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100 for 2000 – #69. The Killers – Sam’s Town

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #9. The Killer’s – Sam’s Town
(Island)

Hype bands. What do you do with them? The Killers got so huge so quickly, and on face value, sounding like 50 other bands. All those big early songs had been beaten through my brain at various clubs and bars. I avoided this band like the plague. Look, before this album, I thought this band was British, if I cared at all. Then came Sam’s Town who turned it all around (if only for a bit).

There’s a one word reason for this – Springsteen. The hype around this record was that it’s their Springsteen record (something Arcade Fire were also touting). So, I figured this will be good for a laugh. But that first single. When You Were Young, was all manner of awesome. That 80s keyboard was gone. Some really tough guitar. And then there’s that awesome, uplifting, almost gospel release that Springsteen mines so well. I loved the anthemic but absolutely nonsense lyrics. And the film clip – the sweaty, Peckinpah-esque film clip – all pointed to a different band from the NME hyped days.

I got my hands on a copy of the album. Amber and Pete really liked it, and it was yet another radio staple here in the UK. Bones, with it’s Tim Burton film clip, followed. In fact, that era of the Killers had quite an influence on Lazy Susan, especially in a dress sense. I was liking Brandon Flowers more in interviews, and a Live At Abbey Road session where they covered Dire Strait‘s Romeo And Juliet was fantastic. I was starting to like this band quite a bit.

Then came Read My Mind. This song just blew me out of the water. It had that Springsteen thing – the uplifting, escapism thing. But they return to more familiar musical ground – it’s a slow buzzing rock song with a bit more of a dance-y 80s beat. And it’s buried under such great imagery – main streets, two star towns, etc. And that Eno keyboard drone! So great.

Not to read too much into it, but gee I loved this song. It is the 4th most played song on my iPod. And yeah, having gotten out of Sydney, I could connect with this song. The open road of infinite possibilities. And the hook – Flowers asks, seductively, if you can read his mind. It’s about making a connection. Finding someone who gets you in this sea of madness.

Oh, and the film clip is very cool.

There are other highlights on this album – Sam’s Town, Reasons Unknown, The River Is Wild. But the last few years have not been kind. The pompousness of the sound has dated. But the handful of well written songs live. Sadly, the Killers moved back to the dance-y electronica (which they actually do well). Their last record had some great songs but more duds. I loved the ambition of this album, and I wish they said more. I was wanting the new anthemic band for a generation (and luckily I only had to wait one more year to discover them).

Read My Mind and those other songs I loved still get to me. My little flirtation with the Killers is probably over, and this record is generally regarded as their worse. Oh well. Maybe someone else in the sea of madness agrees with me and I will find them one day.

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100 for 2000 – #68. The Fratellis – Costello Music

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #8. The Fratellis – Costello Music
(Fallout)

This was another album all over the radio that first winter. You’d see billboards for Costello Music. They’d be on TV performing their songs. And yeah, there were a lot of bands around as well, but I thought the Fratellis was better than all of them.

The thing about this album is it’s fast. Like really fast. It reminds me of the first Supergrass album, where the tempos barely let up. Lyrically, there was something cool going on as well. It’s a very Scottish thing – pretty images, quiet girls, hints of danger. And there was like, 6 singles from this album.

This is another type of record that I need every so often. The ridiculously energetic, fun album. It’s also so British and so exciting. Walking around Soho with these songs on the iPod, I couldn’t help but be excited about being in Britain.

And the songs. Really big hooks. Baby Fratelli and Chelsea Daggerwere about as anthemic as you can get, but still filled with weird details for those who cared to look. Then there’s Whistle For the Choir, a gorgeous, quieter moment. But it’s about the rockers. Flathead, For the Girl, Henrietta… most bands would kill for just one of these choruses.

It’s a pretty easy album to like, if you like this sort of thing. I’m not going to do a big sell here. It’s like that other Scottish “fr” band, Franz Ferdinand. I like what these guys do. From their guitars, to their artwork, to the silly rock showboating thing of having all their surnames being ‘Fratelli’, and heck, even the singer’s Marc Bolan hairdo.

The follow up wasn’t as good, but I’m eagerly awaiting what comes next.

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100 for 2000 – #67. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #7. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
(Domino)

I was working at EMI Australia when this album came out, and they were already set to be the biggest band in the world. My natural instinct led me away from Arctic Monkeys. All the most horrible people I knew loved them. Fuckhead scenesters. So, when Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not came out, I got my promo copy, barely gave it a listen, and moved on.

