That Music List: LIST 257 - 06/06/2026 (Feature Fest #2)

(The Garlands - The Red House, Sheffield 01/08/2011. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

Three months and twelve Lists on from the first Feature Fest, here's a sequel.

As you'll recall, the original Fest in List #245 attempted to include as many of this blog's 25 different regular features as running time would permit, and broadly succeeded. Although I've managed to squeeze in just 18 this time compared to 20 last, it still means that every feature has had at least one run out inside the last three weeks, which is job done as far as I'm concerned.

There is also an element of responding to demand here, believe it or not, as the first Fest has returned the third highest number of hits of anything I've put up since reactivating the blog, and the second highest of any List (the Eurovision 2026 piece is second highest overall). I'm not entirely sure why that should be. Perhaps I just chose unusually well that week?

Either way, such is the age profile of most of the stuff which gets included in the features that brand new tracks are thinner on the ground than usual (as per List #245 also), with the glorious exception of something out only this week from the very much back in action Patrick Wolf.

Absent for large chunks of the preceding decade plus due to various vicissitudes of life - burnout, being hit by a motorist, family illness, financial problems, etc. - a clutch of EPs and last year's cathartic, satisfyingly complex baroque pop treat Crying The Neck (his first long-player of totally new music since 2011) confirmed that the heart, and indeed the art, is still willing.

Fast forward to June 2026, and the forthcoming premiere of Wolf, a sensitive, moving yet unflinching biopic expertly narrated by Patrick's longstanding friend Tilda Swinton. It's set to be shown twice during Sheffield DocFest in the coming week, once each on Thursday 11th and Saturday 13th - assuming this advice doesn't come too late, ticket details can be found here.

The Beast isn't being billed as a single to promote the biopic, if the blurb on Patrick's YouTube feed is any guide, but rather as one side of a standalone 7" released this week on his own Apport imprint ahead of an American tour. Either way, it's a joy to include it, plus one dip into the past, here. And a joy of course to welcome him back generally.

It would be a joy, of course, to be able to welcome back the late lamented Tim Smith in person also, but the activity of the born-again Cardiacs and associated offshoots in the past couple of years in particular have well and truly done the next best thing. Until even recently, who of you would have had them turning out at Primavera Sound this week just gone on your bingo cards? Be honest.

There's not been any new product release as such to mark the Barcelona jaunt (dare we hope for a DVD of one of this winter's concerts back home?), but a message on The Consultant's Memorabilia Collection website alerted me to the news of a digifile reissue and light-touch remastering of Tim's one solo album, Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld. This was on the list to cover in A Loved Album sooner rather than later anyway, but in light of the week's developments this seems as perfect a time as any.

I can't think of any other album in my collection that exceeds its modest brief so emphatically. OceanLandWorld, very simply, is miles better than it actually needed to be.

Recorded between 1989 and 1991 - "by way of penance", to quote from a typically autocratic contemporaneous statement from Cardiacs' shadowy puppet-masters The Alphabet Business Concern - my understanding has always been that OceanLandWorld was intended solely to serve as something, anything, for Cardiacs (or Panixphere, or solo Tim) to sell at gigs whilst they were on their financial uppers.

The early 1990s were often brutal for Cardiacs in general and Tim Smith in particular. Rough Trade's collapse took down the distribution of their 1992 album Heaven Born And Every Bright with it, rendering it largely unbuyable for the thick end of three years after and leaving its main players sharply out of pocket.

Production engagements, from Eat to Sidi Bou Said, would at least have helped keep the wolf from the door up to a point, and in the case of the latter act initiated a fruitful symbiotic relationship which would later on see Claire Lemmon and Melanie Woods become quasi members of Cardiacs, and not insignificant ones at that - Claire's unmistakable trills really helped make Sing to God favourites such as Dog Like Sparky and the immortal Dirty Boy.

At some point against this backdrop OceanLandWorld first saw the light of day. It's far less noisy than the rocky, power quartet Cardiacs were in the process of evolving into, and not necessarily just because of its largely bedroom recording origins.

To me the overriding vision is less any sort of "Ocean" concept that the album's title may have implied (fewer than half of its ten tracks are especially aquatically themed), and more one of creating a suite of inventive and eccentric, yet thoroughly accessible and coherent, charming English art-pop (and you can be assured Tim regarded it as pop, as he genuinely did all of his output, even the more abstruse examples). There's not a throwaway doodle of a track to be found anywhere; Tim's commitment to the craft, even within the self-imposed strictures of this project, was absolute.

