That Music List: LIST 256

Hello again,

...And if this week's opening track doesn't have some of you of a certain age running away screaming (#iykyk), then you're all very welcome to another lovingly compiled virtual rummage through my music collection and recent discoveries.

A novelty this time around is the appearance of the same feature twice over, something which hasn't happened before now and, with 25 different features vying for my attention each List, isn't something I actively set out to do (albeit Feature Fest #2 next week will give most of them an outing anyway).

These are unique circumstances, however. May 2021 saw me launch my short-lived Twitter feed Straight in At... which, as regular viewers may remember, saw me review every new entry in the official singles chart for that day's date in a given year in the past.

Except, with me being eager to please and wanting to launch the feed with a bang, I ended up reviewing May 30th for both 1982 and 1999. Given the number of songs which that entailed, you can be certain that this was all I did that particular day!

As part of my ongoing attempts to move all of my previous music-oriented copy into the one place (wheresoever I can remember where I put it), all of the reviews for those two May 30ths have been given their own entry on this blog now - just click on the year links above.

It won't happen too often that I'll have previous Straight in At... copy which lands on a That Music List publication date - there are a maximum of four more such instances this calendar year - but wherever I can resurface stuff for people even more determined than me to eschew Twitter for all of the reasons anyone would want to nowadays, I shall try to do that.

From those two dates, I have added a few personal highlights in this week's List proper.

The 1982 choices serve as a reminder that The Cars were so much more than the globe-munching soft rock hit which followed a couple of years over, and also give us a minute or two to consider one of Britain's first genuine South Indian origin crossover stars in Sheila Chandra of Monsoon. Hers is a story of resilience in the face of horrible odds in most recent times, reinventing herself as a writer, mentor and coach after a debilitating and permanent onset of burning mouth syndrome killed her singing career stone dead and rendered speech of any sort nigh on impossible.

My selections from the May 30th 1999 assortment could have been full of Britpop era players continuing to rage against the dying of the light with varying degrees of success, but with 25 entries all told that week it wasn't hard to find alternatives I enjoyed more.

Hence some prime drum and bass from Jonny L; one of countless Underworld tracks I prefer to Born Slippy; another reminder of the gifts of the much-missed Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne; and a track from Doves which in my humble opinion they've never come close to bettering in a further 27 years' trying.

The last-named was on the in-store CD player (remember them?) when I popped into my then still-regular haunt Piccadilly Records to raid the 7" racks as usual, and it absolutely filled the room - the harmonica, six-eight time, samples, dubby outro, all of it.

Along with the very different Pop album by Gas (which I'll certainly be revisiting in these pages again before long), Sea Song sticks in my memory as something I never knew I was going to buy from Piccadilly until the day they hit me with it on entering the store. Serendipitous discoveries indeed.

You might also like:

recent output from all of Kneecap, Lucia & the Best Boys, Lime Garden, Gelli Haha and Jesca Hoop. The first-named had me the second the sample of squelchy late-2000s instrumental Fot I Hose by Casiokids first kicked in - well done, gents. As regards the latter, is it really just weeks away from fifteen years since I saw Jesca delivering a sterling support slot to Eels in Leeds? (Yes, Jeremy, because that's how time works).

Guapo in pre-Kavus Torabi days, with a jackhammer of a track from their Towers Open Fire longplayer.

Skyscraper, far from the only industrial act to enjoy a degree of coverage during the Mark Goodier era of the Evening Session (see also: KMFDM, Parallax, etc.) that simply none of them were accorded once he'd left the show.

to finish, one of the defining statements of the Neue Deutsche Welle, as issued by Joachim Witt. I speak with little to no expertise on the matter, but my perception of the NDW is that it never went for the same scorched earth policy of some other music movements home and abroad (punk for one). Hence its embracing of already established performers such as Nina Hagen and Witt himself. Hence, also, something as motorik and repetitive as Herbergsvater, to my thinking as informed by Krautrock as any subsequent genre. The long version of the video is included for 80s arcade fans - feel free to critique Joachim's gameplaying strategy on Defender...

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 22/05/2026).

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Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.