Saturday, 11 July 2026

LIST 262 – 11/07/2026 (a 2018 collection)

Hello again,

Almost a week on, I've finally found a few minutes to collate my thoughts on a magical first musical festival experience for the kids last Saturday.

Just getting to Pop At The Lock and catching up with organisers Kev Birchall and Linda Yarwood, plus many old friends (some for the first time in easily a decade), would have counted as wonderful enough on its own.

The kids getting to see The School, favourites from our assorted playlists, improved it.

The School playing That Boy is Mine, the much-loved staple of the kids’ bedtime indiepop playlist, improved it further.

Finding and getting The School t-shirts their size in the merchandise stall improved it yet further still.

The School lending our youngest (“our superfan”, they enthused) a tambourine near the end of their set and bidding her to play along to Let It Slip… well, that was just the icing on the cake.

For our daughter - so worried beforehand about the festival all being a bit people-y and noisy for her – to be that engaged and enjoying herself was just a joy to behold.

Needless to say, a massive thanks to all of The School, and multi-instrumentalist Francesca Dimech in particular, for their kindnesses… and of course for a knocking good set, old favourites, striking newie Honeycomb and all.


  

(The School, Pop at the Lock, Middlewich 04/07/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Thanks, in fact, to everyone who took the time to engage and chat with both kids, and make them feel so at ease. There’s the danger, of course, that they’ll think every festy is as nice as this now. That’s not actually a bad thing to strive for, though, is it!

Other highlights of the day were plentiful, and included but were by no means limited to:
  • The aforementioned Francesca revisiting her captivating Word Salad repertoire, and reminding our kids not to smoke unless they wanted their carelessly discarded lighters to attract undead firefighters (it does happen).
  • Our son gasping at just how many swearywords MJ Hibbett fitted into two songs in particular (Hibbett regulars can probably guess which two).
  • Both Hibbett and Jetstream Pony’s Beth Arzy managing to elicit boos from the crowd over the World Cup’s dehydration breaks. The latter enjoyed slightly less success trying to get everyone to root for Mexico over England in the football, although the logic – a tournament win for Mexico would enrage Trump to the point of rupture – was impeccable.
  • Quad 90 and Foglights delivering sets that practically demand I explore them both further hereafter. The former’s inclusion on the bill makes so much sense with hindsight, offering up as they do a variant on the disco of Kev and Linda’s beloved Say She She, albeit filtered a little more through the punk-funk gauze of the likes of ESG. Arresting stuff. Foglights, an utterly new name to me previously but comprising one member each of The Cords and Stone Anthem, brought to mind a psychedelic folk take on the (often) drumless, vulnerable yearnings of Sarah Records mainstays Brighter. That counts as high praise in my book.
  • A wonderful set by The Sunbathers; concise, poignant (new song Strong Enough especially) and reflective. Lovely to see a vibraslap in action, too, and yes, the kids inevitably want one of those as well now.
  • Introducing our boy to the joys of record shopping/crate digging, as we rifled through the boxes of Pete Bee’s finest vinyl together and I found a couple of gap-fillers in my collection (one each from Delicate Vomit and The Garlands). One day, son, all these sevens, tens and twelves shall be yours and your sister’s (to say nothing of all the CDs and tapes).

A day to treasure, then. With no more Pop at the Lock or Indietracks, though, how are we going to top it? Wales Goes Pop, Glas-Goes Pop or – if we find a few quid behind the sofa – Indiefjord, perhaps?

****** 





(The Sunbathers, Pop at the Lock, Middlewich 04/07/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

That appearance by The Sunbathers was actually very timely in the context of this week's selection of tracks on That Music List, as A Loved Album takes in four songs from their beautiful debut longplayer from 2018.  

By turns wistful, romantic, pointed, fragile and comforting, A Weekend Away With... invites warm and respectful comparisons with the likes of Marine Girls and Young Marble Giants (the latter the subject of one of two cover versions played by the band at Pop at the Lock, fittingly enough), but there's an overriding yearning present which feels very much their own.  

I remember a Cambridge Music Reviews piece on the album upon its release which theorised that the duo's status as an East Midlands band feeds that sense of longing, this being an act which loves the sea but lives about as far from any coast in England as it's possible to get.  

