the ’90s were still fertile ground. When he’s not rhyming ‘Tiger Rose’ with ‘Joe Blows’ some of his lyrics on here are on a par with his stronger material.

Most: Silver Mountain

As with any archival release there’s often a track that begs the ‘how was this shelved?’ On Somewhere North of Nashville that track is ‘Silver Mountain.’ It’s pure gold. It’s catchier than anything resigned to the vault has business being, it’s infectious – of all the album’s songs it’s this one that I find myself singing days after hearing – and the combination of joyous, foot-stomping energy in performance with tragic narrative of forbidden love places it more in line with a rootsy Americana than the cringe-and-pedal-steel of, say ‘Poor Side of Town.’

Least and Most: Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

/ Tony / 2 Comments

If LA Garage Sessions ’83 was the collection of songs I was most familiar with ahead of Tracks II: The Lost Albums‘ release, then Streets of Philadelphia Sessions was the one I was most looking forward to. Despite there being three albums from the ’90s in the set, this was the most infamous of his ‘lost’ albums and one that had been referenced variously over the years as either his ‘loops’ or ‘hip-hop’ album as all that was known was that it utilised the same drum-machine and loop approach as his ’94 single ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ but that, due to it being ‘another relationship album,’ was benched.

Going back a way – and as previously quoted on one of my former Springsteen posts – Bruce said of it: “there’s a record that we recorded, mixed and didn’t put out. Bob Clearmountain mixed it, spent a lot of time on it… didn’t put it out. That was, like, ’94. And it still intrigues me. I still go back to it. There are still things on it that I really like, and I may go back to sort of say, ‘Okay, well, why…?’ Sometimes it’s timing, you know. There was a particular reason that I didn’t put out that group of music. Sometimes the timing just doesn’t feel right for that kind of record.”

So why wasn’t the timing right? It was 1994 and if we look once again at the original Bruce Springsteen Timeline it’s an otherwise blank space between his tour to promote Human Touch and Lucky Town with ‘the other band’ and the year before the mini E Street Band reunion for Greatest Hits. The ’90s are often considered a fallow period for Bruce, but this box set has at least upheld my long-held belief that his output remained strong but his continual-second guessing after the relative mauling of the aforementioned double-header of ’92 albums meant we missed out on a lot. And miss out we certainly did for Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is the strongest set of songs he put together that entire decade.

‘Streets of Philadelphia’ was recorded by Bruce alone, using a drum machine and synths. While he bought in other musicians to round it out, he stuck with the ‘demo’ version for release. The success of that song – both critically and commercially – as well as the process, must have unlocked something as he decided to cut a whole album using the same approach. The ‘loops’ disc that Springsteen had been given to use only appears on a couple of the tracks, the rest are spare, bruising and subdued synth-lead pieces but often shot through with piercing guitar work and a number of songs on which a small band was bought in to round out the sound. The album was completed, mixed and was ear-marked for release early the next year (1995) and then, Bruce hesitated. Was it Roy Bittan suggesting that a fourth relationship-focused album would be one too many for his audience that triggered the hold? Was it Springsteen unsure of such a diversion from his established sound? Was it the record label pointing out a ‘Hits’ album was expected? Given that Bruce is now in the habit of ret-conning events to fit a certain PR-Friendly version of history, we’ll never really know. We do know that we almost got it during his residency on Broadway – perhaps he was tired of having such a considered ‘blank’ in his story for the ’90s that he wanted to set the record straight – and that this is only one of two albums in the set that Ron Aniello was forbidden from tinkering with. For which we can all be grateful.

This, for me, is the Springsteen album I’d been waiting for. The over-produced element that plagued Human Touch and Lucky Town is entirely absent, there’s a maturity and confidence in his restraint that means no feel or sound is overdone and nothing overshadows the lyrical content and, perhaps for the only time on a Springsteen record, there’s no feeling that there’s a ‘this the radio hit!’ moment. In fact, in between taking credit for ending the Cold War, Apartheid, world hunger and averting World War 3, Steven Van Zandt points out in his autobiography that it was this lack of an obvious ‘hit’ that lead to Springsteen canning it and reverting to his ‘Nebraska persona.’ Either way, Streets of Philadelphia sessions is a gorgeously produced and crafted set of songs that take the narrative and themes Tunnel of Love ushered in and adds a level of lived-in authenticity that works wonderfully with the singing voice he found in his forties.

