18th November - Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister

Artist – Album: Belle & Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

Released: 18^th November 1996

Sounds Like: A good start

Officially Belle & Sebastian’s debut, Tigermilk, was released 5 months earlier, but released seems a far too powerful word to describe that album’s issue: the album was the culmination of Stuart Murdoch’s work on a college music business course and it’s limited pressing of just one thousand copies was his final project, and so the album wasn’t so much released as stealthily snuck out. Luckily, it was just too good to slip the attention of eagle eyed (eared? Do eagles have ears??) music fans though and word spread of a terrific record that was rarer than a tasteful Miley Cyrus video.



By the time of If You’re Feeling Sinister all this goodwill towards the group had translated into a record contract (with the still terribly indie Jeepster Records) and a resolve to, you know, actually be a real band. It also was their first album in general circulation and to be covered by national newspapers, and consequently it was – for all but a privileged few – the first time anybody had heard their songs. They weren’t to be disappointed.



Each track is a triumph of wit and majestic music. ‘Me and the Major’ is a chugging tribute to the differences between generations, the title track sounds warm and comforting but it has a snide humour and candidly deals with suicide in confident manner, whilst ‘Like Dylan in the Movies’ and ‘The Fox in the Snow’ are fey and beautiful. For some time ‘Seeing Other People’ has been my favourite, with its hilarious memories of “Kissing just for practice”.



A backstory like Belle & Sebastian’s might never crop up again. Our world of Spotify and Youtube and Twitter means that it’s unthinkable that its impossible for bands today to earn the aura that the early, mysterious B&S thrived on. Further, few bands have ever released a pair of such perfect albums as Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister with their first couple of attempts. As Murdoch sums up in ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying’: “Nobody writes them like they used to so it may as well be me”

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       The Stars of Track and Field – 4:48

2.       Seeing Other People – 3:48

3.       Me and the Major – 3:51

4.       Like Dylan in the Movies – 4:14

5.       The Fox in the Snow – 4:11

6.       Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying – 3:25

7.       If You’re Feeling Sinister – 5:21

8.       Mayfly – 3:42

9.       The Boy Done Wrong Again – 4:17

10.   Judy and the Dream of Horses – 3:40

Listen to ‘Seeing Other People’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583_nEvuRvw

Also released on the 18^th November:

1974: Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Also released on the 18^th November:

1997: Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West

18th October - Real Estate's Days

Artist – Album: Real Estate - Days

Released: 18^th October 2011

Sounds Like: Good to my right ear

Disaster! On my walk into work yesterday morning I lost the rubber bits that go around earphones, the bits that prevent them from piercing my eardrums and making me really very sore. As the majority of my Albumaday… sampling is made on the 40-minute walk to and from work, this has seriously hindered my blogability. For today I dusted off my ancient pair, family heirlooms that were crafted around the time of the French revolution, but even these are only half working and everything I listen to them is in mono. Until I buy a new pair in the next few days, therefore, everything will be reviewed by my right ear only. First world problems eh?

One band that strikes me as untroubled by first world problems, third world problems, or indeed anything at all, are Real Estate. For them everything seems so easy: in their melodic, jangly indie-pop, in Martin Courtney’s drifting vocals and in their calming lyrics. Even love, that most tricky of subjects, is given the nonchalant Real Estate treatment on the excellent ‘It’s Real’ – Courtney doesn’t need bombast or melodrama, he only needs to simply state “believe me when I say, it’s real” and your heart melts.

‘Younger Than Yesterday’ seems to be unrelated to the Byrds album of the same name, but it’s quite a fitting reference. Comparisons with R.E.M and The Feelies are also bang on the mark, but The Byrds are the spiritual forefathers of all three, masters of the gorgeous guitar work and sweetly worn turn of phrase. Their sound is so lovely that it has barely needed updating since the Sixties, and so the main difference between them and these is that, where The Byrds were spitting feathers over ‘fake’ bands like The Monkees, Real Estate have no worries at all.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       Easy – 3:53

2.       Green Aisles – 5:01

3.       It’s Real – 2:48

4.       Kinder Blumen – 3:55

5.       Out of Tune – 4:51

6.       Municipality – 3:36

7.       Wonder Years – 2:34

8.       Three Blocks – 3:18

9.       Younger Than Yesterday – 4:08

10.   All the Same – 7:21

Listen to ‘It’s Real’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HWcViTXdYc

Also released on 18^th October:

2005: Animal Collective - Feels

Also released on 18^th October:

2011: M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

12th October - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' Rattlesnakes

Artist – Album: Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Rattlesnakes

Released: 12^th October 1984

Sounds Like: Are you ready to be heartbroken?

