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I woke up standing in front of an easel

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #6 :     Severance It had been three long years since we last walked the sterile halls of Lumon Industries, but one frantic sprint through said corridors along with Adam Scott’s Mark S, and it was like we’d never left. Building on the first season’s ‘Macrodat Uprising’ (archly recapped in animated form by Keanu Reeves), Season 2 brought us the inspired Miss Huang (“Why are you a child?”), the Data-Refiners’ first ‘ORTBO’, the goat-loving madness of Mammalians Nurturable, an unforgettable character ‘death’, and the bizarre yet dramatic scene of Mark’s Innie arguing metaphysics with his Outie via camcorder. Puzzle box shows have an unenviable task in needing to pull back the curtain just enough to reveal gradually more of the larger picture, while not quite enough to puncture the mystery. Dan Erickson’s follow-up season manages just that, judging its prestige with dead-eyed accuracy. In Episode 7’s ‘Chikhai Bardo’, we are fi...
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Yesterday you know it never really happened

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 14/02/71 : Air Conditioning - Curved Air On the previously unknown band front, we've had two albums from Atomic Rooster this year and now we've got our second from Curved Air so I'm learning loads this year - and I liked the last one from this lot, so let's see what we've got here. Yeah, I didn't mind this one either - it's all well played and certainly improved by a female vocal presence. In some places I was reminded of Siouxsie Sioux's singing style which gave it a goth-prog air, but then in other places it's very classical with orchestral strings - it's certainly an intriguing mix. It's almost certainly not for everyone and I can't say it's one I'll be rushing back to, but overall I thought it was an enjoyable and intriguing visit. We're at #9 in the charts this week on twelfth week of a 21 week run with it having peaked at #8 in its ninth week - somewhat oddly it yoyo...
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What you gonna do when you feel your lady rollin'?

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 21/02/71 : Blows Against The Empire - Paul Kantner And  Jefferson Starship We met Jefferson Airplace once before (nearly six years ago now!) and I was surprised how much I liked (at least some of) it, so let's see whether this (which I assume is somehow related) can repeat that trick. Hmmm. No. This is just a big ol' mess, I'm afraid. It's some kind of weird folk/rock/prog hybrid which somehow manages to take the worst bits of each of them. No, no, no - NO! We're at #12 in the charts this week on their third week of a six week run, with this being as high as it ever got. The top five this week were  George Harrison ,  Elton John , Simon & Garfunkel  (and the top three would stay the same for three consecutive weeks), Andy Williams and Led Zeppelin , with the highest new entry being Yes (#16). Wikipedia tells us this is the first album to use "Starship" after five "Airplane" albums, but ...
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Would you like an atom bomb? I'm gonna have to get back to you on that.

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #7 :     Pluribus You kind of want to hate Vince Gilligan, don’t you? Not content with creating two of the best TV shows ever made with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the man has somehow managed to go three for three with this audaciously weird post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Conceived, in part, as a showcase for Rhea Seehorn’s prodigious acting talents (she criminally failed to scoop a single Emmy for her phenomenal turn in BCS), this quirky tale sees humanity afflicted with an alien virus that combines everyone’s consciousness into a single, blissfully happy hive mind. Everyone, that is, except 13 survivors, scattered across the globe, including curmudgeonly romantasy author Carol Sturka, who finds herself faced with a global collective hell bent on… making her happy? It’s an absolutely wild premise but it’s Gilligan’s deliberate, often oblique style of storytelling that makes it so captivating. Seehorn is, as you’d expect,...
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He had white horses and ladies by the score

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 28/02/71 : Emerson, Lake & Palmer -  Emerson, Lake & Palmer Our fourth visit with ELP and our third this year - it looks like the prog kings are going to be declared kings of the prog year, so I think we know what we're going to be getting here. Hmmm - yes, it's very prog indeed. There's certainly no doubting the skills involved - Emerson in particular shines on the keyboards playing a lot of notes very quickly in many places on the album (Palmer also does an awful lot of drumming on "Tank", but we don't need to talk about that). But - does that make it great? Or even likeable? I didn't mind "Lucky Man" but apart from that I'm really not so sure - and I think that's probably all I have to say on the matter at this time, your honour. We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fourteenth week of a very decent 26 week run, with #4 being as high as it got in its second week...
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What the fuck is wrong with Seattle?

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #9 :     The Last Of Us Not since Nick Faldo beat Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters has the swing of a golf club proved so controversial. The second season of HBO’s adaptation of the lauded video game series from Naughty Dog was always going to ruffle feathers, but Episode 2 of this latest run  managed to traumatise each and every one of the show’s fans while delivering an hour of television that stands up to the very best ever produced. With a few deviations to better fit the format, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann cleaved closely to the game structure, taking Ellie (Bella Ramsay) down a far darker path than last time as she heads to Seattle with Isabella Merced’s Dina on a bloody quest for vengeance. By turns exciting (the siege!), uplifting (‘Take On Me’!), horrifying (the basement), and utterly devastating (a body behind a horse), The Last Of Us might have proved divisive, but no one can doubt its potency...
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Someone told me long ago there's a calm before the storm

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 07/03/71 : Pendulum - Creedence Clearwater Revival Our third trip with CCR and I've apparently enjoyed the previous two, but have to admit I don't really remember anything about them - in my defence, the last one was 5.5 years ago. I'm looking forward to becoming reacquainted with them though - hopefully it will jog my memory. Yeah, I recognised the general "swamp rock" sound and was surprised to know "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" which I don't think I knew was by them - we've actually previously met a somewhat different version on this . The rest of it is very much in a similar vibe and all well played and perfectly listenable, except when things go a bit off-kilter towards the end of the album on "Rude Awakening #2" (and even worse on "45 Revolutions Per Minute" if you listen to the bonus tracks). It's not really a sound we've heard this year so that was nice - s...
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