POP FACTOR: 620 CONTROVERSY SCORE: 248
What you hear in Baby Cakes depends on what story you’ve been following. The story of garage? Then it’s an afterthought, a sidestep, barely even vital enough to qualify as a move backwards. The sto[…]

Bank Holiday Sounds: I am in a good mood this weekend, and it’s time to share it with you. Download this song (2.5MB) and see how you feel. This is not some kind of evil trick.[…]

Sasha Frere-Jones guest-posts at Fluxblog and raises some really interesting questions about repetition, formula, and ‘badness’ in music. The comments box, delightfully, lives up to them.[…]

THE SQUARE TABLE 13 / The Libertines – “Can’t Stand Me Now?”
Pop Factor: 510
“How can anyone still get it up for this?” asked Blissblog a bit ago. Good question. Listening to this I can’t help thinking of wh[…]

Glad It’s All Over: Where have I been? Off for one last – well, maybe – fling with ILM, having fun on the Top 100 Albums of the 00s thread (plus the tracks one which you should find quite easily). I knew the results three weeks ago […]

Law of Averages
Reviewing new album Showtime in the Guardian today, Dorian Lynskey comments that ‘ Too often [Dizzee Rascal] dwells on internecine squabbles of which the average listener knows, and cares, little’. Which raises some fascin[…]

Minor Public Service Announcement
Freaky Trigger favourites Big & Rich’s Horse Of A Different Color album gets its official UK release on the 6th of September.[…]

A challenge for the research-oriented — this question came up elsewhere but as an answer couldn’t be found, I bring it to you: is there a service or webpage or the like which lets you know what albums are in print? Something like the Al[…]

Thanks to all the people who replied to the ‘stats help wanted’ post – I have enough data to work with now, and can get to work on the exciting graphs and charts. Though first indications are that they won’t be all THAT exciti[…]

Harder Better Faster Stronger
WANTED! Songs with a thematic/lyrical/whatever connection to an Olympic sport – a specific sport please not just ‘sports’ or ‘the Olympics’.
Nothing totally obscure thanks.
If you are readin[…]