five from

I’m sorry I missed you, I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain… Five from The National

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Sneaking in a quick ‘extra’ and the reason behind the selection of Ohio’s The National – my local record shop highlighted the upcoming release of the band’s ninth album at pretty much the same moment as I caught ears on their latest, ‘Tropic Morning News’:

Aside from tapping my foot and digging the tune, it got me thinking. See, The National are one of those bands with which I have a strange relationship. Though I can’t recall how I first heard of them, I was really into Alligator when it came out back in 2005 (and since I recently added it to the collection on vinyl it’s had plenty of spins) and jumped on Boxer and High Violet as they followed but somehow that interest slipped.

Whether it was perceived over-exposure as critics rushed to heap praise or was the fact there was so much to listen to and so little time? Who knows but the end result was that for the next few albums I didn’t jump on them straight away BUT did end up hearing enough to get hold of them and fall in love with them and wonder why the fuck I didn’t get hold of them sooner – what was stopping me? Both Trouble Will Find Me and Sleep Well Beast are bloody brilliant and while I Am Easy To Find is perhaps a tad bloated (3 lps) the augmenting of vocalist Matt Berninger’s voice with an array of guest female singers is brilliant way to keep an evolution in sound. They plough the occasionally-anthemic indie rock terrain with a more thoughtful, literate approach with lyrics that are often at odds with the upbeat charge of the music delivered through one of genre’s more distinctive voices while managing to adjust their formula at the right moments to prevent it becoming stale.

So this time I’ve decided to stop the weird cycle and have pre-ordered First To Pages of Frankenstein* and thought this a good opportunity to highlight five of my preferred cuts from the band’s back catalogue.

Lit Up

This is where I came in, on album number three: Alligator. I haven’t ventured further back really but it’s oft-mentioned that this is where the band really found ‘their’ style / sound. It’s a brilliant album without a track I skip but I like the sharp short hit of ‘Lit Up.’

Mistaken For Strangers

Boxer took everything from Alligator and dialled it up a notch. While ‘Fake Empire’ is probably the most well-known thanks to Obama’s use of the tune, ‘Mistaken For Strangers’ has that brooding urgency that always gets my attention.

Bloodbuzz Ohio

Whether it was down to new label 4AD’s promotion, the band’s continued up tick with the music press or riding the attention use in a successful Presidential campaign… but High Violet did big numbers for the band and seemed to be their break-out moment.

Don’t Swallow The Cap

I feel like Trouble Will Find Me gets somewhat overlooked – following on from the attention of High Violet perhaps something more immediate and ‘hit stacked’ was expected but the album is one that rewards repeated listens, is a more studied and stately affair than previous but is well worth the time.

The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness

A shift in sound accompanied Sleep Well Beast. The band’s trademark sonic atmosphere augmented with new elements, faster beats and squalls of noise that add texture and momentum and make it one of their finest.

*not the last two which contain the postscript where the monster says “It’s ok if people call me ‘Frankenstein’ I really don’t mind, ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ is a tad demeaning anyway”

One fluid gesture, like stepping back in time… Five from Placebo

/ Tony / 3 Comments

The French love their language and have laws to protect it. The Toubon Law, from 1994, mandates its use not just in official government comms (which you’d kind of expect) but also in the likes of adverts – most of which seem stuck in the 1989/1990 vibe anyway – and other commercial communication.

This extends to radio, with an oft-rebelled against rule that 40% of the songs that are played must be performed in the French language. I guess the thinking is that if ‘the kids’ only hear Americans singing about California they’ll forget their own language. Now this isn’t always a bad thing as there’s plenty of good French music out there lately – see my last post for an example – but it also means that if, like I did and – signal permitting still do – listen to, say, RTL2 for any protracted period you’re likely to hear too much ‘chansons’ music.

So where am I going with this…. well, the French love a bit of Placebo as Belgian-born Brian Molko speaks the language fluently. It also means they can play Placebo’s ‘Protège-moi’ as part of the aforementioned quota while also playing a contemporary international band. Hearing this version of ‘Protect Me From What I Want’ along with cuts from their latest, Never Let Me Go, has given me the impetus to run up a few of that band’s best and revisit since shaming them some time back in a ‘Then and Now‘ post.