Getting in the lift after work last night, I was amazed to see that I was sharing it with Aiden Byrne, the youngest ever recipient of a Michelin star. After he hurriedly ran out when it got to his floor, towards his kitchen and away from my star-struck stare, I realised that – following a similar episode where I drunkenly gawped at Heston Blumenthal after an epic beer crawl and the time that my mate swore that it was Sat Bains in front of us in the queue at Greggs at 2 in the morning – I may well be the North’s no. 1 botherer of bald-headed celebrity chefs. Of course, collecting Michelin awarded masterchefs ain’t bad, but if you prefer your name dropping a little more high brow, you might want to listen to Rattlesnakes. Simone de Beauvoir, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote: these guys are a fair few grades better than mine.

It might all sound a bit pretentious, and, honestly, it is. But still, Cole does pull it off; he is very bookish, a young English graduate eager to impress, but, like James McAvoy’s character in Starter for Ten, he’s also charmingly goofy. Coming off as a less street-wise Morrissey, Cole delivers peaches of lyrics like “She's got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin, And she's sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan”.

The Commotions support Cole with jangly indie rock of the highest order, through up-tempo anthems such as ‘Perfect Skin’ and ‘Four Flights Down’ to cool hymns like ‘Speedboats’ and ‘Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?’.

According to Lloyd “Some say that they o.d.'d on Leonard Cohen”. If you fancy death by literate indie pop, indulge yourself in Rattlesnakes.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Perfect Skin – 3:16

2.       Speedboat – 4:37

3.       Rattlesnakes – 3:28

4.       Down on Mission Street – 3:49

5.       Forest Fire – 4:39

6.       Charlotte Street – 3:55

7.       2cv – 2:52

8.       Four Flights Up – 2:37

9.       Patience – 3:40

10.   Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken? – 3:06

Listen to ‘Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvptsWYx6A4

Also released on 12^th October:

2004: Willy Mason – Where the Humans Eat

Also released on 12^th October:

1973: Genesis – Selling England by the Pound

1st October - Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things

 Artist – Album: Rilo Kiley – The Execution of All Things

Released:  1^st October 2002

Sounds Like: What Jenny Knew

Is there a name for when a song repeatedly surfaces across an album? I’ve Googled it but I’m struggling to even think of how to put it without getting half a million itunes support guides come up. Well, anyway, you know that? This has one. I think I’m a fan of them – the rollicking ‘I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago’ on Elvis Country, the shady whistling on Billy Joel’s The Stranger, the game show skits on De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. The one on The Execution of All Things is great too, a touching poem of young Jenny Lewis’s recollections of her parent’s divorce and her father moving to Alaska, named ‘And That’s How I Choose to Remember It’. Sentiments like “When dad moved out to a frozen land, The TV was jumping, it didn't feel right”, “My mom she cried about money and time, And how she felt older, And I didn't understand much” and “My dad was nice and seemed sorry for not being around” are aching memories of a tumultuous time in a kid’s life and particularly strike a nerve for those of us who were also from a broken home.

Of course, all that sounds a bit glum, but please don’t get to thinking this is a melodramatic or a mopey album. Brilliant, warm indie pop masks a lot of Lewis’ most painful lyrics on the likes of the title track and ‘Paint’s Peeling’, and on occasion she rouses herself into an entertaining queen bitch who takes no shit from no one, or else the symbol of stoic perseverance on the emblematic ‘A Better Son/Daughter’. Blake Sennet also pops up with a couple of Teenage Fanclub-esque sunshine songs on ‘So Long’ and ‘Three Hopeful Thoughts’ to further lighten the mood.

All in all, The Execution of All Things is a good album. Much like those segments or snippets of ‘And That’s How I Choose to Remember It’ that reappear throughout the record, it captures and intrigues you in the moment and sounds like something you weren’t supposed to hear, before flitting back out of the memory. Which is a good thing.

Albumaday... rating: 7/10

1.       The Good That Won’t Come Out – 4:31

2.       Paint’s Peeling – 3:20

3.       The Execution of All Things – 4:13

4.       So Long – 5:27

5.       Capturing Moods – 3:35

6.       A Better Son/Daughter – 4:39

7.       Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight That Surrounds You – 3:20

8.       My Slumbering Heart – 5:36

9.       Three Hopeful Thoughts – 2:50

10.   With Arms Outstretched – 3:43

11.   Spectacular Views – 6:20

12.   And That’s How I Choose to Remember It – 0:04

Listen to ‘A Better Son/Daughter’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sy7y54XAE

22nd September - Primal Scream's Screamadelica

Artist – Album: Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Released:  22^nd September 1991

Sounds Like: Era-defining druggy, sexy dance masterpiece

 “Just what is it that you want to do?

