Scatman John - Scatman's World (1995)

1) Welcome to Scatland; 2) Scatman's World; 3) Only You; 4) Quiet Desperation; 5) Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop); 6) Sing Now!; 7) Popstar; 8) Time (Take Your Time); 9) Mambo Jambo; 10) Everything Changes; 11) Song of Scatland; Bonus tracks: 12) Hi, Louis; 13) Scatman (Game Over Jazz)

The first album I ever owned and you're never going to make me fall out of love with it.

Key tracks: "Scatman's World", "Quiet Desperation", "Scatman"

This next museum exhibit here, on your left ladies and gentlemen, is the seminal album by the First Artist That I Ever Loved. In the days when various artists hit compilations were my main source of music, Scatman John came with such a force that I begged my parents to buy the album for me. I've lost my old cassette to god knows where but oh boy that cassette was on play so, so very much. Scatman John was my childhood musical hero and I played this album loudly in my bedroom over and over again, singing along to the English words which I didn't even understand.

John stood out in the 90's eurodance scene. He wasn't a handsome shirtless young man paired with a model-perfect lady to sing the choruses. If you look at his music videos he looks completely out of place in them among all the young folks, with his wrinkles, old man mustache and retro garbs. His music was the trendiest thing there was at the time but John himself looked like someone who would have been more in his element in a smoky jazz club band. Which is where he started from, with his drift into the eurodance scene being a series of coincidences with unexpected results.

I'm all grown now and I can see what he was trying to do. He wanted to reach out to us kids. Give a listen through Scatman's World and pay attention to the lyrics. In fact, it's enough if you just pay more attention to the words in his two big hits. John wants world peace. John wants racial equality. John is teaching us to respect our fellow humans no matter the colour, he's teaching us to finish our education and follow a straight and honest path, he wants us to know that we need to leave this world in a good condition for the generations that will eventually follow us. He teaches how we can overcome all our odds if we try. He's telling us about the darker side of life, the homeless and the misjudged, and what we should do to prevent all that. And he is telling us about the magical Scatland where human race will, hopefully, eventually drift towards, where peace and love towards all man reign.

He wanted to reach to us kids and tell us about these important lessons in life. What better way to do that than to place his messages over the trendiest, catchiest music of the moment? Of course it's cheesy beyond belief, but John never comes across insincere when he drops these obvious anvils and just about dodges sounding corny as well. He goes for the save-the-world mentality, and he pulls it off. The only unbearably cheesy moment is the closing ballad "Song of Scatland" but even that's almost heartwarming if you can get over just how camp it is. In retrospect, given his untimely loss to cancer, it actually becomes quite touching, hearing the album end in a thank you and a good night.

The songs are still ace. The hit singles are all classics, particularly "Scatman's World" - "Scatman" gets all the nostalgic love and is brilliant as well, but I always felt that "Scatman's World" manages to top it. It uses the same elements but in a more refined fashion; you can almost detect a tinge of bittersweetness to it, and it's that underlining seriousness that really makes for the song's impact. "Quiet Desperation" carries that wistful tone and is a surprisingly, powerfully introspective moment hiding within an eurodance album. The more overt pop songs are great too, of course - the hi-energy "Sing Now!", the sunshine shuffle "Popstar", the obvious back-up single option "Only You". Only the Latin influenced "Mambo Jambo" (because it was law there had to be a Latin song on a 90s pop album) fails to leave much of a positive impression, much like most of these tacked on Latin excursions in eurodance albums. Scatman's World is eurodance in its best bliss - solid beats, 90s house pianos, awesome vintage synth sounds, and of course John's vocals, flicking between the speak-singing and the immortal scatting. The two bonus tracks tacked on to the end of the album are rather terrible, but easily discardable in the digital age.

It is absolutely impossible for me to rate this album in any sort of way that would have any meaning in comparison to all my other ratings, because this is where it all began for me and for that, it will always be a great record for me. I guess the main takeaway for all the people who aren't me is that there's more to the album than "Scatman" and if you find yourself in favour of that song for absolutely any reason, there's an album full of the same vibe that keeps up pretty well to its biggest hit. 

Rating 8/10

Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (2008)

1) 2 Atoms in a Molecule; 2) Jocasta; 3) Shape of My Heart; 4) Do What I Do; 5) Give a Little Love; 6) Second Lover; 7) 5 Years Time; 8) Rocks and Daggers; 9) Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down; 10) Mary; 11) Hold My Hand as I’m Lowered

Morbidly romantic, twee but borderline melancholy. Quite pretty all the same, and massively overshadowed by its runaway bubblegum hit.

Key tracks: "Jocasta", "Give a Little Love", "Mary"

Noah and the Whale were largely introduced to the greater audience through the run-off hit “5 Years Time”, a perky and incredibly twee folk pop sing-along about having a really lovely time with your loved one. It would go on to haunt the band for the rest of their career. It typecast the band as the annoyingly fluffy version of their urban folk revival peers, a novelty hit with little real critical appreciation. Even worse, after frontman Charlie Fink’s breakup from his girlfriend Laura Marling, a band member at the time and his duet partner on the song, it turned into a bitter pill that Fink had to swallow each and every gig, a reminder of both past love and spotlight (check out videos of the band performing the song years after its release and witness Fink’s clear disinterest for it on his face). It’s not actually a bad song, but given its adorkable charm it could swing either way towards irritation or adoration - I lean more towards the latter myself, but I have always liked my “Shiny Happy People” moments. However, the real tragedy is that it does undersell its parent album enormously.

Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down as a whole is much more downbeat than its big single. It’s melancholy, downright macabre and death-obsessed at parts and fixated with unrequited love rather than being happy together for most of its length. It is, however, a romantic sense of melancholy: it loves to play up the sad act but with a knowing, poetic wink to it, at times being borderline OTT woe-is-me and fully acknowledging it. It’s almost goth-like, only if goths wore tweed and cardigans and had a significant interest in xylophones and ukuleles. This sort of thing could go wrong in all kinds of ways but Fink is the perfectly charming channel for what the album tries to do: he has enough pathos in his voice and enough wit in his lyrics bring through the knowing wink in the heartache but lace with enough of a genuine emotional attachment. It’s verbose and dramatic, and completely self-aware and all the more alluring for it. “I’m not trying to write a love song, just a sad pathetic moan” indeed.