I can buy into that theory entirely, having lived practically on the Scarborough seafront for five years around the turn of the century but now based almost as far inland in Sheffield as The Sunbathers themselves.  Every return trip to the North Yorkshire coast - and there are many - is immediately followed by the commencement of plans to do another one.  I would not be the least bit surprised were Julie and Paul the same.

Either way, A Weekend Away with... is a quietly triumphant body of work to be treasured, and it was wonderful to learn at Pop at the Lock that the release of a follow-up may not be at all far away now.

You'll have worked out already from the subtitle that The Sunbathers' aren't the only selections among this week's List to hail from 2018.  Everything does.  

This was, as has probably been mentioned ad nauseam by me on here now, the year in which That Music List paused for breath temporarily, only to fall asleep for well over seven years.  Indeed, some of the songs below were already pencilled in for inclusion in Lists 237, 238, etc. some time in spring of that year, only for events to supersede me somewhat.  

Ah well, I hope we're well on the way towards making up for lost time this year, with 41 posts (and counting) already.  

I also hope that there's a few tracks on here that stop you in your tracks and have you exclaiming, "eight years ago?  Really?".  I know there are for me, and in at least two cases poignantly so.  The Chills' Martin Phillipps and Tim Smith of Cardiacs (subject of a spine-tingling cover here by Alison Mathews) were still among us back then.  No longer.

The inclusions from Gwenno, Linda Guilala and Grace Petrie are all right up there among my personal highlights from the entire year, with Eus Keus by the first-named (a towering, mysterious single deserving of far better than the occasional glib epithets of "That Cheese Song" one sees and hears) just shading it over the second-named as my favourite single of 2018.  

Mucho Mejor prompted me to reappraise Linda Guilala's catalogue completely, having evidently not been paying sufficient attention to hook into all of the motorik, Stereolabby hums contained therein.  Not just another sunny, Spanish-language female-fronted indiepop act, this, their presence on Elefant Records - home of many such - notwithstanding.

Turn of the century hitmakers and antagonisers of rockist festival crowds par excellence, Daphne & Celeste were always more interesting, rounded people than a small handful of taunting, ad hominem singles gave them credit for.  Some impressive credits in Off-Broadway theatre and Wim Wenders-produced cinema helps say as much.

Knowing that, the fact that their 2010s comeback comprised collaborations with experimental musician and producer Max Tundra, often erring more on the side of outré electronica rather than pure pop (and even covering a Captain Beefheart track), becomes that bit less of a surprise.  It still served to annoy all of the right people all over again, though, especially those who turned up at their 2018 UK tour expecting just the hits.  Good.  

As such, Alarms doesn't go into the I Love Pop Music And I Will Fight You strand this time, but there's something no less fine from Janelle Monae which does instead.  

Finally, with visuals about as unsettling as the music which they accompany, I feel morally obliged to apologise in advance if The Third Eye Foundation's video gives you nightmares.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/06/2026).


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
LINDA GUILALA – Mucho Mejor 



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Saturday, 4 July 2026

LIST 261 – 04/07/2026 (Pop at the Lock special)

Hello again,

Well.  My gig spreadsheet (of course there's a spreadsheet...) informs me that the ongoing period of six years, eleven months and one week is the longest I have ever gone without attending either a music festival or alldayer in my near thirty-nine years' gig-going. 

The final in-person Indietracks festival of 2019 is still the most recent one, largely for reasons that have been expounded upon at length on these pages before now.  Happily, two of those reasons are now at the age where we can gently consider incorporating them into concert-related plans; and so it has come to pass that the kids will join Linda and I as we end our festy hiatus with a trip to Pop at the Lock at The Kings Lock, Middlewich this very day.

Together, the long round trip and (for them) late night finish may still constitute too great a test of endurance at this stage, and we'll obviously not push them on if they're telling us it's time to go home.  Even so, the little 'uns are very excited about doing something as grown up as watching loads of bands in a pub marquee, and we're so proud of them for giving it a go.  Hopefully that excitement won't turn to mortification once they witness their ancient dad indie shuffling in public.

Son enjoys MJ Hibbett, though it's perhaps wise if I take this opportunity to forewarn Mark that he may hear a lone voice insisting, "It's wind machine, amazing pear!!!" over the top of him if opting to perform (You Make Me Feel) Soft Rock.

