indie rewind
A buyers’ guide to Kirsty MacColl
Has any songwriter ever been more perfectly human than Kirsty MacColl? Intelligent, witty, wilful, vulnerable, contrary, mind-bogglingly talented, possessing a steely resolve and yet still coming across as approachable and utterly vulnerable, was there any wonder that I was besotted with her back when I was a teenager? Hell, I guess I still am. However, …
Not Forgotten: The Divine Comedy – A Short Album About Love
Released at a time where the fashion was to fill the whole run time of a CD with as much material as possible regardless of quality, all in the name of offering the listener more ‘value for money’, The Divine Comedy’s A Short Album About Love, as its name suggests, pulled in the opposite direction. …
Not Forgotten: E – A Man Called E
For two decades now E of Eels has steadily established himself as the premier purveyor of mature male angst. Literate, tuneful, and capable of creating great pop songs that can either be life-affirming or, as the man himself puts it ‘major bummer rock’, and sometimes, both of these things simultaneously. But what of the music …
Not Forgotten: Frank Black – Francis
How are you getting on with the latest incarnation of Pixies? Some of it’s OK. We got Head Carrier on the strength bouncing around to Um Chagga Lagga when it came on the radio. And it’s fine. But there’s the late 80s/early 90s stuff upstairs so… Here’s the thing though. The Pixies album I find …
Not Forgotten: Rock Bass – Garbles
With their debut, Garbles, it’s quite obvious that Rock Bass do power pop. However, the trouble with a lot of power pop is that so much of it can sound really quite generic. Of course, historically the keystone act was Big Star, but there have been other stand outs as well. Cheap Trick, Teenage Fanclub, …
Not Forgotten: The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin
September 2002. It is a time of personal misery and darkness. I’d sold the house I’d worked so hard to afford and had struggled to find a new place, so I was stuck back at my parents and holed up in their tiny box room with those few of my worldly goods that I could …
Not Forgotten: Ed Harcourt – Here Be Monsters
At the time of its 2001 release, Ed Harcourt’s Here Be Monsters was released to a modest amount of fanfare and expectation of great things to come, however for some reason, he’s just never enjoyed the sales that his music deserves. Harcourt is first and foremost a great songwriter, and he’s no such on the …
Not Forgotten: Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner
Sometimes it is impressive what can be achieved with proverbial smoke and mirrors. Promotions, relationships, business deals. Sometimes the appearance that you are something can get you further than actually being that thing. Smoke and mirrors work in the music industry too. From the doing quite well on the surface pop act whose managers are …
Not Forgotten: Levellers – Levelling the Land
There was a time in my late teens when Levellers were a genuinely important band to me. They were a genuinely rocking folk band with a good ear for melody, a memorable riff and, in Mark Chadwick, a reasonable vocalist. 1991’s Levelling The Land is by far and away the best Levellers album. It was …
Not Forgotten: Ben Folds – Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP
An odds and sods release which lifts the majority of its material from a trio of previously released EPs, rather than a full album in its own right, Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP, is nevertheless one of the most out and out enjoyable releases that Ben Folds has ever put his name to. Those of us who …