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Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 20/03/88 : Naked -  Talking Heads Our fourth visit with Talking Heads and this is one I haven't heard, but I like the singles from it, so I have reasonable hopes for it. The tracks I previously knew and liked were "Blind", "Mr. Jones" and (particularly) "(Nothing But) Flowers" and it's fair to say the rest of the album doesn't stray too far from this formula, with lots of tricksy world rhythms blending well (imho) with more traditional poppy elements - but there's enough variety across the album to keep me happy. Overall, I liked it and found it more accessible than some of their more highly regarded albums - I'd almost be tempted to listen to it again! We're at #3 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a thirteen week run - somewhat surprisingly this is their highest ever charting position, although several albums have spent longer in the charts. The rest of t...

The journey continues... Keep Your Courage (2023) A gap of nine years brings us up to her last (currently) album - I checked it out at the time and quite enjoyed it but never revisited it, so it will be interesting to see what I make of it after a gap of a couple of years 1. Big Girls She's sounding very wistful and beaten down by experience, but with some hints of positivity, She's joined by Abena Koomson-Davis (who's got a lovely voice) and a load of horns which work really well. 2. Come On, Aphrodite Abena and the horns are back again with a much more needy song, begging for an opportunity for love. It's OK, but the content/length ratio feels a bit off to me. 3. Sister Tilly This is the song I knew best from the album because it's covered in an interesting Song Exploder podcast  - it's about the activist generation of women from the 60s and 70s and I think it evokes some beautiful images. And it's a decent song as well.  4. Narcissus I'm quite surpris...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 27/03/88 : Viva Hate -  Morrissey Well, doesn't that seem an ironic title with hindsight? At this point, I have to ask the obligatory "can you separate the art from the artist?" question (I think you can, to a certain extent) - so now we've got that out of the way I can just settle down and listen to an album I've got somewhere in the house, bringing us to ten for the year. I seem to recall it's very good in places and generally not bad, but not nearly as great as Steven Patrick thought it was (because nothing ever is). Yeah - it is indeed very good in places, particularly the singles "Every Day Is Like Sunday" and "Suedehead". And the rest of it is generally not bad, with (obviously) intelligent lyrics and (not so obviously) more musical variety than I was expecting. But taking the album as a whole, it just didn't feel that engaging - I'm sure the die-hard fans listened to it a...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2024 #34 :  Los Colonos  (The Settlers) Europe’s exploitation of Tierra del Fuego at the turn of the 20th century is told in an unsparingly bloody drama-thriller by first-time director Felipe Gálvez Haberle. OK, we're going to give them Spanish language film-makers another go with our first film from Chile - and, given the subject matter, I'll be very surprised if this is as boring as the last film. OK, stop me if you've heard this one before - a Scotsman, an American and a Chilean head into the South American wilderness for some weird reason to do with sheep. They soon realise why it's called a wilderness - there's pretty much nothing there. The Scotsman is Alexander MacLennan (Mark Stanley) who seems to be a homicidal lunatic ex-serviceman, the American is Bill ( Benjamin Westfall) who seems to be a slightly saner mercenary and the Chilean is Segundo (Camilo Arancibia) who doesn't say enough for you to...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/09/25 : Futique - Biffy Clyro Our fourth visit with Biffy - I generally quite liked their stuff so far, so I'm expecting this to be bearable. Yeah, it's definitely bearable.  It generally conforms to their "start slow and build to a rousing chorus" formula, with just enough variety (for me) to carry the album.  I like the general sound but I’m not sure I feel the need for any more than a couple of Biffy albums - where this ranks in their canon, I'm not the man to say. I do have a suspicion  they could churn this stuff out in their sleep which I kinda mean as a compliment, but it feels like a very back-handed one. I do imagine they're a load of fun live though and they also got bonus points for calling a track "Dearest Amygdala" - I'm wondering what the album title means though. We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week and the rest of the top five are  Sabrina Carpenter ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 03/04/88 : Wings Of Heaven -  Magnum Our first visit with Magnum (and only their third ever mention) - I seem to recall they were very much not my sort of thing. Somewhat surprisingly, it's not available on Amazon - the internet tells me this is because of " due to licensing issues and record company decisions" (which could mean anything!). Well, this was unexpected. I wouldn't say it's exactly my sort of thing, but it certainly doesn't go as far as being very much not my sort of thing because it's a lot less heavy than I was expecting. I'd say it's like early 80s US guitar rawk with a touch of prog thrown in for good measure - I definitely got hints of Marillion in places as well. I can't say I'll be rushing back to it and I could definitely have done without the 10:36 of "Don't Wake the Lion (Too Old To Die Young)" but I imagine they put on an enjoyably over-the-top live...