My Friend Jo & Sonic Youth

When I started writing my as yet, probably always doomed to be, unfinished series of blogs under the “Obsessive Album Project”* during lockdown, one of the drivers was the chance to talk about Sonic Youth.

And then, I basically chickened out of doing so. The band were and, even in retirement, continue to be such a part of the cultural landscape, that to try and write about them seemed an impossibly intimidating task. Especially given that the legend Kim Gordon (I may be misremembering this) once opined that nobody had ever written anything good about the band. Also, the fact they had basically been around my whole life – and I had somehow never taken any notice of them at all.

Not until it was way, waaaaaaaay too late and I come across a reference to them in David Stubbs excellent book, Future Days: Krautrock and the Birth of a Revolutionary New Music about five years ago and I thought, “Oh, that sounds interesting!”

The first thing I listened was actually, their side project Ciccone Youth’s Whitey Album, the big hook there being Into the Groovey, which takes Madonna’s Into The Groove, already a killer, and makes it better. Then came Bad Moon Rising and then – well, it was five years ago, I’m not sure I could tell you honestly. Suffice to say I swiftly fell into a Sonic Youth sized rabbit hole and I really only emerged from it relatively recently. But, oh boy, let me tell you, it has been a lot – and I mean A LOT – of fun. Especially Goo – fucking Goo! What a record that is. I mean, how many records will take you from Kim’s homage to Karen Carpenter to a takedown of LL Cool J, helped along by Public Enemy’s Chuck D no less, with only a Mary-Christ to bridge the two tracks? The clever/thick hook of My Friend Goo, “hey Goo, what’s new?” the riffing and the screaming of Mildred Pierce…

I write this blog post a a couple of days after having received the latest recording from their vaults, the infamous, 1986 bootleg Walls Have Ears. Infamous because the band considered its contemporaneous, unauthorised, release a transgression of trust and an assault on their standards of quality control. Nearly 40 years later, the band have come to the view that apparently everyone else who heard it at the time did: here is a vital piece of Sonic Youth history, the transition from no wave to alt. rock happening between your very ears.

That’s what I’ve read anyway. Having not listened to it yet, I couldn’t possibly comment. But, being someone who found myself hopelessly addicted to the dissonant, terrifying Confusion Is Sex a couple of summers ago, whose first Sonic Youth record was the aforementioned, psychedelic Bad Moon Rising and who thinks Evol is up there with the band’s very best records, the period of time occupied by this record is of obvious interest to me – and I can’t wait to dig into it.

And as I write this, I write knowing that I am on the verge of drowning again in the deep waters created by the band, submerging myself in the Diamond Sea, massaging my own history and reinventing myself as an obsessive listener to a band that I’ve only come to know posthumously.

I didn’t mention it above, but another of the reasons I haven’t been listening to Sonic Youth recently is that, despite us being on more or less the same wavelength about any band that means anything to either of us, Jo is very much Sonic Youth sceptic. And I have found this difficult in the way that any man who wants his partner to enjoy the same things he does (“you will pay attention to the Ashes, goddammit!” – I’ve never, ever said or, more importantly, thought that, I promise) does. And so, months ago, I promised Jo a Sonic Youth taster, ten songs that would change her opinion of the band for the better. Every time I listen to them, I am reminded that this is something I’ve not been able to nail down.

For many reasons, really. How many albums did the band put out? Lots. How many songs are there? Loads. How many different moods? Loads. Do I concentrate on the early, no wave stuff that is confrontational, intimidating but, actually might strike a chord with Jo (because she is confrontatio -no, no she isn’t)?

Or do I go with the later, what most people would think of as the imperial, phase running through Daydream Nation to Dirty? How about the more contemplative, relaxed offerings from Murray Street? There’s so much to get through and so many avenues to wander down with this band. I haven’t even mentioned A Thousand Leaves, or the appropriately muscular Rather Ripped and whilst I think I’m safe in saying the Sonic Youth record I’d like to be buried, or cremated with is Goo, definitely Goo, such is my level of confusion, I’ve only got one song from that record on there. After all, I’ve only got one shot at this.

Maybe, though, maybe I’m overthinking this and I just need to get ten songs together and send it her way. I mean, if Sonic Youth are, or were, half the band I think they are/were then I’m worrying about nothing. And if they’re not, then I’ve been worrying about nothing anyway because Jo will discard the playlist in a fraction of the time I’ve been thinking about it.

And like that, I seem to have written myself through a crisis of confidence. Here is the playlist for My Friend Jo.

*I keep thinking I might resurrect this at some point, in a more sensible, less anal way. I just need to work out what this might be!

Suede: Electric Brixton 15/12/23

And now we take a break from our scheduled programming…

Last week, I was supposed to go and see Suede with my best mate and Suede uberfan Lukey. Unfortunately for him, he got ill and so Jo ended up coming with me instead.

Friday was to be the first of three nights at the Electric. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve always liked Suede. I remember hearing Stay Together and Animal Nitrate (not necessarily in that order) and being blown away by them 30 odd years ago, but it wasn’t till I saw them at the O2 around 2010 that I fully appreciated how great they were. Even then, the reunion albums hadn’t quite grabbed me up until 2018’s The Blue Hour, which I think is a weird, incredibly beautiful record.

And then, Autofiction came out last autumn and as soon as I heard it, it blew me away. I remember talking to Lukey about it and expressing the view that it was their best record since the debut. 15 months later, I’m going one further – it’s been almost constant in my weekly album rotations and with no skips, I think it’s a thrilling record. I even ended up buying both of Brett’s poignant, but witty memoirs, Coal Black Mornings and Afternoons With the Blinds Drawn.

Alllllllllllll of which is to say, I was seriously excited for this gig, especially in a smaller capacity venue.

Having arrived about 45 minutes before the advertised start time of 8:30, Jo and I managed to bag a good spot close enough to the stage, with a microphone stand positioned directly in front of us – guitar god, Richard Oakes as it turned out.

At the advertised stage time of 8.30, or as close to it as makes no difference, the back screen flicked into life with a tracking shot along some road somewhere ending at the words “Autofiction Suede” graffitied onto a wall.

