The small city of Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand, produced a lot of great music in the 1980s – The Flying Nun record label distributed acclaimed albums by acts like The Chills, The Clean, The Bats, and Chris…
I’ve been very impressed by Jason Isbell’s last two albums; 2013’s Southeastern and 2015’s Something More Than Free. After sobering up, he’s fulfilling his potential as a great songwriter. After two albums of heartfelt, acoustic country, Isbell plugged his electric…
Germany’s Can were too ahead of their time, and too weird, to enjoy a hit record, but they were hugely influential; for instance, when Radiohead ditched guitar rock in favour of more experimental work, Can were one of the bands…
For some reason I never found Aretha Franklin’s original studio albums in second-hand bins, and for years the only album I owned from her was a double disc retrospective. The second disc dabbles in her 1980s work, with star power…
Vigilantes of Love took their name from the New Order song ‘Love Vigilantes’. The band hailed from Athens, Georgia, a city with rich pop music heritage; in all honesty they’d probably struggle to break onto a list of greatest musical…
I’ve been covering Pavement’s albums over the last week or so – revisiting their five albums has helped me to appreciate them more, and how full of ideas their albums are. They’re definitely a strong contender for the best guitar…
I know this is usually a music blog, and apologies to my regular readers for the change in topic today – this is just a one-off. I’m hardly qualified to be a political commentator but wanted to vent a little.…
Right now, I have created 63 artist pages on this blog, and 59 of them are white. Two of the four non-white artists covered are relatively obscure New Zealand acts. And here’s a random selection of ten songs that my…
I’ve been covering Sting on this website this week: I generally find that his solo career is under-rated – while The Police have great singles, their albums all have filler, and the terrific 1992 Greatest Hits is most of…
I’ve had a lot of time for writing recently; some leave and then a work trip with long haul flights and time in airport lounges. Lately, I’ve made several pages for acts with only a handful of albums to their name.…
