A trip to the local Oxfam this weekend yielded a few results, and for some reason I was in the mood for a punt, so parted with a quid for this, knowing little about the band. Fountains Of Wayne founded in New York City in 1995, and this, their third album was, apparently their breakthrough in commercial terms. After one listen, it seems to consist of mercifully short pop songs, which are perfectly OK, but display little which sets them apart from thousands of bands doing simi

Latest Porcupine Tree exploration is their 1996 album, Signify, the fourth album released under this banner, but the first with a settled band, rather than just Steven Wilson and guest musicians. I must admit this has been the most difficult of their albums so far, for me, but it's grown on me with each playing, and I now think I get it. So, what's going on here? We open with a piece of ambience over American spoken word, before the first longer piece, Signify , a powerful g

You might have heard of these lads from Liverpool; they were quite big in the 1960s, unlike me, who was quite small in Liverpool in the 1960s. My nana and grandad lived just around the corner from the McCartney house in Forthlin Road, and my dad once claimed to have been round there in the very early 60s when an excited young Paul rushed across to my lovely Auntie Val, his sister, yelling "Val, Val, we're gonna be on the telly!" Like in every 1960s family in south Liverpool,

I'm always interested to hear a Courtney Pine album, especially when it's cheap in a charity shop. Hence my purchase of this one a week ago. This one was recorded with Delfeayo Marsalis producing as a tight quartet with Pine's saxes supplemented by Julian Joseph (piano), Paul Hunt (bass) and Mark Mondesir (drums), as tight a jazz quartet as you could hope for. This is an album which could have come out 25-30 years earlier and fitted right into the Davis / Coltrane / Coleman e

Last of the Stamford haul is this 1993 solo album from Lloyd Cole, someone whose talents completely passed me by at the time. Here he is, in his third outing without his Commotions. After three or four listenings, this one is really growing on me. Initial impact was unimpressive, and the repeat listening was to see if it could get to three stars . I'm happy to report that it's comfortably there, and it's given the four star reference criteria a look in. It's a collection of l

We reach the 700th album review here, with the second of last week's haul from Stamford. I very nearly didn't buy this, so sure was I that I already had it, but on checking I didn't. Coincidentally, Martyn had been mentioned in two music autobiographies I recently read. Richard Thompson, a man who never seems to have a bad word about anyone, was kind and generous about his contemporary, from the same management and record company, while Chris Frantz did not pull his punches i

A trip to Stamford, and a visit to a charity shop delivered the next three CDs, and change from a fiver. If I was trying to do this with vinyl, I'd be lucky to get change from a fifty, so I'm still happy with my decision a couple of decades ago to embrace this medium. Ry Cooder is a name which conjures sufficient respect to ensure a purchase, so here's his 1979 release, an album of mostly covers. This album is, apparently, the first ever recorded digitally by a major record c

Mick Harvey is best known as being Nick Cave's right hand man for three decades, and as mainly responsible for the Bad Seeds sound. This album, a couple of quid in Oxfam, is his first solo album, a collection of English translations and fresh arrangements of Serge Gainsbourg songs. Very much like Gainsbourg's own work, I'm finding this interesting and enjoyable in small doses. No song is awful, Harvey's musical skills in arranging see to that, but very few leap out as great.

"And a blues CD on the Hallmark label, that's sure to be good" Or in this case, a jazz CD on the Hallmark label - a UK company specialising in budget, out of copyright, uncredited music. So all I know of this collection of mostly live recordings is titles and composers, and the assumption that the ivories are being tinkled by Canadian jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson. My first encounter with Peterson was on TV in the 1970s introducing a clip of Keith Emerson playing boogie woogi

This is the second of XTC's Andy Partridge's trawl through the tapes he has in his garden shed, a mixture of demos, rehearsals, songs which never quite got there, songs which never quite got finished and bits of fun which were never meant to go any further. So, XTC demos first -there's a solid demo of You're The Wish You Are I Had (from The Big Express ), a first take of Chain Of Command (free single with early copies of Drums and Wires ), a very early solo version of All Of

