music

Least and Most: LA Garage Sessions ’83

/ Tony / 5 Comments

Just when I thought I was out…

In a very selfish and inconsiderate manner, Bruce Springsteen decided to wait until I’d finished my Least and Most series on his work to announce the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums containing SEVEN entire albums pulled from the vaults.

Except… that’s not entirely true. Of the seven albums one is a mass collection of demos, one an actual album that was ready for release and then shelved, a soundtrack album that never went further than recording, a couple of ’90s album projects that got rounded out by songs added during the ‘boxset’ project, the remainder of a glut of songs recorded while finding the voice / angle for Western Stars and a disc of holdover ‘rock’ songs. However, as these have been packaged, labelled up and marked as albums proper, the Boss has forced my hand here.

There’s a lot of music here. An embarrassment of riches for Springsteen fans. Almost too much to be consumed and considered in one go. Whereas Tracks was pared down from six, to five and eventually a four-disc, 69-song offering, the aforementioned seven albums here (the disc number varying according to format) offer up 83 songs of varying vintage and quality. This being Springsteen, aside from a couple of howlers, the quality here barely drops below solid, often hits dizzyingly high levels and frequently contains moments that make you wonder how they stayed gathering dust for this long. While the marketing around the release contained the suggestion that each of these finds Springsteen playing in genres and sounds unexpected, the truth is that’s only so much hype: taken in context with where these sit chronologically in his ‘canon’ catalogue, they make not only make perfect sense but provide a fascinating insight into his working process.

So, that’s the intro outta the way. Let’s get into it…

LA Garage Sessions ’83

Of the lot, this was the album I was most familiar with ahead of release. I’d mumbled before about the bootleg of a lot of these songs and where they fall in the great Bruce Springsteen Timeline. However, as a quick recap: with most of the songs for Born In The USA written and recorded by mid ’82, the group of songs from his original working tape that he was least happy with the band versions of, was released ‘as is’ as Nebraska. While fully committed to the material and the voice, I think it’s fair to say the positive critical reception to these caused Springsteen to pause for a moment on the big rock record that was in progress. It probably didn’t help that he and Steven Van Zandt had fallen out over creative input and the latter had left the E Street Band.

Holing up in his LA home and thinking a closer-in-approach to Nebraska tact would be the logical next step without dealing with the hassles of band relationships, Springsteen put down another huge draft of material that – having been circulated for years – is now with on LA Garage Sessions ’83.

These are a fascinating and mostly brilliant group of songs. There’s a clear difference between the aesthetic of Nebraska while the song writing matter remains closer to that and his former work than the more direct Born In The USA material, it’s undoubtedly the bridge the between the two sides as well as a massive informer of his work beyond his stadium-ready record. Most importantly, the rounded out sound here shows him taking more confident swings to creating a distinct ‘solo’ Springsteen sound.

While the repetitiveness of the overall disc – there are 18 songs here and three of them start with that ‘Sir, I am a pilgrim and a stranger in this land’ line- the frequent excessive use of reverb and occasionally clumsy synth – means that it’s not going to be a perfect ‘album’ or even lost classic, it is one of the best in this collection and essential listening for a Springsteen fan as a set of what-ifs and roads not taken. For while the production and sound gets gnawing, the songs here are, frankly, fucking excellent and there’s very little to mark out song wise as ‘meh’ or ‘least’.

But, that being whole point of this series…

Least: My Hometown

Ugh… I know! But hear me out: it would be unfair to say ‘this version isn’t as good as it is on Born In The USA‘ because these are obviously demos and would suffer in comparison. But it’s presented here as part of this project and that’s what I’m marking against. It’s just that, for me, the delivery of this song kills it. This is a mature subject matter and yet he delivers it in a weird horse-whisperer rasp that’s not present elsewhere. Again, though, still a bloody solid song.