Although live performances of any of OceanLandWorld's contents are few and far between, certain tracks, notably the relatively tender ballad Savour (beautifully covered by former Cardiac William D Drake in the Leader of the Starry Skies benefit album in 2010), have subsequently become firm favourites among many fans of the Smith canon taken as a whole.

I for one would be very happy indeed were present-day Cardiacs ever minded to have a stab at Ocean Heaven live one day, assuming Jim can reproduce Tim's lithe, rubbery bassline. He can be sure Tim would be goading him from the beyond if he buggered it up.

Among the other features this week, you may or may not also particularly enjoy:

Les Rita Mitsouko. Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking.

The involvement of krautrock/kosmische godhead Conny Plank as producer perhaps makes a bit more sense when considering his first job was as a soundman for Marlene Dietrich. Perhaps he saw something similar in Catherine Ringer's presence, voice or both. No more than a guess.

My favourite track from the whole of 2015. As I'm sure I've probably suggested when discussing Mbongwana Star beforehand, think PIL's Metal Box as if it had been independently conceived and created in Kinshasa rather than London. Eleven years on, one assumes prospects of a follow-up are fading, sadly?

Three more nuggets of janglepop perfection from across the eras. I only need to mention The Garlands by name to any of my Sheffield indiepop-loving contemporaries for us all to go misty eyed and coo over a certain special Monday evening at The Red House in summer 2011. All of us in various states of self-inflicted misrepair following another outstanding Indietracks weekend, and then another gig the very next evening after... we couldn't possibly summon up the enthusiasm or stamina again already, could we? Well.

DJ Carl Cox with one of my very, very favourite tracks of any genre from 1992. Restless and labyrinthine, yet still a cohesive and fluent piece of work (especially compared to contemporaneous tracks from the likes of, say, Altern8, where you could really spot the joins), Does It Feel Good To You felt, and still feels, like a buffet of all of the things I'd really enjoyed in house, techno and acid up to that point.

Having to fight for space and attention at the same time as 'ardcore dance and cartoon techno were at their commercial apexes, its peaking at an undeservedly low 35 in the official singles chart was perhaps inevitable. For me, however, it's aged better than almost anything else of its kind from the era.

Incidentally, I was this many years, months and days old when I learned Carl was, like me, born in Oldham, though he is of course associated with other parts of the country, and indeed world, rather more.

almost certainly the first appearance of an Estonian performer on That Music List outside of a Eurovision context, in the shape of Velly Joonas, poet, painter and to all intents and purposes the godmother of Estonian soul.

A complete reworking of I See Red by Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Stopp, seisku aeg! features Velly's own lyrics on the vapidity of wealth and possessions, and an irresistible call and respond motif between a scraped violin and bubbly organ throughout which you'll be hearing in your sleep for days after.

Piccadilly Records in Manchester alighted upon the 7" reissue of this utter gem on Estonian crate-digging imprint Frotee in 2015; I'll be forever grateful that they did.

an instrumental from eventual Sarah Records and Vinyl Japan favourites St Christopher, as taken from their 1993 Dig Deep, Brother compilation. And for that release, dig deep they did, Rollercoaster being one of a number of hitherto unreleased gems on that compilation and played - to these ears, at least - primarily on a big theatre organ.

Would that have informed the song title, I wonder; did they record it in, or were inspired by, somewhere in Blackpool such as the Tower Ballroom? If memory serves the compilation's sleeve notes were noncommittal in that regard.

another instance of a Straight In At... date which has already been covered once before on my now mothballed Twitter feed of that name. Enjoy three selections (two of them Eurovision-oriented, for those of you which withdrawal symptoms) from the official singles chart of this date in 2010, or take a look at the singles reviews I wrote back then in full, also newly reproduced on this blog.

an attempt at either an unofficial theme tune for, or else an open love letter to, the Indietracks festival from Lisa Bouvier, performer there in 2014 both as a soloist and as the singer of the reactivated Flatmates. Every Year Until We Die sadly proved inaccurate, all of us having outlived this most perfect of indiepop events for five years and counting now...

J xx

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