What Have You Done

Heed my tale of warning.

Many moons ago I heard of a little musical act going by the name Radiohead. There, on my television screen was an odd looking fellow sat at a piano, wailing into a microphone. This, I decided in my wisdom was arse. Radiohead had no talent and my mind had been set in an anti-Thom Yorke (and friends) mode.

My disliking of the band continued for several years until I was pestered by my peers into purchasing The Bends (really I got it free with another album). After a couple of listens I decided maybe I had been wrong and they're weren't that bad after all. I enquired with the aforementioned peers about similar Radiohead albums and they informed me of the flowery one called Pablo Honey. They also told me the other albums were rather weird and electronic and maybe not worth bothering with. Shortly after that (before any exchange of money at shops for the flowery album) someone lent me Hail To The Thief. I was sceptical, but as soon as I heard it knew I loved it. This set me on a path towards Amnesiac and Kid A. Eventually I got round to buying Pablo Honey and realised it was truly boring (sorry Will, but it's true!).

My warning is, not to stick to what you know. Had I gone with more of the same I'd have listened to Pablo Honey and that vague liking of Radiohead that had been established with The Bends would most likely have been destroyed. Instead I listened to something different and it was great. My musical landscape had been remodelled - like Ground Force or something, but with music and no Charlie Dimmock.

We don't fear these machinesssss

Now that I don't have physics to occupy my mind I have been contemplating my favorite albums of all time.

• The Shins - Wincing The Night Away: THE BEST ALBUM EVER... Seriously! There are no tracks on this album I would skip. I have no more to say on the matter.



• Basement Jaxx - Remedy: This was the first album I liked from beginning to end. To be honest, the albums I'd brought up to this point were generally flaff off market stalls (I just liked the "shiny rainbow thing CDs do"). My fondness of this album also had nothing to do with the semi naked lady on the cover *looks shifty*



• Starsailor - Love Is Here: This was instantly good musical goodness passing into my ears like audio gravy (the nice kind of gravy with little meaty bits in it, not that crap you buy at Morrisons). One of the few albums that I really liked first time round.



• Radiohead - Hail To The Thief: The album which has a bit of everything. Plus the copy I have in York is on MiniDisc - the superior music format, for people who like their music blue and rigid and with a little metal strip across the top.



• Lacuna Coil - Comalies: Swamped, Aeon, Heaven's A Lie, Tight Rope, Daylight Dancer, Aeon, Tight Rope, The Ghost Woman..., Aeon, Unspoken, Tight Rope, Entwined, Aeon, The Prophet Said, Tight Rope, Angel's Punishment, Aeon, Comalies, Tight Rope - Nuff said!



• Within Temptation - The Heart Of Everything: Although the Kate Bush sound was good, I prefer the newer albums. Also this is the one that made someone go "what the hell are you listening to...opera?!" (or something similar).



• Alexisonfire - Watch Out: Yeah, so maybe this is emo, but I couldn't care! This is a sexy album (although not at all in the classical sense of being sexy). This album is summer 2006.

Other albums that were nearly good enough, but either have a couple of crap tracks (or I was too lazy to write about):

• Every other The Shins and Radiohead album (apart from Pablo Honey), VNV Nation - Futureperfect, Elbow - Asleep In The Back, VAC - Hex Angel, FFAF - Tales Don't Tell Themselves, Thursday - War All The Time,
  

Scotch Music

Living in Scotland is on the horizon and to put myself in a Scottish mood I have been listening to the music it has to offer and to find out what's musically in store for me. I already had been listening to bands like Idlewild, Biffy Clyro, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian etc, so already had a good idea of what is to come. Last year The Twilight Sad managed to get themselves into my top 10 albums of 2007, I really liked the vocals because of the acent, nothing gets you in a Scottish mood more than that (well maybe bagpipes), and turns out the music wasn't bad either. This led me to find more bands from Scotland like Frightened Rabbit so I thought I'd share this live video of them playing their latest b-side (from the single Head Rolls Off) which is a cover of N-Trance:

A is for ACO, B is for Beth Orton

Recently I have set myself the challenge of listening to my iTunes, from start to end, A to Z. Mostly this is because I seem to have a lot of stuff that I don't want anymore, or infact, that I never wanted yet somehow have managed to accumulate along the way, so it's time to get those in my recycling bin. It's taking me a while, I've been going about three weeks and I'm only almost done on B. Even so I am enjoying it, listening to things I don't usually listen to, and things that I had forgotten how much I liked. To accompany this task I am going to choose one song/band/singer for each letter of the alphabet, just to make sure I'm paying attention to what I am listening to.

So, here's my choice for A, Japanese singer ACO. I first heard about her on Adam and Joe go Tokyo, and the song they introduced me to is probably still my favouite, Machi, which is a collaboration with Múm. It's a very pretty little song, as is the video.

My B choice is a much more long standing favourite, Beth Orton. I got her album Daybreaker. From a friend as a Christmas present and fell in love with it instantly. It's difficult to pick a song, as to me it is more of just an album that I listen to straight through, and did so almost everyday for well over a year, as I enjoyed both falling asleep and waking up to it. I've decided to link to Concrete Sky for this case, it's not an amazing video, and it's probably not my favourite song, but I think it represents the part of her music that I like, and it's a good song to listen to on a train.