The Decemberists – The Hazards Of Love
by The interviewer was incredulous that an ambitious concept album, let alone a rock opera of all things, had been considered a good idea for release in these modern times. I think he used the word ‘brave’ a lot.
Tenacious D – The Who Medley
“Who better to deliver a tribute to the greatest rock opera of all times? Who? The D! That’s Who!! We’ve been working on this medley …
Dexys Midnight Runners – Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
Forget Come On Eileen and Too-Rye-Ay, forget dungarees and floppy hair. Dexys Midnight Runners underrated classic is a raw, lyrically brilliant, musically innovative masterpiece, and a debut album that deserves wider recognition and acclaim.
Roxy Music – Manifesto
The album has elements of all the best of early Roxy Music, but never quite captures the same brilliance. Manifesto starts well, the intro is appealing, but it quickly fails to live up to the promise. A fairly tame, middle-of-the-roader really. Not the phrase you would normally associate with 1970s Bryan Ferry. Listening through again I can’t emphasise enough how much Trash sounds like the Mod Revival records of this era.
The Who – Who’s Missing
Who’s Missing is undoubtedly the better of the two, and side two of that album contained some of my most played Who tracks back then. Fast forward 10 years and the ‘Great Vinyl Cull’ of 1995, as I like to call it, was the last time I saw that record out in the wild. I needed the money and vinyl was dead, right? So I took all my vinyl to Selectadisc in Nottingham and they bought almost all of it, but that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say it wasn’t that long before I was earning proper money, had seen the error of my ways and started re-collecting all my old LPs, and lots of new ones!
Manic Street Preachers – The Ultra Vivid Lament
The first thing to mention is this was written after Nicky Wire lost both of his parents just before the pandemic, and continuing into lockdown the album, or at least its lyrics, reflects sadness, insecurities and loneliness. The loneliness of being an orphan is real even well into middle age. Been there myself. But more than that it makes you reflect on and see the world altogether differently, probably due to the heightened sense of your own mortality.
Pete Townshend – Scoop
We kick off with an acoustic version of So Sad About Us, complete with intro by Pete himself. A lovely demonstration of Townshend’s guitar prowess. But, alas, at 2:26 it abruptly stops and heads straight into Brr. Brr is a great piece of music that sounds like it would fit on Rough Mix (1977) quite happily but I’d have preferred it if the entirety of So Sad had survived. Zelda is a standout from side one for me, it reminded me of Michael Nyman (reviewed here too) with the ‘heartbeat’ of violin going through the entire track, and as far as I know, appeared nowhere else other than this compilation. I couldn’t see it on any Who album but it would have played nicely with other solo stuff I think.
Wishbone Ash – Front Page News
Released in 1977, Front Page News definitely rates as early Wishbone, but even so this is what they call the Mk 2 lineup and there seems to be a consensus they were passed their best by then. I hadn’t realised they had been so prolific latterly either, with regular releases well into the 2010s.
Uppers On The South Downs
Having lived through, and been very much a part of the Mod Revival scene in the late 70s and early 80s, the only band I’d seen live or really heard of from this collection was Purple Hearts. They were quite popular at the time among my friends, and they recorded several fairly iconic albums such as Beat That and Head On Collision Time, featuring the Mod classic Frustration.
Echo And The Bunnymen – Heaven Up Here
Heaven Up Here was released on Korova in 1981 and was, by all measures, a success – a top 10 album in the UK, an entry in the US Billboard album charts, and it spawned two singles, A Promise and Over The Wall.