Echoes seduces from the outset: the re-recorded “Olio”, the latent Curey tech-mope once wriggling to be free from the shitty post-hardcore recording quality made gloriously explicit. Then “Heaven”, brittle guitar raunch, clos[…]

MY ROCKIST SHAME!!! So I’m tidying up and “Carnival” by Archigram comes on and as you do I find myself bopping around the room, and then it suddenly dawns on me that I’m not just dancing, oh no, in fact I am playing air guitar[…]

Factological amendment to Simon R’s Rough Trade bit: it depends on the RT shop, dunnit? Yes none of them stock garage but in general the Ladbroke Grove one is the one that goes for nu-skool breaks et al. The Covent Garden one is much better: mi[…]

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS – “Wishing (I Had A Photograph Of You) (Extended Mix)”
What really gets me about nostalgia clipshows is their desire to get everyone remembering the same 80s. It’s the same objection I have to Top 100 polls[…]

The whole thing is absurd, a drama queens lament, an over the top gothic grief session for the overly dramatic, it has to be done with a certain starkness, because if it doesn’t it is camp melancholy.
This is where O’Connor works so wond[…]

I’m having one of those days where everything sounds terrific, so please bear that in mind if I say something ridiculous, maybe something like ‘A.D.I.D.A.S.’ is the best single of the year so far. I’ve been wrong plenty of tim[…]

Let’s Do Lunch!: Vintage Frank Kogan, on Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, Times Square and Slade[…]

In case you somehow missed it, Ian Penman now has a blog.
If you don’t know who Ian Penman is or why you should care (whatthehellswrongwithyou?), hie thee hence.[…]

1) Rebel Jew-Silver Jews
The geography of Texas, the glory of a girl named Michelle and ‘The Rebel Jew, who died for you’ all tie in to an aching ballad that cries for a sense of liberation and freedom.
2) You’ve Gotta Serve Somebod[…]

I’m off to France for a week, so no updates from me (and no Focus Group either, sorry). Hopefully NYLPM’s other contributors will pick up some of the slack and run riot while I’m away. Have a lovely Easter Weekend![…]