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Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #35 :  Green Twins -  Nick Hakim As the surreally gruesome album artwork suggests (it features a slime-trailing eyeball admiring itself in the mirror), Hakim’s debut album gives classic soul a psychedelic sheen. Like the memory of a dream, Green Twins is hazily impressionistic, and its subject matter includes a musing that his girlfriend bears a resemblance to God. Another first mention ever for an artist and I'm not entirely sure what my expectations for psychedelic soul are - I suspect it will either terrible or surprisingly bearable. Well, having listened to it, I'd say that psychedelic soul is actually a very good description for it and I found it surprisingly bearable. I was reminded of Prince when he was in one of his laid-back introspective moods - it's quite noodly, but not excessively so. It just has a good mellow vibe to it - but obviously, I'll never listen to it again. Wikipedia doesn't h...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 31/03/17 : Wonderland - Take That Our fifth visit with the lads - I'm sure I'll recognise some of it, but none of the track titles are ringing any bells on first read. Nope - no bells run at all. None of it was hateful, but it all felt a "let's be like Coldplay and fill out arenas with people waving their phones" button-pushing exercise. And I struggle to imagine many of these tracks survived their live show after that particular tour - I'm sure those that packed out the shows loved them though. My only other comments are that  I really didn't need the ukelele backing on "New Day" and what on earth are they doing on the album cover? We're at #2 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a fifteen week run - I suspect they would have been hoping for a bit longer than that. The rest of the top five were  Ed Sheeran ,  Drake ,  Rag'n'Bone Man  and (quite obviously) Vera...

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...