Albums
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Top 10 Gigs and Albums of 2025
So many to choose from in both categories The Gigs Of The Year 2025 was another busy year for gigs, though I didn’t manage to close off #Chapter2 of our #AtoZMusicalTour with the letters U and X still awaiting to be ticked off. The #RaceAcrossEurope tour which was our #Interrail holiday was even better than 2024 with some great locations and bands, topped off with Nick Cave in the Pompeii…
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Yummy, James
Thirty four years ago, James came into this writer’s musical orbit with the release of Gold Mother. An album of it’s time with toe tapping tunes allied to pointed lyrics of the world around us. The die was cast and, for the next few years at least, a new album release was purchased without too…
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Cut to Black, Barry Adamson
While it would be easy to characterise Barry Adamson as having a colourful career to date – having played with Magazine, Visage and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, not to forget collaborations with the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Billy Mackenzie and more, it’s his comic outlook and film noir style that sets his solo…
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Music Makes Scotland
Ahead of tonight’s gig with James Grant and ‘Friends’, it gave me time to listen back to some of the artists and bands who nurtured my love for home grown music in the late eighties and nineties and continues to do so four decades on. Some became commercially successful and internationally known, Orange Juice, Simple…
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Filthy Underneath, Nadine Shah
Listening to the album, initially as background music the first few times, I was taken by the differing tempos and the depth of production across all the tracks. Some were sparse, enabling Nadine’s voice to take the lead, while others had that middle eastern feel which blended perfectly with the instruments as they accompanied her.…
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Who Killed …… The Zutons?
Released twenty years ago almost to the day, April 19 2004. After all these years the album title seems quite apt. Whatever happened to the band who were riding on the crest of a wave in the mid noughties with a string of catchy tunes? After years of seeming inaction, the band make a long…
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Spirit Power: The Best of Johnny Marr
Greatest Hits or The Best of albums. There are/were two ways of looking at them. The first, a commercial exploitation of the fanbase with possibly the hint of one or two ‘additional’ tracks that can’t be found anywhere else. The second, as a gateway to an artist you might not be too sure about, to…
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Sweet Deceit
Everyone knows not to judge an album by its cover. However, sometimes we can’t resist the visual attraction created to tempt the unwary customer. Have you ever bought an album just for the cover? How did it turn out? One such album for me was The Bathers – Sweet Deceit. Released in 1990, it has…
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Glasgow Eyes
The release of Glasgow Eyes has been met by a series of mixed media and personal reviews. For some it lacked all the inspiration of previous albums. At it’s most critical, comments suggested neither Jim or William Reid had actually tried too hard to record the album in the first place. Old guys, with nothing…
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Chronicles Of A Diamond
Following on from their eponymous debut album in 2019, the Black Pumas released a further ten tracks of classic soul, funk, jazz and a mix of rock’n’roll to please their ever growing audience in October 2023. If ‘Colours’ is the track that many associate them with, the new album has several tracks which will touch…
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Étrange Hiver
I found this description of Tom McRae ahead of writing this post and seeing him for the first time tomorrow night, 23 March in Strasbourg. I’m hoping to testify after the gig that the description is a fair reflection on the man! Over the years Tom has garnered a reputation as a great live act,…
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Exit Strategy
My thoughts on …….. Exit Strategy There are many criticisms of streaming sites like Spotify which underfund up and coming artists in particular, while taking already established stars into a new orbit of financial sustainability. For me though, I’ve regularly used Spotify in particular, and YouTube to a lesser extent, to find sources of new…
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Hit Parade
My thoughts on …….. Hit Parade While I can’t say my collection is heavily populated by dance orientated albums, there are very occasional glances to the genre in a few of the records bought over the years. You might find a Diana Ross album or singles by The Commodores from back in the day. More…
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TANGK
Playlist here of the album, with one of the top tracks on video below. My thoughts on …….. TANGK If your exposure to the IDLES started and ended with their debut album Brutalism in 2017, you may be surprised with the change in musical direction as expressed in their latest vinyl offering TANGK. A bit…
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Chaos & Calypso
Playlist here of the whole album. My thoughts on …….. Chaos & Calypso I can certainly hear the ‘chaos’ emerging from the tracks on John J Presley’s most recent album. It’s got the blues. It’s infused with jazz. The guitar solos screech out at you like a racket of banshees (I had to look up…
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Billion Dollar Babies
So has it stood the test of time in the intervening 50 plus years? As I sit here listening to the album during my lunch break, I can’t think of another opening track that was made for this blog and everything me and Bronagh are hoping to achieve with our A to Z Musical tour.…