Placebo formed in London in 1994. They’re currently made up of just the two members – singer / guitarist Brian Molko and bassist / guitarist Stefan Olsdal and missing a drummer. It wasn’t always this way: their longest-serving drummer, with whom they recorded their better albums, left in 2007.

Teenage Angst

From Placebo’s self-titled debut 1996 album.

You Don’t Care About Us

Without You I’m Nothing, Placebo’s second album remains their crowning glory if you ask me. It’s damn-near faultless and remains on regular rotation nearly 25 years on.

Without You I’m Nothing feat. David Bowie

Their second album is so good I’m throwing in another cut, the title track, albeit with a version that differs from the album version as David Bowie approached them to collaborate after the thing was recorded and released. /p>

Meds

Skipping a couple of albums – Black Market Music and Sleeping With Ghosts – where they went off the boil a bit to 2006 and the title track from their last album with drummer Steve Hewitt in which they seemed to have rediscovered some drive and consistency. While not their strongest it was their best in eight years.

Try Better Next Time

Getting in the DeLorean for an even bigger jump this time to 2022 with a song title seemingly taken from my response to the albums they’ve dropped in the last sixteen years… Never Let Me Go oddly feels closer to Meds than anything between. It would seem that the six years they’ve had between albums has allowed them to rediscover a spark that was missing for quite a while now, the songs are leaner and pack more wallop and there’s not a lyric as disastrous as ‘my computer thinks I’m gay, I threw that threw that piece of junk away, on the Champs-Elysées’ to be found anywhere, thankfully.

Bonus tune…

Johnny and Mary

Yes I’m throwing in a cover. Back in the days when singles were something other than an individual stream, Placebo would add either a couple of cracking b-sides or covers. While their take of ‘Running Up That Hill’ gets the most plays we’ve probably all heard enough versions of that one lately so I’ve gone for their cover of Robert Palmer’s classic that accompanied ‘Taste in Men’, the lead single from their third album.

Giant steps are what you take…. Five from The Police

/ Tony / 4 Comments

I spent a good chunk of time yesterday evening sat on the grass listening – from outside of the festival grounds – to a Sting and The Police tribute act (The Rozzers). Regular readers will know I have a fondness for them that only seems to grow as I get older. Hearing some of their classics played out at such volume by a very accomplished band was actually more of a treat than I was expecting it be and reinforced to me just how many great tunes those three chaps put to tape (we wandered away once they started with ‘Fields of Gold’ – there’s only so much vomit you can get in a bucket after all).

In their relatively short nine year original span they put out five albums of increasing depth that saw them get better with each outing before the inevitable inter-band tensions arose and Sting’s ego grew so large that it become self-aware, ate Andy Sumner and made a drumstick-kebab with Stewart Copeland and convinced The Artist Formerly Known As Gordon that jazz was the way to go (that’s if Wikipedia is to be believed). It’s often been suggested that if they’d been allowed to have a bit more time off between albums that they would’ve been around longer but there’s both that thing about hindsight and the fact that A&M had money to be made there and then.

While Sting may have struggled with truly strong lyrics – see Aphoristic’s brilliant take on this – the trio always had a knack for creating great tunes, surging out with the energy of the punk scene with genuine musicality and some brilliant song dynamics.

So, without a red dress in site, here are five crackers from The Police which, conveniently, seem. to have fallen as one from each album.

Truth Hits Everybody

Message In A Bottle

An obvious choice, perhaps, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a cracker.

Driven To Tears

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

I still think it’s the most wonderful gear change in music and, for once, Sting’s lyric ‘and ask her if she’ll marry me, in some old fashioned way’ is pretty decent. Shame about that Sandra Bollox movie

Synchronicity I

The Police’s later career is where you’ll find most of my favourite cuts. I named Synchronicity my choice for 1983 in the (currently on hiatus due to artistic differences) Albums of My Years series – for me they were at their peak and as both a title track and album opener this is a corker and shows how far they’d come.