Daughter, meanwhile, might yet cast aside her anxieties over the noise (it won't be as loud as you think, sweetheart; it's an indiepop festival) and crowds if The School see their way clear to playing 2012 album track That Boy is Mine, always the song on her bedtime indiepop compilation that she opts to play first.  By my rough calculations, she's heard it about 1,600 times now.  She still loves it as much as the first time.

If we're still going by then, I'd love the kids to see The Cords in action, primarily to demonstrate to them what two siblings still sufficiently young to count as relatable figures are capable of achieving.  I do wonder how many other youngsters - and especially young girls - Eva and Grace Tedeschi have inspired in three years on the gig circuit with their accessible, winning music and can-do attitude.  There'll be more yet.




(The Cords, Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 25/09/2025.  Pictures are author's own)

I have my own wishlist for the event, with all of those named so far lazered onto it.  In addition, it will be a pleasure as always to get the chance to take in The Sunbathers' delicate yet stirring acoustic vignettes; an unexpected treat to revisit the by turns macabre and ribald world of Francesca's Word Salad (the solo alias of Fran Dimech of The School, stepping off the subs' bench at short notice); and a welcome opportunity to try out more of the Glaswegian punk-funk disco duo Quad 90 (perhaps the closest thing to a stylistic outlier among this year's line-up, though not at all jarringly incongruous).


It's another perfectly put-together bill of fare, as is only to be expected from Kev Birchall and Linda Yarwood, officially the nicest people in the world of indiepop event organisation and the purveyors of impeccable DJ sets (simple driving principle; "good pop"), be that at either their own Recordsville nights or else at the request of big names on tour such as Saint Etienne and Teenage Fanclub.

It's also the last such bill, with Pop at the Lock being retired as an entity after this weekend's fifth edition, a year later than originally planned.  

It's been a joy to take in Kev and Linda's events whenever personal circumstances have permitted - we got to more of their previous Congleton-based onedayers Going up the Country (2012-2017) than we didn't - and heaven knows a step back from putting these on has been well earned.  As, for that matter, has the right to some better luck with the weather this time than has often been the case (few present will forget the non-stop rain and fetid cold of the June - that's June - 2016 renewal).

To serve as a reminder of the breadth of acts invited to play it, and as a thank you to Kev and Linda, this week's List comprises as many Pop at the Lock performers present and past as possible.  

The aforementioned The School get the A Loved Album treatment for what is still at the time of writing their most recent longplayer; almost four decades' on and off activity by both The Popguns and this year's headliners The Darling Buds is covered by A Session of Sorts and Then and Now respectively; and there's even been an opportunity to give the Francophone feature its first run out for a few weeks courtesy of Feutre.

By way of a finish, there's Meet Mr Marsden - not just my all-time most loved Spearmint track, but alongside Endless Art by A House a dead-heat for my favourite "list" song of them all.  How I'd gone over 260 Lists without including this one at least once before beats me.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 28/06/2026).


THE CORDS - Fabulist (2025) 

MJ HIBBETT & THE VALIDATORS - You’re a Tory Now (2019) 

QUAD 90 - Le Blank (2025) 

MILKY WIMPSHAKE - I Wanna Be Seen in Public with You (1997) 

JETSTREAM PONY - Self-Destruct Reality (2018) 


A LOVED ALBUM: The School - Wasting Away and Wondering (2015)
THE SCHOOL - All I Want From You Is Everything 
THE SCHOOL - Wasting Away and Wondering 
 

THEN AND NOW: The Darling Buds
THE DARLING BUDS - Lost Time (2026) 
THE DARLING BUDS – Spin (1987/1988) 
  


THE JUST JOANS - Johnny, Have You Come Lately? (2017) 

MIKI BERENYI TRIO - Island of One (2026) 

BABY ARMS - A Sign (demo) (2016) 

THE SUNBATHERS - You Love Me Too (2010) 
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

ALL ASHORE! - Radio Sunshine (2020)
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Popguns
THE POPGUNS - Who Never Found Love (2025)
THE POPGUNS - Where Do You Go (1988) 


FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE
FEUTRE - Les regards étrangers (2021) 


SWANSEA SOUND - Rock N Roll Void (2021) 

¡AY CARMELA! - Settle for Less (2016) 

BMX BANDITS - Edelweiss (1993) 


NIKKI & THE WAVES - Online Chess (2022) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
FALLING & LAUGHING - Friday Night at the Festival Disco (2016)
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Saturday, 27 June 2026

LIST 260 – 27/06/2026

Hello again,

Well, that was an awful lot of fun!  I had no idea the Belle and Sebastian/Saint Etienne double header at Halifax's Piece Hall would fall upon Father's Day when I bought the tickets last autumn, but as the perfect finish to that particular day I don't think anything else could have topped it.