The band ambled onto stage and immediately struck up a cacophonous noise, Richard Oakes squalling guitar soaring across the now packed crowd as Simon Gilbert whipped up a thunderstorm on his drumkit. Not for the first time in my life, I couldn’t work out what they were playing, but as a smirking/smiling? Brett Anderson made his way onto stage, gesturing at us to make some noise, the answer came – it was time to Turn Off Your Brain And Yell.

The moment I’d been waiting for then arrived almost too quickly, Personality Disorder was and is my favourite song on Autofiction and the moment when the song drops out and then comes back in on a chugging guitar riff and drums had me pogoing along with everyone else, shouting the call and response chorus back at our hero. A 3 song opening run off the new album closed with the excellent 15 Again, Brett really getting into the “Fifteeeeeeeen” bit of the title – and his surroundings on stage, leaping onto monitors as he exhorted the crowd for more.

And then, here were three songs to help everyone lose their mind, The Drowners, Trash which featured a bit of “We always come back” sprechesang from Brett (there was quite a bit of it on the night, I liked it) and the aforementioned Animal Nitrate, with its guitars like exploding depth charges. How many bands would kill to have 3 songs like these to close a night with? Here we were just 6 songs in. I guess this is what you get with a band like Suede.

And this is how a band like Suede follows a run of three songs like that…

Here is a band in total command.

Pale Snow followed as the band really took it down a notch before giving way to I Don’t Know To Reach You with Brett’s vocals hitting you right in the heart.

Autofiction stomper, Black Ice seemed almost too big for its surroundings, the sound coming off a little distorted and Brett’s vocal’s suffering a little in comparison, but led into the emotional highlight of Autofiction, Brett’s tribute to his late mother, She Still Leads Me On, the crowd puppets on a string, ecstatically clapping along.

Another emotional highlight followed when the band disappeared for a breather, leaving Brett with an acoustic guitar and the question, “What are we doing next?”

Still Life! was the call from the crowd.

“Fuck.”

It’s really hard to play, apparently. But like the trooper he is, Brett more than managed it. Then, an opportunity for me to sing “It Starts And Ends With You” to Jo, repeatedly. In that moment, I was glad she was with me and not Lukey and then we fell into Daddy’s Speeding, although Matt Osman, Richard and Simon had left the stage to both Brett and Neil Codling on piano by then. That was a moment, let me show you…

I think it was perhaps this song that led Jo to comment, admiringly, on the extent of Brett’s vocal range. You could have heard a pin drop around me as Brett sang the words,

“Whiplash caught the silver son

Killed the sad American

Crashed the car and left us here”

Genuinely, spine tingling.

But neither band, Brett, or us had come for the spine tingling moments really (although I’m always partial to one). This gig had been a celebration. A celebration of being able to be in a small big room together, of a brilliant album; a celebration of 30 years, of who we were then and who we are now, of one of the great bands of my lifetime.

And so the main set was closed out on riotous, crashing versions of So Young (as joyous at the age of 46 as it was 30 years previously), Metal Mickey – you haven’t truly experienced this one until you’ve been part of a thronging mass bellowing “Oh dad, she’s driving me mad” in unison and, one for the adoring crowd, The Beautiful Ones. This was dragged and draaaaaagged out by the band to the extent that you were certain this was the last song. It had to be, there was nowhere else to go.

And off they went. Leaving me with reflections of the sheer joy Brett Anderson had written all over his face at times during the evening, of the way the criminally underrated Richard Oakes – once a 17 year old kid who showed Suede there could be life post Bernard Butler – and his guitar playing has come to define this era of Suede as the rhythm section thundered away in the background – and what a rhythm section, by the way.

They returned for one encore. Brett said we’d been so good, we deserved one, but it had to be “vibey”. And so, appropriately I thought, we closed out on That Boy On The Stage. That boy on the stage was now a man in his mid 50’s, absolutely dripping in sweat, swinging a microphone lead around his head and loving every minute of it. What a performer.

What a night. I haven’t been to many gigs this year, but there again I haven’t been to many gigs like this in my lifetime. They were so good that, being the great mate I am, I immediately booked tickets for me and Lukey for their summer show in the park at Ally Pally with the Manics. That promises to be a completely different experience altogether…

That promises to be a completely different experience! (Haha)

Incidentally, I referred above to Autofiction being Suede’s best album, you might agree with that, you might not. But, with several references to “our new, and best, album” on the night, it’s clear that Brett certainly does! They walked the walk on this one too, with 8 tracks from the new album being played – note to bands, THAT is how you promote a new(ish) album.

2023 Album Round Up: Vol III PJ Harvey

When I used to write Arsenal related articles for any of Arsenal-Mania, Daily Cannon or the Gooner, I always used to feel that my timing was a bit off.

(this has been exemplified by the fact that I began writing this piece over a month ago and then life happened)

Write an article calling Freddie Ljungberg useless? Watch him turn in a man of the match performance the following week (maybe he was reading), say you think Arsenal are going to be champions? Watch them take 4 points from a possible 15, fading and dying (oops, wrong club).

Anyway, that’s quite a long way round of acknowledging the fact that no sooner had I written an article referring to previous blog favourites The National as “a joyless Frankensteinesque recreation of the band they once were”, then they release a surprise album, Laugh Track which very much proves, to continue a theme…

It’s one for later really, but I can’t tell you how happy I am to have the band that Jo and I came to obsess over back – and all it took was the boys to let Bryan loose on his drumkit again. Welcome back!

As I first started writing this piece over a month ago, I can update you further and say that Jo and I will be getting the bus down the road to see them at Crystal Palace Park next July with our mates Lizzie & James, which is a very unexpected turn of events. As is this week’s arrival of the Laugh Track vinyl!

Anyway.

Having, been absolutely entranced by her live show at the Roundhouse at the end of September, it’s time to talk PJ Harvey. Or to give her her full title, The Great PJ Harvey. England’s Last Living Rose.

Just over a year ago, PJ watchers like me (that doesn’t sound creepy in any way, does it?!) were intrigued to read a comment from Harvey, saying that she had now completed her latest album, she was really proud of it and it would be available the following summer. Right, I’m presuming everyone else was intrigued, I know I was.

Months passed and then a track appeared, ‘A Child’s Question, August’. Ahhhhh, I quite liked it, with it’s repetitive guitar figure, but it didn’t grab me. Not in the way something like ‘The Glorious Land‘ from ‘Let England Shake’ did when I first heard that in 2011.

