I’m very much enjoying the re-issued ‘Sulk’ by The Associates now sonically buffed up and presented on double CD with a bunch of excellent extra tracks, B-sides and demo versions. I know the singles but had never got around to getting that particular album – it is the very definition of a flawed masterpiece – the production is bizarre, busy and cluttered, there is some spectacularly bad drumming on it and even remastered it still sounds strangely murky and just sort of..wrong…and yet it also features a couple of chart hits (Party Fears Two and Country Club) and maybe the best way to hear these songs is on AM Radio half way up a ladder. It’s the sort of record that would give Steven Wilson a cold sweat, and yet it’s glorious. Makes me wonder if we worry too much about production techniques and rules about how things ‘should’ sound and should just enjoy the oddness and idiosyncrasies of records like this.