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 10/04/88 : Introducing The Hardline According To... -  Terence Trent D'arby Our first visit with Terence (and, in all likelihood, our last) and it's one I don't believe I've ever listened to - and I'm expecting to like it, so quite why I've avoided it is unclear. It's even more surprising because apparently "we" own it, taking us to nine for year. I liked "Wishing Well", "Dance Little Sister" but "Sign Your Name" is easily the class track on the album - anyone would be proud of that, wouldn't they? The whole album is b eautifully produced with a lovely crisp sound to it - but I did solve the mystery as to why I avoided it and it's that  I just don't love his voice. I admit he does what he does with it very well ("As Yet Untitled" is very impressive multi-track a capella number), but a whole album of it kinda grates on me.  I also liked "W...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #2 :     Supacell With the MCU taking off into the multiverse in recent years and DC Studios preparing to relaunch with a phase dedicated to Gods and monsters, Blue Story writer-director Rapman’s brilliantly original Netflix joint Supacell brings superheroes back down to Earth. Set on the streets of Peckham, Lewisham, Brixton, and Camberwell, Rapman’s show — inspired by the likes of Heroes and Misfits — follows five Black South Londoners who inexplicably develop superpowers. Far from aspiring Avengers however, what makes Michael (Tosin Cole), Sabrina (Nadine Mills), Andre (Eric Kofi Abrefa), Rodney (Calvin Demba), and Tazer (Josh Tedeku) such compelling leads — and the show so unique — is that they really are just ordinary people trying to get by in modern London. Seamlessly blending familiar genre features — Superspeed! Superstrength! PORTALS! — with character driven, street-level drama, Supacell has given its genr...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 17/04/88 : Bridge Of Spies -  T'Pau Our second visit with T'Pau this year and this is another one I owned, taking us to eight for the year. I remember having it on cassette and playing it loads, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it. It starts up with "Heart Of Soul" which is a well constructed song which manages to sound very 80s whilst also being slightly different from the usual fare. I actually think it's easily the best track on the album, with only "China In Your Hand" also standing out from the other tracks which are pretty standard US new-wave pop-rock. I can quite understand if people aren't into it but, quite possibly because of my familiarity with the material, I think it's well done pretty standard US new-wave pop-rock (and not at all what you'd expect from a band from Shrewsbury) so it was great to catch up with, particularly "Sex Talk", the title track and ...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2024 #35 :     Cerrar Los Ojos  (Close Your Eyes) The Spirit of the Beehive director Víctor Erice returns after 30 years with an enigmatic tale of a disappeared actor that ruminates on memory, ageing and cinema itself. Skipping over There's Still Tomorrow (#38) which depicts gruelling domestic abuse, Omen (#37) which is apparently a surrealistic take on Congolese occult practices and Opponent (#36) which follows an Iranian wrestler claiming asylum in Sweden brings us to this, which, if I'm being honest doesn't sound a whole lot more promising, but sometimes enigmatic can be good, can't it? Hmmm - 160 minutes. Oh joy.  Well, the good news is that it wasn't 160 minutes of suffering. But the bad news is that I gave up after half an hour because this film was going nowhere very, very slowly. The first ten minutes were a completely random scene from some time in the past involving a man hiring someone to track do...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 24/04/88 : Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son -  Iron Maiden Our seventh visit with the Maiden (drawing them amusingly level with like-minded spirits Kylie Minogue and Taylor Swift) and I have at least heard of this album, which gives me some hope I'm going to find it bearable. But not too much hope, obviously. Well, well well. I actually LIKED "Can I Play With Madness?"  and "The Evil That Men Do" wasn't far away from those dizzy heights, but I actually didn't mind most of it (although almost ten minutes of the title track was a bit too much).  It all takes itself very seriously, but I can't quite decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing - if you're not going to take your "art" seriously, then why should you expect others to do so? Let's be clear, I'm never going to listen to this again - but if forced to chose between this and Bros , then the Maiden are going to win ever...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 01/05/88 : The Innocents -  Erasure This is our first visit with Erasure (but certainly not our last) and my feeling has always been that time has been somewhat unfair to them with their incredible popularity around this time having been pretty much forgotten. So I'm looking forward to this, partly because I'm expecting to enjoy it and partly because maybe things will become clear as to why they've faded into semi-obscurity. It starts with "A Little Respect" which still sounds very decent and I also remembered "Chains Of Love", which isn't a million miles away in terms of sound - but the rest of the album has more variety than I was expecting. "Ship Of Fools" is very Depeche Mode-ish, "65000" is surprisingly electro hip-hop (thankfully without any rapping) and "Yahoo" has definite hints of gospel - it's all pretty up-tempo musically, but sometimes accompanied by ...