Most: Unsatisfied Heart

This is actually a pretty tough call. Taking the songs on an individual basis there’s so fucking much gold here. ‘Shut Out The Light,’ for example, has always been one of his best. The provocative ‘Klansman’ is a slice of fried gold, ‘Richfield Whistle’ has long been a favourite character study, ‘One Love’ is a fucking belter and many of these tunes could have been a standout if revisited later in his career instead of left behind as Springsteen continued his perpetual forward motion. ‘Unsatisfied Heart,’ though, is a real stand out for me. It’s as complete as it gets – it’s staggering that while some of the songs from this session were short-listed for inclusion on various Born In The USA iterations, this was never among them. Another of his great character studies of a man whose past catches up to him, ‘Unsatisfied Heart’ straps a killer chorus to the ‘Sir I’m a pilgrim’… line in a song that explores the overall theme of the ‘album’ and gives it a full and glorious melody that, while not given a nod on Bruce’s immediate next, definitely feels like a nod both in substance and vibe on Tunnel of Love.

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.

Least and Most: Letter to You

/ Tony / 20 Comments

Here we are at the end of the road with Springsteen’s final studio album.

At least, for now. Within a few days we’ll have seven previously unreleased studio albums to absorb and while Tracks isn’t included in this rundown, the albums that make up Tracks II: The Lost Albums are just that, full studio albums. There’s also confirmation that, along with Tracks III (ffs, that vault must have been huge) Bruce also has a new solo studio album ‘in the can’ earmarked for a 2026 release. It’s like he doesn’t read this blog with the amount of work he’s lining up for me.*

Where was I? Oh, yes, for now. Letter To You was an album that came by relative surprise in its timing mid pandemic (he’d managed get the band together for a week at the end of the previous year**) and in its absolute quality and power. Letter to You feels like a much-needed warm hug from an old friend you didn’t expect to see again —if that friend was a thunderous barroom preacher with a worn leather jacket, a telecaster slung over his back and a saxophone-wielding mate waiting in the car.

If this turns out to be the last E Street Band powered album, it’s one hell of a bow out; it’s a combination of everything that was and still is great about it with relatively minimal production or overdub. Springsteen calls back to his past magnificently – the record bristles with revisited old chestnuts like ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’, the mildly Dylan-esque ‘Song for Orphans’, and the swaggering ‘If I Was the Priest’ rubbing shoulders with new tracks like ‘Burnin’ Train’ and ‘Last Man Standing’ that bring the E Street Band’s stadium roar back in full force. While at times there’s an odd juxtaposition between songs written by Thesaurus Bruce and One-Phrase-Repeated-Over-and-Over Bruce, the combination is a winner. It’s like we’ve run into him at a bar and he just had to tell us one last story (or twelve).

Where this sits in the overall Springsteen album run-down I’ve yet to figure out but Letter To You is certainly his strongest and most consistently spot-on since Magic. That it’s the first time since The River that the band worked through songs without having had them demoed first is also clear – there’s a sense of spontaneity and freshness in the arrangements that hasn’t been heard in decades. There’s very little to nitpick about in Letter To You but…

Least: The Power of Prayer

While ‘Rainmaker’ hasn’t aged as well as it could have and ‘House of a Thousand Guitars’ is a little let down by the repetition of its title, ‘The Power of Prayer’ is absolutely the weakest link on an otherwise indecently strong album. Feeling more like it would be at home on Working on a Dream, Springsteen’s gospel inclinations here come off less like a heartfelt epiphany and more like a cliche-laden preacher hitting the stage unprepared. It’s an empty-cliche-ridden snoozer for me, it aims high and wants to hit that uplifting spiritual power of earlier efforts but leans on formula instead rather than feeling. I mean – when was the last time you ran your fingers through the hair of your significant other and thought ‘that’s the power of prayer’***? It may well be sincere but so is a 99p greeting card from Sainsbury’s.

Most: Ghosts

Hands down the album’s finest, Ghosts charges in on a revved-up E Street engine and never lets off. It’s a swirling elegy for lost bandmates and the magic they created together but manages to balance that sense of nostalgia with catharsis. Time passes and moves even for our heroes. You feel old, you feel alive but, for these glorious five and a half minutes you feel together with Bruce and the E Street Band.

What makes ‘Ghosts’ – and the best of this album – work so well in 2020 and 2025 is the sense that these songs didn’t spend too much time in gestation. There’s no feeling of over-working or heavy production. Bruce isn’t trying to venture into a different sonic direction here. He doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, just crank up the Chevy and happily barrel down memory lane.