All that I wanted to say, words only got in the way… Five from My Morning Jacket

/ Tony / 3 Comments

I’ve been writing on this blog in varying stages of regularity for a hair over ten years now and, having kicked off with reference to one of my favourite bands, it feels the time is right for me to stitch together a handful of My Morning Jacket’s songs that I enjoy a whole fucking lot.

Like so many others, My Morning Jacket came into my aural sockets via one of those cds attached with funky gloop to the front of a music magazine. From first hearing ‘One Big Holiday’ I was hooked. While It Still Moves got the thumbs up from me it was Z that blew me away and still ranks as one of my all-time favourites.

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky the band got going in 1998. A couple of strong, promising albums The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn on indie-label Darla were followed by lineup changes and signing to major distribution with ATO for break-through It Still Moves and have been mining a rich seam of guitar-driven excellence that bridges indie-rock/folk, alt.country and full tilt jam outs that veer gloriously toward psychadelia since all pinned down by Jim James’ voice. While it’s fair to say there’s been the odd dip post-Z as they continued to try driving their sound down different avenues, their albums are always worth tuning in and contain plenty of cracking moments as they keep exploring and they’re a brilliant live act as the constant presence of their two official live albums – Okonokos and Live Vol.1 – on my turntable will gladly demonstrate.

While The Waterfall marked their last effort for some years – indeed, it looked like the end of the band was on the cards for some time – a reinvigorated My Morning Jacket emerged in 2021 with a self-titled effort that saw them playing at their finest again.

It’s near-impossible to condense their work into five tunes, so let’s leave at being a case of ‘here are five My Morning Jacket songs’:

The Way That He Sings (2001)

One Big Holiday (2003)

Anytime (2005)

Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Pt.2 (2008)

Complex (2021)

Man without ties don’t dress for dinner… Five from Paul Westerberg

/ Tony / 6 Comments

As the decade of poodle-rock moved into the decade of flannel and corduroy, the ‘last, best band of the eighties’* The Replacements dropped their final album – All Shook Down.

The Replacements had risen from basements and punk-rock roots to major label status on the back of Westerberg’s ever-evolving songwriting and diversity. While they never made good on their promise (a whole ‘nother story), the rising alt-rock scene that took its cues from the punk-rock scene of the eighties (read Husker Du, Black Flag and The Replacements) and the new dawn ushered in by the success of Nevermind and artists that held his band’s work up as influence, the expectation was there for Paul Westerberg’s solo career to deliver on the ground laid by his band.

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, though. In a way you wouldn’t be wrong to suggest that Westerberg’s solo career route provided the near exact mirror to that of his band’s: going from major label hopeful to prolific indie label darling to basement recordings.

Seemingly torn between consistently playing to his strengths and trying to cover as many bases as possible and remaining true to his punk rock mindset led to oft-patchy albums. Then again, I don’t think he gave or gives a shit, his cynical approach to the music industry alway apparent. There’s a throwaway “is that good enough?” in the mix on Let It Be‘s ‘Answering Machine’ that’s telling of the approach – capture it and move on to the next rather than labour on it. However, for all that, his work is always worth tuning in for as he remains an excellent songwriter who seems to be able to pull of a catchy riff or aching melody at whim while throwing out lyrics with plenty a clever wordplay and knowing wink and I’ve tried to collect five such examples that cover the range.

Whether we’ll hear more from him at this point is anybody’s guess but I sure hope we do.

Waiting For Somebody

Westerberg’s first new solo music didn’t grace an album of his own name but instead featured heavily in Cameron Crowe’s ‘Singles’. Along with scoring the movie, Paul donated two songs for the soundtrack; ‘Dyslexic Heart (a then-unfinished country song he’d written for someone else) and ‘Waiting For Somebody’.

