five from

We fell in love, in the key of C – Five from Wilco

/ Tony / 3 Comments

This is far from the first time that Wilco have cropped up here. Back in the early 2000s I’d started to get into this revered band from Chicago – picked up a couple of CDs based on enjoyment of the then-new A Ghost Is Born… but then I stopped listening to them. The reasons are lost in the mists of time. It’s unlikely a case that I wasn’t enjoying it, more likely that I was delving deep into a lot of music at the time and they got list in that mix. There’s also the scientifically proven fact that music hits you differently at different points in your life and if you’re not quite in the right zone it’ll bounce off like a space vehicle with misjudged re-entry angles.

Skip forward some years to the modern-ish day. A time before orange-coloured despots got their second term and decided to add a new line to the definition of ‘cluster-fuck’. Something got me listening again – suddenly the compact discs are replaced by wax circles with special editions of Sky Blue Sky and Summerteeth kicking off a real deep dive and gradual accumulation of their back catalogue as I realise I’ve been sleeping on a huge amount of quality music. It’s also a factor that my son seems to share this with me – initially inspired by the obvious Beatle influence.

Adored by critics and fans alike, Wilco have, to quote AllMusic, ” evolved from a rough-and-tumble alt-country act into a mature and eclectic indie rock ensemble, Wilco have become critical favorites and cult heroes on the back of a stylistically diverse body of songs.” Uncut – a magazine I’ll often flick through – regard them as an institution, and the “most artistically consistent and compelling narratives in music.”

Across a remarkable run of great albums, Wilco have continually delivered the good stuff. Each album moves forward, adapts, changes and finds gold in the process. So how on Earth do I whittle a now 31 year (and still going) career into five cuts?

I’m gonna cheat. I’m going to split this into two parts. Because, thankfully, there’s a clear marker in their career where the current line-up fell into place in 2004 in support of fifth album A Ghost Is Born. So, five from the first five….

Passenger Side

Wilco formed just days after the end of Tweedy’s former band Uncle Tupelo and work on AM began just over a month on from that band’s last concert with the same line-up, minus Jay Farrar. It’s fair to say that AM is the only Wilco album that’s close enough to that band’s sound to be truly labelled as ‘alt-country’. It’s a lot of fun, mind, with songs like ‘I Must Be High’ and ‘Casino Queen’ getting things off to a cracking start and ‘Passenger Side’ is a real stand out though

Misunderstood

For a moment it looked like Tweedy’s Wilco would be the weaker of the bands formed by the Uncle Tupelo split as Farrar’s Son Volt had gotten off to better start. Shortly after the recording of AM, though, Jay Bennett joined Wilco. Bennett would become Tweedy’s creative collaborator through the band’s next few albums and his guitar and – more importantly – keyboard work would expand the band’s sound palette. Being There is a monumental album, and it’s a double, that deliberately blows away any ‘alt-country’ tag and is a massive leap forward.

Shot In The Arm

Another evolution, Summerteeth, may not be as strong as Misunderstood – perhaps because of the substance-addiction and tension-related issues swirling around the band during its recording – but it’s a glorious, off-kilter pop-fused album whose Beatles and Brian Wilson style melodies hide a darker centre in the lyrics across another bloody strong album.

Poor Places

Choosing one song from one album is getting trickier and tricker. The band’s ‘Best Of’ gave Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot six songs apiece and yet… YHF is an album that’s another benchmark in the band’s history. A tumultuous period that would see members including Jay Bennett leave and their record label refuse to release the finished product nonetheless bore one of their most well-known records. Oddly enough, those six slots on Wilco: What’s Your 20? ignore, for me, some of the album’s finest, including ‘Poor Places.’

Spiders (Kidsmoke)

I will always love A Ghost Is Born. I love the fact that, whereas all their previous albums are so concisely put together, even when they go off on tangents, A Ghost Is Born is so deliberately unravelled. With a drastic change in personnel and Tweedy battling drug dependancy and mental health issues (he’d check into rehab just as the tour supporting it was due to start), A Ghost Is Born is the Wilco album that rewards more with repeated listenings.

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

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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.

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.

It always gets so hard to see, right before the moon – Five from The War On Drugs

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I know I’ve dropped a few tunes from The War on Drugs over the years here yet as I sit here with them in my ears through the day I figured it was time to drop a few more in one place in a more organised manner.