(Belle and Sebastian, Piece Hall, Halifax 21/06/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Given the two acts to fit in before the strict 10.30pm local curfew, the "...and other songs" bit after the If You're Feeling Sinister run-through was shorter than it probably has been and will be for most of the rest of this tour, even before factoring in a short pause for a medical emergency also. I was still dead happy with it, though.

With the appreciable caveat of the lack of a full list on setlist.fm against which to check, I can say that unless they played any of them at Scarborough Futurist Theatre just the twenty five years ago this very week (26/06/2001, with me in the same Sarah Records t-shirt as I had on last Sunday), this will have been the first time I'd have seen all of Seeing Other People, Me and the Major, Fox in the Snow, If You're Feeling Sinister, Mayfly and The Boy Done Wrong Again live (as well as later tracks Reclaim the Night, Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Sleep the Clock Around).

Hopefully this link to my recording from the night of Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying will work fine.  My gift to you all. 

No playing of their new World Cup track in the end, much less any mention of football at all other than in its rightful place deep into Another Sunny Day.  No matter; I've taken the liberty of including the similarly new but otherwise far more irreverent World Cup track from Lynks in this week's selection.

As for Saint Etienne, you may recall I'd wondered out loud on here last week as to whether their set would eschew much from last year’s International album and basically be a victory lap of hits. Turns out that's exactly what it was, with only Glad from that long-player making the cut on the night. I don't particularly mind that; heaven knows they've absolutely earned the right.  They did manage a segue into 7 Ways to Love for those who know!

And so to this week's other selections apart from Lynks.  The headline for me, I think, is the return of The Durutti Column.  Note the lack of italics; this isn't an appraisal of the enigmatically titled 1980 debut album by Vini Reilly, but rather an actual return of the Durutti Column. 

Vini's previously prolific nature has been stifled appreciably by his trio of strokes over 2010-11 and resultant difficulties in playing guitar as before, to say nothing of a financial hardship exacerbated by intransigence in the DWP benefits system.  Indeed, Renascent is his first collection of new material since that incapacitation, 2012's Songs for Pauline - the only other "new" release in the interim - actually being an abandoned album from 1983.

Happy to report (is "in spite of those difficulties" too crass to tack on?), the playing on such as lead track Liars is essentially still as agile, translucent, delicate and expertly crafted as ever, though with Vini now 72 years of age and regular drummer (and manager) Bruce Mitchell 86, any drop-off would have been forgivable, in truth.

Wittingly or otherwise, the endorsements in the past year or so from everyone from Dev Hynes to Harry Styles might just have done their bit in helping raise the band's profile again ahead of this return to meaningful action, and BBC Radio 6 Music's Marc Riley reassuringly wasted no time in bigging up Liars upon release.  

Quite what, if anything, lies ahead in terms of accompanying concerts is conjectural given the performers' relative antiquity and (where applicable) health issues, but one can be certain that any venture back into the live circuit wouldn't struggle for ticket sales.

How representative of Vini's body of work my four selections for A Session of Sorts are is for you to scrutinise at leisure, and the dominating, jackhammer electronic percussion of Arpeggiator (from 1987's The Guitar and Other Machines) possibly polarises opinion as much now as ever it did.  Good, let it.  It's a firm favourite of mine, either way.