Love Untold

14 Songs, Westerberg’s first solo album arrived in 1993, a year later than the ‘Singles’ soundtrack. I’ve already covered that album here so let’s skip ahead some to 1996’s suitably titled Eventually. His second album suffers from born from two distinct sessions and producers. Sessions with Brendan O’Brien ended when time and songs ran out and the rest of the album was picked up later with Lou Giordano. I think it was for the best – O’ Brien has a style that layers Westerberg’s work to the point of it sounding tired and lacking the spark that comes when he’s playing looser and more off-the-cuff. That being said, ‘Love Untold’ is a pretty decent song.

Lookin’ Out Forever

Kicked out in just that loose, off-the-cuff style – apparently this one had different lyrics for some time before Josh Freese** walked into the session, counted it off and a new take and chorus made its way onto Westerberg’s third album, and last major label release, Suicaine Gratification.

High Time

Having kicked the major label circuit to the kerb (or did it kick him?), Westerberg hit something of a writing streak with three solo albums in his own name along with two credited to his alter-ego Grandpaboy released on Vagrant between 2002 and 2004.

Perhaps to escape the expectation associated with his name, Westerberg used the Grandpaboy albums to drop the stuff that felt more obviously ‘rock & roll’ and Richards indebted stuff that 14 Songs had delivered with ‘Knockin’ On Mine’ and ‘World Class Fad’. It meant that the two albums – Mono and Dead Man Shake – are some of his strongest and most consistent efforts to date.

5:05

Seemingly disinterested in releasing an album in a conventional sense, Westerberg retreated to his basement studio. In 2008 the self-recorded 49:00…. of your Time Life was uploaded to digital outlets that were willing to accept the 49 cents price point he insisted on though promptly disappeared as a likely result of the legal issues surrounding the samples of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Steppenwolf and The Kinks (to name a few) that featured in the single-track album. “Ten publishers came after us immediately ’cause I used all these snippets of songs that I recorded. It was either pay up or pull the thing.”

So he uploaded 5:05 – more of the free-wheeling, deliberately ragged and quickly recorded song that feels like part of his on-going kiss-off to the ‘music making machine’ – which, at 5 minutes and 5 seconds in length, fits in with the 43:55 of the longer piece to total 49 minutes of music on the nose.

I’ll leave you with an interview with the man himself that sums it all up really – the interviewer has no idea who she’s caught in the carpark, Westerberg is perfectly happy for this to be the case. He’s taking the piss a touch with the contents of his bag and yet there’s a certain bittersweet, knowing charm to the ‘yeah, that would be me.’

*per Musician magazine

**drummer extraordinaire who ‘s played with everyone from Sting to Guns ‘n’ Roses as well as The Replacements

Feel the warm wind touch me, hear the waters crashing… Five from Crowded House

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Over the last year or so I’ve been delving into Crowded House. Prior to this I’d really only had a familiarity with some of those hits that seemed to be regular radio plays and couldn’t say I’d ever listened to a Crowded House album, let alone own any. That’s since changed and they’ve become one of those bands I’ll often turn to on long drives or just fancy something, frankly, gorgeously charming to listen to.

I’ve yet to really take in the now three albums they’ve made since they decided to regroup in 2006, instead I’ve been thoroughly enjoying their first four album run. I won’t try and give a review of their albums or career as Aphoristic Album Reviews has already done an outstanding job of that – and it was just those round ups that prompted me to delve deeper at last so will merely politely suggest those looking for more can find a perfect round up there.

Instead these are five of my favourite Crowded House songs which, I’ve noticed, neatly represent one from each of their original albums, in order of date rather than preference, along with one of my absolute favourite songs of late which comes from Afterglow – a collection of outtakes and b-sides – and was left off their first album.

Hope you enjoy as much as I have been.

Don’t Dream It’s Over

When You Come

Fall At Your Feet

Private Universe

Recurring Dream

Let the music do the talking… Five from Joe ‘fucking’ Perry

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Aerosmith’s ‘Walk This Way’ was the first band ‘auto-biography’ book I’d read back when it dropped in back 1997 and the well-thumbed hardback on my shelves is testament to how many times I’ve either re-read or consulted it since. I also picked up Steven Tyler’s ‘Does The Nose in My Head Bother You’ at, I think, an airport or similar some years back so I was keen to read to read Joe Perry’s ‘Rocks’ when it was published yet, somehow, hadn’t.