                   

The curiously appealing romantic misery features a genuinely interesting album underneath, one that’s musically just as far away from the twee leanings of its big single as its mood was. For one, it’s gorgeously arranged. Multi-instrumentalist Tom Hobden spends most of the album with his violin and a horn section is constantly lurking nearby the band, and their presence is integral, and nary a song goes by without at least one instrument outside the usual rock band combo that seems to have been lying around and then turned into an important part of the song’s structure. There’s also the ever-present backing vocals - they’re largely performed by Marling and her lithe huskiness is such a great counterpoint to Fink’s that it’s inarguable that they’re a big part what gives the album its personality, and showcases like “Mary” definitely hammer that point down. It’s overall a busy album in its sound but each element is given space to breathe, which gives it a surprisingly down-to-earth feel even though the album gets particularly lush quite often. That intimate-yet-epic twist is the album’s forté - it makes grand statements like “Give a Little Love” (which, with its gorgeous organ and an incredible call-and-answer finale, is arguably the best song this band ever pulled off), the title track or “Hold My Hand as I’m Lowered” that much more meaningful. It also makes the largely mid-tempo run of tracks genuinely exciting and varied.

The tempo, in fact, only really picks up right in the beginning with the breezy and bouncy “2 Atoms in a Molecule”, the bedroom Arcade Fire-isms of “Jocasta” and the downright jubilant sounding “Shape of My Heart” -  afterwards it’s only “5 Years Time” that injects a little refreshing energy into the tracklist and pulls off the feat of sounding far better in context than it does outside it. But as neat as they are - and “Jocasta” is one of the album’s best in fact - it’s the moody cuts that make the album and bring out the band’s strengths as songwriters and performers. They’re full of little curveballs, both lyrical and musical in kind, and frequently reveal true inspiration, including a level of playfulness that’s often atypical in something like this. There’s whimsy, personality and warmth - and often a really pretty melody to accompany any three of them. Ultimately, strip away any of the thematic gimmicks and these songs still stand because of how well their core has been written.

Shortly after the album’s release Fink and Marling would split, turning Noah and the Whale’s path to a wholly different direction while leaving the wheel of the scene free for the band’s peers to take over. Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down has become as bittersweet as it loves to be in its lyrics: a great start to a journey that never really happened and a great album obscured by the one atypical ditty. But its charm never dims. I still keep falling in love with the melodies, the harmonies and especially the lyrics that probably think they’re smarter than they actually are, but damn it if they don’t reach the concept of futile, unreachable but oh so life-vital love better than anything on this side of 80s Morrissey.

Rating: 8/10

 

Physical corner: Standard jewel case with a charmingly illustrated lyrics booklet.

Ataxia - Automatic Writing (2004)

1) Dust; 2) Another; 3) The Sides; 4) Addition; 5) Montreal

Supergroup jamming. Whatever guttural feeling that latter word just gave you, that's going to be your take on this.

Key tracks: "The Sides"

The second of John Frusciante's mad rush of albums during the latter half of 2004 was to show that the scope of the project (if you want to call it that) was beyond just him releasing new records solely under his own name. Ataxia were a short-lived band between Frusciante, frequent brother-in-arms Josh Klinghoffer and Fugazi's Joe Lally who had a few jam sessions, recorded some of them, played a single gig and then "disbanded" when when everyone's collective attention span moved onto something else. It was never meant to be anything more than friends playing some music together for a little bit, and the fact that we have a couple albums of material released under their name (both recorded during the exact same session but released years apart) is largely because at this point Frusciante recorded absolutely everything he took part in. Automatic Writing can't really be called a debut album or even a supergroup passion project: it's a musical snapshot captured by happenstance.

The five songs on Automatic Writing are all essentially lengthy jam moments. The rhythm section builds up a steady backbone for the songs while Frusciante fills the spaces in sound with his guitar, opting for more abstract, atmospheric tones with it. The whole thing has a bit of a hazy atmosphere to it, something where the mood and sound is meant to be stronger than structure. And they're long jams - the shortest song clocks at six and a half minutes while the average length runs comfortably around nine minutes or so. Most of those minutes are spent repeating the same passages over and over again, building up the mood and the tension while gradually introducing the occasional new variation. Each song features vocals (with all three members getting their turn) but it's perfunctory: you could turn each song into an instrumental without losing anything, with the singing just acting as a formless additional element more there for the melody than for the lyrics. Frusciante's also the only one with enough gusto to be a lead singer, while the other two fade into the background texturally.

Jam bands admittedly never did much for me, and while purely in terms of performance Ataxia is more than adequate, there's a point where atmospheric wallowing turns into meandering and Automatic Writing frequently crosses that line. Much of the music on it is interchangable with one another, to a point that no impression is left behind beyond the vague overall feeling of the entire record. There's of course obvious differences between, for example, "Dust" and "Montreal" (one's a build-up, the other one's a come-down), but they're only apparent while listening to the record and if you're paying attention: after the album's over, it's all merged into one big murky sameness and whatever high and low spots have faded within the general sea of mediocrity. The sole exception is "The Sides", which sounds like a Frusciante solo song: it's tonally different from the rest by being instantly more driven and dynamic, it has some progression, evolution and change, Frusciante's voice is dead center and invested, and it sounds like it actually has a goal and a purpose. It's close to great and its explosiveness is a far cry from the rest of the album - if there's one thing to take away from Automatic Writing, this is it.