We wanna be free

We wanna be free to do what we wanna do

And we wanna get loaded

And we wanna have a good time

That's what we're gonna do

(No way baby let's go)

We're gonna have a good time

We're gonna have a party”

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Movin’ on Up – 3:47

2.       Slip Inside This House – 5:14

3.       Don’t Fight It, Feel It – 6:51

4.       Higher Than the Sun – 3:36

5.       Inner Flight – 5:00

6.       Come Together – 10:21

7.       Loaded – 7:01

8.       Damaged – 5:37

9.       I’m Comin’ Down – 5:59

10.   Higher Than the Sun (A Dub Symphony in Two Parts) – 7:37

11.   Shine Like Stars – 3:45

Listen to ‘Come Together’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjW82je_38 

Also released on 22^nd September:

1969: The Band – The Band

Also released on 22^nd September:

1997: Björk – Homogenic

Also released on 22^nd September:

2008: TV On the Radio – Dear Science

7th September - The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs

Artist – Album: The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs

Released:  7^th September 1999

Sounds Like: The book of Love

69 Love Songs does exactly what it says on the tin: a hugely ambitious project, it sets out to serenade us with 69 brilliant songs about love. This is no Mills & Boon album though; Stephen Merritt examines the condition of love from all angles, dissecting the grisly and painful bits at least as much as the warm and fuzzy bits, always with wit and style.

There, 69 words.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Absolutely Cuckoo – 1:34

2.       I Don’t Believe in the Sun – 4:16

3.       All My Little Words – 2:46

4.       A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off – 2:41

5.       Reno Dakota – 1:05

6.       I Don’t Want to Get Over You – 2:22

7.       Come Back from San Francisco – 2:48

8.       The Luckiest Guy of the Lower East Side – 3:43

9.       Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits – 2:25

10.   The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be – 1:11

11.   I Think I Need a New Heart – 2:32

12.   The Book of Love – 2:42

13.   Fido, Your Leash is Too Long – 2:33

14.   How Fucking Romantic – 0:58

15.   The One You Really Love – 2:53

16.   Punk Love – 0:58

17.   Parades Go By – 2:56

18.   Boa Constrictor – 0:58

19.   A Pretty Girl Is Like… - 1:50

20.   My Sentimental Melody – 3:07

21.   Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing – 2:27

22.   Sweet-Lovin’ Man – 4:59

23.   The Things We Did and Didn’t Do – 2:11

24.   Roses – 0:27

25.   Love Is Like Jazz – 2:56

26.   When My Boy Walks Down the Street – 2:38

27.   Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old – 2:03

28.   Very Funny – 1:26

29.   Grand Canyon – 2:28

30.   No One Will Ever Love You – 3:14

31.   If You Don’t Cry – 3:06

32.   You’re My Only Home – 2:17

33.   (Crazy for You But) Not That Crazy – 2:18

34.   My Only Friend – 2:01

35.   Promises of Eternity – 3:46

36.   World Love – 3:07

37.   Washington D.C. – 1:53

38.   Long-Forgotten Fairytale – 3:37

39.   Kiss Me Like You Mean It – 2:00

40.   Papa Was a Rodeo – 5:01

41.   Epitaph for My Heart – 2:50

42.   Asleep and Dreaming – 1:53

43.   The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing – 2:46

44.   The Way You Say Good-Night – 2:44

45.   Abigail, Belle of Kilronan – 2:00

46.   I Shatter – 3:09

47.   Underwear – 2:49

48.   It’s a Crime – 3:54

49.   Busby Berkeley Dreams – 3:36

50.   I’m Sorry I Love You – 3:06

51.   Acoustic Guitar – 2:37

52.   The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure – 3:10

53.   Love in the Shadows – 2:54

54.   Bitter Tears – 2:51

55.   Wi’ Nae Wee Bairn Ye’ll Me Beget – 1:55

56.   Yeah! Oh, Yeah! – 2:19

57.   Experimental Music Love – 0:29

58.   Meaningless – 2:08

59.   Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin – 1:46

60.   Queen of the Savages – 2:12

61.   Blue You – 3:03

62.   I Can’t Touch You Anymore – 3:05

63.   Two Kinds of People – 1:10

64.   How to Say Goodbye – 2:48

65.   The Night You Can’t Remember – 2:17

66.   For We Are the King of the Boudoir – 1:14

67.   Strange Eyes – 2:01

68.   Xylophone Track – 2:47

69.   Zebra – 2:15

Listen to ‘Abigail, Belle of Kilronan’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75u4mN1HO0M

Also released on 7^th September:

1998: Belle & Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap

Also released on 7^th September:

2004: The Black Keys – Rubber Factory

Also released on 7^th September:

2011: Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost