LIST 272 – 19/09/2026

(Coup Dur - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This week's List was always going to have a Francophone start to it, just not the one I was anticipating, following news of the sad passing of Catherine Ringer a few days back.  Reports generally indicate that she was taken quickly by an aggressive cancer at 68, which is no age.  

Tributes have been generous and in no short supply, not least from Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, periodic collaborators with either Catherine solo (as recently as 2022) or with her and the late Fred Chichin's pioneering pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko.  "Artiste incomparable, amie incomparable. Catherine, tu nous manqueras. Bisous de tes amis Russell et Ron", they write.  Nous aussi.

In including Marcia Baïla in List #257 (q.v.), I wrote, "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".  

Amid all of the musical inventiveness, that force of nature voice was always front and centre.  Powerful, characterful, emotive.  Again, as I mused earlier in the year, perhaps the duo's first producer Conny Plank saw something of the Dietrich about Catherine, harking back to his own formative years as the diva's soundman.  

Needless to say, a tribute to Catherine will appear on these pages at some point in the coming weeks.

And what of the French (and Belgians) I was expecting to write about first this week?  Those of us who say yeah to a bit of yé-yé duly filled our boots in Sheffield last Friday, enjoying what was just the second ever British gig for Coup Dur.  

Theirs is very much not a mere pastiche of that sixties sound, however.  Smart, confident, melodic, witty, and inflected with more contemporary indiepop touches on occasion.  It's additionally to the late 1970s they turned for cover versions rather than earlier, giving buoyant renditions of both Devo's Uncontrollable Urge (another originally Conny Plank-produced track mentioned this week, coincidence fans) and Part Time Punks by Television Personalities.

Coup Dur's debut 10" released in May was cheekily entitled The English Want... Coup Dur, and tonight they very definitely did.

Big thanks as always to Elodie, Chris and Madeline for putting on such splendid entertainment, and to Nick Godfrey of Precious Recordings for putting out the headliners' stuff and encouraging them over here in the first place.  Given Nick's and my shared background of sometimes working for the Racing Post, I did wonder whether he might have fancied paring a trip up to see Coup Dur with one to the St Leger at Doncaster the day after.  He'd have seen history being made, too.  Either way, I still owe you a pint from Indietracks 2019, kind sir.  

***

(Precious Metals - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Coup Dur's support act belatedly brings us on to the selections for this week's List.  The festive costumes from the last time I'd seen Precious Metals five days before Xmas were inevitably missing, but all of the wide-eyed vim of their repertoire was still present and correct - and indeed landed with me even better this time, thanks in part to Mary Street Live's clearer PA system and acoustics.  

This was a great run through tracks old and new, from those whose jangles and dual female harmonies brought to mind Talulah Gosh to the more crunching tones and riffs of recent track Pigeon, included this week.  

It was also grand to witness the deployment of an Omnichord on stage, almost certainly the first I've seen since Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society accompanied himself entirely on one for an Indietracks tent session back in 2015.  More Omnichords in pop, please.  They're quirky and fun.

(Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society at the Omnichord - Indietracks festival, 25/07/2015.  Pictures is author's own)

In addition to helping putting on the bands, Madeline went the extra yard and supplied a tremendous (mostly) Francophone pop playlist on Spotify by way of further recommended listening.  I'm certainly gorging myself on it at the moment.

One of just two tracks on there that I'd had earmarked to appear in the Fabriqué en France feature on That Music List before long anyway, Main dans la main is top-notch electropop fun from Elli et Jacno, mainstays of seminal French punk band The Stinky Toys previously. 

Jacno, or Denis Quilliard to his mum, also released a smattering of tremendous instrumental albums, some not entirely dissimilar to this single but rawer in execution and on occasion veering into similar territory to earlyish Durutti Column.  They're well worth your time also.

Fun fact #1.  A dedicated smoker, Denis's stagename of Jacno was taken from the graphic artist who drew the Gallic helmet logo of Gauloises cigarettes.

***

Of all of the new or recent tracks included this week, I don't think any are newer or more recent than The Rabbit, the a-side of a single released last Friday which signifies the return of Nat Johnson & The Figureheads.  

There's not been much recorded output from Nat since her relocation to the north east a while back, and the logistics of members spread far and wide are, by her own admission, likely to put paid to any hopes of full band gigs in support of these new tracks.  

Even so, it's a joy to have Nat back, that clear voice and impeccable songcraft all as present and correct as before; and I'll never not be kindly disposed towards Nat's work following her temporarily reassembled Monkey Swallows The Universe's delivering of one of the single most poignant sets I ever saw.

(Nat Johnson pictured during the last ever Monkey Swallows the Universe performance - Indietracks festival, 30/07/2017.  Picture is author's own)

Indietracks, 2017. Already known in advance to be the final final MSTU gig - no further reunions thereafter. Emotional enough already, but their playing a cover of a song by Slow Down Tallahassee, in memory of that band's late and much missed Claire Turley, had the Sheffield indiepop contingent in the crowd in tears. Claire's widower Ian was present among them. Heart-rending scenes and a generous tribute from and to equally generous performers.