The whole point of Ataxia was for three friends to lose themselves in music for a while and the recordings were never a priority, and much like with most jam sessions the main resonance the music carries is the harmony between its players and the feeling of everything syncing together between the three individuals. For me listening to jam sessions inevitably makes you feel like an outsider sitting by the side and not invited in. What's being observed may be impressive in one level or another, but the magic that happens doesn't come across if you're not actually one of the people playing. Automatic Writing is that to a tee. If you're coming across this because you're binging through Frusciante's 2004 project, this is the dud of the lot. If you're listening to this beyond that context, I'm mainly just wondering why.

Rating: 5/10

Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)

1) Smells Like Teen Spirit; 2) In Bloom; 3) Come as You Are; 4) Breed; 5) Lithium; 6) Polly; 7) Territorial Pissings; 8) Drain You; 9) Lounge Act; 10) Stay Away; 11) On a Plain; 12) Something in the Way / Endless, Nameless [hidden track]; 20th Anniversary Deluxe edition bonus tracks (The B-Sides): 13) Even in His Youth; 14) Aneurysm; 15) Curmudgeon; 16) D-7 (Live at the BBC); 17) Been a Son (Live); 18) School (Live); 19) Drain You (Live); 20) Sliver (Live); 21) Polly (Live)
Deluxe Edition CD2: The Smart Studio Sessions 1) In Bloom; 2) Immodium (Breed); 3) Lithium; 4) Polly; 5) Pay to Play; 6) Here She Comes Now; 7) Dive; 8) Sappy; The Boombox Rehearsals 9) Smells Like Teen Spirit; 10) Verse Chorus Verse; 11) Territorial Pissings; 12) Lounge Act; 13) Come as You Are; 14) Old Age; 15) Something in the Way; 16) On a Plain; BBC Sessions 17) Drain You; 18) Something in the Way

Key Tracks: "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are", "Something in the Way"

It destroyed hair metal and created a generation of angry teenagers, but it's actually quite fun isn't it? And iconic, sure, but not perfect - though you can understand why this became such a Big Thing.

I’m absolutely positive Nevermind is a hugely nostalgic album for a lot of us who grew up in the 90s but in my case it’s not even because of myself; my sister is to blame for that. She was a huge Nirvana fan and because we lived in adjacent rooms with a paper-thin wall separating our respective realms, the Nirvana catalogue became incredibly familiar and a part of the everyday soundtrack. I can’t say I liked the band at the time (the music tastes of my teenage sister and my prepubescent self were… different) but somehow Nirvana became a comfortable part of my everyday life. A shockingly large amount of their catalogue has been deeply engrained into my brain on a subconscious level and even though I only got into them myself much, much later down the line, I already feel like I’m a long-time fan just because of how familiar it all sounds.

Even though Nevermind is commonly viewed as the soundtrack of the misunderstood and disaffected youth of the early 90s, it feels more upbeat than anything particularly angry or melancholy - I’d actually call it a downright fun album for most parts, no matter the lyrical content (admittedly, Kurt’s joker off-record persona and grim sense of humour has really soiled their dark and brooding image for me, even though I fully know how tragically it all ended for him). It’s got the sound of a garage band having fun together, creating a lot of really noisy but really bouncy choruses to sing along to: if there’s one particular important factor in Cobain & co’s music, it’s how engaging to the listener it is. Nirvana only knew how to do a very few things (or at least they rarely got the chance to show their full range before the band’s end) but they performed those few tricks really well and, most importantly, with a lot of charisma. Whatever musical potholes there may be here and there, it’s Cobain’s charisma and presence that fills them and turns them into very satisfying moments of primal energy and teenage aggression. Nevermind’s songs are simple and they’re not particularly interesting lyrically but they’re inviting songs, highly resonant and quite often really fun. Even the rather somber “Polly” feels almost jovial in its over-the-top seriousness. The only really, genuinely melancholy moment of the album is “Something in the Way” at the very end and it is a really great song, one of the best on the album: completely at odds with the eleven tracks before it, but simultaneously acting as the one moment where the album’s darker undercurrents stop hiding behind catchy guitar racket.

Nevermind’s reputation precedes it and a lot more, lot better writers have done thinkpieces on its place in history and analysed its music, and it is worth all that for pop cultural reasons. It’s never cemented itself as a personal classic for me but it’s still a lot of good fun. It has its nostalgic vibes for me and it’s very vivid in how it represents its era of music, but ultimately it doesn’t cut very deep. Both the songs and the sound are fairly straightforward so there’s not much more to it than meets the eye and all in all it carries the vibe that in order to truly appreciate it, it has to have come into your life during a pivotal moment of your musical journey. I don’t want to downplay its charms though - when you’re in the mood for exactly what it offers it can be a riot, and rather amazingly its big hits still sound quite fresh in my ears. “Come as You Are”, “In Bloom”, “Lithium” and obviously “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are all modern rock classics and miles ahead anything else on the album. Even “Teen Spirit” has endured through all the radio overplay, the pointless covers and the amateur guitarist treatments, and still sounds just as vital as it always has been. It is utterly one of the defining songs of the 90s and the capsulation of all the teenage slacker apathy that we associate with the era, much more than any song of its generation.

A word on the 20th anniversary edition which I happen to own. It hosts the ideal set of bonus material you’d want with a release like it: all the studio b-sides, a selection of live cuts and a bunch of demos and alternative versions. However, the material here isn’t really all that exciting. The studio b-sides are all fairly dull and clear quality control outtakes and the live material works but doesn’t make a strong enough case for you to return to them actively. The second disc is devoted to various demos but given how Nevermind is a fairly straightforward set of songs with a simple production job in the first case, the demos are mainly just shoddily recorded versions of their album selves that aren’t worth the tim and the few non-album cuts that appear among the demos barely register. The one bright spot is the live version of “Something in the Way” hidden at the very end: the mournful cello of the studio cut is replaced by anguished guitar wailing and makes for an incredible alternative version that’s miles ahead anything else on the disc. Unless you’re a hardcore Nirvana maniac that lives and breathes for every note the band made, there won’t be anything else worth extended listening among the extras – casual fans are safe to skip these completely.