I've certainly owned this album for 20 years and I'm not sure I've ever listened to it until now. I never did buy the "Nirvana - saviours of rock and roll" label, but did rate them as a decent rock band among many others. This 1992 collection of B sides, singles and radio sessions was almost certainly bought in a closing down sale at Our Price, which had a ludicrous number of CDs without jewel cases or artwork for £1 each, so has a homemade insert. It opens with Dive and Sli

This one was a very cheap purchase of an Original Masters box set of five albums in a charity shop in Leamington Spa. I've never been a fan of Jethro Tull, but I'm aware many find them an interesting prog adjacant band, so I thought I'd part with £3.50 and give it a listen. This is the first of the set, from 1977. If I'm honest, I'd have preferred to give a couple of the early 1970s 'classics' a listen, but here goes. This starts with Songs From The Wood an introductory song

National Health's second album was exactly what the record buying public ( apart from a few nerdy second year science students) absolutely weren't looking for. I, of course, bought it on release, even though I had embraced punk and put my old prog records to the back of the box - I'd seen the band performing earlier in the year with this line up. Many years later, I was able to pick the CD up online, for far less than I sold the vinyl, a win in my eyes. For me, this is easily

The whole point of this blog is to listen to the vast array of CDs I already possess, but I'm buying them at a rate which means the older ones are being pushed aside for the new purchases, especially if I've been internet shopping after a drink, when there's little or nothing on the TV. So here's yet another Porcupine Tree CD, their 10th studio album, and their last one before a decade long hiatus. What could be more prog than a 2 CD set, where the first CD is a 55 minute lon

This album, Lambchop's second, was a recent late night EBay purchase, and the earliest of the band's albums that I so far own. It's a collection of very gentle, laidback songs, which envelop the listener, like a warm bath, while drinking a cup of hot chocolate. without too many of the songs standing out as greats. The arrangements are lush and easy to enjoy while remaining understated, at times with smooth string arrangements, although perhaps the recorder accompaniment to th

As a nerdy sixth form Genesis obsessive, I was ambivalent about Gabriel's debut solo album and probably didn't investigate it until a couple of years later, enjoying what I heard. Later still, I picked up my own copy, but it's only recently via Ebay that I've replaced it on CD. So nearly half a century on, how has it held up? Frankly, a bit of a curate's egg. Moving from a band noted for 23 minute whole side epic tracks and sprawling double concept albums (both of which Gabri

When I was at school, Roxy Music passed me by, despite being taken with their early singles, Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama. So, there's a world of 1970s Roxy waiting for me to visit and see what I missed. My reticence is due to my finding Brian Ferry ( schoolboy football contemporary of Everton hero, Howard Kendall ) a singularly unappealing character, with his love of fox hunting and support for the Conservative Party. But, from the world of Roxy, I've embraced (metaphorica

Bought many moons ago, this second solo album from Bob Mould has long been regarded as one of his most bleak and impenetrable, and one which only gets a very infrequent outing. Certainly it has a sound closer to the darker sections of Husker Du than to Mould's previous album, Workbook, which was at times quite light and poppy. He's joined on this album by bassist Tony Maimone (from Pere Ubu) and drummer Anton Fier (Pere Ubu and Golden Palaminos), giving a real power to the so

A recurring theme throughout all aspects of the art and entertainment world is how far one separates the artist as a person from their body of work. Given the petulant, self obsessed, supporter of racist politics and serial canceller of gigs and walkout merchant that Morrissey has become (or always was, but now he doesn't need the money..?) I wasn't relishing revisiting his albums. There isn't even the consolation, as with Smiths CDs, of knowing that three quarters of the hea

This is the second album in an Original Album Series box set which I bought many years ago, and have only just got round to listening, I'll admit that I felt I'd be just going through the motions with some 2 or 3 star generic jazz, which didn't really have much impact, but I was very wrong indeed. It's really rather good, and I doubt if my words can do it justice. Haitian Fight Song starts with a bass solo (as is allowed when the band leader is a bassist), but it isn't reall