However, advance word from the critics was encouraging and so, in what is turning into bit of a tradition for me and Jo, once the vinyl arrived on release day, we turned the lights off, dropped the needle on ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying‘ – for that is the title – and were slowly sucked into a strange, beguiling land. When we came up for air about 40 minutes later, I – we – felt so completely transported by what I had just heard, there was only one thing to do – yes, again!

The album opens with a weird keening noise, sort of like a siren, but not a siren and a repeated, haunting “do-do-do-doo” vocal from Harvey and it draws you straight into the soundscape of the album. I should point out here, before I get full into fanboy mode that, as usual, it isn’t just Polly Harvey herself we have to thank for this brilliant record, it has been produced with regular partners in rhyme John Parish and Flood. Harvey has now reached such levels of greatness that she can write a book of poetry, ‘Orlam’ – the story of a 9 year old girl named Ira – in her native Dorset dialect if you please, and adapt that poetry for her record and an immersive, enchanting live production.

It’s actually a little difficult to talk about the album without thinking about the live show now, though of course it is the live show that has ultimately triggered this post. A case in point here is track 2, ‘Autumn Term‘. If I was talking about the record without having seen the live show, I’d be talking about how the sampled cries of schoolchildren echo Radiohead’s ’15 Step‘, but having seen the show, I’m thinking of how Harvey danced around the stage throwing her arms in the air in time with the cries and looked like she was having so much fun doing so. Maybe I should stop worrying about mixing the two and just embrace it. You don’t really mind, right?

‘Lwonesome Tonight‘ sees the first of a few references to Elvis Presley as well as peanut butter & banana sandwiches and represents an early album highlight, with a lovely circular guitar riff and Harvey singing in the higher register she first debuted on the aforementioned ‘Let England Shake’. This album doesn’t feel BIG. It’s intimate & melancholy and full of atmospheric touches, like the ones that introduce ‘The Nether-Edge’.

On my first listen to it to the first side of the record, I found myself being drawn to the odd number tracks, before forgetting all about that as the second side unspooled. Difficulties in deciphering the album’s lyrics – a glossary of terms is provided with the album, so you’re taught the language as you listen to it ceased to matter. To the point where it was only after the Roundhouse show where I thought, maybe I should actually have a look at it and figure out what is being sung about.

So now, ‘A Child’s Question, August‘, with more references to Elvis and its steady, circular build of synths and guitars that never really resolves itself around its “Love Me Tender, tender love” makes A LOT more sense to me than it did a few months back. I think it’s gorgeous. It’s followed by the album’s title track, which one ups it in the beauty stakes. This one, with it’s – what is it, a ukulele, a banjo? – is possibly the stand out moment on an album full of stand out moments, with it’s exhortation “O wyman, wyman, unray I” (Oh warrior, warrior, undress me).

Once you’ve recovered from this saucy business, Harvey brings out her best West Country accent to sing about “horny devils” before taking the album out on, in the context of the album, quite a spiky track ‘A Noiseless Noise‘, all clattering percussion and wailing horns and guitars.

If you hadn’t already worked it out, I am quite a fan of this album. I’m super aware that with PJ Harvey, as with everyone else I love, I have a tendency to go “this is the best thing ever!” – and then familiarity kicks in. But I still largely feel about this album as I did when it was released into the wild in July. I find it simply mesmeric and, as with certain things PJ Harvey has put out over the course of her career – ‘When Under Ether’, the entirety of ‘To Bring You My Love’ – the album just makes me want to stop whatever it is I’m doing, sit, take a breath and lose myself in it. It’s a gorgeous, glorious land PJ Harvey has created here – to me, its closest in its overall atmosphere and tone to both ‘White Chalk‘ and ‘To Bring You My Love‘ but without repeating those experiences.

Seeing the album performed live in its entirety has really tipped me over the edge about this album. I thought it was a really brave thing to do, but I guess it was only brave if you didn’t have confidence in the material, or in your fans to understand what was being presented. And PJ Harvey clearly did, of course she did. This album is her best in years and the more I listen to it, the closer it gets to album of the year territory.

Okay, I’ll level with you, it’s kind of already there…

2023 Album Round Up Vol II The National & Gorillaz

So, a bit later than planned (sorry about that, I’ve had some… stuff going on), here is volume II of my essential album round up for 2023.

You don’t really have to be too much of a detective, I mean there is a huge clue in the title of this website, to have worked out that your author is, or at least was, a huge fan of the American band, The National.

The small word “was” is a big word here, because having got into the National with the release of 2010’s masterpiece, High Violet and then gone back to previous albums, falling forward up to and including 2017’s Sleep Well Beast, I think it’s fair to say the National had a run over 15 years that is up there with any band – and I do mean any band – in the history of recorded popular music.

And then I Am Easy To Find happened.

Jo and I actually went to see The National live on this tour, bringing the block all the way back to its very beginning, with another trip to Berlin’s Columbiahalle. We had a great time, but that was easy because the songs from I Am Easy To Find were surrounded by so many great catalogue moments. The album itself, I found overlong, dreary and lacking in the usual magic a National album provides and did I mention that it was long?

One to listen to and then forget that you ever had.

So, the advance word this year – it must be said, from the band itself, was of a new National album that was like a greatest hits of the National, but with new songs. Yay, right?

Wrong. Or, as Depeche Mode Dave would sing, “Wroooooooooooong!”

From The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein, the first track over the hill, Tropic Morning News set the tone by dint of its distinctly jaunty, but average nature. Then came Eucalyptus, which did indeed hark back to former, High Violet era, glories but lacked the lyrics, or the the musical hooks to embed itself into my brain and disappeared, forgotten, five minutes after hearing it.

I think mostly, I’m never going to forgive the National for evoking one of the greatest bands of all time with the song New Order T-Shirt and writing such a horrendously dull song around the title.

Dudes! What the fuck?

I know you love New Order, I remember Matt dancing to Age Of Consent on the tourbus in Mistaken For Strangers – so how in the world has this happened?

This how my brain works, right? Despite the fact I hate this song, I still sort of wanted to buy The National’s New Order tee shirt, but for once, my logical brain took over and said, “no fucking way, sonny Jim. You will regret it.”