Rating: 7/10

The National - The National (2001)

1) Beautiful Head; 2) Cold Girl Fever; 3) The Perfect Song; 4) American Mary; 5) Son; 6) Pay for Me; 7) Bitters & Absolut; 8) John’s Star; 9) Watching You Well; 10) Theory of the Crows; 11) 29 Years; 12) Anna Freud

Casually-played americana without any lofty ambitions or instrumental finesse. It's a modest start.

Key tracks: "Beautiful Head", "American Mary", "Son"

Forget Alligator, Boxer, et al. Forget the intricately crafted textures, the subtle instrumental wizardry, the layered arrangements and the gripping atmosphere that have become The National’s trademarks. Forget Matt Berninger’s half-awake half-drunk insights into human nature. All that’s still well into the future. The National’s debut is an album featuring group of friends who decided to form a band, wrote some music in their living rooms and recorded it with little in the way of greater ambitions before they had played a single show.

The self-titled first album lacks the dynamics, the songcraft and the instrumental signatures (Bryan Devendorff’s distinct drumming style, the Dessners’ interlocking guitar parts, Scott Devendorff wasn’t even officially on bass at this stage) that The National have come to be known for. Instead, you have mid-tempo rock songs with little variety on arrangements or composition. Matt Berninger’s instantly identifiable crooning is the main thing that ties the self-titled with its successors and you occasionally get a whiff of musical foreshadowing of what’s to come in the future, but in every other respect this is The National in embryo stage. They’re still trying to find a foothold in the world of music, searching for a sound of their own with only a hint of knowledge of their own talents; less indie superstars, more the band at the back of the bar. Even the hints of future directions lean towards wholly different areas, with an unexpected alt-country vein rearing its head across the album and giving the impression there was a chance the band could just as easily have headed into Nashville rather than New York nightlife. And at the same time, it’s only a hint that never dares to fully come into the forefront, almost like the band wasn’t even certain if that was something they should be doing.

Admittedly it’s a little underwhelming but if you avoid comparing this to the rest of the band’s catalogue it does show in a better light. The songs are a little one-note, but it’s a decent note and Berninger’s charisma carries it far better than it might have with some other singer. Each track carries at least one reasonably solid idea and especially the relatively up-tempo “Beautiful Head”, the lazy swagger of “Anna Freud” and the clearly intended stand-out torchlight song “American Mary” become familiar friends fairly soon. “Son” is the the only real glimpse of the band’s future you can hear here: it has all the elements of a classic National track and while they’ve not fully clicked into place yet, it’s the best song on the album. Even so, it says something when the standout song of the album is “29 Years” (which shares its lyrics with Boxer’s “Slow Show”): more an interlude than a full song, it breaks away from the rest of the album’s mid-tempo waddling by wrapping itself in lo-fi fuzz and taking an angle more atmospheric than musical. On any other album it might be little more than curio, but here it positively stands out as something different that stretches the borders beyond the established range - a promise of a more interesting future.

Even with its positive points this is nonetheless completely inessential to anyone but the biggest fans and even those might find it rather throwaway. With time it’s grown on me to an extent but it’s hard to say whether I’d have given it the opportunity to grow on me if it wasn’t for the band’s future efforts; and still, it’s not an album of hidden depths or slowburning glories. It’s an alright recording from a group who hadn’t yet discovered their voice, a set of early efforts that somehow ended up being recorded in a studio before the band was really ready for it. It makes for a comfortably decent album, but nowhere close to a real revelatory experience.

Rating: 6/10

Rubik - Bad Conscience Patrol (2007)

1) Sleeps a Friendly Stranger; 2) A Hard Try; 3) City & the Streets; 4) Buildings; 5) Hinges; 6) Why Don't You Let It Happen; 7) The Interventionist; 8) Jesus/Hypnotist; 9) Bill Withers; 10) Wrappt in a Carpet

Rubik as a rock band. Unfairly forgotten: the later albums really don't show off just how solid these guys were with guitars, and you can find a lot of classics here.

Key tracks: "A Hard Try", "City & the Streets", "Jesus/Hypnotist"

Funny how things change in retrospect. Once upon a time Bad Conscience Patrol sounded like a brand new band's promising, exciting entrance: an album that was clearly hailing from an established, popular sound but which had a lot of great songwriting to it and enough personality that it was clear Rubik would be a force to reckoned with once they'd find their own voice. And they truly did find it, to the point that everything after the first album bears barely a resemblance to Bad Conscience Patrol, and the debut now looks like a bizarre relic out of place in the band's discography. What made Rubik so interesting in the first place ultimately proved to have no bearing to why they would be a great band.

But back in 2007, Rubik were a part of the wave of rock bands borne in the aftermath of OK Computer. Bad Conscience Patrol flicks through various strains the post-Radiohead bands took, switching from millennial paranoia and anxiety to sky-piercing anthems laced with careful hope. Bad Conscience Patrol wears its influences in its sleeves and some songs lean towards their inspirations more than others ("Wrappt in a Carpt" sounds exactly what you would write after binging on OK Computer, the Yorke-isms of the title included) but Rubik carefully flash their own character throughout, to make it clear there's more to them than their record collection. The band's characteristic erratic creativity is present already, leading to plenty of unexpected twists along the way that aren't all too obvious from the initial notes: the bonkers rhythm-flicking assault of "Buildings" isis the musical equivalent of your cat having a sudden freak-out running around the room, and "Why Don't You Let It Happen" shifts moods from murky organ pitter-patter to a jovial march and eventually an epic closure like three songs perfectly inhabiting a single skin. They bring a touch of something surprising to the mix, songs rarely going exactly where you imagined they would from the first notes.

