Gold, Calf

Just FYI guys
Worshipping of golden calves
Does not turn out well

New Boots and Panties!! By Ian Dury

Ian Dury was renowned for thriftily buying his clothes secondhand with the hygienic exception of footwear and underpants. Sound advice! 

For some reason this album got shelved with the punk records back in 1977 but it’s more of a mix of funk and pub rock, with a nod to 50’s rock n roll. Chaz Jankel’s keyboards are a perfect foil for Ian Dury’s cheeky lyrics and earthy Essex accent. Session musicians Norman Watt-Roy and Hugh Charles who played on this record were then later recruited into Dury’s backing band The Blockheads.

Highlights for me on this are Sweet Gene Vincent, a tribute to the 50’s rocker, and My Old Man, a tribute to Dury’s dad and the awkward relationship they shared with feelings hidden and unspoken until it was too late. According to the wiki page Dury discovered later that the cover photo (featuring his young son Baxter) was taken around the corner from where his dad had died in a bedsit back in 1968.

https://album.link/gb/i/267608439

The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips

I walked into the office today for the first time in about four or five years and this album was conveniently enough long enough to last for the journey there and back again. It was a beautifully sunny day and gulls were circling over Poole Harbour. As I listened, I kept thinking to myself, how much I was going to enjoy this album even more on the next listen and the one after that. 

I’m going to give this four stars for now, and I may well come back and upgrade that at some point in the future. 

Can’t say fairer than that!

https://album.link/gb/i/1247942375

Mountains

Look beyond as if
Gazing at distant mountains
Enzan no metsuke

Windmill, orange

Sure, windmills kill birds
Just nowhere near as many as
Climate change and cats

Public Image by Public Image Ltd.

I was just a bit too young to be a proper punk (and to be honest, I was a weedy, speccy nerd so Elvis Costello was more my thing) but I enjoyed that glorious jubilee summer of punk vicariously. After all the filth and fury had faded, nobody was quite expecting this album from John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten).

It opens with an existential howl of distorted guitar feedback before a two part screed against religion that is so fierce it makes Richard Dawkins look like a church mouse in comparison. After the ranting track Annalisa, the eponymous lead single brings a bit of focus to the album and establishes exactly what post punk was going to sound like with Keith Levene’s slashing guitar, Jah Wobble’s god like bass and Jim Walkers Motorik drums suiting Lydon’s sneering vocals.

Critics hated this at the time and it also went down like a cup of cold sick with former punks wanting more cartoon antics. It’s more interesting now to look back on this as an avant Garde experimental piece with some standout moments (Jah Wobble’s bass on the final track Fodderstompf is hypnotic) rather than a coherent album.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

https://album.link/gb/i/714686395

Myths of the Near Future by Klaxons

A literary sci-fi concept album name checking JG Ballad, William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon should be right up my street, but unfortunately it’s a little bit of a let down. It opens promisingly enough, sounding like a 1970s prog/krautrock album but quickly turns into something more akin to Franz Ferdinand style indie. Indeed, I would have sworn that Golden Skans, the best known hit from this album, was by the aforementioned band. 

As far as the literary pretensions go, it seems to be mainly using words like ‘hypersonic’ and ‘infinity’, and chucking in the odd reference to Westphalia and Aleister Crowley like a nerdy contestant on University Challenge. I did kind of enjoy it but I got the impression that they were expecting it to be a much bigger hit than it was, and the band has been on hiatus since 2015. 

https://album.link/gb/i/1442923575