Originally formed when Kurt Vile and Adam Granduciel discovered their mutual obsession with Bob Dylan, the band dropped one album with that initial lineup before Vile’s departure to pursue his own solo career (on completely amicable terms) and a mass exodus of players led to Granduciel recruiting new members and gradually expanding on the band’s sound ahead of the release of 2014’s Lost In The Dream signified a massive shift in both their appeal and sound having arrived at a seemingly perfect combination of grand guitar-driven soundscapes that build and unfold into blissful tunes that combine obvious influences like Dylan and Petty with elements of My Bloody Valentines and Sonic Youth while retaining their own identity. From Lost In The Dream thru I Don’t Live Here Anymore they’d parlay this sound across three pretty-much faultless albums (so far) that inevitably occupy plenty of car stereo time as well as so often proving a mainstay in headphones as the sound manages to feel suited both to the intimate listen as well as creating a sensation of cruising down a clear highway at sunset.

A Needle In Your Eye #16

Debut albums are funny things when looked back on so many years later. Wagon Wheels is very much and album of 2008’s indie-rock feel and more heavily indebted to Vile and Granduciel’s love of Dylan than anything else with the band’s name on. While there’s plenty to enjoy Only ‘A Needle In Your Eye #16’ (I’m guessing the numbering of songs as ‘versions’ is another nod to Bob) is a real standout for me .

Brothers

Originally a longer tune on the Future Weather EP the version on second album Slave Ambient manages to retain the song’s vibe but bringing it into a tighter arrangement that – like a lot of songs on the album including the wonderful ‘Come to the City’ – feel like a clear transition is underway as Granduciel refines his sound.

An Ocean In Between The Waves

One of many highlights from 2014’s Lost In The Dream

Pain

A Deeper Understanding is another of those albums I can cue up and just let… flow. Adding a little more grit to the tone of Lost In The Dream, I love the sound of the guitars across the album and ‘Pain’ builds to a point that just lets these go.

Victim

It would be daft to repeat the same formula over and over and so, just as A Deeper Understanding adds to Lost In The Dream‘s sound, 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore still contains just as many long burn, slow builders while adding a few more electronic elements and drum loops into the mix, bright sounding synths and upbeat tempos all wrapped-up in a mix that highlights the ‘morning in America’ era FM sound that manages to sound both reverential and fresh. There’s also plenty of lush guitar tones and scorchers too.

I fear that I’m ordinary, just like everyone – Five From The Smashing Pumpkins

/ Tony / 24 Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time with The Smashing Pumpkins’ music recently. To be more specific, that of their first ‘run’. You know, that glorious period captured on Rotten Apples from 1991 thru 2000. My wife – in true enabler fashion – got a bit trigger happy in Rough Trade last year when she saw the Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness box and, with a couple of purchases since their albums to that point now sit in my record collection and indulged in a plenty.

Never knowingly non-grandiose, there was always something different about Smashing Pumpkins that stood them apart from the pack in that golden era of alt. rock in the early nineties. There’s wasn’t the raw angst of those bands hailing from the Pacific North West, instead they proffered a more richly layered and often, well, fucking gorgeous sound propelled by the distinctive voice and brilliant guitar work of Billy Corgan. The rest of the band – James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlain and D’arcy Wretzky – always looked cool as hell while Corgan maintained the look of someone apart. I was chatting about the band this weekend with the owner of my record store of choice and he maintains that Billy, while alway a bit weird, went full-on knobhead when he shaved off his hair. I think he has a point.

So, harkening back to a time when he was just a bit of a pretentious control-freak rather than full-on David Icke supporting lunatic, I thought I’d drop five examples of tunes from that period they could do no wrong while steering clear of the obvious, but still great, choices of ‘Today’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Disarm’ etc. It’s also worth pointing out first that ‘Mayonaise’ remains the single best thing they’ve put to tape but having already blogged about that, I won’t do so again here.

Bury Me

First album Gish is full of absolute belters of which ‘Bury Me’ is a great example of the band’s harder side – delivering pummelling riffs that would be at home on a Soundgarden album underpinned with Corgan’s innate ability to unleash a guitar solo and drop down to a nagging melody and expansiveness of sound inside of four and a half minutes.

Drown

Eight and a bit minutes of brilliance complete with feedback and an E-Bow solo, on an already unimpeachable collection, ‘Drown’ felt like an outlier then on the Seattle-focused Singles soundtrack and still feels like one today in the same way as Paul Westerberg’s cuts. It is, however, a massive early highlight. It was written after Gish and serves as a bridge between that album and their next. Due to label politics – Alice In Chains etc were on Epic as was the soundtrack – it was never released as a single despite radio love. Second only to Mayoinaise for me.

Soma

A rare Corgan / Iha co-write, ‘Soma’ is the centrepiece of Siamese Dream – a six and a half minute song that manages to encapsulate every characteristic of the band’s sound, managing to move from the tender to ferocious with a dynamic few could muster.

