14th November - Jarvis Cocker's The Jarvis Cocker Record

Artist – Album: Jarvis Cocker – The Jarvis Cocker Record

Released: 14^th November 2006

Sounds Like: He’s so proud of it, he put his name on it

It took Jarvis Cocker such a long time to become a rock star that, by the time he’d done the inevitable and struck out solo without the aid of the rest of Pulp, he was already in his mid-forties. As a consequence, The Jarvis Cocker Record (or Jarvis as it’s also known) lacks some of the vim and vitality of his earlier records. What is not missing, though, is his trademark wit, and it seems that his deep distaste for a whole host of modern day happenings has only festered with age.

Cocker has arguably never sounded as straight pissed off as he does on the exquisitely blunt ‘Running the World’ (Cocker has a name for the people that are still running the world, but it’s a dirty word that rhymes with shunt and I’m not going to use it in case my Mum reads this post…). ‘I Will Kill Again’ is as darkly menacing as Pulp’s ‘I Spy’ and ‘Fat Children’ is almost comical with its tale of death by obese ASBO-collectors.

The music has mellowed a little – as much as the ‘Crimson and Clover’-sampling ‘Black Magic’ rocks, it never threatens to do so particularly hard – and Cocker has lost the occasional tick and hiccup which used to litter his delivery, but as a whole The Jarvis Cocker Record still finds the man in impeccably good form.

Albumaday... rating: 7/10

1.       The Loss Adjuster (Excerpt 1) – 0:29

2.       Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time – 4:09

3.       Black Magic – 4:21

4.       Heavy Weather – 3:49

5.       I Will Kill Again – 3:45

6.       Baby’s Coming Back to Me – 4:09

7.       Fat Children – 3:23

8.       From Auschwitz to Ipswich – 3:49

9.       Disney Time – 3:04

10.   Tonite – 3:56

11.   Big Julie – 4:41

12.   The Loss Adjuster (Excerpt 2) – 0:29

13.   Quantum Theory – 4:40

Hidden track Running the World – 4:50

Listen to ‘Running the World’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monyiOsoKxg

Also released on the 14^th November:

2008: Beyoncé – I Am... Sasha Fierce

30th October - Pulp's Different Class

Artist – Album: Pulp – Different Class

Released: 30^th October 1995

Sounds Like: Cocker spangles 

Britpop’s crowning glory didn’t come from Oasis or Blur, or even Supergrass or The Verve, but from a band that weren’t really very Britpop at all. Pulp had been floating about on the periphery of the UK’s indie rock scene since 1978 – back when the Gallaghers were just ruddy-cheeked rapscallions, scrapping away in primary school playgrounds – and had released three unremarkable albums before hitting big with His N’ Hers in 1994. Although their sound was more ensconced in alternative rock and post-punk than any Sixties revival, the public picked up on the lively ‘Babies’ and the single ‘Do You Remember the First Time?’ and bundled the Sheffield group on to the burgeoning Britpop bandwagon.

Fast forward a year and Pulp had headlined Glastonbury and scored a huge hit with the unbelievably good ‘Common People’ (a song so strong that even a cover by William Shatner couldn’t undermine it). Different Class was released in October and it became clear that any one of the other 11 tracks within could be released as a follow up single. As it was ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’, ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘Something Changed’ all made the top ten, but the theatrical opener ‘Mis-Shapes’, the relentless ‘Live Bed Show’ or the calm closer ‘Bar Italia’ could surely have troubled the charts too. The album is stuffed full of accessible rock pop, with Jarvis Cocker’s pithy observations about class-tourists (how about: “What's the point of being rich if you can't think what to do with it? 'Cause you're so very thick.” or “You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control and with nowhere left to go”) and accented vocals the cherry on the cake. About the only thing that hindered their commercial appeal was the sexualised content of ‘Pencil Skirt’ or ‘Underwear’, and the darker moments, such as the frightening ‘I Spy’ and the insecure ’F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E’ .

The following year Cocker wiggled his bum at the Brit Awards audience during Michael Jackson’s performance, got arrested and released without charge thanks to Vic and Bob’s Bob Mortimer acting as legal representation, and forever cemented his place in my mind as one of Britain’s greatest frontmen.