Elsewhere, the following may or may not count as highlights:
  • The first ever double-decker Then And Now.  With Panda Bear and Sonic Boom continuing their hitherto fruitful partnership with an out of the park knockout of a new drone-pop single which encapsulates so many of their respective strengths, it seemed the perfect opportunity to marry that to a previous highlight each from two performers clearly sharing equal billing.  Angel, in particular, is one I came to a lot later than I might ordinarily have done, its omission from my CD copy of Indie Top 20 Volume VIII owed to the track's near eight-minute length.
  • Other new or recent additions to my listening diet from The Linda Lindas, Grace Ives, Mike D, My Lo-Fi Heart and Otoboke Beaver. 
  • Electro People by Fox, which I briefly considered badging as an Isn't That...? feature.  I think its use as Kenny Everett's theme tune from more or less the time of the single's release is a bit too well known for it to surprise many, though.
  • A few weeks on from including his video cameo for The Loft, some more Stewart Lee, this time the setting to music of his tour de force dismantling of Paul Nuttalls of the UKIPs [SIC] by Asian Dub Foundation.  Can I nominate someone to do the same to his Richard Hammond routine, please?
  • Tracks by To My Boy, Topper and Those Dancing Days which I'd have put money on my having included in a List before now, but evidently hadn't.  The last-named is an especially egregious omission; it should really have gone into my collection of eponymous songs (q.v. List #232), had I had my two braincells in alignment at the time.
  • Following on from last week's bang up to date power pop treat from Wishy, an example of the genre from an altogether different era courtesy of The Raspberries.  Some will know already, of course, that this sexually suggestive 1972 US smash hit was primarily written and sung by future Hungry Eyes performer Eric Carmen, long before his hard rock went soft.  Matron.
J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 22/06/2026).


LYNKS - Kick the Ball (2026) 

THE WEDDING PRESENT - Jet Girl (1995) 

THE LINDA LINDAS - Burning Out (2026) 

FINITRIBE - Ace Love Deuce (Steve Osborne Remix) (1991) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Durutti Column
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Liars (2026)
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Arpeggiator (1987) 
 

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
THE HIDDEN CAMERAS - The International MMA - The Mild Mannered Army (2002) 


GRACE IVES - Stupid Bitches (2026) 

FOX - Electro People (1981) 

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION ft STEWART LEE - Comin’ Over Here (2020) 

DAVID LYNCH – Are You Sure (2013) 


GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ
AIRSTREAM - Airstream (1992) 

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
THE MOTORCYCLE BOY – Big Rock Candy Mountain (1987) 


MIKE D - What We Got (2026) 

THOSE DANCING DAYS - Those Dancing Days (2007) 

THE RASPBERRIES – Go All the Way (1972) 

MY LO-FI HEART - I Know It So Well (2026) 


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Saturday, 20 June 2026

LIST 259 - 20/06/2026

Hello again,

So, for those of you who are following it, how's your World Cup going?

If you're Belle and Sebastian, it's going alright.  Whatever else might come to pass, Scotland's victory over Haiti is likely to prove sufficient to secure a last-32 position on the team's first trip to the Finals in a generation.  Try telling them and hundreds of thousands of Scotland fans that the expansion of the Finals to 48 teams is a detrimental development.

How things go against Morocco (this week's blog will have automatically uploaded literally halfway through that match) might yet just determine whether attendees of this weekend's two runs through the entire If You're Feeling Sinister album, in Dundee's Caird Hall and Halifax's Piece Hall, find the band cautiously optimistic, very happy or delirious.  As Linda and I will be at the latter, I'll let you know next time.

In the circumstances, it seemed only right and proper to open (kick off?) this week's List with Belle and Sebastian's own brand new contribution to the football song genre.  

It's a characteristically delightful, nostalgic, self-effacing and amusing rumination on most of a lifetime spent watching the national team try and fail, on not being the kids who'd get Scotland back on the world stage as they thought they would, and so on.

It also rehabilitates the band's relationship with football, in so far as they have presented it on record, anyway.  No referee giving them nothing as in Another Sunny Day.  No protagonist not wanting to take orders from a moron as in I Don't Want to Play Football.  Just an expression of the joy (and anguish) of the game, for the joy of the game's sake, evidently free of cynicism.

The Halifax gig (and indeed certain others on this tour) isn't just about a welcome opportunity to see the headliners once more, however.  From a gig-going perspective, at least, it'll afford me the chance to pay a fond farewell to the soon to retire Saint Etienne, the Sheffield leg of their valedictory autumn tour having sold out whilst I was still lacing up my proverbial boots.


(Saint Etienne (yes, they're in that first photo somewhere) - Indietracks Festival, 30/07/2016.  Pictures are author's own)


Quite the right moment to give Sarah, Pete and Bob the A Session of Sorts treatment, therefore, albeit finding a representative - but none too obvious - sample from their 36-year body of work minus the sixteen tracks already featured in previous Lists took a bit of work.  

I was certain that something from the final International album needed to be included for completeness sake, and it's just a lovely bonus that my choice, a collaboration with the excellent Confidence Man, is accompanied by a jolly Scooby Doo-aping animated promo replete with surprise cameos.   