Thank you, logical brain. My logical brain also says this dad rock band had a wonderful 15 year run of creating beautiful music to go with incredibly vulnerable, wonderful lyrics. Now, the music is lifeless. Appropriately, given the album title, FTPOF is a joyless Frankensteinesque recreation of the band they once were. Where’s the life?

If this is the point, then, at which we must part ways, then thank you for the memories and for that always sensational live hat-trick of Conversation 16, Afraid Of Everyone and Squalor Victoria. Maybe it’s not you, it might just be me.

But just to be clear, it probably is you.

Whilst we’re here. I’d kind of like a word with Zane Lowe.

A few months back, I listened to a typically effusive interview with Damon Albarn where Lowe described the latest Gorillaz album as the best Gorillaz album ever. or words to that effect, I’m not going back to check, if you’re that bothered, feel free and let me know if I got it wrong in the comments.

Zane, my man, Cracker Island isn’t even the best album released since the Conservative government let several thousands of its citizens (and, probably, voters) die during the pandemic times. That honour obviously falls to Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez.

Moreover, even if you’re going to discard the slightly flabby Plastic Beach, how can we forget the towering achievement that was 2005 Demon Days?

I have loved Blur for 30 years, give or take a few months, and even I would say that Demon Days, track for track, is Damon’s masterpiece. Even though Parklife is one of my favourite albums of all time, I don’t think it’s particularly close.

Anyway, suffice to say that when I finally laid ears on Cracker Island, I was *quite disappointed. It’s nice enough, a Stevie Nicks (STEVIE NICKS!) here, a Beck there. Nothing offends, but it all feels quite lightweight, bland and of a piece. I thought Silent Running, feat. Adeleye Omotayo is pretty good, playing off your now standard melancholy hill vocal from Mr Albarn and New Gold, ft Bootie Brown & Tame Impala is obviously a banger, but other than that, it’s all a little forgettable.

Now, as someone who has been listening to Blur (and therefore Damon) all his adult life, I’m the first to admit that, Damon is an absolute master at writing a song that makes you go “Meh” on first listen, only to find it hooked into your brain two weeks later (more of which, anon). Having had a few listens here, though, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I’m going to assume that Zane was just enjoying his day too much and didn’t want to spoil it.

Songs to make you go meh indeed. What a disappointment.

2023 Album Round Up: Vol I The Waeve & Depeche Mode

Helloooooo… is there anybody out there?

Like Cillian Murphy’s character in 28 Days Later, Jim, this writer stumbles out into the streets of London, wondering if there is anybody left to listen, anybody to talk to. So if you are out there, you are reading this and you’re not a rage infected human being, please do feel free to drop into the comments and say hi. Especially if you enjoy any of what I’m about to say.

I recently took the decision to remove myself from Elon Musk’s hellsite and just doing that has, I think been good for my phone battery and, more importantly, my mental health. I’ve stopped being in that always “on” mode that some of you might recognise, constantly refreshing to check what’s going on in the world when you should be more focused on what’s going on in your own living room. I feel better for it, but it’s also left me missing talking to people about what’s going on in my world – and theirs/yours.

Soooo, I thought I’d dip a toe back into my writing and offer up some thoughts on my musical highlights of the year to date. Interested? Stick around.

The year really began for me with Graham Coxon’s collaboration with Rose Elinor Dougall as The Waeve. I have a slightly weird relationship with Graham’s music in that I don’t quite trust his output in the same way I have implicitly trusted his Blur bandmate Damon Albarn. There’s no logic to this. I’ve been listening to LOTS of Coxon’s music this week and it is almost uniformly excellent. Even something like 2009’s The Spinning Top, a folk album which is very much not in my wheelhouse, I think is great (and I love it). Coxon has nothing to prove as an artist and yet, I still needed to read a few reviews and listen to the Waeve on Spotify a couple of times before committing to a vinyl purchase.

Tl;dr review of The Waeve? It’s fucking excellent.

We already know Coxon is the great English guitarist of his generation. Did you know also know he was a classically trained saxophonist? Maybe you will once you’ve listened to this album. The combination of his voice against the more deadpan stylings of Rose Elinor Dougall is a beautiful one (but then I am a sucker for these male/female combos), whilst the name The Waeve is an apt one for a band whose sound rolls and undulates like the sea. The album opens on the frantic Can I Call You, but by the time you’ve got to the closing, quiet You’re All I Want To Know, you’ve been caressed into a place of beautiful serenity. Definitely an album of the year contender.

Next up, you don’t have to have paid too much attention to this blog to know that Depeche Mode are this writer’s favourite band evs. And as such, the sudden passing of Andy Fletcher last summer was; a) terribly sad; b) the apparent death knell (no pun intended) for the chances of any further music from the boys from Bas.

And yet, not only did an Instagram post shortly follow showing the boys at work in the studio, but when advance word on the Mode’s 15th studio album Memento Mori (the title was in place before Fletch left us) came, it was almost universally positive.

Lead single, Ghosts Again, backed by a wonderful Anton Corbijn video, was – to my ears anyway – the brightest, poppiest (but not in a bad way) comeback single the band have put out for years. A sharp relief following the middling Where’s The Revolution and dirge that was Heaven. To me, it hinted at an album everyone could enjoy. It’s definitely true that Ghosts is an outlier on the album, but I can also tell you that when I dropped the needle on the vinyl, Memento Mori’s 12 tracks and 50 minutes flew by so quickly, Jo and I went straight back to the beginning – with the weird feeling of our favourite track changing with each new song unfurling before us. Except for, initially, Caroline’s Monkey & Soul With Me, which seemed to bring an abrupt halt to the momentum provided by Depeche’s James Bond theme in waiting, Don’t Say You Love Me and the insistent, driving rhythms of My Favourite Stranger.

The Dave Gahan penned Before We Drown, if lyrically slight, potentially even trite, is so well produced that for many, nearly six months after release, it’s the highlight of the album. For me though, it’s the following track, People Are Good which both references Kraftwerk and nods back across nearly 40 years in cynical agreement with People Are People, which takes the honours here. I love the world weariness in the lyrics, the way Gahan delivers them and the musical setting which, aptly, just seems to keep going in the face of adversity.

