Millions Now Living Will Never Die by Tortoise

This is a bit good! It’s described as post-rock, but to my ears it includes elements of krautrock, math rock and minimalism, with echoes of Can, Steve Reich, Roy Budd and Terry Riley. The highlight is the opening track Djed which lasts for an epic 20 minutes and features motorik drumming, spacey bits and glitchy breakdowns. 

 The rest of the tracks are shorter but no less interesting with blissed out guitars, vibraphones and marimbas. I absolutely adored this album and will be listening to the rest of their work as soon as I’ve finished listening to this album again.

Spring rain

Spring rain slowly falls

Garden thirsty for new growth
Petrichor perfume

461 Ocean Boulevard by Eric Clapton

https://album.link/gb/i/1440851328

Not this guy again, surely? He’s a massive racist bellend who openly stole the work of black artists and covered a reggae song in a cod Jamaican accent. I wish he’d just focused on taking heroin instead.

Hazy Moon

Silently waiting
Mist crosses her silver face
Like Buñuel's razor

Paris 1919 by John Cale

OK, it’s fair to say that this album is not quite what I was expecting from the founder of the legendary Velvet Underground. It opens with some perfectly fine 70s arty pop, but the lyrics pretty soon take off into surreal flights of fancy with references to murdered oranges, singing elephants and a glam rock stomp about Macbeth. The title track, a Beatles-esque reference to the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles, is probably the highlight, even if it’s an unlikely subject for a pop song.

The reason for all of the random whimsy quickly becomes clear on the second disc of this deluxe edition with a series of demos and outtakes that openly reference the prodigious amounts of cocaine that Cale was evidently doing during the recording with much sniffing and odd bits of studio chatter.

Probably not going to listen to this one more than once, to be honest.

Down, Geese

The hunter took aim
Squeezed the trigger, feathers flew
"Goose down" he muttered

She's So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper

Cyndi Lauper was a breath of fresh air back in the early 80s. The initial impression was of a squeaky voiced, diminutive bundle of energy with multi-coloured hair exploding in all directions. Her biggest hit, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, was a cover of a by-the-numbers 1979 post-punk track by Robert Hazard. Lauper filled it with proto-girl power pep and a New Wave sensibility that immediately improved it by several orders of magnitude. 

The rest of the album is equally good, showing an impressive range to her vocals going from a very creditable 1920s style Betty Boop impression on He’s So Unusual to a heart breaking soaring performance on Time After Time. 

Definitely one of the best and most underrated performers of the 80s, I think.