Then they toured, and someone gave me a ticket to the show. I’m 100% sure I was going with a friend. Who that friend was I don’t remember – pipe up if it was you (I’m sorry I forget things). Anyway, I knew very few of the songs, but never, ever has the Enmore Theatre sounded better. In my mind, I heard the Buzzcocks, I heard the Replacements, I heard Black Flag, I heard Elvis Costello, I heard Billy Bragg. Whether these extremely young lads from Sheffield had heard of any of these artists was unknown to me.

So before I left Australia, I ripped the album onto the iPod, and got on a plane. That winter, end of ’06 leading into ’07, was owned by the Arctic Monkeys. It was like what I heard about the days of Oasis. It seemed like they had 6 songs on high rotation at the same time. All those brilliant singles, throw in Mardy Bum and the non album single Leave Before the Lights Come On.

So it seems silly I didn’t fall for these guys earlier. And it’s because I underestimated Alex Turner. I couldn’t imagine what a 20 year old could possibly tell me. As it turns out, quite a lot. Especially in London that first year, going out a lot, meeting a whole new level of bullshit scenesters, Turner and the Monkeys were the all important anchor to reality. Their working class, no bullshit attitude was a much needed elixir.

I keep coming back to bands like this. Is it my working class background? Or my desire to live a quiet, proud life. The thing Tony Soprano talks about all the time, the dignified male silence. But I’m always drawn to bands that shut up, roll their sleeves up and just do the work. It’s the DIY ethic – I’m sure I was one of thousands of people who looked at Uncle Tupelo and thought, that could be me.  The same kids looked at the ugly, scruffy, uncool guys in Arctic Monkeys and thought the same.

The musicianship is red hot. The riffs, the stop/starts, the speed… I’d like to see any other band that has appeared on the cover of the NME in this decade pull off one of these songs. And the arrangements are always fascinating – the guitar interplay that levels Television at their best. The sound is thick, it’s choking, and it’s intense.

But it comes down the the songs. Lyrics that everyone quotes – from aging rockers to young politicians. And having met quite a few could-be-big bands, to see a band so actively wanting to insult their audience was captivating. It’s like climbing a mountain, then spitting.

Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But… is a point perfect attack on those scenesters that leech off them now but will forget them tomorrow. But better still is Fake Tales Of San Francisco – a healthy fuck you to bands who care more about their name producers, their US tour dates, their image and drugs than songs. Ending with the anthemic, heroic rally cry of:

Get off the bandwagon!
Put down the handbook!

The live music scene is a heady scene, full of bullshit. Turner captures the darkness, and the magic. Fights with bouncers, girls who never talk to you, the darkened corners of the dancefloors. How did 20 year olds pull this off so magnificently.

Apart from those big singles, there are two songs that people talk about, list in magazines and get a great reaction live. For me, they are the two real masterpieces on this record, and this decade in music.

Mardy Bum – the lightest thing on here, and one of the very few songs in the career to flirt with real affection. But it’s the detail that paints these people as real. They miss buses, they laugh and joke around. And the line everyone talks about – remember cuddles in the kitchen – that is placed in the perfect part of the song. Every radio station in the UK playlisted this song anyway, even though it was never a single. You watch, as the years go by, this will be to Turner like ‘Yesterday‘ is to McCartney.

And finally, damningly – A Certain Romance. Musically, it’s extraordinary. From the opening teeth gnashing guitar thrashing, it slides into a sweet groove until it hits it’s reggae lite beat, and then goes for several more ups and downs before it ends. It’s the 00s Good Vibrations. And it’s Turner’s best lyric too. A damning dissection of small minded thuggery, of idiots, of people who like songs just so their’s new ringtones. As good a bullshit detection alarm as anything Dylan did in the 60s. And just when you think this us vs them anthem could go nowhere more, then comes that mindblowing last verse. Our narrator looks over at his friends, who do all the same things, and he regrets that he can’t seem to hate them in the same way. What a way to end a song, and an album.

Turner takes all his own accusations apart, and calls himself the hypocrite. It’s a contradiction in my life too. I general leave whenever people play the ‘remember when’ game, but I put up with it with my friends. I can’t get mad at them. They argue about stupid things, they should know better than to like basshunter, or support Howard… and you just can’t get angry in the same way.