Never Let Me Go is the penultimate track and, for me, is lifted by a brilliant, urgent vocal from Gahan. And this is on an album full of brilliant Gahan vocals – you’re probably going back to Violator for the last time Dave sounded so good across an entire album. Perhaps there’s something about Martin Gore sharing songwriting duties outside of the band for the first time, with the Psychedelic Furs Richard Butler, that liberated Dave; maybe it’s just the quality of the songwriting, but whilst there have been Mode albums with higher peaks this century, this is their most consistent effort since, yes, you’ve guessed it – Violator.

(I’m saying it cos Fletch is no longer around to do so)

You know how I know that? I’m still playing it all the way through and I have been for the last six months.

The closing Speak to Me is more mood music than a song and with its ascending chord progression, reminds me a little of Moby’s God Moving Over the Face of the Waters (AKA the song which closes Michael Mann’s Heat), but this Gahan penned piece, which crashes out in a wall of sound, finally answers the call of the incredibly atmospheric, Nine Inch Nailsish My Cosmos Is Mine which opens the album. It wasn’t for everyone that track, but – although it came across as a bit of a weak opener to their otherwise excellent Twickenham show – I thought it was, and remains, a very exciting experiment from two men now in their seventh decade.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtnDJBBt9dP/?img_index=1

And that probably sums up the album for me. That we got a new album at all was a minor miracle, that the boys (ha!) sound so reinvigorated after 40+ years working together is something else entirely. Kudos to the guys and engineering genius Marta Salogni and uber producer James Ford.

Ummm, that went on for a bit longer than planned. Sorry about that, but y’ know… Depeche fucking Mode. Back soon, with more highlights from 2023.

Peter Hook & The Light: Brixton Academy 100722

Three years ago, I got tickets for Peter Hook’s planned celebration of his old mate Ian Curtis life, performing the two Joy Division albums, Unknown Pleasure and Closer in full with his band, The Light. I think I’m right in saying the original show was to have taken place on the 40th anniversary of Ian’s death, 18 May 2020. Of course, Coronvirus had other plans for all of us.

On Sunday night, me, Jo, my cousin Josh and my mate Ads were finally able to hand over tickets which had been sat in drawers since April 2019 and walk into the Brixton Academy for an advertised 8pm start.

I have to give Hooky some major props here – one of the themes of his excellent book about his time in New Order, Substance, was how he got fed up with going on late just because. So, more or less 8 on the dot, Hooky walked the walk and took the stage for a warm up set of New Order before the Joy Division business could begin.

The warm up set started slowly with Lonesome Tonight and Leave Me Alone – and then the rampaging sequencers of Everything’s Gone Green took the roof of my head off. In no time, I was hollering “It seems like I’ve been here before!” at Ads and a slightly nonplussed Josh. A cleverly arranged Regret, which saw Hooky ceding vocal duties for the chorus followed and then, a heavyweight one-two, the “Ooooh – Yeahhhhhh” of Crystal (one of my top five New Order tunes), followed by the “Oooooh oooooooh, oooooh oooooh” of Temptation (surely one of everyone’s top three New Order tunes).

Having brought the Academy to fever pitch – I had already lost both my voice and my mind, Hooky & the Light promptly fucked off offstage for a few minutes.

They returned to a Kraftwerk tune – I believe it was Trans Europe Express, although that could be my alcohol soaked brain playing tricks on me and, after a few early Joy Division singles “NO LOVE LOST!”, launched into the moment by which Ads said he would judge the success of the gig, Disorder.

I mean, fair enough, in a lifetime of iconic Hooky basslines, is Disorder not the most iconic of all?

Spoiler alert, it passed with flying colours. Day of the Lords sounded exactly as heavy as you would have wanted it to, but it was the three songs in the middle of the album that really landed. For me, anyway. New Dawn Fades, with its buzzing guitars, the driving rhythms of She’s Lost Control, during which I really felt as though I was the one who had, er, lost control and then the magnificent Shadowplay.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf2HP2Jj674/

“To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you..”

I was completely lost in the music, a pathway created by this music out from the stage, through my brain & body, out the doors of the Brixton Academy, travelling north over the River Thames and up onto the M1 towards Manchester. I could have been on my own at that gig and it wouldn’t have mattered to me (no offence, gig comrades!). The passing of 40+ years has, in my opinion, diluted none of this music’s power; conversely, the man at the centre of it all has probably become a much more rounded performer in that time. Even if Ads was slightly put out that Hooky wasn’t singing AND playing his bass – as I said though, it doesn’t seem fair to expect one man to be both Hooky AND Ian Curtis.

What was not up for discussion were the arrangements chosen by the band, or the presentation of those arrangements. Eschewing projections, or fancy lighting, this was very much – as Ads said, a “garage band” presentation of Joy Division material. Or, perhaps better put, as Ads and I agreed, the band Joy Division had been and that, really, Hooky maybe wishes he was still in.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf2aDTqDdqI/

I have long held, I’ve said it here, that as much as I love Unknown Pleasures (and I do love Unknown Pleasures), it’s Closer which is the true Joy Division masterpiece. However, even I would concede that it fared less well here. Part of it is the songs themselves, which are much more internal than on Unknown Pleasures, part of it was that I think Hooky’s voice couldn’t always be heard above the music. But the clattering Atrocity Exhibition, Heart And Soul and the aching Decades all very much hit the spot.

Ceremony

Hooky being Hooky, he wasn’t going to leave us on the horror of Ian Curtis fatalistic, self prophesising, vision of the future, so we then got an encore of Atmosphere, Ceremony which was incredible and still not the highlight of the night because that was the next track, a face meltingly heavy version of

“DANCE, DANCE, DANCE TO THE RADIOOOOO!”

Transmission, before the eternal Love Will Tear Us Apart closed out the night. People talk about how some songs are immortal, I suppose I do it quite a lot, but I think Love Will Tear Us Apart is absolutely one of those songs everyone would agree on. There’s a reason both Hooky and his former bandmates in New Order who can’t seem to agree on anything can absolutely agree on this one thing and both finish their sets with it.

Three hours of absolute mayhem and totally worth the three year wait – and hangover.

Cheers, Hooky!

The Obsessive Album Project: Part Twenty Eight (1977.1)

Today on The Obsessive Album Project we take our first look back to a monumental year. 1977 was the year David Bowie released Low, the year Kraftwerk released Trans Europe Express and the year The Clash released their debut album. Also, even more importantly, at least for a 21 year old living in West London, your author popped out into the world.