Letter to You is the grown-up version of Born to Run, with a few hands dragging in sentimental baggage. It’s occasionally corny, but mostly full-blooded and triumphant. And when ‘Ghosts’ kicks in, you remember why you climbed in the passenger seat in the first place: for the ride, for the stories, and for the shared scars of friendship and loss. Life ain’t always a beauty but, hey, it’s alright.

*Of course he does.

** Two thoughts – chronologically this places those sessions in the same year as the final Western Stars sessions as well as those for Twilight Hours on Tracks II. Secondly: these songs were written following a bout of writers’ block and after the death of his friend and on an acoustic guitar given to him by a fan after one of his “Springsteen on Broadway” shows. That’s one hell of a burst of creativity.

***as a Humanist the answer is ‘never.’

Least and Most: Western Stars

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Ok…. let’s get back into it. Western Stars is still the odd one in the Springsteen back catalogue – while it may well be that some of the albums on Tracks II: The Lost Albums will fill in some of the steps that Bruce to get here, it sits apart at the moment; neither the acoustic, bare-bones approach of his other ‘solo’ albums or as ‘rock’ as his other work with full bands. Much like We Shall Overcome.. this is vey much a one-off detour*.

Where this album sits in my own ranking of Springsteen’s albums will vary depending on the mood I’m in: with the passing of time this album’s single-sonic style has meant that it’s not one I reach for typically and if you’re not up for that sound, it’s a skip as very little on here that varies from the ‘Bruce goes big, full-orchestra Glen Campbell / Burt Bacharach / Jimmy Webb’. At times the stylistic choice with its over-emphasis on twang and orchestral pop feels forced (much like a lot that Ron Aniello ‘brings’ to Springsteen’s music of late) and weighs downs songs that, in another setting, might have bounced freer without the need to add them on.

There are, however, a bevvy of solid Springsteen songs on Western Stars that are not only strong enough to withstand the production treatment but flourish in their arrangements and Bruce’s sonic departure. ‘Sleepy Joe’s Cafe’, for example, wouldn’t work in any other context yet here is a great addition. Songs like ‘Western Stars,’ ‘Chasin’ Wild Horses,’ ‘Hello Sunshine’, ‘There Goes My Miracle’ and closing ‘Moonlight Motel’ feel like Springsteen had got a very good core of songs for this project.

Sadly, like a lot of his later-career albums at this point, there weren’t quite enough and so we get some reheated tunes – we know now that ‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ has been repurposed from a mid-’90s project – and heavy production to polish up the lesser tracks.

Take, for example:

Least: Hitch Hikin’

Given that some of Bruce’s previous album openers have been real strong jump-off points (think ‘Radio Nowhere’, ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ for recent examples or ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ or ‘Thunder Road’ or fucking ‘Born in the USA’), Western Stars gets off to a sluggish limp with a song that could’ve been fine were it not for the hammy production and slopping on of backing and orchestration that does nothing for it.

Most: Drive Fast (The Stuntman)

‘Drive Fast (The Stuntman)’ fits very firmly in the list of great Springsteen songs that work well in this album’s context and would actually work well elsewhere – here the orchestra joins and swells as Springsteen’s character piece – an injured stuntman recalling his glory days – unfolds, elsewhere it could just as easily be a Nils Lofgren slide. While this character – like so many on Western Stars – is past his best, Springsteen gives them a beautiful treatment.

*excluding the ‘film’ version of the same album that followed a few months later and stapled on a cover of fucking ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’.

Monday tunes: recovery mode

/ Tony / 1 Comment

It’s been a weird old couple of weeks. A long drive down to Cornwall – which I think is only ever a short drive from somewhere else in Cornwall – and back for work followed very quickly by the switch to BST knocked me a little for six.

As I sit here recovered and with a week to spare before I put myself through a similarly taxing schedule, albeit for pleasure this time , I thought I’d ease myself back into this (and before tackling the final two instalments of the Springsteen Least and Most series) and ask you to lend me your ears for a few tracks while I share a sampling of those tunes that have aided my return to sanity as much as the copious amounts of caffeine I’ve been mainlining.