The big (re-)revelation Bad Conscience Patrol offers is that it's a showcase of just how solid and powerful Rubik were as a rock band - something that the later albums would go to great lengths to obscure. The majority of the songs here breathe the spirit of 90s Britrock but reflected through a unique kind of Nordic lens by way of e.g. Mew: something a little more muscular biding its time in the background, brighter melodies interspersed with crunchy riffs. Rubik also prove that they can go hard if they wanted to: distorted explosions of guitar walls are deployed tactically throughout, keeping the songs on their toes. "Sleeps a Friendly Stranger" and the aforementioned "Buildings" harness Rubik's manic energy into slightly askew rock anthems that rampage like wild beasts in an enclosed space, "The Interventionist" and "Bill Withers" are the album's rock edge at loudest and crunchiest with the former a emotion-laden cry for action and the latter the album's darkest and heaviest cut, and while "Hinges" tones down the guitars and locks into a groove, it keeps its tension bubbling under. Even when they're most obviously paying tribute to their idols, the songwriting stays strong: "Wrappt in a Carpt" may sound like a ripoff but it's a top quality one, building to a finale wrapped in its own paranoia and closing the album to a spellbinding degree, leaving the album to rest on a disquieting but memorable note.

On three particular occasions Rubik completely knock it out of the park, and it's the album's three singles that show Bad Conscience Patrol at its strongest. "City and the Streets" in particular: it's a phenomenal song that for four and a half minutes sounds like the only music there is that matters, soaring in its melancholy euphoria with Artturi Taira's mumbling falsetto instantly becoming the kind of voice that could recite a phone book and resonate a hundredfold. It's one of the best rock songs that Finland has produced to these ears, without any hyperbole: a landmark Finnish indie classic the likes of which rarely land. The towering "A Hard Try" almost does it again, being a hit that never was: an honest-to-god guitar anthem that reaches blissfully cathartic highs through its melodic firework choruses. It's not close to being as strong a "City & the Streets" but that only speaks to the strengths of that song; on its own "A Hard Try" is a classic cut that could have launched a new band with some wider exposure. The last of the lot is also the album's oddball moment, which ironically turned out to be the one thing here that hints where Rubik would venture: the bright, airy and melodic "Jesus/Hypnotist" is in such a huge contrast to anything else on the album that the whole song on its own is a surprise (one of the lead melodic instruments is a banjo), and it's only its guitar-revved finale that brings it in line with the rest of the album. But, its colourful pop twinkle is a thing of beauty and marvel from the get-go: it's so warmly welcoming that the fact that it's so out of place between two of the album's murkiest songs gets brushed away quickly from way of enjoyment. If anything, it acts as the album's brief respite moment as it launches its darker final cuts.

It's practically inevitable but Bad Conscience Patrol itself is framed by its strangeness from its own discography and it's hard to really discuss it without making those comparisons; especially as the kaleidoscopic, more technicolour outfit Rubik changed into gave them the brief amount of wider international exposure and thus sealed the deal as their definitive sound. Following Rubik's dissolution and the attestment that three albums (and some EPs) are all we'll ever get, Bad Conscience Patrol has (perhaps surprisingly) managed to hold its weight better than expected and arguably sounds even better than it did when Rubik's transformation was a current event taking the attention away from the humble beginnings. It's a different side of the band here, utilising their wild ideas into a shape that's on one hand more conventional and something we've all heard before, but in Rubik's hands becomes something that frequently surprises, inspires and, in the end, still excites.  While Bad Conscience Patrol may not win all the points on originality, it's thrilling and engaging, and Rubik as a guitar-driven rock outfit could easily stand with the best of their peers. With time the album revealed itself to be more than just a debut with great promise; instead, it can confidently be called a small classic of the rich Finnish 00's indie scene that stands strongly on its own accord.

Rating: 8/10

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (2007)

1) March into the Sea; 2) Dashboard; 3) Fire It Up; 4) Florida; 5) Parting of the Sensory; 6) Missed the Boat; 7) We’ve Got Everything; 8) Fly Trapped in a Jar; 9) Education; 10) Little Motel; 11) Steam Engenius; 12) Spitting Venom; 13) People as Places as People; 14) Invisible

Modest Mouse prove that they can lay proper focus on song craft with a semi-concept album, and that they can pull it off without losing any of their manic energy. Johnny Marr inexplicably guest stars.

Key tracks: "Dashboard", "Missed the Boat", "Fly Trapped in a Jar"

Modest Mouse circa We Were Dead Before the Ship even Sank were going through a lot of changes. Their major label debut Good News for People Who Love Bad News had been a surprise hit, and the success had suddenly opened the way to big-time recording studios and bigger budgets to record with. Coincidentally the band’s vision of their music had started to change as well, though not towards the much-feared mainstreamification some assumed. The tried and tested trio setup had ran its course in the band’s head and while Good News had already turned the frequent helping hand Dan Gallucci into a stable part of the group, their new ambitions paved way for a further expanded approach and a more layered sound. The stage line-up had doubled in size to accommodate this new vision and to bring it to life on in concerts, and suddenly the band was officially filled with multi-instrumentalists and helping hands. Good News might feel like the easy border between the old and new incarnations of Modest Mouse but it has a lot more common with its older siblings than most give it credit for: We Were Dead reinvented the band, both in sound and as a group of people.

Isaac Brock’s songwriting, too, was going through changes. It had been growing more nuanced for a while but Brock started the We Were Dead sessions like he had something to prove. It was originally a concept album: one by one, song by song, the crew of an unlucky ship would die until there would be no one left. The concept was eventually scrapped and only traces of it remain in the finished album in a confusing manner where shared characters appear as frequently as they are forgotten, but the fact that Brock & Co were even plotting an honest-to-god focused story that ties every song together instead of simply using general overarching themes is already telling of the change in the band’s ways. Modest Mouse are a not a group that do cohesion and careful organisation, after all: their songs are always on the verge of unravelling and it’s never too long until they do, the albums are long and rambling 70-minute slabs of erratic twists and turns and Brock can switch from soft and emotional to rabid yelping and barking in a flash, accentuated by his equally messy guitar style. Here though, there’s clarity and focus, and even with the concept gone the songs sound like they were carefully thought over and composed. This shift in tone was further aided by the rather random appearance of Johnny Marr, who had casually decided to tag along full-time after a few informal sessions together. He didn’t bring much of a direct musical influence with him (his guitar parts for most parts sound like his reinterpretation of Brock’s style, rather than uniquely his own) but his decades of experience and a more refined songwriting style likely rubbed off onto Brock.