I must admit to a little trepidation beforehand upon learning just how stacked with collaborations International was, with Orbital, Erol Alkan, Nick Heyward (a busier man himself just now, of course, with Haircut 100 newly reactivated), Vince Clarke and The Chemical Brothers all contributing.  Happy to report, it's still intrinsically a Saint Etienne album, rather than sketches of their ideas buried too far under other people's arrangements.  

How much of it is getting an airing during the current tour dates is an interesting question, with, one would suspect, a quorum of attendees hoping more for some sort of victory lap set rather than too many deep cuts.  I could answer that question myself with a quick check on setlist.fm, but where's the fun in that?

Many other nice things in this week's List, of course, of which a few to note include:
  • Another Forgotten 80s selection in the shape of Wexford-via-New-York singer-songwriter Pierce Turner.  Debut solo album It's Only A Long Way Across, from which Orange Coloured Sun is taken, was produced by no less a figure than experimental composer Philip Glass - perhaps the driving influence behind some of the sonic trickery in the choruses here?  
Fellow listeners to Piccadilly Radio in the 1980s may remember Orange Coloured Sun being routinely rechristened Orange Coloured Socks by Tony "The Greek" Michaelides, whenever played on his visionary new music strand The Last Radio Programme.  Such was his sense of humour: the late Stu Allan's hip-hop show Bus 'Diss would similarly always be retitled Bus Pass.  

A wildly successful promotions executive, as well as a highly gifted broadcaster and public speaker over the decades, I will never not have Tony to thank for many mid-1980s discoveries that I still hold dear today - The Desert Wolves, Mirrors Over Kiev, Old Ma Cuxsom & the Soapchoppers, and so on.  You didn't get those on Simon Bates back then.

  • Then and Now treatment for Peaches, the Canadian doyenne of explicit, gender-prodding electroclash and no less arresting a presence over three decades into her career.
  • Other new or recent stuff from Wishy, Souad Massi, Rowena Wise and Man/Woman/Chainsaw.  If there is a better power-pop moment this year than Lovesick, the lead track from the first-named's second longplayer slated for later this summer, I'll be more than a little surprised.  It's genuinely, genuinely that good, and set to dominate my mental jukebox for the foreseeable. 
  • Having reminded myself of his comparably opulent baroque pop in last week's brief piece on Haute & Freddy, another chance to enjoy some prime Owen Pallett.
  • The Pere Ubu track mentioned en passant in my Eurovision 2026 review (trust me, it made sense at the time).
  • To finish, The Long Goodbye features by no means the only qualifier for this feature from Leicester's favourite identical twin filmmakers and spacerockers Matt and JJ Kerry (along with that city's go-to bassist nonpareil Gary Gilchrist), trading as The Freed Unit.  This won't be all you see and hear from its parent album in the coming weeks, either.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 18/06/2026).



BELLE AND SEBASTIAN - It Only Takes One Lion (2026) 

THE SHANGRI-LAS - Footsteps on the Roof (1967) 

MAX TUNDRA - The Gradual Disappearance From Food Packaging Of The Lettres Ornées Typeface Since The Nineteen Sixties (2000) 

THE MIDDLE ONES – Y.A.W. (2011/2015) 
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

CODY - Dovetails (1997) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: Saint Etienne
SAINT ETIENNE X CONFIDENCE MAN - Brand New Me (2025)
SAINT ETIENNE - Side Streets (2005) 
 

EUROTASTIC
RAINBIRDS - Blueprint (1987) 


SOUAD MASSI - Ana Inssan (2026) 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - Glider (7” version) (1990) 

OWEN PALLETT - Lewis Takes Action (2010) 

ROWENA WISE - Blood Ties (2026) 

HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT – Bad Review (1997) 


THEN AND NOW: Peaches
PEACHES - Whatcha Gonna Do About It (2026)
PEACHES - I U She (2003) 
  

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
SHRAG - Unseasonal Thoughts (2012) 


(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

MYSTERY JETS - Two Doors Down (2008) 


RAPPING SONGS
LL COOL J – Mama Said Knock You Out (1990) 

THE LONG GOODBYE
THE FREED UNIT - Yr Sister is a Junkie (1996) 

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Saturday, 13 June 2026

LIST 258 - 13/06/2026

Hello again,

It's a pleasure to be with you once more today, and a grateful thanks is extended to you all for dropping in for last weekend's Feature Fest #2 (List #258), which has followed its predecessor in being one of the most viewed pieces I've put together since reactivating the blog.  