If there were someway to have this on wax without plumping down the £300 (ish) needed for the box this wouldn’t have left my turntable this year. As it is, the mp3 versions have barely left my stereo.

Least: The Little Things

You know that mp3 version of the album I have? This isn’t on it. While there’s no ‘that’s the hit!’ moment on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, this is the dud. While the remainder of this album’s songs feel true, this feels flippant, out of synch with the remainder and unnecessary (almost like the odd tangent of ‘Reno’ on Devils and Dust).

Most: Something In The Well

I could very easily have gone for many another track here. ‘One Beautiful Morning,’ ‘Between Heaven and Earth’ or ‘Waiting On The End Of The World’ are clear highlights but ‘Something In The Well’ is one of those songs that sits amongst his best work and points and future material too. Springsteen’s fights with the black dog are now well-documented but I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a struggle ever put so compellingly into song before that has made me go ‘holy fuck, that’s it’ – what I’ve often referred to as a ‘deep hole in a field,’ Springsteen casts as a well. Like so many other moments across this album, the instrumentation is minimal but not sparse and wholly effective. There’s also an element to the sound – if you strip it back to his guitar and vocal delivery – that’s at one with that which he’d flick back to in the following year for The Ghost of Tom Joad.

What makes Springsteen, when he’s on form like this, great as a song writer is his ability to look within, find what’s inside him and us, and turn it into something we can, and want, to listen to and ‘Something In The Well’ is another strong example of just that.

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.

Talking about music…. from 1994

/ Tony / 2 Comments

It doesn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to grasp that, along with talking about music in a manner that may not be that healthy, I have a bit of a soft spot for music from the 1990s.

Somewhere between returning from summer and being laid out by this year’s flu virus I had the utmost pleasure of reconnecting with Geoff Stephen to do just that – talk about music and, specifically, five ‘essential’ albums from 1994. While I could’ve run down a list from any year of that decade – as my now-stalled ‘albums of my years‘ series will attest – ’94 is a pretty key year for that music I love and so many of those artists that I love dropped some stone-cold classics that year.

You can check it out here, should you so wish, and be sure follow the1002ndalbum podcast wherever you usually get such thing for some great takes from other guests and some great themes.

Weekend spins, or what I did on my summer holidays…

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Here we are slap in the middle of La Rentrée and with the chaos and confusion it triggers subsiding somewhat and the rain lashing down like a cow pissing on a rock outside to signify that summer is well and truly in the rearview, it feels like it’s finally time to crack my knuckles, blow the proverbial dust off my keyboard and get back to this and talk about what’s been filling my ears.

It’s certainly been a while. In many ways it’s been the Summer of Springsteen* with both the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums, the promise of Tracks III and the approaching drop of Nebraska ’82. But we’ll get to that later. I spent, as is often the case, a large part of my summer in France. Booked before the results of a DNA test revealed a large part of ‘me’ heralds from the exact region we visited, I spent a pleasurable couple of weeks driving around Brittany and Normandy with the occasional stop for a bit of record shopping thrown in amongst sampling the local cider and IPA. I’m gonna start the ball rolling with a track from Beach House – a band that I’d been listening to increasingly on that streaming service beginning with S for some time so when I found Once Twice Melody on sale for €15 I wasn’t going to say ‘non, merci.’

Beach House – New Romance

Mew – Am I Wry? No

Beach House sit in that category ‘dream pop’ category that serves as a catch all for those songs with pop melodies wrapped in atmosphere and sonic textures and feels like a lush, blanketed bridge to shoegaze. Mew are one of those bands who, like Beach House, appear so often in such playlists.