Fun fact #2.  One thing connecting the Figureheads and the subsequent choice on the List from early-1980s post-punks I'm So Hollow is that they each feature a former Sheffield University Library colleague of mine, Chris Loftus and Jane Antcliff respectively.  There are more besides them still working here whilst also recording and playing.  It's going to get to the stage that I'm going to need to embark on a however short lived music career before I retire, just so as not to let the side down.  I play a mean comb and paper.

You may also like:

• New or recent stuff from Inspiral Carpets (now numbering Clint Boon's own son among their ranks - no, you're old...), Ex:Re, Spratleys, No Peeling, The Flying Hats, Water Machine and Nicole Atkins.

• Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip with my favourite song of the whole of 2007, and just the latest track I'm astonished I never included on here back in the day - all the more so considering I'd plundered plenty else from the Angles parent album.  I hope Scroobius Pip aka David Mead's subsequent switch to acting has been proving a sufficiently fulfilling career move for him; I understand he appears in the current Young Sherlock reboot.

• Some selections from the 2009 eponymous longplayer by Fever Ray, this week's A Loved Album.  Karin Dreijer's first solo release away from The Knife, albeit with their brother Olof still guesting, Fever Ray was and remains an entirely distinct musical proposition from the likes of the parent group's Silent Shout.  A far more stark, dry, bare, serious, minimal, strange and nightmarish music, the live shows at such as Coachella in 2010 in support of Fever Ray - dark stage with intermittently flickering lampshades, performers in shapeless robes with face masks and Morlock-style wigs, etc. - encapsulated the disquieting, unsettling sense of the music perfectly.  As with This is the Day... last week, it's been no struggle to find four highlights to share, despite having mined some of the singles in pre-hiatus Lists previously.

• Repaying the favour of the Beck remix of an Air track back in List #246, here's a no less splendid Stuart Price (aka Les Rythmes Digitales) remix of one of Beck's.  If I'd remembered about this in good enough time, I could have included it among the Session of Sorts choices for Beck in List #255, but I'm far from unhappy with my actual selections, so no harm done.

• My personal favourite from the long and extensive catalogue of John Watts' enduring New Wave and rock act Fischer-Z, as well as the nearest thing to a breakthrough UK hit for an act with deeper and more sustained success in mainland Europe.  Watching one of those retrospective interview things on YouTube not too long ago, it was amusing to hear Watts suggest that he was having an unofficial competition at the time with the likes of Sting as to who had the most preposterous voice.  You decide.  Fischer-Z's second album, Going Deaf for a Living, gave its name to the memoir of Steve Lamacq, but we shall speak no more about that.

• A 1989 hit by Cookie Crew that's actually even cooler than I realised at the time, its release having predated my eventual discovery of Kraftwerk's Numbers upon which it is primarily founded.  In the first instance, this then fourteen-year-old simpleton just enjoyed that it sounded like a wet armpit.

• In a crowded field, possibly my favourite Gnac track of the lot.  Almost ten minutes long, and still doesn't outstay its welcome by even a single second.  Graceful, steady beauty.

J xx



Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 17/09/2026).
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Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2007
DAN LE SAC VS SCROOBIUS PIP - Thou Shalt Always Kill (2007) 

NAT JOHNSON & THE FIGUREHEADS - The Rabbit (2026) 

I’M SO HOLLOW – Dreams to Fill the Vacuum (1980) 

BECK - Mixed Bizness (Nu Wave Dreamix by Les Rythmes Digitales) (2000) 

THE FLYING HATS - The Blender (2025) 

A LOVED ALBUM: Fever Ray - Fever Ray (2009)
FEVER RAY - When I Grow Up
FEVER RAY - Keep the Streets Empty for Me 

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
RHYTHM DEVICE - Acid Rock (1989) 

PRECIOUS METALS - Pigeon (2026) 

FISCHER Z - The Worker (1979) 

EX:RE - Radio Station (2026) 

PENGUIN CAFÉ – Pythagoras on the Line Again (2019) 

RAPPING SONGS
THE COOKIE CREW - Got to Keep On (1989) 

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
WATER MACHINE - Tiffany (2025)
MARINE GIRLS - Honey (1981)
TREMBLING BLUE STARS - You’ve Done Nothing Wrong Really (1998) 

INSPIRAL CARPETS - Touching from a Distance Too Far (2026) 

THE MUFFS - Agony (1995) 

SPRATLEYS - Ripe (2026)

(No video - please click on this Bandcamp link)

IBON ERRAZKIN - I Come and Stand at Every Door (2003) 

A LOVED ALBUM: Fever Ray - Fever Ray (2009)
FEVER RAY - Concrete Walls
FEVER RAY - I’m Not Done 

FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE
ELLI ET JACNO - Main dans la main (1980) 

NICOLE ATKINS - Trippin’ on Teardrops (2026) 

FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON - Vertical Pig (1994) 

NO PEELING - Stationery (2026) 

CONNAN MOCKASIN – Please Turn Me Into The Snat (2010) 

IN LOVING MEMORY: Gazza Johnson
CHINA CRISIS - Hanna Hanna (1983) 

THE LONG GOODBYE
GNAC - Stepping Aside (1999)