We’re going to take a look at the three albums mentioned above – starting with The Clash (#70) and their debut album. It happened so long ago now that I can’t really remember how I got into The Clash, but I suspect an old friend pointed me in the direction of London Calling at some point. And then an even older friend, Baxi, pointed me at the first album.

I think there’s something important about listening to punk at the right age, in the right circumstances. When I first heard this album, I could relate – a little – to the anger contained within Strummer & Jones lyrics – although at university, I was working a low paid job at McDonald’s, you could say I was so bored of the USA. There have been stages in my life where the Clash have been massively important to me, Jo will tell you about a point in 2005 where I was obsessed by the film Rude Boy and the live performances contained within it. She still can’t listen to White Riot without wincing. I will tell you about how much I related to the lyrics to Janie Jones and, obviously, Career Opportunities.

Although now, let’s be honest, a middle aged man who is in a more comfortable position than where I began this blog ten years ago yesterday (belatedly happy birthday to me), I listen back to the first Clash album and still love it. I love its energy. I love the paranoiac What’s My Name. I love that Mick Jones was the only one who really knew what he was doing.

It doesn’t really matter to me that The Clash weren’t really punks (at least not musically), that they used it to jump off into the worlds they were interested in, because I did the same too. And maybe I thank them for letting me know it was okay to do it that way. Clearly, their cover of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves is where the mask slipped for the first time; a) it’s a brilliant cover; b) whilst their contemporaries stood still, it led to so much great music. 8.82

Here is a photo of The Clash’s Paul Simonon and David Bowie.

Speaking of whom, we come to Low (#71), originally conceived as the soundtrack to Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth which, of course, starred the Thin White Duke himself. If you read my Blackstar tribute, you’ll know that it was Low, more than any other album which – belatedly -cemented my relationship with Bowie.

Here is where I try to win any Bowie fans I upset with my dismissal of Lodger back.

I was pretty much hooked by this album from the opening as the instrumental, Speed Of Life whirred into life. It’s such a jaunty opener, I defy anyone to listen to it and not enjoy. We then get a series of short, perfectly formed pop songs. Breaking Glass tells you,“Don’t look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it”, which makes me laugh every time I hear it. Sound And Vision & Always Crashing In The Same Car hint at creative struggles, with Bowie singing in hushed tones on the latter, as if bereft of confidence. It’s quietly beautiful.

The second side is, largely, where the magic happens though. This is where Bowie (and, obviously, Brian Eno), finally, had me thinking “That’s it, I’m in!”

Weeping Wall does a ghostly approximation of Scarborough Fair, whilst A New Career In A New Town would be echoed 39 years later on Blackstar. I mentioned earlier about hearing music in the right circumstances. I had heard Warszawa a couple of times before, notably on the soundtrack to Control, Anton Corbijn’s film about Ian Curtis and it had done nothing for me. Listening to it with new ears and within the context of the album, I found its doomy tones and glacial pace, almost dirge like, impossibly alluring. The same goes for the “I’ll invent my own language” track, Subterraneans which closes the album out. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure that the first time I heard this album, I went straight back to the beginning.

Always crashing in the same car, I had found my Bowie gateway drug. 9.09

“From Station to Station, back to Dusseldorf City/ Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie”

With these words, German electro pioneers Kraftwerk made it clear that they had also been listening to David Bowie. This line comes from the title track of Trans-Europe Express (#72) and I think this track, this magnificent sprawling track which dominates side two of the album, is one of the most important tracks in the history of music. Yes, even more important than New Order’s Everything’s Gone Green *BIG CALL KLAXON*

Side one kicks off with Europe Endless – gets on a train and provides a homage to limitless travel within Europe that, writing in the Brexit aftermath, seems, well, like a dream to me now.

The Hall Of Mirrors is a spooky reflection* on the nature of celebrity and how it can distort your own self image. This is properly terrific, percussion echoing like footsteps throughout the track whilst a woozy synth bass and whirling keyboard lines evoke the distortion you’d find in the titular hall and Ralf Hutter sings “even the greatest stars discover themselves in the looking glass”.

The pulsing Showroom Dummies lightens the mood with a mission statement wrapped in a knowing, deadpan humour that apparently everybody writing in the music press at the time seemed to miss. Scars still raw from WWII perhaps. I can understand how this tongue in cheek joke may have read as something more sinister in 1977. It’s as if the Terminator walked into Tech Noir and, rather than killing Sarah Connor, started a dance revolution instead.

And, when you flip the vinyl, you get the revolution. Trans-Europe Express puts you back on a train and, as with Bowie on Subterraneans, creates its own language. I feel slightly wanky saying this, but I really do feel like it created the future of music right here. Hip hop and rap certainly owe a debt to these 4 men from Dusseldorf and their bleeps and percussion and pulses.

Although perhaps not the singing.

And on the singing, are our four heroes singing “Trans Europe Express”, or it is Trance Europe Express? Whichever it is, the track seamlessly bleeds into Metal On Metal & Abzug.

Endless Endless closes the album out on a slight reprise of the opening track and the optimistic refrain, “endless endless”.

It’s not going to surprise you to hear that I love this album. I think it is one of two in the Kraftwerk cannon which has a legitimate claim to being their finest.

What’s the other one? You will have to wait and see… 9.27

 

*See what I did there, haha

The Obsessive Album Project: Part Twenty Seven (2001.1)

Today on the Obsessive Album Project, as we’ve ended up talking about turn of the millennium albums from both PJ Harvey & Radiohead, I thought it would be worth sticking around to have a look and see what else was going on at the time.

Which brings us to albums by The White Stripes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

First, White Blood Cells (#67) – bonus point for you if you can guess who this one was by. When it came out in 2001, I loooooooooooooved this album to absolute pieces. It felt then, and still does, incredible to me that two people – okay, two incredibly talented people – but just two people in Meg & Jack White could create such a noise on their own. And fuck if they didn’t look absolutely amazing too. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t listen to it too much twenty years later, but I do still get the occasional urge and listening back now, there are some brilliant, beautiful tracks to be had here, although I’m not 100% convinced we needed 16 tracks as the album, for me, runs out of steam as the scuzzy Mariachi of I Think I Smell A Rat recedes in the rear view mirror.

However, Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground is a hell of a way to kick off an album, another of those songs with a haunted vibe you know I’ve come to love so well. The rocking Fell In Love With A Girl, on the other hand, is one I will forever associate with Saturday nights following my mates Kev & Luke around the LSE’s After Skool club, having drunk one turbo shandy too many and desperate for a girl, any girl, to pay me some attention.

Yes, one turbo shandy is one too many. I know that now.

Hotel Yorba is something I feel I should like, but it feels like the sort of White Stripes song you might hear at a wedding if the groom wanted to prove he was, y’ know, edgy but still have everyone singalong. The Same Boy You’ve Always Known & We’re Going To Be Friends show that, amongst the chaos and fury, Jack White could do tender too and even twenty years later, The Union Forever, “It can’t be love, for there is no true love”, still kills. 8.13

Aside from the turbos, one of the more positive influences Kev & Luke (perhaps more Kev to be fair) had on my life following my return to London from Leeds in late 2002 was to introduce me to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and their imaginatively titled album, B.R.M.C. (#68)

Let’s cut right to the chase here, this album is, basically, all about the four absolute bangers which kick the album off, Love Burns, Red Eyes And Tears & Whatever Happened To My Rock And Roll (Punk Song), Awake – and Spread Your Love. The Rebels fuzzy sounding guitars were definitely a winner back then and, I guess, the line “red eyes and tears, no more for you my dear I fear” stuck with me; a) because it’s a good one, but also; b) because – at that point in my life I was full of red eyes and tears having had my heart broken and my life turned upside down in the summer of 2002.

By the same token, the shoegaze of Awake, guitars crescendoing around a simple plea to “Take Me Home” also resonated with me, whilst the album closer, Salvation, which nods towards psychedelia, proved that the Rebels could slow the tempo and still convince. The album highlight though, is the aforementioned Spread Your Love which bounces happily along on the fuzziest of guitar tones and a blissed out vocal, inviting you to “spread your love like a fever”.

Believe me lads, I wanted to. 8.27

I have already written a review of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part (#69) on this website.

(To be fair, I’ve probably reviewed a lot of the albums I’ve talked about as part of this project already, it’s just that I clearly remember doing this one).

Also, having listened back to it for the first time in a while, my feelings about it haven’t really changed.The album’s mid section – Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow, God Is In The House & Oh My Lord, is, with Cave’s delicious imagery, its strongest. That said, the beautiful, broken, We Came Along This Road was something which really spoke to me on this listen. The overall feel here is that Cave had, obviously, written some magnificent songs and, throughout this album, they are decorated so ornately by the Bad Seeds.

I can’t talk about this album without mentioning watching a documentary about the making of this album, which depicted Nick trying to get the McGarrigle sisters to sing the backing vocals to Sweetheart Come in a way that didn’t sound like “sweet hot cum”. I almost feel like he wrote that line deliberately (of course he did – you know what I mean…), of course I now can’t hear that line in any other way, which is a shame because it really is a beautiful song.

Overall, then, a gorgeous album (despite the unwanted injection of man milk), the only complaint and one that – funnily enough Jo and I both shared – is that it is a track or two too long. 8.92

The Obsessive Album Project: Part Twenty Six (PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City…)

Today on the Obsessive Album project, it’s all about PJ Harvey’s Mercury Music Prize winning album, Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (#66), which has just been reissued on vinyl. For the truly obsessed, there is also a record containing the album in demo form.

So, naturally, we have that too, but it’s Jo’s, so we don’t have to talk about it here.

I’m not quite sure what happened with me and this album, you know. We have already established, I think, that I am a huge fan of PJ Harvey’s work, this was very much the case in October 2000 when the album was released. I remember, though I don’t remember exactly when it was, jumping up and down on my bed in Burley Park, Leeds, when she played Later with Jools Holland to promote Stories… And yet, it wasn’t till my mum came up to visit for my 24th birthday in July 2001, that I got the album. My mum, bless her, bought it for me in the Virgin Megastore there.

Okay, I’ve just looked it up, the Later appearance came nearly a year after the album’s release, so maybe I just didn’t know about it. If it’s okay with you, I’ll let myself off.

So, enough about me, what about this album then?

Well, ten years in and 5 albums down, Stories is the continuation of a hot streak which has lasted since PJ’s debut, Dry. Following on from the clanging claustrophobia of Is This Desire, this record is a huge, wide eyed, widescreen epic. Written as Polly Harvey had moved to New York, hence the album’s title, the other shift in focus here is towards the personal. Is This Desire’s tortured characters; Joy Catherine, Angelene & Leah are gone, replaced my more personal perspectives; you, I, me.

Which immediately lends this album a more intimate perspective, even as PJ takes you by the hand and leads you around the brightly lit streets of New York. It’s there in the very first lines of the album, on stone cold classic Big Exit,

“Look out ahead! See danger come! I wanna pistol, I wanna gun!”

It’s a ferocious opener, the guitars sounds huge and PJ’s vocals reverberate as if she is signing from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building with the mother of all megaphones at her mouth. It’s this song that I would end up bouncing along onto on my bed in October 2001,

“Baby baby, ain’t it true/ I’m immortal when I’m with you”

PJ Harvey is back in the room. And with one of my favourite things, she’s ever done.

Another of my favourites is A Place Called Home.

*Unreliable Narrator Klaxon*

I did know about this album in advance. I remember getting a magazine, Select I think, which contained a CD promoting various new releases on its cover. So A Place Called Home was the first thing I heard from the album. Interestingly, listening to the demos, this song started life with a trip hoppish drumbeat that would end up repurposed on We Float.

There’s something about the kaleidoscopic instrumentation here, it creates this dizzying sensation as if, if you really concentrate on it, you might just fall. And over this backing, PJ sings,

“With love comes the day, just hold onto me.”

Perfect. Like all good story tellers, PJ ends the song back to its beginning, but from starting looking for a place called hope, she’s certain that we will find the titular place called home. Goosebumps, readers, goosebumps.

Thom Yorke turns up halfway through the album to deliver his most impressive appearance(s) of 2000, first on the sparse, sleepy Beautiful Feeling and then This Mess We’re In which sees Thom dreaming of “making love to you now baby” and being summarily dispatched with the words “I don’t think we will meet again” less than two minutes later as PJ takes over the conversation and the sun rises over the skyscrapers. There are impressionistic moments like these all over the album, rooftops and street corners, sunsets and sunrises.