The red line running through We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is that Brock’s talent as a songwriter is constantly being highlighted. Sure, it was clear before that the band wrote good songs - the previous albums are full of them - but Modest Mouse have only rarely come across as a group with a real, determined focus on crafting a song. Usually they just channel their manic energy through their instruments and magic happens in the process, but We Were Dead approaches the process from a different angle: this time it feels like Brock and the band actually sat down to think of all the nuances in writing a song and how to make each second count. The concept album angle is a slightly over the top logical conclusion of that path but even when that was dropped, Brock kept focusing on the melodies, the arrangements and the structures. That’s how we’ve ended up with songs like “Little Motel”, “Fire It Up” or “Missed the Boat”, which would have been unreal on any previous album. They’re intricate, beautiful compositions that are a natural yet long-missed evolution of back catalogue favourites like “3rd Planet” or “The World at Large”, where the band’s tight interplay is used to create something genuinely lovely. “Missed the Boat” in particular is quite a thing – its verses keep shifting shape, the chorus soars like it’s the most effortless, weightless thing there is (with The Shins’ James Mercer making one of his three very audible contributions here) and Marr flourishes the song with his most Smiths-esque riffs in the album, all coming together to form a song that sounds so small and down to earth yet still so impactful and impressive. The token long track “Spitting Venom” is similarly empowered by the new approach: where the past songs of extended length brought on the minutes through sticking to particular grooves and intense jamming, “Spitting Venom” evolves its arrangement as its initial tight rock-out seamlessly transforms into the horn-accentuated, mammoth finale, constantly adding and dropping details so it never feels like it’s repeating itself.

We Were Dead switches between these new sweeter cuts and the usual Mouse-esque franticness and off-kilter rock throughout the album, just to squash any worries that there’s no more fire in the band’s belly. In fact, that’s actually where most of the album’s best moments come from: the whimsical yelper pop of “We’ve Got Everything” and “Steam Engenius”, the gloriously demented neuro-rocker “Fly Trapped in a Jar” and the more polished energy rush of “Florida” are as smart, frantic and exciting as the band’s ever done. The hit single “Dashboard” answers the questions of whether the band could follow up on the success of “Float On” (yes) and if they could pull it off even better (yes) - with its inspired double drum tracks, horn punctuations, quirky backing vocals and rapid fire chorus spit, it’s a song that’s both instantly enjoyable as well as bizarre enough to make you wonder how it became a radio staple. Like all Modest Mouse albums We Were Dead feels slightly overlong but this time there’s no obvious tracks to cut - no interludes, no novelty moments, no overrunning sketches. Regardless of their nature each song is fleshed out fully and wrapped tight, running exactly as long as they need to and yet long enough to develop all those brilliant arrangements and melodies to their richest. The only tracklist complaint I’ve got is that “Invisible” cuts the album off rather abruptly, but it’s hard to fault the song for it - it’s a great, muscular power punch, even if it’s an awkward closer. It’s an imperfection but hardly a deal breaker, and there’s something very typically Modest Mouse-like in such an ending.

Which, I guess, works perfectly as a reminder that it’s still Modest Mouse despite all, because flipping back and forth between the previous albums and this the change is so stark. The six-piece on We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is obviously operating way differently to the lo-fi teen angst and fury that the band made their name with and the change is stark enough that you could be justified in calling this a brand new second incarnation of the band, the start of a whole new book rather than just a chapter. I love the rawness of the earlier albums as much as anyone, but focusing on that is kind of missing the point. Everything presented on this album has reared its head here and there throughout the band’s works and now Brock’s finally decided to bring it out in full force while having the means to do it - it’s making an occasionally teased promise actually realise in full glory. That’s why it’s not really turning the back on the old sound when We Were Dead turns out to be their best album - it shines the light on the building blocks that have always contributed to their music being great but which never got the center stage before.

Rating: 9/10

Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister (1996)

1) The Stars of Track and Field; 2) Seeing Other People; 3) Me and the Major; 4) Like Dylan in the Movies; 5) Fox in the Snow; 6) Get Me Away from here, I'm Dying; 7) If You're Feeling Sinister; 8) Mayfly; 9) The Boy Done Wrong Again; 10) Judy and the Dream of Horses

First shot at an actual attempt to start a career in music. Still has all the hallmarks of a thoroughly pleasant B&S experience, but maybe they should have waited more than five months from Tigermilk.

Key tracks: "The Stars of Track and Field", "Seeing Other People", "Me and the Major"

Tigermilk was little more than a glorified university project, but it captured far more attention than Stuart Murdoch and co could have ever imagined. Critical acclaim followed, labels got interested and everyone wanted more from this dainty little pseudo-group, and Murdoch decided to turn Belle and Sebastian into a real band. If You're Feeling Sinister was recorded quickly after signing up with Jeepster - their second album within a year, released within five months from Tigermilk - and it's a response to the new reality. It's a more seriously composed record, with a more nuanced take on the style the group won people over with on Tigermilk; a real debut album from a real band.

If You're Feeling Sinister leaves me a little colder than it probably should, and some of that can probably be blamed on the haphazard way I have navigated across the B&S discography, with this album somehow being one of the last ones I heard from the group (even after the b-side compilations). While a major milestone for Belle and Sebastian in terms of establishing their early signature sound, by the time I personally got around to it I had heard everything it had to offer before already and I had heard it in more interesting ways. Tigermilk may lack the finesse but it in its place it had a whole load of quirky charm, as well an unexpected off-beatness to it that If You're Feeling Sinister deliberately avoids. You won't find curveballs like the debut's "Electronic Renaissance" to an even remote degree here, and instead everything more off-the-cuff was released on the EPs surrounding Sinister. The following couple of full-length elements would then further develop this particular sound while including some of those unexpected elements to a more balanced degree. In comparison to its surrounding releases If You're Feeling Sinister sounds practically a tad plain, a work taking shape but still in progress - and I can't shake that feeling off.