This album made plenty of best of the decade lists, and I completely agree. A major work. I’ve evoked the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Dylan in this review. And for the 00s, they were the solution for all three of those artists. And most importantly, they were popular. They got to people who normally don’t have their lives changed by music. I’m there with them, hype be damned. And thank god, they actually got even cooler as the years went on.

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100 for 2000 – #66. Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #6. Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope
(Sire)

Emily was quite surprised with me, as we stood in line, outside that synagogue in Marble Arch. How can I not have heard Regina Spektor? It was a good question. Somehow she just missed me by. I think I got her mixed up with Ronnie Spector. So here we were then, lining up to see her. I had not heard a note of her music. I was still so new to London, and she was doing a short showcase at a beautiful synagogue. It was the launch of her album Begin To Hope.

She only did 8 or 9 songs that night, but I was blown away. I was actually in love by the first song – Summer In the City. A lonely, sexy ballad about missing a faraway lover, it wrapped up my time so far in London. Missing friends, wishing it was summer, drinking too much.

The rest of that gig was filled mainly with material from Begin To Hope, and each was better than the next. For the next year or so, this album became a big part of my life. It seemed the deeper I dug, the more rewards I found.

I have a soft spot for girl-y singer songwriter stuff. I always have, and it’s somewhere between a crush and being in love. Or maybe it’s more like a soap opera. And I’m not in love with Regina Spektor, the person (or Angie Hart, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Beth Orton etc) – I’m in love with the mysterious girl who exists for about 45 minutes on their records.

But to really get the most out of Regina Spektor, you have to meet her halfway. Her strange erratic melodies, and her imagery – cereal boxes, dolphins, wonder bread, November Rain. But between the clever stuff, there is real heart. The climax of On the Radio sums it up. After questioning funny things about life and love, she backtracks and spells it out

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood

It’s probably one of the most beautiful expressions of love and life I’ve ever heard.

I still carry this album with me. For albums about love, girls and matters of the heart, it’s the most important album for me in the late 20s. Every minor and major encounter with love has been reflected on this album. The intimacy of drool on another’s pillow (Samson), a night in with a little bag of cocaine (Hotel Song), trying to kiss anywhere except the mouth (That Time)…and so much more.

A few years after that synagogue show, Regina came up in conversation. I brought up that show, that awesome first show. Well, turns out Mike somehow had a recording of the show. Which I now have as well. It’s pretty cool to have a recording of a show that changed your life.

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100 for 2000 – #65. Darren Hanlon – Fingertips and Mountaintops

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #5. Darren Hanlon – Fingertips and Mountaintops
(Candle)

I left Australia, with one bag, one iPod, and started again, in many ways. When I got to London, this great city of music, a whole new batch of records entered my life. Those records make up the rest of the 2006 list. But there is one album in the middle, one that I listened to when I was wondering around Europe, with no one I knew knowing where I was. It was one of the very last albums I bought in Australia – Darren Hanlon‘s Fingertips And Mountaintops.

I had heard some of these songs live, but I barely had time with the album. On planes, trains, buses and just walking, I listened to this album. Wandering around Madrid, or Vienna, or Copenhagen, listening to Darren Hanlon. It became my little bible.

The jokey-est song is Couch Surfing – an acoustic surf rock song about ‘dossing’ (a word I only learnt when I got to London). It’s clever and witty, but the lines about the weightlessness the philosopher’s teach – just a back pack and the open road – captured the romance.

It helps that this record is so soothing. Hold On, this non-descript expression of support, guided me through many strange streets. The low level bitterness of the mindless People Who Wave At Trains was amplified at every platform I travelled on. My encounter with Mischa Barton in a Spanish bar was captured quite well by the song Elbows.

There was one other song recorded in these sessions that never made the record (it came out on a Candle compilation) – My Life A Blur. For me, it lives well with this album, and it’s all about travel. The carriages that rocked me into slumber. Of all of Hanlon’s songs that I love, it’s this one that hits home for me the most.

I clung onto the lyrical advice on this record for dear life. I drank up it’s stories. There is something quite zen about this record. The title track is named after a brilliant image;

If you put one finger in front of your face
And close one eye
You can block out a mountain

It doesn’t mean anything, and yet everything.

Hanlon has come such a long way from that guy I saw at the Lansdowne Hotel, playing two songs between a mate’s set. He’s been with me this entire decade. It’s now been four years since his last proper album. When that next album comes out, I’m sure it will help me deal with what life brings me.

