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You can call me delusional 'cause I'm imagining things

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #44 :  Man's Best Friend - Sabrina Carpenter Released almost exactly a year after her superstar-minting breakthrough Short n’ Sweet, and using a palette of soft rock, 80s pop, light disco and yearning country melodies, Carpenter added rich colour to one of pop’s most distinctive self-portraits. Her blatant sexuality is offset by an ironising sense of camp and a deep streak of cynicism, as she wonders whether to wrap her little finger round a series of hot but useless men. But whether dialling her exes while hopped up on “go-go juice” or being toxic for the sport of it (“you think that I’m gonna fuck with your head / well, you’re absolutely right”), Carpenter knows she’s part of the problem. Her fake helplessness at her own worst impulses is just one part of a formidable screwball comedy arsenal – she’s a Rosalind Russell for the dating app era.   Finally, one we've met and  written up  - I didn't min...
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Sometimes I get to thinking while you are far away

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Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 23/01/94 : Elegant Slumming -   M People Another one we own (fourteen for the year) and I seem to recall I didn't mind it, even if her voice did get a bit annoying after a time. It opens with "One Night In Heaven" and "Moving On Up" which are very decent tracks - and the rest of the album isn't far off it in terms of quality. Also, I actually didn't find her voice too annoying because there's a decent amount of musical noodlery going on without her - if anything, I'd say it gets a bit too noodle-ish at times, but I reckon they just about get away with it. Overall, I'd say this grooves nicely - it was less dinner party-ish than I was remembered.  We're at #6 in the charts this week on their sixteenth week of an impressive 73 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its debut week - kept off the top by, quite obviously, Meat Loaf. The top five this week were Chaka Demus & Pliers (a...
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Left you in Catford 'Spoons and you were all alone

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #47 :  Dead Channel Sky - c lipping. Clipping frontman Daveed Diggs is best known for being in the original cast of Hamilton, and for all that this album is filled with noisy industrial rap, you can easily imagine it being successfully adapted for the Broadway stage. Dead Channel Sky is set in a cyberpunk dystopia not dissimilar to the scorched-sun “real world” of the Matrix, humming with janky tech and populated with fascists and freaky hedonists. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes render it in acid squiggles and revving breakbeats, while Diggs delivers his mutoid poetry like a prophet jacked up on some amphetamine he’s synthesised in a backstreet lab.  Somewhat surprisingly, this is our second visit with the pretentiously named clipping. - last time I described it as "unremittingly grim", so obviously I'm super glad to be back with them. Well, that was "interesting". The first track ...
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She is floating like a butterfly, so charming

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Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 30/01/94 : Tease Me -   Chaka Demus & Pliers Our second mention ever of the duo after the last post when they were in the top five and I remember that I either find them bearable or detestable but I'm not entirely sure which - it ain't gonna take long for me to find out, I suspect. Phew - they're bearable. I'm not a fan of that Jamaican sound, but they at least sound authentic (it feels pretty old school to my uneducated ears) and they're not in the slightest bit offensive. I can't say I love their version of "Twist And Shout" but it really could have been a lot worse - and you get ten points if you can tell me who originally recorded it. A whole album of it is far too much for me, but I accept that many, many others chose to disagree with me in '94 (and possibly still do, as much as I know). It's quite some font they've gone for on the album though... We're at a somewhat surpri...
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The tractor is big, but my heart is large

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Yes - it's that's time of year again! I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last six years and it's always been an interesting combination of hidden gems and absolute horrors, so here we go again on the race to complete this year's list before 2026 comes around .  Last year I'd previously met nineteen of the list and had written up ten of them - I'll be surprised if the numbers are quite as high again this year, but let's see. #50 :  The Passionate Ones -  Nourished by Time Marcus Elliot Brown, AKA one-man project Nourished By Time, has a classic R&B singing voice in the style of Freddie Jackson or Luther Vandross: warm, earnest and with every word enunciated as if to express his keenness of feeling. But his music is quite different: a slippery layer cake of samples, multitudinous keys and lo-fi pop production, with Brown singing of a world where “the ebb and flow isn’t ebbing right”, be it in love or civic life....
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We call them fools who have to dance within the flame

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Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 06/02/94 : In Pieces -   Garth Brooks Garth is quite possibly the best selling artist we have yet to meet here and I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of listening to one of his albums. Whenever I've heard some of his music, I've considered it to be bearable but unremarkable, but maybe a whole album's worth will help me understand what I've been missing. Hmmm - well, it's OK, I guess. It's definitely country based but it was also leaning in to Billy Joel more than I was expecting - without being anywhere near as good, obviously. Garth has a nicer voice than I was aware of though, so I might be tempted to check out his best-of, but I am slightly concerned that  "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association" was playing hard to the MAGA crowd before they even had a name. So all in all, I'm undecided and unconverted - but there's certainly no danger I feel I've been missing out all the...
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Greggy writes letters and burns his CDs

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Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 13/02/94 : Under The Pink -   Tori Amos Our third visit with Tori and I've enjoyed our previous visits with her piano-based kookiness and I know this is a highly regarded album. This is also our third female singer/songwriter in a row - which is pretty good going for the time. It opens with a track I knew, with "A Really Good Year" being a typical combination of musicality and quirk - it's got a lovely combination of piano and strings under it but it does take some trips out there in places. And I also obviously knew "Cornflake Girl" which has some most peculiar lyrics, but is very catchy musically. And that's a pretty common theme throughout the album, although I'd say there's less musical quirk than I was expecting - it features some absolutely gorgeous piano playing though. Overall, I'd say it's admirable rather than loveable on the first listen, but I can see it potentially being ...
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