It's also clear that the whole thing was written, recorded and released within a couple of months. It would be downright impossible for Murdoch to ever write anything genuinely subpar - he's one of the most perfectly pleasant songwriters around and even in his weaker moments there's still something thoroughly heartwarming in the way he gently plays with his melodies. He makes irresistible melodies sound like the easiest thing in the world and it always works to some extent. There is no way you can even remotely dislike If You're Feeling Sinister if you're in the slightest into Murdoch's tropes or the whole "shy bookish university boys blushing hard about shy bookish university girls" vibe Belle and Sebastian's early days were rife with. in general, Thus, If You're Feeling Sinister is a perfectly fine album in what it sets out to do - twee indie pop songs with a sharp wit and lyrics with hidden twists for the observant listener - but taken as songs, one-by-one, its batting average isn't particularly striking. Most of the big hitters are encountered right from the start, with "The Stars of Track and Field" being the album's definitive song that aims to be the big opening woah moment to impress from the first step and "Seeing Other People" and "Me and the Major" offering the album's strongest melodies and memorable hooks, but after that it becomes a series of thoroughly cosy but not particularly memorable songs - and I wouldn't necessarily raise those three highlights either anywhere near the band at their best. It's obvious that despite its humble beginnings Tigermilk got the best parts of the early material, and wheeling out If You're Feeling Sinister so soon gives the impression of needless rushing before they had the right material in tow.

I can still readily admit to enjoying If You're Feeling Sinister and you can't deny the growth the band exhibit here. Even if there's no flights of fancy present as a possibly intentional desire to keep both feet firmly in the ground, the way If You're Feeling Sinister goes about its concepts and songwriting tropes feels more focused. It takes a step away from Tigermilk's still a little untamed imagination into something consciously more carefully laid out: there's many a moment here where it sounds like a band hard at work trying to up their game. The intent is there, it's just simply the songs that let it down. As much as I listen to this, I still struggle to remember most of it by the time the album has quieted down; the latter half is particularly guilty about this to the point that it's remained as a list of titles with barely a trace left in my mind (for what it's worth, the title track is by far the best song in the final stretch solely on the strength of its incredibly simple but deadly effective title drop moment). This probably comes off harsher than it is in reality because Sinister is an alright album without any really genuine downsides, and it's full of aspects that make early Belle and Sebastian so charming. There just isn't that much meat around its twee bones when compared to everything else released by the band.

Rating: 6/10

John Frusciante - Renoise Tracks 2009​-​2011 (2015)

1) Genex 44; 2) Singular Scope 85; 3) Motiern 58; 4) Hew Brenderson; 5) Unending 126 Mix; 6) Culminate; 7) 90/180; 8) Anea 18

I mean, these are discarded demos... but honestly, these sound more refined than most of the other electronic material Frusciante put out.

Key tracks: "Unending 126 Mix"

John Frusciante has always been good with his internet releases for fans: his scattering of free downloadable albums are outtakes for the hardcore followers, but they've been notably insightful ones. Renoise Tracks 2009​-​2011 is ostensibly a selection of songs from the period when Frusciante first abandoned his guitar-oriented direction and moved towards a more free-form electronic sound, billed as practice rounds from when he was still messing around with his new tools. That's the surprising thing about it; this sounds far more like Frusciante is already comfortable with what he's doing and has specific direction in mind, acting like a prelude to his IDM/acid house-oriented Trickfinger records more than his somewhat messy set of electronic albums under his own name. One of Frusciante's electronic sound's bigger downfalls is the aimlessness they often fall victim to - and yet, this set of early attempts sounds much more like an intentional album than the ones that actually had commercial releases.

Renoise Tracks strikes real gold with "Unending 126 Mix", which sounds like what electro-Frusciante has the potential to be but with a focus that material of its ilk generally lacks. High-energy beats come together with a careful application of his guitar and some nice synth samples, with Frusciante's voice bringing them together. It sounds like what you'd expect an IDM track from a rock songwriter to sound like, and it really works. The rest of Renoise Tracks are slight variations on the same themes, altering largely on whether it emphasises the beats or Frusciante himself. It's where you get the only real notion that these were originally intended just for Frusciante himself, uncertain whether to go for a fully instrumental route echoing his inspirations or trying to express his old ways of writing through new means, and finding ways to bring the two together. It's enjoyable to a surprising degree and it's strange how the actual albums released chronologically after these songs didn't develop further on the ideas here.

Renoise Tracks leaves you wanting for something developed from the ideas presented here, even if it doesn't exactly leave you wanting to come back to it frequently either. It's a decent listen but only kicks into a really memorable gear occasionally. Yet, for the time it plays it's engaging and even outside its better moments it has a bunch of neat ideas which maybe could have crossed over onto something really good with a little more development. For what is effectively a group of discarded demos, it's unexpectedly solid.

Rating: 6/10

Kylie Minogue - Ultimate Kylie (2004)

Disc One: 1) Better the Devil You Know; 2) The Loco-Motion; 3) I Should Be So Lucky; 4) Step Back in Time; 5) Shocked; 6) What Do I Have to Do; 7) Wouldn’t Change a Thing; 8) Hand in Your Heart; 9) Especially for You (with Jason Donovan); 10) Got to Be Certain; 11) Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi; 12) Give Me Just a Little More Time; 13) Never Too Late; 14) Tears on My Pillow; 15) Celebration
Disc Two: 1) I Believe in You; 2) Can’t Get You Out of My Head; 3) Love at First Sight; 4) Slow; 5) On a Night Like This; 6) Spinning Around; 7) Kids (with Robbie Williams); 8) Confide in Me; 9) In Your Eyes; 10) Please Stay; 11) Red Blooded Woman; 12) Giving You Up; 13) Chocolate; 14) Come Into My World; 15) Put Yourself in My Place; 16) Did It Again; 17) Breathe; 18) Where the Wild Roses Grow (with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)

Yes, there's a lot of cheese. But also a whole load of solid gold pop, and a lot more unexpected gems than you'd expect from a surface glance to Kylie's overlooked career.