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100 for 2000 – #64. Youth Group – Casino Twilight Dogs

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #4. Youth Group – Casino Twilight Dogs
(Ivy League)

Yup. Why, it’s another Youth Group album. Casino Twilight Dogs was probably their big chance at mainstream success, having had their cover of Alphaville‘s Forever Young featured on the OC. It was a number one single, and the guys even toured with Coldplay.

A few words about Forever Young. Now, I had no idea how hated this band were until Forever Young hit the airwaves. The amount of jealousy and anger people had at this band because of their success was shocking to me. That they were the best band in Australia at the time didn’t seem to matter. Because they were on a cool label they got all the chances.

(I would think they were the lowest selling artists on Ivy League who made more than one record, but why let facts get in the way)

So, yes, it’s a cover. But that is the schtick for the OC. Having worked on a couple of those soundtracks, they are full of cover versions. Also, Forever Young is a great song. It’s a weird doomed prom night teen suicide song – and the Youth Group version, which slowed it down and added sweetness and menace, was an interesting take.

All the fuckers who hated them knew far too much about the OC. The tall poppy syndrome was in full force. And finally, the fact this song got to number one shows how much Australia is a little America. I mean, I could not hate the OC any more than I do, and it just wrapped up a generation. We are sheep.

In the end, Forever Young is the last track on this record, and I think of it as a separate thing. The delights of this album come from all the other songs, some of Toby Martin‘s finest.

The biggest problem with Casino Twilight Dogs is that it sounds like a compilation. It jumps around a bit, from the opening Catching And Killing, a strange, jagged song that’s almost like the Fall. Then there’s Start Today Tomorrow, one of Martin‘s most beautiful songs, backed by a string quartet. And there’s everything in between.

Martin lost none of his ability to express big emotions. Let It Go (which oddly was left off the international version) nods to Dylan, but is about sweet release. Similarly, Daisychains is a gorgeous apology to an abandoned lover. I would be on the balcony at work, listening to these two songs as I had my regular cigarette, wondering if I could actually pack it all in.

Th album trails off at the end. There are a few too many mid tempo pop rockers. And there are great songs, but it’s probably their weakest album overall. It was still easily one of the ten best of 2006.

Success did not come knocking after all. Youth Group bunkered down and continued on.

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100 for 2000 – #63. Belle And Sebastian – The Life Pursuit

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #3. Belle And Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
(Rough Trade)

It’s funny to think that for a band that I love so much, their last album was the first one I bought on release. But I guess Belle And Sebastian have slowed down. Ever since the band regrouped after the departure of Isobel Campbell and Stuart David, learnt to play live, do interviews and enjoyed being in a band. The Life Pursuit is even more slick, more fun and more exciting.

The band really shines on this record. As the story goes, the band started rehearsing and writing without Stuart Murdoch, and he finally came in and finished off the song ideas. And so, never has this band sounded less like Murdoch‘s backing band. Blues Are Still Blue, Price Of A Cup Of Tea and the amazing 70s funk of Song For Sunshine.

And as great it is that the band is on fire and the music sounds great – it is still Murdoch’s show. He brings in some of his best songs. Funny Little Frog, the first single, a twisted song of devotion. White Collar Boy is a bizarre cartoon of the simple boy led astray by a beautiful woman, set in a prison. Weird, but fun.

I know people who hate this record (most significantly, people who put out their previous albums). And yes, it’s almost like the second album of a new band.

I obviously love the new band though. And with this record, I finally felt like I was in the club.

One more thing. I always thought Mornington Crescent was in Scotland, but as it turns out it is of course in London. I think of their song every time I pass it. As we head into the London years, I thought I should point that out.

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100 for 2000 – #62. Lazy Susan – Every Night

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #2. Lazy Susan – Every Night
(-)

I played bass on Lazy Susan‘s Every Night album, their third.

Here’s some fun facts for fans about each track on this record.

1. Every Night is just Paul. It was a home demo that we all thought was sounding great enough to include. He recorded it on one of those then-new digital multi track home recorders, with faders and a CD drive, that I think are now completely redundant.

2. Something Worth Waiting For always seemed like the first song we would play for about two years. It was certainly the first song we tried to record in the studio. Which right now would be a good time to say it wasn’t so much a studio but a recently converted general store. It was the domain of Mr J Walker, of Machine Translations, who was producing our record. It was in regional Melbourne in the middle of nowhere and I loved every minute.

As it was our first bit of recording, and we had just got out of a big drive down there, we were feeling pretty ready to attack. We wanted to put up some pictures torn from magazines for inspiration. Pretty sure I had the Ramones ready to go. Our producer said no.

