Hyacinths And Thistles: my review of the latest Stephin Merritt side-project. For once the hosannas are muted.[…]

J is for…”Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’En Vais” by Serge Gainsbourg. From his Vu De L’Exterieur album, it’s as near as he came in the 70s to conventional singer-songwriting. That record takes the strummed, sensiti[…]

Go Kathleen Go!: the most excellent creator of Pearls gets her licks in in a Proper Big Newspaper, on the ever-pressing subject of Beatley hegemony. And she even gets a dig in at Radiohead![…]

Okay, I’ll take a break for a couple of posts, it being Serge Gainsbourg next, a man who it seems sacrilegious to write about in an office. (That’s not really the reason). Pitchfork reviews SYR5, the latest in Sonic Youth’s experime[…]

I is for….”I Want You More Than Ever” by The Clientele. As The Clientele continue their slow creep towards some small-scale kind of fame (with a sound as instant and recognisable as theirs, it’s pretty much assured), you just […]

H is for….”Hit ‘Em Up” by 2Pac. Greg tells me there are other records I need to hear before I can fully understand Tupac’s fatal diss, though rightly points out that a track which begins “I fucked your bitch, you f[…]

G is for….”Garden” by The Fall, from the 1983 classic Perverted By Language. Their records at that point were a mixture of lively sarcasm and a thick, inscrutable brutalism. Knotty riffs, garage monobeats and fat, menacing keyboard […]

The Spiller article Tom linked to gives me the impression that it was written by an indie fan. (At this point I admit that I don’t read Tangents so I’m going entirely on the one article here.)
“Groovejet” is, in effect, no dif[…]

F is for….”For Doz That Slept” by Black Sheep. Marvellous slice of party hip-hop whose only lyrics are “Fuck you”, sung, rapped and scratched in every which way you can think of. Courtesy of the mighty Brian M., who says[…]

E is for….”Everything Happens To Me” by Julie London: this irascible reviewer/fan accentuates Julie’s sultriness, but on this wittiest of songs what gets me is how well she uses arched-eyebrow resignation to paper over heartbr[…]