Starla

They’d only released two studio album when Pisces Iscariot arrived in 1994 as a collection of B-sides and previously unreleased songs to demonstrate that The Smashing Pumpkins had tunes to spare before we even knew what 1995 would bring. With songs that are almost as strong as those released as many already released, Pisces Iscariot is that rarest of things – an ‘odds and sods’ album that’s nearly essential. ‘Starla’ is an 11-minute epic that should be entered as evidence that Corgan was one of the era’s greatest rock guitarists.

Muzzle

How to choose a song from the behemoth that is Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness? A 28 song double album with very little filler… One of the most ambitious and indulgent albums out there, a slab of great music that’s stocked to folds with tunes songs including ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘1979’, ‘Zero’, ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’, ‘Thirty Three’, ‘Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans’….. well, I really like ‘Muzzle’ so let’s go with that.

And here’s a man with a lust for life, he lives for now on the edge of a knife – Five From Thurston Moore

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Thurston Moore – erstwhile founder and guitar wrangler, singer etc of Sonic Youth – has been popping up a fair bit on my news feed of late. He’s got a memoir out (which I look forward to reading) and as a health issue has limited his physical wandering to promote it, there’s no shortage of interview opportunities to do so. 

Along with his former band’s work, Thurston’s solo work has proven a strong mainstay in my collection and I always enjoy slapping on one of his albums. In the same manner that his band used to straddle both the alt-rock and avant-garde worlds, Moore’s solo work has swung from one to the other with an array of noise-based, experimental recordings across a myriad of labels and outputs as well as a now seven album long roster of song-based projects of which those recorded with the ‘Thurston Moore Group’ probably lean as close to the Sonic Youth ‘sound’ as we’re likely to get since that band’s move to inactivity in 2011.

While there are certainly some elements of his less song-based stuff worth checking out – if you’re curious I’d recommend 2021’s Screen Time and 12 String Meditations for Jack Rose (Moore’s tribute to that mighty of drone musicians) – I thought it worth tipping the proverbial to a smattering of his solo catalogue…

Frozen GTR

While Moore’s first solo album Psychic Hearts was very much a snapshot of mid-’90s Sonic Youth in sound, his second song-based solo album Trees Outside of the Academy felt wrapped more around acoustics – save for the odd searing lead laid down by J Mascis whose studio the 2007 album was recorded in. The album has long been a favourite of mine, it’s a decidedly warm sounding album and showcases Moore’s ability to create hypnotic acoustic rhythms. 

Benediction

Following the acoustic-leanings of his previous solo effort, Demolished Thoughts was produced and assisted by Beck in his more folk-pastoral mode with splashings of harp and violins adding to the album’s delicate lushness. Unfortunately, according to Kim Gordon’s ‘Girl In A Band’, Thurston realised that most of the songs on it were about ‘the other woman’ and so it was buried. Twelve years on and with Mr Moore now married to the presumed subject of these songs it’s worth a revisit without the baggage, right?

Forevermore

With Sonic Youth on hiatus, Moore’s first rebound effort came via the short-live, punkier edged Chelsea Light Moving. When he next emerged with an album in his own name it was 2014’s The Best Day which also marked the first effort of his Thurston Moore Group which featured My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe on bass, James Sedwards trading guitar licks and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums. The Best Day feels like a statement of intent as well as a great collection of tunes and ‘Forevermore’ bristles along with a real thump and kick across it’s eleven minutes that manages to combine Moore’s penchant for sprawling guitar epics with his ability to craft a real driving hook.

Smoke of Dreams

While <The Best Day leant to SY and Thurston’s harder-driving sound, for 2017’s Rock n Roll Consciousness he, and the Thurston Moore Group, paired with producer Paul Epworth – yep, he of Adele, Rhianna and Florence and the Machine work – for an album the delved into the gentler, hippy-like side to Thurston Moore’s writing. Yes there are noisy, bouncing guitar jams but there’s more of the softer side with some real optimism in the lyrics.

Hashish

By The Fire – so called because it’s “the idea of people sitting around a fire and dialoguing” – is the Thurston Moore lockdown record, if there’s such a thing. Finished and released in 2020 while Moore was coming off the back of the Spirit Counsel project, By The Fire feels like a glorious melding of that project’s experimental leanings to Moore’s riff and song-based work in a way that his solo work to date hadn’t really managed

There’s a piece of Maria in every song that I sing – Five From Counting Crows

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The Counting Crows are one of those bands that seemingly achieved mainstream success overnight on the back of their hit single ‘Mr Jones’ – they managed to pull of a neat trick of combining complex and wrenching lyrics with a roots inflected take on alternative rock with a sumptuous production (thanks to T Bone Burnett) that hit the magical sweet spot between sounding nostalgic and contemporary just at that moment in the early ’90s. August and Everything After remains one of that decades strongest albums and while they’ve continued to pump out solid albums (albeit with an increasing number of years between them) since they’re probably still best known for that first flurry of tunes. Or singer Adam Duritz’ (now removed) dreadlocks and his ability to punch way above his weight with the ladies.