Key tracks: "Better the Devil You Know", "I Believe in You", "Confide in Me"

Kylie Minogue often finds herself placed into the guilty pleasure bin even by people who openly admit to liking other popular mainstream pop. She started her musical career as the poster girl for Stock, Aitken & Waterman and became synonymous with the particular type of cheese that 80s synth pop was made out of, before transitioning to a campier glamour associated with the corniest of gay discos – neither areas which can claim to have particularly high musical esteem. The brief transitional phase between the two where she tried to prove she was a artist to be taken seriously flopped: only a few ever bought into it and even fewer remember it. She hasn’t had the critical re-evaluation that other big pop stars have had in the recent years and while she has the power to still make the occasional commercial splash, it’s mainly just her fan base that pays attention to her. While, say, Madonna has had so many iconic eras and hits over the years that people recognise decades worth of work from her, Kylie has largely been relegated to be the girl who sang “I Should Be So Lucky”. Maybe “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” if you’re lucky.

Ultimate Kylie isn’t the cash-grab seasonal stocking filler it might appear as at a glance but rather, it’s Kylie’s vindication: the proof that her discography is just as hit-filled (quality-wise even if not necessarily commercially at all times) as any other of her more seriously taken peers. The two discs stretch through her entire career up until 2004 and what becomes apparent pretty quickly is that the large scale is absolutely necessary. Not just because you’re presented with one instantly memorable and legitimately good song after another throughout the tracklist, but because the two disc format gives it a really good split. The first disc is devoted entirely to her 80s SAW era while the second disc is devoted to the 90s and beyond. The separation of the instantly dated 80s sound from the rest of the material acts in favour of both the SAW era as well as the rest of the music: you don’t get productional whiplashes and placing the 80s material on its own allows for it to be judged within its own terms.

The first disc is incredibly dated - far beyond the occasional trend giveaways of the second set - but if you can get past that (or maybe even love the sound, like myself) it’s a joy to listen: each song is so mercilessly hook-driven and shamelessly hit-seeking that you can’t help but admire. It also makes it feel a little criminal that it’s “I Should Be So Lucky” that gained such immortality when you’ve got such a towering classic as “Better the Devil You Know” awaiting: it opens the compilation and it’s such a great belter of a track with a tour de force of a chorus. Sometimes the factory-line nature of the operation surfaces a bit more obviously than other times, with a definite audible gap between the legitimately great and entertainingly cheesy songs. Particularly by the end of the disc the compilation starts to falter with the diabolically ill-advised 50s throwback “Tears on My Pillow” and a serviceable but a thoroughly pointless cover of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” ending the party on a dual bum note. Still, if you’ve ever had an affinity for the decade’s dated plastic cheese shine, the first disc is surprisingly good fun.

The second disc is the real heart of the collection, moving from corny fun to genuinely excellent. It swings more wildly between sounds and styles from knowingly camp to futuristic cool, but it keeps the quality coming. It even incorporates a few collaborations where Kylie is more support than the star: Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow” is a bewildering end to the general dancefloor joy of the entire album but is incredibly pleasing as a curveball that leaves you guessing just as you thought you got her figured out (and it is a marvellous song). The compilation also helps shed some light to her early 90s albums where she tried to escape her pop image and brings forth songs like “Breathe” and the breath-taking “Confide in Me”: the latter, in particular really deserves more kudos than it has, sounding completely unlike anything else here and bringing forth drama and tension Kylie has rarely displayed. The futuro-glitz trifecta of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, “Slow” and “Come Into My World” have aged marvellously and see Kylie finally finding a real voice for herself. Only the throwaway R&B bandwagon hop “Red Blooded Woman” really hits the brakes along the way, though it’s also a surprise how badly the comeback hit “Spinning Around” has dated: it revitalised her career when it dropped but several years later and surrounded by the singles that came since, it comes off as awfully pedestrian and paper thin.

It’s not just the music that’s a greatly positive surprise on Ultimate Kylie, even the compilation in itself has been pulled together so well that it’s a genuinely pleasing. You can always tell when a compilation is a quick cash-in and when it’s been crafted with actual attention, and Ultimate Kylie falls squarely in the latter department. The era split is a genius decision in itself for reasons described before and that there’s equal weight given to all eras rather than trying to pretend any of the less well received eras never happened is always a great thing (only the non-inclusion of the Manic Street Preachers aided “Some Kind of Bliss” is a little mysterious and disappointing). The liner notes in the booklet and the photography detailing the eras make it feel like you’re holding a celebration of a legacy. The attitude of giving a damn goes as far as the token new song “I Believe in You”: what could have been just a quick leftover track included solely for promotional purposes has somehow ended up becoming the best damn song in the entire two discs. It’s cool, groovy, stylish, futuristic and absolutely impeccable both in production and performance. You don’t really have to wonder why when you look at the credits and realise the song was written by Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and Babydaddy, who were having their own do-no-wrong golden year in 2004. The other new song, “Giving You Up”, is a little less successful but I readily admit to generally being left a little cold by most things touched by Xenomania, who produced the song.

Kudos to my sister then, who was clearly desperate for present ideas during the 2004 Christmas season and decided to gift this to me after a 30-second exchange between us about Kylie having a bunch of good songs following an advert for Ultimate Kylie on TV. I don’t think this would have found its way in my collection otherwise but I’m glad it did – there’s a lot of quality pop scattered across the two discs here.

Rating: 8/10