I think there's probably mileage in doing these three or four times a year, at appropriately spaced intervals.  Let's see what the autumn brings in that regard, eh.

By the way, bringing forward the A Loved Album treatment of Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld to last week has not proven to be a mistake per se (how could it be regarded as such?); but having been reminded that Cardiacs' Sing to God turned 30 years of age on this Thursday just gone (the 11th), I wonder whether I should have done that one this week and held out for a bit longer with the solo project after all!  

It's probably not giving anything much away to confirm Smith's absolute magnum opus was always going to be covered as A Loved Album at some point; astonishingly, of 16 appearances of Cardiacs in this blog's entire lifespan, just two selections have ever been taken from Sing to God, and neither of them its most revered track of all.  

For the time being instead, it's a trip back to 1989, and four tracks from Kite, the astonishing second album from the late and much-missed Kirsty MacColl.  

A greater sufferer by turns of record company interference, indifference or intransigence than most, Kirsty had to wait eight years between albums one and two (the next two would follow in little over four years, albeit even then for two different labels, one of whom could hardly have promoted their artist less).  

That alone could have helped fuel the mood so palpably evident in Kite, fundamentally a more angry, determined and strident record than its Kinks-covering breakout single might have led casual listeners to assume.

Angry, that is, but never screaming, as that was never Kirsty's wont.  It's hard for me to recall another performer so capable of conveying so many emotions in just the one broadly consistent deadpan delivery.  Kite's lead single, not actually the cover of Days but the self-penned Free World, would have been artlessly, over-aggressively spat out by less disciplined practitioners, whereas Kirsty's straight bat voice (and, for the greater part, straight face in the accompanying promo) handled the coruscating attack on the greediest and most unscrupulous amid the political classes most adroitly.

Disappointment, pity, boiling fury, wry amusement (and Kirsty was always far from humourless - everything from There's A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop... to In These Shoes? via the television appearances with French & Saunders and Raw Sex tell you that much), despair, feistiness.  Kite runs the gamut of these and more, with not the faintest recourse to jarring vocal cosplay.

Nobody's fool, but on occasion up to that point marginalised as if regarded as one, Kite stands as a vital, defiant piece of work and significant personal accomplishment by Kirsty MacColl.  I need hardly add that there is not a single track on it that she ought to be remembered for less than That Duet That's Out Every Xmas.

1980s contemporaries of Kirsty, if perhaps not all that frequent sharers of a stage given their respective distinct musical orbits, Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur remain pleasingly prolific into their dotage (genuinely: look at how many new Blancmange albums have seen the light of day in the past 15 years).

I wouldn't know whether Vince still harbours hopes of laying to rest one of pop music's longest standing hoodoos and finally write and perform a number one British hit single (Only You having reached the top as a cover, of course, and Vince having reached the summit in person performing an EP of ABBA covers), though he won't be doing that with the debut eponymous album of Clarke/Arthur/Benge analogue synth supergroup Doublespeak, consisting as it does entirely of covers.

It's still a fascinating artefact, the temptation simply to reinterpret the work of their familiar charting peers among the UK synthpop landscape eschewed pretty much entirely in favour of covers ranging from Fad Gadget to Laptop via Young Marble Giants and The Magnetic Fields.

Doublespeak the album is respectful, inquisitive, bright-eyed, open-hearted, true unto itself (Neil's voice seems to become more determinedly authentically Lancastrian with each passing year) and playful enough to whack in a David Essex number, because why not.  I've plumped for the trio's interpretation of the title track from ABBA's The Visitors, at least in part for its chilling resonance even today.

Much else besides these, naturally, and you may particularly like:
  • A personal highlight from the first Alvvays album, which I've somehow managed to overlook including on here until now.  Remind me, fellow Sheffield indiepop travelers - was it Molly Rankin of Alvvays or Tanya Donelly of Belly whom we had to spend part of a Leadmill gig convincing that Glossop wasn't a made-up town name?  I'm not sure whether we succeeded.  
    