That strange DJ function on the streaming service most of use recently plucked a couple of their songs out of my listening history and I thought throwing up a few of there’s would serve as a toe back into posting here.

Perfect Blue Buildings

August and Everything After is just an exquisite combo of rich ballads, brilliant melodies and cracking musicianship all pinned down by Adam Duritz’ lyrics and voice. There’s a particularly strong trifecta in the middle of the album with ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’, ‘Anna Begins’ and ‘Time and Time Again’ but ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’ become one of the groups most beloved songs and there’s something about that line ‘It’s 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday, it doesn’t get much worse than this’ that hits the sweet spot for me.

A Murder of One

After an album of relatively serious, angsty ballads and a run for Springsteenism on ‘Omaha’, ‘A Murder of One’ is a joyous, upbeat way to end an album and a cracking tune to boot.

Angels of the Silences

How do you follow up the success of August and… ? Recovering The Satellites is a bloody good album. Problem is it’s also a pretty long and heavy one – feeling every minute of its near hour length at times. It’s got a lot of great tunes on it but I always found it too much for one sitting and a lot of the quiet joy that lives between the lines of August.. missing here. ‘Angels of the Silences’ always hits the spot though with its urgency

I Wish I Was A Girl

Third album This Desert Life is an underrated gem in Counting Crows’ catalogue – after the overwrought writing and weight of their second album, it’s a tighter, more professional effort that relatively zips along at 11 songs but each of them are very well-crafted and benefit immensely from both a lighter tone and Duritz seemingly having reigned tendency to over-emote. Hooks and cracking melodies abound but I’ve always loved the lyric and delivery of “You dive into the traffic rising up, and it’s so quiet, you’re surprised and then you wake.”

1492

Those first three albums still find their way into my ears a lot. Their fourth Hard Candy was pretty solid but I kind of drifted away from Counting Crows and, it seems, so did many. After another few years between albums they dropped the double album Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings in 2008. They’ve dropped another one and a half studio albums in the 15 years since but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about them. ‘1492’ – all dirty guitars, energy and frenzied lyrics – has been a favourite since I heard it and one I never reach for the skip button over.

Someday our ocean will find its shore… Five from Nick Drake

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My Morning Jacket blew my head, and eardrums, off on Tuesday night. My wife and I hoped on the chuffer and caught the opening night of their UK / EU tour in the achingly glamorous Kentish Town. Two plus hours of intense and magical power (including a twenty minute ‘Dondante’) means I’ve been leaning toward a calmer soundtrack and indulging in the quiet majesty of Nick Drake’s all-too brief discography the last couple of days.

Nick Drake died at just 26. His mother, Molly, was a poet and folk musician and Nick’s love of music developed at a young age. A quiet child he was nonetheless confident and soon learnt the piano, saxophone and clarinet while his other studies suffered as a result of his love of music (how many musician’s biographies have that in similar?). He spent a chunk of time in France – studying in Provence – while pursuing both developing his guitar and smoking pot. Hey, it was the sixties after all.

When he returned to the UK he enrolled at Cambridge and was quickly got into the burgeoning folk scene, playing shows in London and Cambridge. He was signed to Island Records when he was 20 and recorded three albums Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Later (1971) and Pink Moon (1972). Lukewarm (at best) reception and poor sales – not assisted by his increasing reluctance to perform live. A troubled soul, his depression worsening, Drake returned to his parents house in 1974 where he died on November night following an overdose of an anti-depressant.

Years later with musicians such as Robert Smith, Peter Buck, Kate Bush and even The Black Crowes citing him as an influence, Nick Drake’s catalogue started to receive the praise and attention it so deserved. I think it appeared in a Volkswagen commercial Stateside. I think it was the late ’90s while at Uni I picked up Five Leaves Left and then very quickly thereafter his two other albums so, here, in no particular order or merit, are five of my favourite Nick Drake songs to lend a quietly majestic soundtrack to the day.

Time Has Told Me (from Five Leaves Left)

The Thoughts Of Mary Jane (from Five Leaves Left)

One of These Things First (from Bryter Later)

Things Behind The Sun (from Pink Moon)

Rider On the Wheel (from Made to Love Magic)

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

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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

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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.