Until, that is, while hitting up the local library with my son to stock up on books for him to read (it gives me a massive sense of pride that he takes joy in sitting down and reading to himself already) I saw Joe Perry’s ‘Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith’ waiting for me to pluck from the shelves – it’s probably worth pointing out that the music and biog sections sit close by the children’s section, this tale of excess wasn’t nestling alongside the Hilda or Roald Dahl books.

An expectedly calmer read than that of Mr Tyler’s prose – though Perry too was assisted in his auto-bio – while ‘Rocks’ offers a counterpoint to some of his singer’s arguments as well as picking up on the tumult within the band since 1997 (numerous fallings out, injuries, Led Zeppelin auditions and finding out about X-Factor gigs via the internet) as well as just how excessively manipulated by the toxic approach of their manager Tim Collins. Perry gives an insight into his personal life, how event recent addictions to pain pills nearly derailed his marriage and, of course, his relationship with Tyler.

One of the biggest take-homes though is the Perry’s dissatisfaction with his working relationship with Steven Tyler and his singer’s seeming reluctance to write with him alone anymore despite supposedly seeing them as a Jagger / Richards songwriting team. While Tyler – even as recently as Aerosmith’s last studio album Music From Another Dimension – seems inclined to keep trying to write a ‘hit’ single, Perry would rather stick to what the band is good at. If ‘Rocks’ is truth then he and the rest of the band were so appalled at ‘Girls of Summer’ as a song so non-Aerosmith they refused to be in the video.

While Tyler may think that a band into its fourth decade has another chance at a massive hit (likely the reason the last album was so dampened by the cheesiest of ballads), one thing’s clear – Joe Perry has a love for and a real knack for the dirty blues (as opposed to ‘pure blues) rock riffs that make up the band’s finest work.

In fact whenever he hasn’t had an outlet for them in Aerosmith, or when he’s not been in the band, he’s put out a good body of solo work that’s stuffed with great tunes. While there’s something missing in the lyrics or vocals that only Mr Tyler can provide, so many of these could well have been more of a massive Aerosmith song than the schmaltz the group-writing sessions stuffed their later album with.

Here are five of which:

Let The Music Do The Talking

Perry walked away from Aerosmith in 1979. There’s plenty of reasons as to why but it was a glass of thrown milk that proved the final straw. While Perry would later discover that his / Aerosmith’s management team were working to hinder his solo career, the Joe Perry Project’s first album Let The Music Do The Talking shifted well enough, went down nicely with the critics and made it clear that Perry had the riffs that could’ve kept Aerosmith going for a lot longer (by 1980, Aerosmith were playing increasingly smaller venues and Tyler was collapsing on stage more frequently). So clearly an Aerosmith song that when the group reformed it was their first single, albeit with altered lyrics.

South Station Blues

Perry may have had the riffs but he still had an active addiction, a wife that was spending his money as though he were still drawing down Aerosmith payola and as the years went by the Project’s output decreased in quality though, with a new album a year after his first, Perry was already outpacing his former-band’s output. This, from the group’s second, is a pure belter.

Shakin’ My Cage

Years…. decades in fact after his last solo output, Joe Perry decided to ditch the Project element for his first proper ‘solo’ album in 2005. With Aerosmith on another rest period, Perry seemed determined to keep on the bluesier side that had leant itself to their last album Honkin’ On Bobo and put out an album on which he played everything but the drums. It’s not a very varied album but Perry showed he’d still got a fuckload of those classic heavy riffs in his bag even if Tyler didn’t want ’em and if you happen to dig those crunchy guitar workouts then it’s a pretty strong album.

Mercy

Also from Joe Perry and one that was up for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance – fittingly Perry lost out here to Les Paul.

We’ve Got A Long Way To Go

With Aerosmith’s plans in the toilet after illness, injuries and strife called their tour with ZZ Top to be cancelled, Perry pulled together Have Guitar Will Travel – billed as a solo but much more of a band album and a lot less ‘produced’ than his previous album, feeling more like a warm, home-studio rave-up than polished, it feels like a relief in that respect but doesn’t hold together too well. Still, he also had songs like this which were clearly written with his usual singer’s pipes in mind and would’ve gone down well as an Aerosmith tune.