MC Solaar – Caroline

I had the pleasure of catching up with Geoff Stephen over at The 1002nd Album Club recently and, while discussing something that’ll appear soon, he mentioned that MC Solaar’s debut – Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo – was listed in ‘1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.’ It’s a brilliant album and MC Solaar, with his ridiculously smooth flow and delivery, combination of hip-hop, acid jazz and soul proved that French music wasn’t all derivative Johnny Halliday slop.

George Harrison / The Beatles – All Things Must Pass (Demo)

In amongst the hype about the upcoming reissues of the first three Anthology volumes and the ‘new’ fourth instalment, I was flicking through Anthology 3 and stumbled on this little gem. Having spent time with Dylan and the Band at the end of ’68, Harrison found is interest in the guitar and his approach to songwriting revitalised – only for songs like this, and others, to receive little interest from Lennon and McCartney. This early demo – from Feb ’69 – and included on Anthology 3 (hence the dual artist attribution) is a beautiful sign of just what a magnificent songwriter he’d become.

Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!

Eddie Vedder – Room at the Top

Listening to the radio while driving through France has become something of a tradition over the last few years that we’ve been doing so. Unfortunately, I think it’s time to find a new station as RTL2 seem to have gotten stuck with only a handful of songs that get played on each DJ’s show. So, in amongst daily blasts of the new Indochine song and uncensored versions of Nirvana’s ‘Rape Me’ it became clear that the French are currently obsessed with Lola Young’s – admittedly brilliant – ‘Messy’ and Chappel Roan’s also brilliant ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ It’s a gloriously well-crafted song and, as Graham over at Aphoristic pointed out, she’s got Dan Nigro in her songwriting corner and they’re just pushing out gold. Makes me think of that glorious period of Madonna’s collaboration with Patrick Leonard.

I mentioned a while back how I’d been enjoying ‘Bad Monkey’ and its soundtrack of Tom Petty covers. Eddie Vedder’s take on Room at the Top (accompanied by his Earthlings band rather than his previous solo acoustic take) is an absolute blast of the great stuff.

And, finally….

Bruce Springsteen – Born In The USA (Electric Nebraska)

Strap yourself in, here we go: it’s Springsteen time. I mean: holy fuck. Aside from having given us SEVEN previously unreleased albums earlier this year (although really you can only apply that to two of the discs properly), Bruce recently dropped the bombshell we thought we’d never get: Electric Nebraska. Long rumoured and shrouded in myth – Springsteen, fresh from writing and recording with a home four (or eight) track, took said songs to the studio to, as always intended, work up with the E Street Band. Some of them worked, some didn’t, some evolved down the line and ten of them simply sounded perfect they way they were on that beat-up cassette in his back pocket and were released on the stark, beautiful Nebraska. Now, as we near release of ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ – the film of the book documenting that period – the fabled Electric Nebraska has been found in the vault, presumably right at the back along with the material coming on Tracks III, and will be released as part of a larger package next month.

To whet our appetite we get the Electric Nebraska version of Born In The USA. It’s rare that a song floors me but this, along with the news of the box, did that. Of the three versions we now have of the song – the other two being the famed Rambo Bruce version the ’82 demo, acoustic blues take on Tracks (and revisited on the reunion tour documenting Live in New York City – this is easily the best take on it. Like the Boss says in the video trailer, it sounds nothing like any of this other electric songs.

That’s it, for now. As I finish working my way through the Tracks II: The Lost Albums to restart the ‘Least and Most’ series, I’ll leave you with another Springsteen song and a highlight from that mammoth collection that shares the same vintage.

*fuck Oasis.

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.

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: The Ghost of Tom Joad

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Three years, an Academy Award, an awkward E Street Band reunion, a Greatest Hits with a cluster of ‘new’ songs, and at least one scrapped album sit between Springsteen’s first albums of the the ’90s and The Ghost of Tom Joad‘s release in November 1995.