Sandwiched in between these two is The Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore. Guitars crunched up to 11 and PJ back atop the Empire State Building, I love this piece of music. In album full of thrilling moments, this is right up there with the best of them. Her voice drenched in reverb, PJ cries,

“This isn’t the first time I’ve asked for money or love, heaven and earth don’t ever mean enough”

That’s a mission statement, right?

You could say the same about this line from This Is Love,

“I can’t believe that life is so complex, when I just wanna sit here and watch you undress”

This is the song, not my favourite on the album by any means, but I think this is the perfect synthesis of the romanticism expressed in Polly Harvey’s lyrics and the sonic palette, guitars all amped up, of the album,

“This is love, this is love that I’m feeling”

She repeats as if she can’t quite believe how loved up she is.

We Float and that repurposed drum beat surface here. This is my uncle Jo’s favourite PJ Harvey song. In fact, despite my best efforts, it seems to be the only song of hers he likes – but he REALLY Likes it. And why not? It’s a beautiful piece of music shot through, initially, with the kind of bleak lyrics which might have appeared on Is This Desire:

“I was in need of help, heading to blackout
Till someone told me run on in honey, before somebody blows your goddamn brains out”

But then the song becomes something else as a shimmering piano line takes over and realisation dawns that we can just float and “take life as it comes”. With all the romance and danger that implies.

Hidden track, This Wicked Tongue ensures this beautiful album ends on a slightly curdled note, all dirty guitars and PJ’s voice echoing off the walls. One last rock out to send you on your way.

I know this record is seen to be PJ Harvey’s most straight up, radio friendly record, but this is done so well, I think it’s impossible to hold this thought against her. 9.08

The Obsessive Album Project: Part Twenty Five (Radiohead Kid A & Amnesiac)

And so towards the end of another week on the Obsessive Album Project. Today, we’re talking about a “bunch of Oxford Jesuses”, widely regarded as the greatest band to have come out of the mid 90’s music scene. I am referring, of course, to Radiohead. A very specific period of Radiohead.

The period that spans Kid A (#64) and Amnesiac.

I, like everybody else hearing Kid A for the first time, was confused by it. I think the memory of that first listen has stayed with for the last twenty years, to the point where I read appraisals of Radiohead’s discography almost always acclaiming Kid A to be their greatest ever achievement – and it almost always Kid A – and I think, did I hear another version of this album?

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fine album indeed and in tracks like Everything In Its Right Place, The National Anthem and, of course, Idioteque, the band produced some of their most iconic songs, but there are large parts of this album, hello Treefingers, that could just be considered mood music – and I have to be in the mood to hear it. The last half of the album, in particular and with the obvious exception of Idioteque (the first Radiohead song you could dance to?), I find very well produced, but overly ambient and difficult to engage with.

Lest you think I’m complaining too much, I should make clear that Everything In Its Right Place is a superb track, with that lovely, slow dawning opening synth lines which really gives you the feeling that the album is waking up, and the repeated line “Yesterday, I woke up sucking a lemon” which speaks to Thom Yorke’s state of mind as the band tried to escape OK Computer. Just as good, of course, is the highlight of Radiohead live shows for the last twenty years, The National Anthem.

Live, this song is not so much heard as experienced – once you’ve had that experience you won’t quickly forget it. The recorded version can’t quite match that feeling, of course not, but opening on Colin Greenwood’s down in the dirt bassline, as samples float in and out of the mix against Phil Selway’s drums, it creates a discordant concerto in your head. In 2000, it felt like the most thrilling thing they’d ever done, twenty one years later I don’t feel any differently about it.

We had a weird experience with How To Disappear Completely in Amsterdam, 2008. Standing in the Westerpark, enveloped in this song’s beautiful rhythms, we watched a man who was maybe stoned, maybe pissed, maybe both, stagger across the ground in front of us. As Thom, up on stage, sang, “I’m not here, this isn’t happening”, the guy face planted. When he stood up, his face was covered in blood. It was some tableau. Some soundtrack, too.

Perhaps, maybe, the point of Kid A is that in choosing not to make OK Computer Vol: II, the band were able to move on and create their own future. 8.5.

The following year, Amnesiac (#65) would prove to be a more engaging exercise. I say that and two things occur to me:

1) what if Amnesiac had come out first? Answer, I don’t know, but I do know that this album, exemplified by Morning Bell/Amnesiac’s “cut the kids in half” line, there’s a slight air of decay & danger to it that I love.

2) I must have actually liked Kid A more than I thought I did, because when Amnesiac was released, I was straight to my local record shop in Headingley to pick up the library book edition of the CD, song with Tricky’s Blowback – more of which soon.

And in the piano led Pyramid Song, Radiohead constructed their, ahem, towering achievement across these two records. There was a phase across 2003 when we were straight out of work into the pub across the road in Twickenham (the Red Lion, it’s Tesco now) and I would bang Pyramid Song straight onto the jukebox. Get Friday night off to a bang. The locals loved it, I’m sure they did.

The album actually kicks off with Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box. I mention this only to point out that there are some echoes of Kid A here too, the sonar like beeps echoing Everything In Its Right Place’s intro and, boy, Thom still seems upset about something, “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case” he sings. A line you can only really appreciate if it catches you in an increasingly crowded ticket hall, rush hour Waterloo.

Thom is back at the piano for You And Whose Army? A then topical takedown of Tony Blair and his illegal war in Iraq, which starts off sleepy and ends up being quite rousing as if Yorke himself has gathered an army behind him. I love the groove of I Might Be Wrong, which has that danger I referred to earlier, whilst the strings of Dollars And Cents could have come out of a James Bond movie.

As with most of the songs on Kid A, there is a superior version of Like Spinning Plates on the live album, I Might Be Wrong but it’s still pretty good and then, I’m sorry about this everyone, one of my favourite Radiohead songs ever, Life In A Glasshouse, closes the album out.

“Once again, I’m in trouble with my only friend, she is papering the window pane” Given what has come before, this is such a great, wry opening line. The closest Radiohead may have ever come to comedy. Backed by Humphrey Lyttelton’s trumpet free flowing across another great piano line, Thom’s closing line, “Well of course I’d love to sit around and chat, only, only, only, onlyyyyyyyyy (etc) there’s someone listening in” closes the album on a slightly sinister smile. 9