That Music List: LIST 253

Hello again,

Contrary to expectations, no gig report from me this week. I would have liked to enthuse about W.I.T.C.H.'s visit to Sidney & Matilda in Sheffield on Wednesday just gone, and share some pictures, even. Work commitments, alas, thwarted me at the last, and with that a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity to see the reactivated Zamrock legends came and went.

I can assure those that immediately harbour concerns of me going back to my previous state of finding excuses not to go to gigs, and gradually disengaging from music all over again, that that ain't happening. The thousands of words I'm writing on Eurovision concurrently with compiling regular Lists doesn't feel like the actions of someone giving up!

Life still intervenes sometimes, that's all; and with the increasing need to juggle a portfolio of jobs, whilst also attending to the needs of two kids with complex trauma issues and very elderly parents, any opportunity for a night out is still grasped with both hands whenever all things remain set fair.

Be that all as it may. Do please enjoy the track below taken from W.I.T.C.H.'s joyous album of last year.

Eurovision week looms large again, for good or ill, and as well as currently compiling some notes for 2026 to be published on here in the next couple of days (see if you can guess ahead of these which entry has angered me like few others in 45 years of watching the show!), I took the opportunity last weekend to retrieve as many of my notes on previous renewals as I could find scattered around cyberspace, and bring them all into the one place.

I've already posted one blog entry compiling those, but in case you missed them and are sufficiently curious, here they are again:

That Eurovision Review - 2025

That Eurovision Review - 2024

That Eurovision Review - 2023

That Eurovision Review - 2022

That Eurovision Postmortem - 2021

That Eurovision Postmortem - 2017

Next week's List, number 254, will be an all-Eurovision special. Possibly the last, unless I want to start deep diving more assiduously into national finals or renewals from the last century?

Away from all of that, this week's TML highlights include a belated appraisal of Allo Darlin', belated in so far as it's getting on for a year since the joys of Bright Nights, the Anglo-Australian quartet's first album in a decade, saw the light of day.

As much as any act whose lifespan coincided with that of the Indietracks festival, Allo Darlin' felt like our band (along with The Just Joans, the Spook School and Standard Fare, I'd suggest).

Footage from 2008 exists online of Elizabeth Morris - at the time Allo Darlin' was effectively her solo vehicle - playing a version of Emily on her ukelele to a gathering, curious crowd on one of the platforms of the hosting venue, the Midland Railway centre in Swanwick. I'm in there somewhere, if out of view throughout. Only the fact a fair chunk of the first verse is missing has led me to post an alternative festival performance of the same track instead, but the gist is exactly the same.

From that well-received, if not to say breakthrough, Indietracks performance onwards, it was possible to follow Elizabeth's progress at close order.

The expansion of the band to the quartet which survives to this day. Opening for Australian janglepop legends The Lucksmiths on the occasion of their final ever English concert. The cheek of the Henry Rollins Don't Dance single, replete with Saturday Night Fever-apeing artwork. Repeat returns to Indietracks, most memorably the celebratory set in 2010 (as their debut album continued its ascent from merely popular to required listening among the indiepop faithful) and the festival-hushing solo reading of Tallulah in 2012. Guest appearances with The Just Joans. Excellent choices of cover versions, including the rockist-baiting interpretation of a Ramones staple included here. Guitar duties for Tender Trap at the invitation of Amelia Fletcher.

All this and more besides in little more than eight years. It was quite the ride, with plenty of us following it all.

(Allo Darlin' - Indietracks Festival, 25/07/2014. Pictures are author's own)

Bright Nights is the Allo Darlin' tempus fugit album, wearing as it does the hallmarks of the subsequent decade's worth of life, love, loss, building families, car crashes and enduring companionship.

It doesn't bounce off the walls musically in the way that tracks such as Kiss Your Lips used to do, but to thine own self be true; to these ears it sounds exactly as one might expect a ten years older Allo Darlin' to sound if allowing age and wisdom to bear its influence, rather than trying to reproduce former glories too exactly. Its measured calmness and instrumentation even found it a place (and a top ten place, at that) in the UK Folk Album chart, and not in the least bit incongruously.

For however long the reunion lasts, it's a joy to have them back.

Other things particularly worth flagging among another List that I (obviously) recommend in full include:

Metric, shared this week in both 2026 and 2006 flavours. As with other recent Then And Now subjects Howling Bells, I await the Metric album I still love throughout rather than enjoy a number of tracks of, but where Romanticize the Dive is good, it's very, very good indeed.

Die Art, Billy Bragg-endorsed post-punk survivors of pre-Reunification East Germany, shared here both because Kiss Me Till I Die is something of a mid-1990s favourite of theirs for me (and evidently also for those contemporaneous compilation CD compilers who turned to it fairly frequently), and also as an act of solidarity with their home city of Leipzig following the recent attack there.

Deathprod, the ongoing project of Norwegian experimental artist Helge Sten, heard here utilising the unique creations (cloud-chamber bowls, chordophones, etc.) of fellow experimentalist and instrument builder Harry Partch (1901-1974) with typically disquieting results.

As promised and threatened a few weeks back, not just a sufficiently lengthy Craven Faults piece for The Long Goodbye, but on reflection still my favourite from this enigmatic West Yorkshire performer's growing repertoire.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/04/2026).

Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

A CERTAIN RATIO - Do The Du (1979)