I love this album. It’s only grown on me over the years. It’s easily the most musically subdued in his entire back catalogue – with arrangements even starker than Nebraska – yet its beauty lies in those quiet moments and his willingness to paint striking stories with the slightest of brushes. It’s also worth noting that when that brush flushes with colour in the style of, say, the flush of keys on “Dry Lightning”, it’s down to Danny Federici. While it was clearly another left-turn after the short-lived E Street reunion for Greatest Hits, it’s his most consistent set of songs for some time. Rather than grappling with coming to terms with his wealth and status, Springsteen’s eye is turned outward for a compelling set of stories of those that America had turned its back on – working class, foreign born – by the mid-nineties. As the man himself puts it: “the austere rhythms and arrangements defined who these people were and how they expressed themselves….They were transient and led heard, complicated lives, half of which had been left behind in another world, in another country.”

Least: My Best Was Never Good Enough

Springsteen, in ‘Songs’, describes this as his ‘parting joke’ and a way of satirising the way that complex moral issues can be trivialised. Maybe it’s over my head but I’m not sure the album needed a final ‘gag’ song. It feels a bit like ‘Pony Boy’ slapped at the end of Human Touch as if to lighten the listener. It’s not an inherently bad song – none of these ‘leasts’ are – but it’s far from my favourite on the album and doesn’t really sit shoulder to shoulder with the title track, ‘Youngstown’, the compassion of ‘The Line’ or ‘Sinaloa Cowboys’ or…

Most: Galveston Bay

In a way I feel ‘Galveston Bay’ is one of Springsteen’s bravest songs as a songwriter: the lyrics and the story are of the highest quality but the music is so whisper-thin (delicate picking that’s more intonation than melody and the softest of keys, both courtesy of Springsteen, the only credited performer on the track) yet it demands your attention throughout. There’s no verse / chorus / verse structure here – there are two opening stanzas – as this feels more prose than song – that introduce the two characters without an indication of where we’re heading before tackling a theme straight from a real life event in Seadrift in 1979, tackling – in just five minutes – one hell of a story. A harrowing but redemptive story about how, after getting to a certain point, people can actually make the right choice instead of a deadly choice. It’s more a short story set to music.

I’ve been hooked on ‘Galveston Bay’ since I first heard The Ghost of Tom Joad and that hook has only sunk deeper as time moves on.

Least and Most: Lucky Town

/ Tony / 3 Comments

In theory I should have released this post on the same day as that for Human Touch, right? If only this weren’t a massively busy month for me professionally and personally I may well have done.

However, that does lead me nicely to my thoughts on this album that have changed somewhat in the years since the full album rankings. I think the widest-held belief is that if Bruce were to have taken the best of Human Touch‘s tunes and added them to Lucky Town he’d have had a real victory on his hands and there are plenty of takes out there on what that ‘Lucky Touch’ album would contain.

Thing is, having listened to Lucky Town a lot more over the years, I don’t think that’s necessary. Lucky Town is a really solid set of tunes that feel complete as it is – this is Springsteen in the early ’90s grappling with his concerns (coming to terms with his wealth, his new life as both a married man and a parent) and dealing with them with the same levels of compassion, honesty and humour that underpinned his best work in the previous decades and with some great tunes to boot. What I know wonder, then, isn’t ‘what if Bruce had compiled the best of both?’ but more ‘what if he’d never released Human Touch after all?’ I mean, we’ll never know, but this feels like the start of Bruce second-guessing. He wasn’t sure Human Touch was ready and had sat on it for over a year thinking it needed one more song whereas Lucky Town came together really quickly. Had Lucky Town not had the shadow of Human Touch then I feel Springsteen’s first album of the ’90s would have been received a lot more favourably and probably had a bigger impact.

Anyway, that’s not what we’re here for. It’s a solid album but, sure, it has a few lows of which the standout for me is..

Least: Leap of Faith

Across the two albums, seven songs would be released as singles of which this was the weakest of the bunch if you ask me. I can’t say there’s anything inherently wrong with it, I just can’t enjoy this one, it feels like a by-the-numbers studio session without much true feeling behind it.

Most: Living Proof

I could just as easily go to bat for ‘Better Days’, ‘Local Hero’ and even the title track but ‘Living Proof’ has continued to grow in my esteem over the years and especially as a parent, it feels all the more powerful.

