That Music List: LIST 243

Hello again,

First up, here's something for you TML nostalgia buffs. With a few minutes of spare time last night, I revisited the very first List from almost exactly seventeen years ago, retested all of the links (most of them needed replacing, in truth), and gave the whole thing the same treatment as I apply to new Lists, nested videos and soforth. All much easier to navigate than first time around, and if I do say so myself, the song choices mostly hold up even now. Feel free to take a look, and a listen. Have fun.

As regards this week's choices, two more features seeing the light of day for the first time today are A Session of Sorts and Bulletproof.

The former is, I suppose, simply a neat way of sharing four songs not previously included on a List by the same artist or performer, stretching across the entirety of their careers wherever possible. And on this, the twentieth year of a career determinedly forged on their terms and their alone, Lancaster's finest sweary, red wine-marinaded husband and wife DIY psychedelic punk combo The Lovely Eggs are as deserving candidates as any. Long may they prosper.

Bulletproof may evoke thoughts of Pop Will Eat Itself among some of you, and yes, I expect the early-mid 1990s Oldham club night which gives this feature its name was equally inspired by that leave-your-brain-at-the-door stomp by Stourbridge's finest. It's Senser, however, that get a run out this time, Eject still a towering example of the rap-rock crossover genre du jour.

Now a mere 33 years of age (and how old does that make me feel typing that), it's unarguably of its time, but what an invigorating, exciting time that was.

The aforementioned Lovely Eggs - spoiler alert - will make an appearance in the Favourite Song of the Year feature at some point before long, although I'll leave you to guess what year and what song. It's a short trip back to 2023 for today's favourite, a meeting of active minds between Ben, son of entertainer Roy, and Matt Berry in full Bonzo's The Intro and the Outro mode.

Playful, self-effacing (there's at least the acknowledgement that not everyone gets jazz, even if Berry then shoots them down in familiar fashion) and not overstaying its welcome, it's also just about the only thing you'll see on here this week ever to have found its way into a question on Radio 4's Counterpoint (on which my scores continue to increase gently - I'm still not going on it, though).

The simple act of gathering all of the material used or intended for use in this blog's original 2009-2018 run into one Google Doc recently has proven a useful exercise, not least in surfacing a slew of tracks I could have sworn I'd included before now but actually never had.

Hence, at long last, Mary Bobbins by Gabrielles Wish, at least as much of a cult Manchester act as The Fall, if not more so, and with a not dissimilar (if generally less acrimonious) revolving door of members pivoting around founder and sole constant presence Robert Corless.

The Rob's Records mid-1990s incarnation of the band represented here remains my firm favourite, a feverish, tense post-punk brew enriched by the sound effect treatments of then member David Peplow (the same David Peplow who lectures here in Sheffield these days? I wonder...). Within the confines of a small venue such as the Star & Garter in Manchester, where I saw them support Half Man Half Biscuit and Calvin Party, it made for an intense listening experience. The almost pop stylings of over a decade and a half later, not so much.

Other things to enjoy this week include, but are absolutely not limited to:

Tracks from opposite ends of the career of the recently reactivated Would-Be-Goods, Jessica Griffins' singular Received Pronunciation delivery and ear for a tune both still present and correct decades on,

A splendid late single from Fosca, the post-Orlando vehicle from academic, diarist and flaneur Dickon Edwards and another act hitherto hideously underrepresented in this blog,

Форум, reckoned to be the first synthpop act in Russia. I'd been in two minds as to whether to include them as a Eurotastic act, the desire to observe the pre-hostilities Eurovision interpretation of what comprises "Europe" wrestling with Russia's current exclusion from said contest. Ultimately they're not appearing under that banner,