Tess Parks – Somedays

Margaret Glaspy – Act Natural

There’s something satisfying about a good needle-drop in a film when the song is one you love and that’s the case with Tess Parks’ ‘Somedays’ which I was pleasantly surprised to hear pop up in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.’ It’s such a beautiful stroll feel of a tune. Margaret Glaspy’s 2023 album Echo the Diamond is definitely worth checking out – the New York based singer-songwriter came to my ears on a Wilco playlist somewhere or other as she’d previously toured with them. Speaking of Wilco..

Wilco – Handshake Drugs

The Beta Band – She’s the One

I’ve been on a real Wilco rediscovery kick lately, reabsorbing favourite albums – like the recently reissued A Ghost Is Born from which ‘Handshake Drugs’ hails – and spending time with those that I’ve missed. It’s been, and continues to be, a real pleasure especially as my son seems to be keen on them too helped by the fact that they wear their Fab Four influence on their sleeve.

The Beta Band are, hopefully, poised to enjoy a resurgence as they’ve rallied together again after their initial gentle collapse in 2004. Back with tour dates booked and a reissue campaign ready to go included their The Three E.P’s – yes, as referenced in ‘High Fidelity’.

Buffalo Tom – one of Boston’s many fine musical acts – are also in the process of reissuing many of their ’90s albums and, judging by their social media posts, it looks like Sleepy Eyed is about to be next as it hits its 30th anniversary this year.

Buffalo Tom – Sunday Night

Bruce Cockburn – Lovers in a Dangerous Time

It’s funny where you discover music isn’t it? ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Time’ came up as track one some ‘heardl’ challenge or another. I hadn’t heard it before, so I failed that one. But I did love the tune and have since been enjoying his 1984 album Stealing Fire of which a bulk of the material is inspired by his travels in Central America.

Something a little more up to date…

Lissie – Into The Great Wide Open

I don’t spend a lot of time watching television – well, streaming that it, that is. There are couple of other shows that aren’t called ‘Reacher’ that I’ve enjoyed recently and ‘Bad Monkey’ was pretty solid. Its soundtrack of Tom Petty covers (as it’s based in Florida) was an added bonus. ‘Into The Great Wide Open’ has never been one of my favourites yet Lissie – who also appeared in my other recent binge, ‘Loudermilk’ – does a great job of turning it into a regular spin.

Matt Berninger – Bonnet of Pins

The National’s front-man has a new solo album on the horizon and I’ve been pretty taken with ‘Bonney of Pins’, really enjoy the way this one builds into a frenzy (well, by the self-proclaimed ‘Sad Dads’ standard, at least) of sorts.

Thanks for sticking around, hope you found something to enjoy.

Least and Most: High Hopes

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Reviewing High Hopes as a studio album feels unfair, but as Springsteen insisted on referring to this reheated plate of leftovers as just that – so be it.

Arriving in the resurgence that followed Wrecking Ball and its tour, High Hopes is Springsteen’s most scattershot album to date, there’s no narrative, no theme, no intent other than putting out an album that’s made up of covers, out-takes and re-imagined versions of songs from various points of Springsteen’s then-recent recording past. Songs like ‘High Hopes’, ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad, and ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ had been recorded (much better) and released previously while tracks such as ‘Heaven’s Wall’, ‘Down in the Hole’ and ‘Hunter of Invisible Game’ were outtakes from somewhere between ’02 and ’08 while ‘Harry’s Place’ was an outtake from The Rising. As Tom Morello sat in with the E Street Band during the Wrecking Ball Tour to replace Van Zandt (who was spending time in Lillyhammer), he’s also all over this album in, unfortunately, negative ways. Aniello’s production values on top of songs that Springsteen had previously thought not good enough for release isn’t a winning combination and while there are a few solid cuts it’s mostly ‘meh’ (or ‘bof’ as the French would say). Perhaps Bruce knew it was gonna be a while before we got another new album from him and wanted to get some product on the shelves ahead of another tour. They can’t all be The Darkness on the Edge of Town after all.

‘Hunter of Invisible Game’ sums it all up for me. This is a song that’s got a good idea, it’s got pretty decent melody and Springsteen and Co thought so much of it that they even had Thom Zimny create a ten minute short film around it. But, like the album as a whole, the thought is there, the motions seem right but there’s no substance to it. The song doesn’t actually say anything and I still scratch my head as to what this fucking invisible game is that Bruce is hunting – is it relevance in the modern musical world? Is that why he’s wearing a Canadian tuxedo on the cover? It feels like he came up with what is, frankly, a fucking great title, but it ran out of legs. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad we get to hear it but that’s as far as it goes.