Any way you sing it, it’s the same old song – Five from Talk Talk

/ Tony / 6 Comments

At some point between lockdowns last year when non-essential shops were allowed to open up for a little while, we wandered into my ‘local’ record shop. I’m pretty sure I was there to collect something.. anyway, my wife picked up Talk Talk’s It’s My Life (by chance the purple ‘Love Record Stores’ version). I’d heard of the song and I’d heard them mentioned a lot especially in relation to kicking off post-rock with their later work but for some reason had never ventured into their work, like a muppet.

Anywho, cut to a few months later and by the end of 2020 there are four of their five albums (the first one doesn’t really do it for me, too synth-pop) on my shelves and I’ve had that wonderful feeling of discovering an artist and absorbing as much of their material as I can. There’s a massive leap between that second album and their later work and even across their last three albums there’s little by way of connective thread in terms of sound.

I won’t go into a breakdown of their albums or a ranking of them – Aphoristic Album Reviews has already done an outstanding job of that and it’s well worth a read.

I had the pleasure of hearing ‘Life’s What You Make It’ on the radio on the way back from the office this lunch and it felt as good a time as any to sit down with a mug of coffee and explore five songs I really dig from Talk Talk.

It’s My Life

Everyone knows ‘It’s My Life’ how “This ain’t a song for the broken-hearted, no silent prayer for faith-departed”… NO not that one. Nor “It’s my life and I’ll do what I want It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want”. It’s My Life was their breakthrough and while still very much a synth-pop album it’s a fairly decent one (I will be *that* person and say it sounds a lot better on physical vs digital but hey ho) and manages to stand out thanks to Hollis’ vocals and the arrival of Tim Friese-Greene as producer / additional member.

Life’s What You Make It

The Colour of Spring is pretty much a solid 45 minutes of perfection. Just listening to it is an utterly immersive and satisfying experience. Not just a bridge between their previous two albums and their later experiment-embracing final albums, it’s a massive giant’s leap on in a way that only a few bands have ever made. So, yeah, I’m going for two from their third. The lead single, ‘Life’s What You Make It’ is just balls-out brilliant – from that bass riff that’s actually a piano riff (I’d love to have seen Hollis’ face when he came up with such a delicious hook) and that dirty guitar… I could eat this song.

I Don’t Believe in You

I love the angry, moody as a teenager finding out there’s no Wi-Fi guitar that punctuates this one and then that gorgeous little lift immediately afterwards at approx 3:38 like a sudden gush of gorgeousness. What I mean is, if it’s not clear, is that if I was asked to choose a favourite Talk Talk song it would be this.

I Believe in You

Actually, maybe I DO believe in you… It’s almost like a different band behind each album they all sound so different. Spirit of Eden is the one I’d heard about for so long before getting it because it’s so often credited with being one of the touch-points in the birth of post-rock though, as others before me have pointed out, closer to jazz in its textures and ambience. To me the album is one that should be enjoyed as one piece – one gorgeous, mediative intricate piece.

After the Flood

I really have a thing for Talk Talk’s last three albums… Hollis’ voice and that piano sound aside – the real unifying element is just how fucking good they are. With the last one – Laughing Stock – I really feel like Hollis just let go, there’s something gorgeously cathartic in just how free-form the music is.

Wave after wave after wave… Five from The Cure

/ Tony / 5 Comments

The Cure have been around a while now… their debut dropped a few days over 42 years ago now.. after forming about twenty miles from where I’m currently sat.

They’ve come a fair old way since the late seventies in West Crawley and undergone the prerequisite lineup changes and issues that come with a band of that vintage, knocking out 13 albums (though nothing for over 12 years), notching up 30 million plus sales of those and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 (and if you haven’t seen Smith’s deadpan response to a very excitable reporter you ought to be popping over to YouTube).