Albumaday... rating: 10/10

1.       Mis-Shapes – 3:46

2.       Pencil Skirt – 3:11

3.       Common People – 5:50

4.       I Spy – 5:55

5.       Disco 2000 – 4:33

6.       Live Bed Show – 3:29

7.       Something Changed – 3:18

8.       Sorted for E’s & Wizz – 3:47

9.       F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E – 6:01

10.   Underwear – 4:06

11.   Monday Morning – 4:16

12.   Bar Italia – 3:42

Listen to ‘Live Bed Show’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6hkldGTFXs

Also released on 30^th October:

2001: The National – The National

Also released on 30^th October:

2000: U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind

29th September - The Verve's Urban Hymns

Artist – Album: The Verve – Urban Hymns

Released:  29^th September 1997

Sounds Like: 15 bitter-sweet symphonies

Sorry for the briefer blog posts this weekend; I’ve had a bit of jam-packed weekend. Yesterday I was at a ball (ha, a ball, me!), whilst today I travelled back from Nottingham (where, coincidentally, I met a sprightly octogenarian who has been serving in the navy since 1943, and then I got caught up in a huge anti-Conservative Party march down Manchester’s Oxford Road). All of this extra-curricular activity has left me a bit bushed so I’m afraid that this is the best we can do:

The Verve broke up in 1996, and so naturally they released one of the greatest British albums of all time in 1997. Whether it be tub-thumping anthems (‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘Velvet Morning’), introspective ballads (‘Sonnet’ and ‘One Day’) and psychedelic raves (‘Catching the Butterfly’) Urban Hymns forged exceptional songs with stunning alacrity.

They broke up again in 1999, but since then we’ve not had another masterpiece. Which is plain inconsistent.

That’ll do pig.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Bitter Sweet Symphony – 5:58

2.       Sonnet – 4:21

3.       The Rolling People – 7:01

4.       The Drugs Don’t Work – 5:05

5.       Catching the Butterfly – 6:26

6.       Neon Wilderness – 2:37

7.       Space and Time – 5:36

8.       Weeping Willow – 4:49

9.       Lucky Man – 4:53

10.   One Day – 5:03

11.   This Time – 3:50

12.   Velvet Morning – 4:57

13.   Come On – 15:15

Listen to ‘Sonnet’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2vGa-yLiso

Also released on 29^th September:

1977: Billy Joel – The Stranger

Also released on 29^th September:

1998: Outkast – Aquemini

Also released on 29^th September:

2003: Muse - Absolution

2nd September - Suede's Coming Up

Artist – Album: Suede – Coming Up

Released:  2^nd September 1996

Sounds Like: Bowie does Britpop

Some would have it that Suede are the group that kickstarted the Britpop fad, highly acclaimed pioneers that were barged out of the way by yobbish upstarts Oasis and Blur and left to pick up the scraps in terms of hit songs. The description fails on closer inspection on two counts: Suede were not quite the first of the Britpoppers – Morrissey had been making music like this for a decade (including his 1988 single ‘Suedehead’, the track from which Suede took their name) and the rockier elements of the earlier Madchester scene (including a somewhat Baggier Blur) were the real forerunners; and the group were certainly not the nearly men of pop – their first album became the fastest selling debut in history as it rocketed to the top of the charts, whilst their fourth album also surged to the top. Coming Up, their third effort, is the other of their three number one albums (second album Dog Man Star broke the sequence with its measly third place charting), and with it produced five top ten singles. They didn’t do too shabbily, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Coming Up’s array of hits is indicative of the direction the band took with this release. The group had parted ways with guitarist Bernard Butler, and frontman Brett Anderson made the decision to adopt a much more upbeat and accessible sound than the commercially tepid (but since declared masterpiece) Dog Man Star. The album is dominated by simple, anthemic choruses and rousing guitar solos, with Anderson prancing about in his Bowie/Bolan obsessed manner and half-celebrating, half-lampooning the excessive lifestyles of vacuous nineties celebrities.

‘Trash’, ‘Beautiful Ones’ and ‘Saturday Night’ are classics, but, to be honest, the one note tactic to the album – Anderson had announced that he wanted to write an album of “just ten hits” – does begin to grate a little. A change in dynamic, a pared down approach to a song or two just to give you time to breath, is sadly lacking.  It’s good, not great, and is perhaps the album to turn only once you’ve tired of their first two stonkers.