Least and Most: Human Touch

/ Tony / 4 Comments

You know how it is with quotes and soundbites – sometimes their origin gets lost even when the quote itself remains pure and valid. I’ve got a sneaky feeling it was Hall of Fame related – possibly while inducting someone else – but Springsteen is on record and oft-cited as saying “I tried it [writing happy songs] in the early ’90s and it didn’t work; the public didn’t like it.”

Now the problem with this is many-fold and as we now lurch into the ’90s with this series, this feels as good an opportunity as any to address this.

Firstly – pretty sure Springsteen’s work of the previous decades is also littered with ‘happy’ songs too. I don’t think anyone is getting a lump in their throat listening to ‘I’m A Rocker’ or ‘She’s The One’ nor would they with the upbeat songs in the decades to come.

Secondly – it wasn’t the emotional nature of the songs that went unliked. It was the quality.

If there is a third point here, and I’m fairly certain of that, it’s that the ’90s were as prolific for Bruce as any other decade. We just haven’t heard most of it as it’s been shelved. I’ve seen mention, at some point, of five unreleased records from the ’90s. Even Van Zandt mentions going down to Rumson to hear a new batch of songs while the Boss fretted about not having a single yet. I haven’t spoken much about ‘Unrequited Infatuations’ yet but you have to take some elements with a pinch of salt as Van Zandt feels to have single-handedly shaped entire careers and global political movements with just a few sage words at the right time. However, given that he claims that havingtold Springsteen to revisit his Nebraska vibe resulting in The Ghost of Tom Joad, that puts this conversation in the early ’90s. Springsteen’s early ’90s seems to be more a period of second-guessing than it does of making happy songs.

Back to point 2 though…. listening back through the albums in sequence again for this series has been great. It’s also given me a different perspective on this album. I can’t remember the point in my collecting that I originally purchased Human Touch (and probably Lucky Town at the same time) but I know it wasn’t in release order. It makes it all the more evident that quality control suffered a big drop off with Human Touch. There were always lesser songs on Springsteen’s albums but Human Touch feels like the first time in which – rather than give such tunes to other artists or assign them as b-sides – the minor material makes up the bulk of the album and, while it’s not all bad, the good songs feel like outliers. After waiting four and a half years for a new Bruce Springsteen album and getting just shy of an hour’s worth of this lesser material, it’s understandable that it wasn’t well liked.

It could be that there’s a lack of chemistry between Bruce and ‘The Other Band’ that means the weaker elements of the songs can’t be carried over by great playing, but it’s not like he picked up of people that only knew a few chords. The songs are simply ineffective. There’s a song about TV, ffs. There’s also a song about feeling like a Real Man with his girl that actually contains the line “Rambo he was blowin’ ’em down”. It’s come to something when ‘Pony Boy’ isn’t the worst thing on an album.

Least: Cross My Heart

‘Cross My Heart’ is a pretty unforgettable and unremarkable tune. It doesn’t even sound like Bruce is that enthused about it and he’s the one singing it. Listening to Tracks it feels like he had half a dozen that were pretty much the same song as this and may just as well have chosen one at random to put on the finished disc. It tries to lift the beat and find momentum at points but it honestly feels more like a backing track and really sits amongst his lesser material for me.

Most: With Every Wish

Yeah, for all the mountain of filler there are some pretty good songs here that feel exactly how you’d want Springsteen to sound at the start of the ’90s. The title track is a bit of a gem. ‘Roll of the Dice’ – written with Roy Bittan – feels like it could have made a good E Street rave up given a chance.

‘With Every Wish’, though, is the rarest of things on these albums: it feels like a natural Bruce Springsteen song. The gentle nagging melody, the cautionary tale of love, the sweep of strings and a horn (courtesy of Mark Isham’s muted trumpet) that make it feel like it comes from a different, better album. It feels as close to a natural follow on from Tunnel of Love‘s material as you can get. It had me hooked the first time I heard Human Touch and still holds my attention throughout. The fact that it’s more sedate in its pace and accompaniment means not only is the production less overwrought and feel of session players absent but it suits Springsteen’s more mature songwriting themes that little bit better too.