Still often tagged with the ‘goth’ label, their impressive back catalogue swings across a lot of different styles – while you’d be fair for lumping albums like Seventeen Seconds or Faith in the genre, you’d be hard pushed to say the same of songs like ‘The Love Cats’ or ‘The Caterpillar’ in there as they took their manager’s advice to explore different sounds instead of splitting up.

My interest in The Cure is nowhere near as devoted as many of their fans’. I like a good chunk of their stuff but I’m also unfamiliar with vast tracts of it. For me, they’ve made two albums that I think are unimpeachable – Disintegration and Wish – and a shit load of great songs.

So, here are five of my current favourites to get you over that mid-week hump.

All Cats Are Grey

The band’s early goth/post-punk period doesn’t feature much in the listening list for me but there’s something about ‘All Cats Are Grey’ that I always enjoy.

Pictures of You

Disintegration is easily one of the greatest albums The Cure, or anyone else, has made. ‘Pictures of You’ was written after a fire at Smith’s home had him find his wallet – complete with pictures of his wife – while going through the remains.

Plainsong

Is it cheating to have two songs from the same album? I don’t care: Disintegration is brilliant and ‘Plainsong’ is just the perfect album starter.

Bloodflowers

Apparently, Bloodflowers the album was the final instalment of a trilogy that included Pornography and Disintegration. If I’m being cynical I’d say perhaps it was more of an effort from Smith to prop up interest and sales after the reception to Wild Mood Swings wasn’t too favourable. It’s nowhere near as strong as the other members of the ‘trilogy’ but I always enjoy the title track.

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea

On any day it’s a toss-up between Wish and Disintegration for my favourite Cure album. Wish is just such a strong album and so much more guitar-driven than its predecessor and leans into the alternative-rock sound with real style. ‘Friday I’m in Love’ and even ‘A Letter to Elise’ might be the hits that everyone knows but ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’ is the album’s centrepiece.

I been starin’, I been starin’ into space.. Five from Dinosaur Jr

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Formed in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1984, Dinosaur Jr are one of my favourite bands. Originally setting out to create ‘ear-bleeding country’ music, the band, propelled by J Mascis’ guitar playing, went from being one early proponents of fuzz-laden noise rock to being a massive influence on alt. rock, grunge and countless other players and bands going from indie labels to major and back again via line-up changes and reunions.

It’d be an unenviable task to try and pin point their sound – they’ve shifted quite far from their raucous debut Dinousaur (the band would add the ‘Jr’ shortly after to avoid litigation from) especially as bass player Lou Barlow initially handled most of the vocals – but one thing that’s been consistent across their work is the guitar playing of J Mascis who’s up there in my list of top ten guitar players.

With that in mind, here are five great Dinosaur Jr songs – not ‘the best of’ or even ‘essential’, just five cracking Dinosaur Jr tunes to get your teeth into on a Sunday evening.

Freak Scene

Their first ‘hit’ in the UK when released on Blast First in ’88 and a great example of the early sound of the original trio of Mascis, Barlow and drummer Murph.

Out There

Mascis signed to Sire records in 1989 but Barlow was out of the band by the time of their major label debut Green Mind. ‘Out There’ comes from Where You Been and was a pretty good hit (by Dino standards).

Nothin’s Goin On

Come Hand It Over, Dinosaur Jr’s final of four major-label albums, J Mascis was the only ‘original’ member left. The label, realising by now the band was never going to be another Nirvana, barely even promoted or distributed the album which is a shame because of the band’s ’90’s majors era’ Hand It Over is my favourite.  After the album’s release and tour, Mascis would retire the band’s name and release a couple of solo albums under the J Mascis & The Fog moniker.

All I Came To Do

In 2005 the original lineup of Dinosaur Jr reformed for a series of live shows and, in 2007, a new album Beyond appeared. A powerful album filled to the brim of great tunes and Mascis’ dazzling guitar work.

Said The People

Oddly, the reunion has held. The lineup has now produced more albums than during their first tenure with another expected this year. Their second back-together album Farm was even stronger and highlighted J’s slower-burners more prominently, ‘Said The People’ is a real favourite of mine.