4th November - My Bloody Valentine's Loveless

Artist – Album: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Released: 4^th November 1991

Sounds Like: What you want 

Next to Top of the Pops 2 and Pitchfork Media.com, below my parents’ CD and tape collections but ahead of just listening to the radio, the now sadly defunct The Word magazine had a huge impact on my music taste. The free cover CDs, attached to the front by a strange slither of snot-like glue, were invariably amazing and they introduced me to, amongst others, Sigur Rós, Sufjan Stevens and The Go! Team (or, if you prefer, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and Lord Kitchener). 

I remember that the first copy I bought also had an engrossing piece on the greatest underrated albums of our time. Thanks to Rocklist.net (a website you need to check out if you, like me, enjoy a good list) I’ve managed to track down the full 100, with the following introduction: 

 “… what of those masterpiece records that were undernourished at birth, or cold-shouldered by the critics, or simply slipped between the floorboards of the industry, those discs whose ever-expanding virtues genuinely deserve to be trumpeted from any available rooftop? … a few of our favourite writers & musicians offer their personal bids for The Great Underrated Albums of Our Time”.

Below choices from Johnny Marr and Phil Jupitus (Roy Harper’s Stormcock and Madness’ Keep Moving respectively), and before Nick Lowe’s selection of Jimmie Vaughan’s Strange Pleasure, was the former editor of NME Danny Kelly’s pick: My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.

That magazine came out in June 2005, so I was on the cusp of my 17^th birthday. I bought Loveless on the strength of that review, and I can honestly say that no album before or since has so blown my mind on first listen. If – somehow – you haven’t yet heard the Irish band’s 1991 shoegazing classic, I implore you to drop all that you’re doing, enter itunes, pay the £7.99 and play the whole album in its entirety. Once finished, repeat (at least three times).

Maybe one day you’ll write a blog about your various musical influences and this post will get a mention. 

Albumaday... rating: 10/10

1.       Only Shallow – 4:17

2.       Loomer – 2:38

3.       Touched – 0:56

4.       To Here Knows When – 5:31

5.       When You Sleep – 4:11

6.       I Only Said – 5:34

7.       Come in Alone – 3:58

8.       Sometimes – 5:19

9.       Blown a Wish – 3:36

10.   What You Want – 5:33

11.   Soon – 6:58

Listen to ‘What You Want’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azXLPL-iuSI

Also released on the 4^th November:
1983: Paul Simon - Hearts and Bones

Also released on the 4^th November:
1991: Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque

Also released on the 4^th November:
2008: Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place

11th April - M83's Saturdays = Youth

Artist – Album: M83 – Saturdays = Youth

Released:  11^th April 2008             

Sounds Like: Ferris Bueller’s Pretty in Sixteen Weird Breakfast Clubs

In recent years there seems to have been a bit of a trend to embrace all things 80s. Classic cult films such as Labyrinth and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have become must haves in students' DVD collections, and new(ish) movies such as Drive, Hot Tub Time Machine or Tron 3D owe a lot to their 30 year old ancestors. There’s been a reconsideration of the hairstyles and clothes worn – no one’s going to start wearing piano ties or sporting mullets again (please, please don’t), but there’s echoes of a previous time in the general styles and shapes paraded on the catwalk today, whilst colourful leggings, big earrings and even shoulder pads can be seen on most streets now. Over in television land, we’ve seen new series resurrect the ghosts of Yes, Prime Minister and Red Dwarf, as well as the release of the subpar Only Fools and Horses spin off Rock and Chips just a few short years back. In politics, Mrs Thatcher may have finally giving herself up to the devil and the fiery bowels of hell this week, but her working class battering philosophies are still very much in fashion down Parliament way, where the idiotic clowns that currently run our country no doubt have posters of the 80s most evil (only) Prime Minister taken straight from old Smash Hits magazines and plastered on to their bedroom walls.

In music, there is probably more adoration than anywhere for the decade that taste only really had a fuzzy memory of. Bands like Cut Copy, MGMT and Passion Pit obsess over synthpop. Destroyer’s Kaputt, released 2 years ago, is enamoured with the smooth soul and new romantic sounds of circa 1982. Raphael Saadiq is our Prince. Calvin Harris has love for you if you were born in the 80s, the 80s. Which is nice.

But everyone immersed in this 80s fad have warped the time to suit their own needs. They (for the most part) reside in a world where everyone was named Corey and they had a totally radical time dancing Thriller and eating voul-au-vents. No duh, right? Nobody does this more than M83 on this album, which sounds like the greatest John Hughes movie ever made. ‘Graveyard Girl’, one of the albums many highlights, actually has a spoken middle from an outsider teen and references Molly Ringwald. ‘Kim & Jessie’ is swooping, murmured and epic, like The Psychedelic Furs meets A-Ha. ‘We Own the Sky’ does a phenomenal job of balancing retro instrumentation and modern indie rock. It’s just all round a great album. It may see the decade through rose tinted Ray Bans but it’s definitely righteous to be a part of.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       You, Appearing – 3:39

2.       Kim & Jessie – 5:23

3.       Skin of the Night – 6:12

4.       Graveyard Girl – 4:51

5.       Couleurs – 8:34

6.       Up! – 4:27

7.       We Own the Sky – 5:02

8.       Highway of Endless Dreams – 4:35

9.       Too Late – 5:00

10.   Dark moves of Love – 3:18

11.   Midnight Souls Still Remain – 11:10

Listen to ‘Kim & Jessie’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abqy3DdAzHI

3rd Feb - The Pains of Being Pure At Heart's The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Artist – Album: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Released:  3^rd February 2009

Sounds Like: It’s 20 years older than it actually is.

Amongst many other equally great and important things, the early nineties brought us The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Sonic the Hedgehog and shoegaze music – the latter so named because the main players would often spend a lot of their stage time staring at their feet. It’s best proponents included the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive, who all managed to combine beautiful layers of distorted guitars with mumbled vocals that followed catchy pop melodies.

Back then Kip Berman, Peggy Wang and the rest of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart would still have been in some New York primary school, playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures and probably yet to even hear of an effects pedal, yet somehow their self-titled debut authentically feels like a forgotten album from that time. It’s not so much an update of that older sound but a continuation of it, as if it never went away.

From the rousing ‘Come Saturday’ to the giddy ‘A Teenager in Love’, this record is an accomplished and confident first attempt. Chief single ‘Young Adult Friction’ emerges from the distortion to become a hook-laden anthem and went on to be named as one of the best tracks of 2009 in various end-of-year lists. The second half is slightly weaker, with the less memorable tunes, but all in all the future (or their take on the past) looks promising for The Pains of Being Pure At Heart.

Albumaday... rating: 7/10

1.       Contender – 2:40

2.       Come Saturday – 3:17

3.       Young Adult Friction – 4:07

4.       This Love Is Fucking Right! – 3:15

5.       The Tenure Itch – 3:45

6.       Stay Alive – 4:56

7.       Everything with You – 2:59

8.       A Teenager in Love – 3:24

9.       Hey Paul – 2:03

10.   Gentle Sons – 4:32 

Listen to ‘Young Adult Friction’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4itzHRpltQ