No, not another end of year poll or list, but more of a discussion about some of the music that you have either discovered for the first time, or rediscovered – either from the dusty box at the back of your attic, or online, or just out wandering around the world – and that you had forgotten how good it was.
My discovery was Chris Bell’s ‘I am the Cosmos’. I’ve had the Big Star CD of ‘No.1 Record/Radio City’ for years and regularly played it, but didn’t really know much about them, until a feature in one of the magazines earlier this year about the band, and specifically Chris Bell, put me onto this. Loved it! Very Big Star in feel, with lovely melodies.
One of my rediscoveries, that I hadn’t played for years, was the Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane collaboration ‘Rough Mix’ from 1977. The first time I ever heard of this album was many years ago when I saw Michael Weston-King at the Brook in Southampton, and he covered the beautiful song ‘Annie’, and was praising the whole album – he was quite right to! So I don’t really know why it hadn’t been played for ages, but it’s now been rightfully restored to a regular listen.
I envy your new discovery of ‘Cosmos’. It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?
My new discoveries: I joined a band where the singer recommended Peter Bruntnell, especially his album ‘Normal for Bridgwater’. Recorded some time around the end of the last century, it’s a great collection of Americana songs, especially ‘By the Time My Head Gets To Phoenix’. His latest album, Houdini and the Sucker Punch, released this year, is possibly better. We went to see him in Sutton last weekend and had a ball.
The other was a single song, a deep cut I had mysteriously never heard. I’ve loved some (certainly not all) Blur songs over the years, mainly the more reflective, downbeat ones – This Is a Low, Blue Jeans and so on. But I’d never sought out Trimm Trabb until Miranda Sawyer talked it up in a recent podcast about Britpop. It’s not really Britpop at all: an eerie, echoing intro is followed by an insistent, repeating acoustic riff backing Damon sadly half-singing about “All those losers on the piss again… I sleep alone”. And then it goes up about three gears and rocks the hell out. It’s my song of the year – not bad for a tune from 1999.
Misplaced Childhood has long been a Top 10 album for me, but the others rarely got a listen … until 2024 when I went down a Fish-shaped Marillion rabbit hole (and I’m pretty sure there are bits of Season’s End (Steve Hogarth’s first Marillion album) that started life in Fish’s pen).
I owned 3 Neil Young albums, plus a Best of previously, but this year I inherited a damn near full catalogue on CD and realised what I had been missing (although I still can’t truly work out where one should say “enough Neil now”
Nick Cave (and The Bad Seeds) – not everything I’ve heard is a winner, but I now actually get what the fuss is about
In 1988, Kerrang published the Top 100 Albums of All Time, and invited readers to submit the ones that should’ve been there.
Foghat was one suggestion, qand until this year I’d never heard a note. But now understand why someone was suggesting it should be in the Top 100 (OK, maybe no higher than 98 but it’s not a bd album by any stretch)
Elvis’s film soundtracks of the 1960s.
Vibrantly colourful in this colourless, dull era. Short, fun, easily available and cheap, I’ve been amazed just how much quality there is… contrary to received (including my own over the years) wisdom. Loads of tracks that suddenly go ’60s party scene’ crazy with absolutely no prior warning.
Girl Happy is something else, 1965 personified, though I’m not sure I’ll ever warm to the Ye Olde Ragtime/Dixieland shtick of Frankie and Johnny, released in 1966, a year notably short – for very good reason – on Ye Olde Ragtime/Dixieland shtick!
I agree regarding the soundtracks. I picked up the CD box set a few years ago, and the quality is a lot better than their reputation suggests. There are a few clunkers in there of course; Frankie & Johnny is one, and I remember Paradise Hawaiian Style being difficult to get through as well, but the clunkers are the exceptions. I think the fact that they’re short albums helps (I’m not sure any of them break the 30 minute mark) but there are some good albums beyond Loving You and Jailhouse Rock. Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout for example.
I think if you take the best of the soundtracks, the gospel albums and albums such as Pot Luck and Something for Everybody then you could make a very good Elvis album for each year of the 60s. It’s not the wasteland between Elvis is Back and the NBC special that it’s often made out to be.
Paradise Hawaiian Style (the film) sounds like it will be great; it really isn’t, and the soundtrack follows the same path.
It’s bizarre that Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire is considered a career high whereas Fun In Acapulco, from the same year (63), is to-all-intends-and-purposes Ring of Fire x 10!
Incidentally, one of the bonus tracks tagged onto that LP, because the Colonel thought the previous soundtrack had short-changed the public (great guy!), is called Slowly But Surely, and is a mid-60s freakbeat gem made before the term had even been invented… and a full three years before the mid-60s itself!
With you on Slowly But Surely. Fantastic song.
Bark Psychosis / Hex
An album I bought back in the day (it came out in 1994) but hadn’t listened to in years and years and forgotten all about.. It was mentioned recently in the Steven Wilson ./ Tim Bowness Album Years Podcast and so I went back a re listened….. it’s brilliant.
If you like later period Talk Talk, then give it a go.
I have rediscovered some old courtesy of my iPod shuffle that came up with:
Richard Thompson’s You?Me?US? Was never my favourite album of his but She cut off her silken hair is a forgotten gem
Nina Simone – live upbeat version of The house of the rising sun.
Also I recently took delivery of the complete Doug Sahm 5 cd boxset of his MCA albums – absolutely superb
Also recent obsession in 18 months with both the Tindersticks and also Thea Gilmore. Both seems to have a high level of consistency.
I was alerted to Caroline Lavelle and her 1995 album, Spirit, recently. Said to be one of the core gaelictronica influencees, it isn’t, but is a great slab of electronic infused folkie stuff that survives being near 3 decades old. Worth a go!
A bit of a mixed bag for me.
A fair bit of student music – Shed Seven, Feeder, and Sleeper. A break away from some of them for a while means I’m hearing them with fresher ears, and enjoying them.
But it was really modern-day Willie that made my year. I already had a fair bit of the older stuff, but I heard his cover of Tower of Song, and so went searching.
This got more airplay this year than most tracks. It’s Willie, covering an Eddie Vedder song. And it’s great
Last Leaf on the Tree is only now getting airplay chez moi, too late for the list. It is an astonishing set, if not all quite working as well as it might. Which is probably pretty much a metaphor for the 91 year old singer:
I saw Sleeper support The Bible at the Junction about 18 months before their first album came out and they were genuinely really good, so I’ve always had a soft spot for them. And not just because of Louise (and the Sleeperblokes).