Mostly Music

  ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #10 - October 2020 This one took me totally by surprise. Early December, and I thought I know the winner : it would be Slow Readers Club, who released two albums in 2020. The first and superior ('The Joy Of The Return') was in the packed month of March and got a bit overlooked as a monthly winner (although I did buy it, as they are planning to play Milan in April, fingers crossed), but they also had a October 'lockdown/isolation' album - and that was going to be my winner. Even if, I didn't like it as much as their March album, and at 8 tracks, 28 mins, it was a little in the middle ground between EP and LP... Still, the post was half-written in my head ... But a nice surprise package in the post from the man behind Vinyl Reveals   turned my plans upside down and now mean I have to try to write a blog post about a band I know absolutely nothing about, and have never seen live. Worth a glance at this episode to gain more in...

  ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #9 - September 2020 I lost money when Pledgemusic imploded (plenty of links on that, here is one  ), not a lot, about 25 quid for a couple of Salad CDs. I hadn't backed many projects before, but I liked the idea until some greedy fuckers ruined it...  The idea in this day and age to 'pre-order' albums to give the artists the money to make the album seemed a good and worthy approach. I'd done a couple of Wedding Present items ('Going Going' album, and the 'Something Left Behind' film, I missed the Valentina one as at that time with two very small kids, I didn't find I could afford the 100 quid 'entry'). So when Such Small Hands (basically the solo venture of the current Wedding Present bassist and Cinerama member, Melanie Howard) announced a crowd-funder at the start of the year, it was a no-brainer to get involved. I liked the approach of this, it was very transparent, it had a modest financial targ...

  ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #8 - August 2020 It's late December, and I have no clue what is my August Album of the Month for 2020. This is not an ideal situation to be in. To be fair, this only really happened with August, for the rest of the months, I had a pretty clear idea, even if there was a couple of late changes.  But August, I was stuck, I had nothing... I searched the internet for albums released in August, and a couple of possibilities finally stood out, after plenty of scrolling. I decided on my course of action : using my (very cheap - 4 months for 99p!) Tidal subscription to listen to them both and choose very quickly after a couple of plays ... (of course, one of my original rules was that I had bought the album - so out the window that rule went...) The Killers was an option. I have most of their albums, but frankly, a bit like Coldplay, only really rate the first couple. They belong to a long list of bands (Placebo, Oasis, Snow Patrol, Starsailo...

 ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #7 - July 2020 Lou Barlow released his solo debut in 2005, entitled Emoh (which is Home backwards - has anyone told Lou?). Yet it wins July 2020 Album of the month? Well, it was reissued on 31 July 2020, and especially since I didn't have it before, I feel its a worthy winner. Its a gentle, mainly acoustic album, apparently heavily referencing Lou's recent divorce.  My attempts at seeing Lou live have been frankly awful. This year, I had tickets and would have seen Sebadoh. I also had tickets for Dinosaur Jr in 2016, which was cancelled due to band illness - they returned in July 2017, but that overlapped with summer holiday (so missed it, as well as Pixies in Cambridge Junction). So, yet to have the pleasure of seeing any of Dinosaur Jr (J doing a solo show in 2018 again during my summer holiday just to complete the collection of missed gigs)  Lou seems a good egg, living and breathing music and art and is extremely prolific. I ...

  ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #6 - June 2020 The band I have listened to the most in the last two years must be Built To Spill. Catching up for lost time, since I only discovered them two years ago, when they announced a gig in Milan for the 20th year anniversary of their fourth album, the superb 'Keep It Like A Secret'  I listened to that a lot on Youtube, went to the gig, and then proceeded to hunt down CDs for seven of their eight studio albums (plus the official Live CD they have released) .... I still need to get their debut album ... might have to be a download, not found it under 50 quid yet on CD ... I'd heard of them before, mentioned in articles alongside Dinosaur Jr, Pixies etc, but never actually heard them. If you haven't heard them, I'd recommend to start with 'Car' and 'Carry The Zero' songs - two of their finest.  This particular album is a bit different ... its a set of covers, of songs by Daniel Johnson , not someone I...

 ALBUM OF THE YEAR - SHORT-LIST .... ALBUM #5 - May 2020 This might be a short entry ...  I don't have a whole lot to write about this band ... I've never seen them live , although I have heard them faintly... they played the 'bar' stage at the annual Wedding Present Brighton August festival (ATEOTS) in 2018 ... its a nice bar but not really ideal for live music and I decided to stay at the front of the main stage after Salad so I could say hello to Young Romance. I have no regrets, but if this album had been released then, I think I would have pushed into the crowds and braved the squeeze to see Jetstream Pony. So I have some regrets, I guess... This photo is taken just a couple of hours after hearing them ... Me in my Pip Blom t-shirt, well before their first album was out (told you I was hip, didn't I?) I got this album, pre-ordered as a digital download from Bandcamp on a Bandcamp friday, and actually released to me to download a week before the announced releas...

 And Now For Something which isn't an album of the month ...  Despite the universal love and attention my album of the month posts are receiving, I do occasionally want to write about other things (in fact, I have the next major topic all lined up, just calculated it might involve more than 25 albums...), so ...  Music. And how we consume it. (With our ears...) . I have been pondering this ... I recently mentioned that 'I don't do vinyl'. I used to. I sold off my vinyl when I moved to Italy in 1998. It simply wasn't practical - I moved with a single suitcase - so I took only CDs.  In those days (it was all fields round here), vinyl was a cheap alternative to CDs, especially second hand. I remember paying 3 or 4 quid for Viva Hate, while the CD stared at me from the shelf with a 11.99 price tag on it ...  I personally don't think vinyl sounds better. I think nostalgia plays a big part. I can understand the big is better attitude especially for nice artwork, with ...