Still, that’s one of the better tunes…

Least: Heavens Wall

Wasn’t there anything else in the vault? ‘Raise your hand’ gets repeated thirty six times. Springsteen sings like he’s scrolling through Deliveroo trying to chose dinner at the same time.

Most: The Wall

Hello? (Hello, hello, hello) Is there anybody in there? Oh, no; not that Wall. This ‘The Wall’ was written in 1998 – thanks to an idea from Joe Grushecky – after Springsteen visited the Vietnam Memorial and memories of New Jersey musicians, including Walter Cichon, from Bruce’s youth who never returned from the war. While Springsteen having another great Vietnam song this late in his career wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, The Wall’ is one of his most personal and affecting and – with the bitingly bitter “I read Robert McNamara says he’s sorry” – is one of his finest songs. It’s all the more baffling that it’s ended up on an album with so muck cack.

Least and Most: Wrecking Ball

/ Tony / 3 Comments

It must have been a strange time for the man they call The Boss as 2012’s Wrecking Ball arrived. Entering into his fifth decade of releasing albums, two members of his E Street Band having passed, his albums still hitting the top spot on release but quickly dropping out of view of the charts. Meanwhile he’s a very wealthy man while so many of his fans are facing the brunt of the then-economical issues America was facing. Some, if not all, of these themes are tackled on Wrecking Ball which marked a departure from Brendan O’Brien and the start of his work with Ron Aniello.

Since the comeback of The Rising, each of Springsteen’s albums had something to say about the times in which they were released. From that album’s 911 backdrop came the war-protesting Devils and Dust, Magic‘s swipe at Bush and even … The Seeger Session‘s choice of protest songs was clearly pointed while Working On A Dream seemed a celebration of Obama’s arrival. Wrecking Ball adds the plight of the downtrodden into the mix and seems to aim for a sound that touches on each previous but falls a little short and seems to have forgotten the sense of fun that had been present on so many of his previous albums and replaced it with too many songs where it feels that the words took more focus than the tune and Aniello’s stapled-on effects take the place of a full-band sound; Wrecking Ball contains contributions from several E Street Band members (notable absences include Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent and Roy Bittan) on a couple of tracks but with most instruments handled by Springsteen, Aniello and various session players.

It’s not a bad Bruce album, though. The songwriting is stronger than Working On A Dream, there’s more consistently good songs and the mix of performers – putting this somewhere between a ‘solo’ album and his ‘other band’ albums of the early ’90s in that respect – works well. There’s a lot to enjoy despite a few howlers, and listening back to it for this I’ve enjoyed it more than previously. Of course, I’ve still go no time for..

Least: Easy Money

Here I could go for the neutering and mangling of ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.’I could swing for the dour trod of ‘Jack of All Trades’. But, ‘Easy Money’…. it just feels so false. It’s an example of Aniello’s production choices that feel tacked-on and, despite the summon-the-masses, foot stomp approach of the song it’s too bloody slight in its substance. There are some heavy handed takes in the first verse but the most frequent lyric in this, literally, ‘(Na-na-na-na-na) Whoa! Whoa! (Na-na-na-na) Whoa! Whoa!’. This and ‘Shackled and Drawn’ sit together as what happens when the dourness of Aniello’s production sucks the air out of songs that aim for …The Seeger Sessions‘ lightness of foot.

Most: We Take Care of Our Own

It was almost too obvious a choice for Obama to use this in his re-election campaign. This is Springsteen at his best – a real call to arms that doesn’t hammer any point too hard but packs plenty of punch. It sounds fresh, akin to his then new-found friends in Gaslight Anthem or Arcade Fire, and relevant. Much like ‘Born In The U.S.A’ it’s an fist-pumper with a bitter current beneath it but that doesn’t overshadow it. Here Aniello’s touch is light and, released as the lead-off single for the album, it felt like a promise of more to come. Also worth paying attention to are ‘Death to My Hometown’, ‘This Depression’, ‘Rocky Ground’, ‘We Are Alive’, ‘This Depression’ and ‘Swallowed Up (In The Belly of The Whale).’

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.