3. Fake Our Deaths was the first single and the one we made a video for. In a strange art space in Camperdown, we ran around, avoiding to imaginary attacks.

4. Wreckage had the funniest bassline. It was needlessly complicated, but I liked it because it made me feel like Bruce Thomas. We played a gig with C-minus Project once and their bassplayer, Bruno, said something onstage about me not being a real bassplayer (the in-joke was, neither was he). After this record, I felt like I was only a bassplayer. Guitar and piano are just hobbies for me.

5. Don’t Fail Me Now. I love this song. This might be my favourite on the album. Again, it’s very fussy on the bass. This for me is typical Lazy Susan, and what I loved about the songs. The songs were about “Very attractive but unhinged women”. If you want to hear what we did, start here.

6. Pretty White Girls was Pete’ song. Actually Pete had plenty of songs, but the only Pete vocal (For those who always ask me who writes what, here are the Pete ones – SWWF, PWG, Pieces, ITTLWH, Optimism. Rest are Paul’s). I had very little to do with this song, which makes me think of Australian beaches. I often think of this song when I’m wishing I was at an Australian beach. Those pretty white girls are also missed.

My greatest musical contribution to the album came in two funny chords at the end that is the same two funny chords used in several Beach Boys songs.

7. Missing Out On Sleep – the big ballad moment. This and Every Night was the two songs that put the album’s theme into one, recurring night. Which was one of those self fulfilling prophecies, because my last year in Sydney was pretty much the same night over and over. No sleep, alone, listening to music.

Having written songs for my own band, I was always amazed how little the other guys knew the songs I wrote. Whole chorus lyrics would go by unnoticed. Which happened to me with this track, where I never notice how great the opening couplet was for a long time.

(It’s All the planets that were aligned/Now lie scattered across the sky)

8. By & By. This was the last song written for the album. We had more than enough songs, until someone told Paul that what we were doing sounded like the Band. Now, I LOVE the Band. And I was flattered at the time (my two bassplaying heros – Dee Dee Ramone and Rick Danko). But in retrospect, I think that person was high.

Either way, Paul decided it would be a blast to try and write a song that sounded like the Band. What he wrote instead was this fantastic song that, if I had a vote, would have been our second single. This record was getting pretty depressing and/or angry. This song was just a delight. It’s such a Sydney song for me. I think of Oxford St, at 2am as I walked home, leaving all the madness behind, but loving the madness anyway.

I mucked about with different bass things, but only really figured out what to play in the studio. I’m pretty proud of what I came up with. Screw the tonic.

9. Rubbed Off is one of a series of long, build up pieces by Lazy Susan. Scuffed Up and Why Don’t We Just Call It A Night came before on previous albums. I don’t recall ever playing this live, but I love the way this track sounds. It has that evil chord progression that we just kept pushing harder and harder.

I loved the fact that we did this kind of stuff – had album songs. That’s what albums about.

10. Pieces. The big rocker. Pete loves his open G tunings, and this was a great punky thing. And like all great punk, it’s actually close to impossible to play as you have to be so spot on. There was a lot of looking at eachother. Great thing about this song though is there are lots of moments to jump up and down live.

11. I’ll Take The Long Way Home used to be louder, more Oh Darling-ish. I much prefer the quieter version. It’s got every cliche – the diminished chords, the running bass etc. It was originally called just Long Way Home, but I thought that sounded a bit too much like the new Norah Jones album, so it got expanded. We played this song a lot, because it worked.

12. Optimism – this was an odd song. Lyrically I think it’s perfect. Sound wise I think it jumps around a bit, not sure what it should be. It’s very sweet though, and it makes me think of my friend Bec a lot. She is the biggest optimist I know, and how hard it is to maintain that. I’m assuming no English person understands this concept.

13. Nobody Feels Safe Anymore. You know, I barely know this song. Another live hold out, I did my little bit in the studio and that was it. And as I played these songs live so often, putting the actual CD on didn’t happen every often. So it snuck up on me, a member of the band, how powerful this song is. In an album where everyone is sad, angry and lives are falling apart, this track is the saddest, angriest and fallen apart the most. It’s such a bitter note to end an album on.

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100 for 2000 -#61. Bob Evans – Suburban Songbook

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2006 – #1. Bob Evans – Suburban Songbook
(Capitol)

2006 was like no other year in my life. For various reasons over the course of 2005 I found myself in new situations – jobs, home, life, music, love, etc. And I met lots of new people. In 2006 I probably met more new people than in the last 3 or 4 years combined. And by the start of 2007 it was all different again.

2005’s batch of serious, serious albums faded into the background. And at the heart of my 2006 was a sweet, wistful, cautiously optimistic and affectionate album by a guy named Bob Evans. The album is Suburban Songbook.

Actually, his name’s not Bob Evans but Kevin Mitchell. And although this was the second Bob Evans album, I had been following Kevin Mitchell’s career (on and off admittedly) since 1997 with his old band Jebediah’s album Slightly Odway. Bob ended up on EMI (staffed by some of his Murmur records buddies at the time), which is where I found myself in 2006.

I liked his first album but didn’t love it. So when Craig gave me this album before it came out, I had lukewarm expectations. His hook in selling it to me was the production by Brad Jones (who worked on the two Josh Rouse albums I talked about earlier) and Ken Coomer (formerly of Wilco) on drums. I have to admit the first couple of listens passed by without event, without any revelations or epiphanies.

But then the simplicity of Don’t You Think It’s Time?, the opening track, started to seep into my brain. I have vivid memories of going to work, sitting on the bus at Military Road, passing the McDonalds just before my stop, and listening to this song. Then, listening to this song as I caught the bus down Spofforth Street to the ferry, and then going over Sydney Harbour at sunset, adding an unnecessary 20 minutes to my trip, but the most beautiful thing you will ever see. In winter when it was dark already, and this song was still on high rotation, I would be halfway through this song at the bus stop at the IGA and Jo would turn up and we would talk about something random, and I’d continue the song after she was gone.

It’s a beautiful song. It has a real hymnal quality. A hymn for us, the cautiously optimistic romantics. It’s kind of what Pete Seger calls a grocery list song – it jsut lists stuff. And the lyrics could be so banal in other contexts. But Bob’s clear, uncynical heart shines through. And the song becomes some weird Zen help book. Like a good friend who opens your mind, and questions you in your safety zone.

It’s no small step to say that when I started to think about going overseas, this song was playing in my mind. Didn’t I think it’s time for moving on? Time to leave the past behind? All this for quite a simple song, that took me ages to get my head around.

So this is the number 1 album for 2006, so I like every song to some degree. But there’s other BIG ones, that are on the same level of Don’t You Think It’s Time. Clear second is Sadness & Whiskey. I always thought it should have been a single.

It’s another escapist song. I don’t want to be that sentimental guy/Always dreaming of the years that passed him by. And there is something about the fact that it’s Kevin, it’s Bob, it’s this guy that I have known and followed for 9 years, that makes this song resonate. That guy in that band that inspired my first band so much, who dressed in bonds t-shirts, scruffy dyed hair, converse indie etc, was becoming a grown up. And I felt I was too.

(An aside. I have stickers on my guitars, something else I stole from Jebediah)

Sadness & Whiskey also had a pure, romantic core. And that love is all over the album, which was dedicated to his then-girlfriend, and now wife.

There’s more songs I can waffle on about, but I will pick just one more. Me & My Friends is the last, hidden, track. Like the whole album, it’s brilliant in it’s simplicity. It’s vignettes of a night out – getting stuck into a few, leavinga trendy bar for a dirtier one, being left alone as everyone’s on their mobiles and saying cheers. It’s a perfect song about drinking with friends, and I don’t know anyone else who’s written such a song without making it sound like Oasis. This song has captured many a nights I’ve had, and if there’s a god, many a night to come.

So it seems it comes in waves. Serious and sad albums followed by one pop record that turns back the tide, and keeps me going. Some people wait every five years for the new Nirvana. I wait every five years for a pop record to stop me getting too obsessed with Zappa or Cohen or other serious rock.

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100 for 2000 – #60. The Reservations – I Blame This On You

By • On • In music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2005 – #10. The Reservations – I Blame This On You

I left this last slot for 2005 for this record. Our last album as a band that was never released, although most of my friends have it. In my mind it was finished and done.

I was going to do a longer piece. Essentially the liner notes and track-by-track for an album no one’s ever heard, really. Then I realised how boring and arrogant that is/was.

Here’s some quick fire points instead.

– This album is largely unhappy. As opposed to our first album which sounded very bright and happy. Odd then that this record was written in a time of happiness and the previous one came from deep unhappiness. Fascinating, as Stephen Fry might say.

– I’m not only proud of this album, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Encompassing all my life experience, this is the top thing.

Okay, enough indulgence.