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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #38 :  Prince Of Tears -  Baxter Dury Opening with a hilarious and obscene twist on Will Smith’s Miami, Baxter Dury’s fifth record is a self-assured series of wry stories and character studies. Dury half-sings/half-speaks in gruff Cockney tones, clearly unafraid of comparisons with his father, Ian – but his work more than stands on its own two feet. I met a Baxter Dury album in passing once and didn't hate it, but didn't love it - from the description above, I'm expecting more of the same here. And yeah, the apple really hasn't fallen far from the tree with Ian's influence being very much on display, but it's feels a bit more contemporary (which it probably should since New Boots And Panties!!  is 47 years old now - and features a very young Baxter on the cover). It's not really my thing musically, but there's some obvious skill involved in the lyric creation - if maybe not so much in the...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 23/04/26 : You Got This - Skindred  We've met Skindred in passing as a new entry at #2 in '23 with an album I described at the time as "certainly quite something" - but this time they get a full write-up, so I'd guess I'll have to find a better way to describe it. Ah yes - this too is certainly quite something. It's quite heavy rock with various other influences, notably reggae but there's all sorts in there thrown together with a large number of pop culture references. It's all done skilfully enough and appears to take itself seriously musically, without taking itself too seriously culturally - which feels like the right way round to me. I can't say I'll be rushing back to it, but I admire them for doing what they do and I imagine they're a whole heap of fun live. And they're at #1 with a new entry - well done them! The rest of the top five are Jessie Ware (another new ent...

Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #41 :  Lotta Sea Lice -  Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile She’s the Aussie singer-songwriter whose bright, witty debut album made her an instant indie star; he’s the goofy Philadelphian who once played guitar with the War on Drugs. Together they make a distinctive, slacker-style pairing on their collaborative record, which brings together Vile and Barnett’s similarly twangy accents on new tracks, covers and each other’s old material. I haven't minded a bit of Courtney in my time, but I'm not sure I can reference much Kurt - so let's say I'm intrigued by this but no more than that. I'm really not convinced by the title though. Hmmm - it's like Lou Reed and PJ Harvey made an album together. We've got two talented people who can make nice noises, but don't always choose to do so - I will say I like the guitar work, but I'm not entirely convinced by the rest of it. Wikipedia tells us they...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 07/04/17 : Automaton - Jamiroquai Our SIXTH visit with Jamiroquai (making them the 32nd artist to reach this milestone) and I'm amazed to see they were still going in '17 - and even more amazed to see they're still at it, touring Europe and Japan later this year. I expect this is going to be yet another album which is way more Jamiroquai than I've ever needed in my life.  Yup - and yet, whilst that's true, I'd much rather take this album than some of the didgeridoo infested waters we've previously experienced. They've just dialled it all back a bit here and it's much the better for it - it's lacking a killer track or two, but it's all very listenable. Also, amusingly, both daughters entered the room when it was playing and started to get down to the funky beats - which is reasonably impressive for a band who were 25 years old at this point in time. We're at #4 in the charts with a new...

Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #44 :  I See You -  The xx On their third album, the London trio finally sheds the excessively hushed and incredibly influential electronica of their 2009 debut. Instead, they turn to the kind of vintage samples producer Jamie xx has long used in his solo work, setting richer, more uptempo backdrops against mournful dialogues about romantic disappointment and isolation. Just to complicate matters further, we've not met this one yet on our trip across the 2017 charts but we're going to - so I'm going to save it for later and you'll just have to wait to find out what I thought about it (and yes, I obviously listened to it before I realised I wasn't going to be writing it up). #43 :  The Kid -  Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith After leaving university, LA musician Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith became enamoured with a 1960s synthesiser called the Buchla 100. Six albums later and she’s still not finished experimenting with ...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 14/04/17 : Memories...Do Not Open - The Chainsmokers I know I don't mind stuff from The Chainsmokers, but I couldn't name any of their tracks if my life depended on it. Maybe this will jog my memory (spoiler alert - it won't). I stand corrected - I actually did remember "Paris", but would never have remembered it was by this lot. I was expecting the album to be a general dance-y thing in a Disclosure or similar style, but it's actually more poppy - think something like a One Direction album but with guest vocalists. It's not dreadful, but it's all very samey and gets pretty dull pretty quickly - I can understand people bought it on the strength of a couple of decent singles, but I suspect the number of re-listens wasn't all that high. We're at #3 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of a sixteen week run - easily their most successful album. The rest of the top five were  E...