 Albumaday... rating: 7/10

    1.       Trash – 4:06

2.       Filmstar – 3:25

3.       Lazy – 3:19

4.       By the Sea – 4:15

5.       She – 3:38

6.       Beautiful Ones – 3:50

7.       Starcrazy – 3:33

8.       Picnic by the Motorway – 4:45

9.       The Chemistry Between Us – 7:04

10.   Saturday Night – 4:32

Listen to ‘Trash’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PdKGDMhau4

Also released on 2^nd September:

2003: The National – Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

20th May - Super Furry Animals' Fuzzy Logic

Artist – Album: Super Furry Animals – Fuzzy Logic

Released:  20^th May 1996

Sounds Like:  The band don’t give a f**k about anybody else

The importance of grammar cannot be understated. For example, there are Supergroups, such as Derek and the Dominos, Humble Pie and Them Crooked Vultures; there are super groups, such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Spoon; and there are Super- Groups – Supergrass and Super Furry Animals. That’s not to say you can’t fall into more than one of these categories: Broken Social Scene and Cream are both collections of already established stars that just so happen to also be super. Likewise, whether they’re actually furry, or indeed animals, is up for debate, but SFA fully deserve at least the first of their third word label.

Performing guitar based rock and demonstrating a love for the sixties, the band quickly assimilated itself with the Britpop movement. However, being from Cardiff, they were far removed from their London/North West focused contemporaries, and the band quickly developed their experimental rock and psychedelic tendencies into much more interesting places. Next to the straightforward, catchy punk pop of ‘God! Show Me Magic’, there’s the indie anthem ‘Something for the Weekend’ and the beautiful psychedelia of ‘Hometown Unicorn’ and ‘If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You’.

With a song about Howard Marks and the self same infamous drug smuggling Mr Nice making up the album cover collage, as well as lyrics such as “first time, I did it for the hell of it, stuck it on my tongue and then swallowed it”, prolific drug use is never from the menu. At times the songs are hallucinogenic and the album can be patchy – fuzzy if you will – but it remains one of the best debut albums of the nineties.

Albumaday... rating:  8/10

1.       God! Show Me Magic – 1:50

2.       Fuzzy Birds – 2:27

3.       Something for the Weekend – 2:34

4.       Frisbee – 2:21

5.       Hometown Unicorn – 3:33

6.       Gathering Moss – 3:22

7.       If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You – 3:17

8.       Bad Bahaviour – 4:26

9.       Mario Man – 4:07

10.   Hangin’ with Howard Marks – 4:20

11.   Long Gone – 5:20

12.   For Now and Ever – 3:32              

Listen to ‘Hometown Unicorn’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxXF0B_SyM

Also released on the 20^th May:

1997: Foo Fighters – The Colour and the Shape

25th April - Blur's Parklife

Artist – Album: Blur - Parklife

Released:  25^th April 1994

Sounds Like: Top of the Britpops

It’s a shame that Parklife, one of the most quintessentially English albums of all time, wasn’t released just two days earlier, on St Georges Day; the saint’s day for that Palestinian reptile botherer and all-round cocky geezer that for some reason is the patron saint of England. As it is, it shares it celebrates its release date on DNA Day, which isn’t nearly as relevant.

From the dogs at the track album cover, to song titles such as ‘London Loves’, ‘Clover Over Dover’ and ‘Jubilee’, the album oozes British identity. ‘Girls & Boys’ and ‘Parklife’ (adorned with verse narration from Quadrophenia’s very own Phil Daniels) became lager-lout anthems for the burgeoning Britpop scene, and the underlying wit, obsession with the British musical history and the very modern attitude of these and other tracks helped cement Blur’s reputation as icons of the wider Cool Britannia movement. Damon Albarn stood as his generation’s Ray Davies, creating wonderful, popular music with literate, humorous and relevant lyrics. Hear ‘Parklife’, think ‘You Really Got Me’. The whole album stands as an incredible homage to UK culture and a must have for anglophiles anywhere.

As fun as the livelier moments are, the real standouts here are the slow ones. ‘End of a Century’, Badhead’, ‘To the End’ and ‘This Is a Low’, contain lush, baroque arrangements and deal with failing relationships, the loss of youth and the mystery of the future. They're weary and cynical, but beautiful and real. Like ‘Waterloo Sunset’ from the Kinks’ oeuvre, after the initial attraction of the anthems, these are the songs that you will take with you and remember forever.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       Girls & Boys – 4:50

2.       Tracy Jacks – 4:20

3.       End of a Century – 2:46

4.       Parklife – 3:05

5.       Bank Holiday – 1:42

6.       Badhead – 3:25

7.       The Debt Collector – 2:10

8.       Far Out – 1:41

9.       To the End – 4:05

10.   London Loves – 4:15

11.   Trouble in the Message Centre – 4:09

12.   Clover Over Dover – 3:22

13.   Magic America – 3:38

14.   Jubilee – 2:47

15.   This Is a Low – 5:07

16.   Lot 105 – 1:17

Listen to ‘Badhead’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEbD_R7Q4SI