(Yes, visiting international pop stars, Glossop is indeed a thing.  Here is YJ06 FXP, a 2006 Optare Solo M850 integral low-floor minibus, pictured in Glossop town centre on 26/08/2016 whilst working for Centrebus's High Peak operation.  Picture is author's own)

  • Further new or at least halfway recent stuff from Genesis Owusu, Tamikrest, Faith Eliott, Sulk Rooms and Pink Breath of Heaven.  The last-named, essentially the San Franciscan-based treat you can enjoy between My Bloody Valentine albums, were in fine form in Todmorden two nights back. 
Sulk Rooms, actually based in West Yorkshire rather than passing through it, may be seen to occupy broadly similar immersive electronic territory to those other present-day List favourites Craven Faults, though I appreciate I run the risk of doing either or both splendid projects a disservice.  A Hidden Life's parent album Songs Of Soil promises musical ruminations on the vastness of the Yorkshire landscape.  It delivers. 
  • One additional newish track that, among the many fabulous new discoveries I owe to listening to Joel Rigler and Steve Vickers' peerless Saturday afternoon Sheffield Live radio show The Breakdown, I've fallen for particularly hard in recent weeks.  Sweetly, simply put, Remember Monday might actually have gone a lot closer to winning Eurovision last year had they pulled off what Symphony for a Queen by Haute & Freddy does far more skillfully.  
I do like opulence in pop, though the tendency to throw too many flourishes and adornments into the mix to the detriment of the greater whole is always a risk.  Owen Pallett got the balance so right over a decade ago.  Army Of Lovers always did, too (and Massive Luxury Overdose as an album title left little to the imagination either).  Add Haute & Freddy to that list.  There's a lot going on; but whilst some of the most obvious theatrical 1980s acts have been cited as touchstones, might one suggest also some trace elements of It's My Party era Stewart & Gaskin, or even Hazel O'Connor?  
  • Not the last-named Coventry punk actress and performer, but rather an Australian Franciscan missionary namesake.  The early-1970s albums of Sister Irene O'Connor, subject of a long-overdue reissue late last year, are genuinely extraordinary - amalgams of (highly) devout and contemporary synth/acoustic guitar/primitive drum machine-driven folk tracks played in full by Sister Irene and devoid of any other involvement save for fellow Sister Marimil Lobregat's rudimentary production and engineering.  
You may have heard Fire (Luke 12:49) soundtracking Villanelle's baptism late in the run of Killing Eve.  However, you will definitely have heard its influence in plenty else before or since, perhaps nowhere more since TML returned than in the Katie Alice Greer track shared in List #241.
  • Finally, a Long Goodbye from Cornershop, and a further failure to rack my brains successfully in compiling this week's write-up.  I know that I saw Tjinder and company play the rump of Woman's Gotta Have It (still my favourite Cornershop album) live, concluding with an utterly mesmeric and even longer version of 7.20am Jullander Shere than the one shared here, whilst living in Germany.  I know I usually write down the details of every gig I go to in minute detail, too.  
Did I do so on that occasion, however?  Did I fudge.  I blame the quantities of ebbelwei in my bloodstream that year.  It must have been during the winter of 1995-6, and the chances are it was at the Kulturzentrum KFZ in Marburg, as many such British bands of the time played there.  Setlist.fm draws a blank, however, and the accursed Gemini's attempts at gaslighting me into believing the gig date was April 6th (when it was Stereolab that night) are just reminder enough again of the perils of entrusting these factual recollection requests to AI.  I don't suppose any of you out there were at the gig?

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 11/06/2026).


POINTER SISTERS - Pinball Number Count (DJ Food Re-Edit) (2003) 

GENESIS OWUSU - Life Keeps Going (2026) 

APHEX TWIN – Ptolemy (19nn/1992) 

CSS – Alcohol (2006) 


A LOVED ALBUM: Kirsty MacColl - Kite (1989)
KIRSTY MacCOLL – Free World (1989) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
ENDERBY’S ROOM – My Old Friend (2013) 


THE PASTELS - Nothing to be Done (1989) 

DOUBLESPEAK - The Visitors (2026) 

ALVVAYS – Party Police (2014) 

SISTER IRENE O’CONNOR – Fire (Luke 12:49) (1973) 

TAMIKREST - Imanin (2026) 


DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES
*READYMADE* - Ninos (1990) 

A LOVED ALBUM: Kirsty MacColl - Kite (1989)
KIRSTY MacCOLL – What Do Pretty Girls Do? (1989) 


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