Troubled Songs: Music of the Northern Ireland Conflict

I had the great idea of putting together a compilation of songs about the Troubles, by which I mean the violent conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and continued until the peace process of the 1990s mostly moved the conflict into the political arena. I am trying to look at the conflict through the way it was represented in song and to explore the events that inspired particular pieces of music. So I've put together slightly more than a CD's worth of tunes, which you can listen to as a playlist on Spotify or YouTube.

A word of warning: musically speaking, these songs are of variable quality and some of them are not good at all. I'm not expecting anyone to listen to these tunes over and over and feel that they have discovered some lost classics (although I think some of these songs are worthy of a wider audience). My hope more is that people will find the songs and the accompanying text an informative and interesting way of exploring these events that are now starting to recede into history.

But first a history lesson on the origins of the conflict, with the massive caveat that the historiography of the Troubles is itself a contested subject. In the 1920s Ireland was partitioned, with 26 counties becoming a self-governing free state (and later a fully independent republic), while six counties in the north east remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland, with its own devolved parliament. The Unionist-Protestant majority monopolised power in Northern Ireland, keeping the Nationalist-Catholic majority marginalised, discriminating against them in the workplace and the provision of social housing. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched periodic military campaigns to force the British out of the Six Counties; these proved ineffectual and by the mid-1960s the IRA had tacitly given up on the armed struggle and was devoting its efforts more towards non-violent engagement with social issues.

In the 1960s a new civil rights movement emerged through which members of the Catholic-Nationalist community sought greater equality in the life of Northern Ireland. Inspired by the African American civil rights movement, this campaign used sit-ins, marches and civil disobedience to advance its goals. Members of the Protestant-Unionist community were unnerved, fearing the loss of their privileges but also concerned that the civil rights movement was simply a ruse by the IRA. At the time Northern Ireland had a reformist prime minister, but he was moving too slowly to satisfy the demands of the increasingly radicalised civil rights movement while also contributing to the sense of his own Unionist community that events were spinning out of control. Loyalists (hardline Unionists) reacted violently against the civil rights movement, attacking marchers (often with the overt or tacit support of the local police). Loyalist paramilitaries launched a bombing campaign.

In August 1969 Northern Ireland exploded, with rioting and sectarian violence erupting in the towns. The police lost control and the British Army was deployed. The previously moribund IRA was revitalised, with an influx of new members initially seeking to defend their communities but then seeing the disorder as an opportunity to advance the cause of Irish unification.

That's the background for these songs. I've only picked ones from the time of the conflict (so no "A Nation Once Again", "Only Our Rivers Run Free", or "Come Out Ye Black and Tans") and I've mostly avoided ones that address the conflict so obliquely that they could be about anything (so no "Invisible Sun" or "Spirits in the Material World"). I'm presenting them chronologically so that they can bring us from the conflict's start up to the time it began to fade away.

The Barleycorn "The Men Behind the Wire" (1972)

There was a brief moment where some Catholics in Northern Ireland welcomed British troops as a more palatable alternative to the Unionist-controlled police, but the honeymoon proved short-lived. Soon the IRA and British Army were trading shots. In an effort to crush the growing IRA campaign, the authorities in 1971 introduced internment without trial, rounding up Catholics suspected of IRA involvement. This proved controversial and also ineffectual, as the authorities had no accurate list of IRA activists. This song sees The Barleycorn protest against internment with a surprisingly jaunty tune, which spent three weeks at the top of the Irish singles charts (and was more recently sung by Alan Partridge's Irish doppelgänger). The Long Kesh prison mentioned was subsequently the site of the H-Blocks, where IRA and other Republican prisoners staged the blanket and dirty protests and then in 1981 the hunger strikes, in which 10 prisoners died.

Wings "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" (1972)

On Sunday 30 January 1972 in Derry British paratroopers shot 26 unarmed men taking part in a demonstration against internment, 13 of whom died immediately with another dying later. Unsurprisingly this caused outrage and led to a surge in IRA recruitment. Paul McCartney's Wings rushed this song out as their protest against the paratroopers' actions. It is a strangely anodyne offering, failing to communicate any real sense of shock and anger at what had just happened and featuring lyrics and a tune that are all pretty fatuous. It was banned by the BBC but still made number 16 in the UK singles chart.

Plastic Ono Band "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1972)

John Lennon also felt the need to comment on Bloody Sunday and his band released this record, which I had somehow never heard before. Lennon's solo career I mostly associate with schmaltzy piano led ballads so this groover was a pleasant surprise. Unlike McCartney's tune, this actually engages with the events of Bloody Sunday and attempts to communicate a bit more detail about the history of the conflict, albeit from a partial perspective.

The Dubliners "The Town I Loved So Well" (1973)

The Dubliners are not from Northern Ireland (the clue is in the name) but their manager Phil Coulter was a native of Derry. Coulter is often portayed as the bad guy in Irish traditional music narratives: the breadhead impressario with the ear for cheesy pop adjacent tunes and plinky piano flourishes. Yet he wrote this affecting song for The Dubliners, sung here by the legendary Luke Kelly. By now the penny was beginning to drop that the Troubles were not going away any time soon. The song nostalgically compares the pre-conflict era, warts and all, with the disconcerting present.

I'm not including any related music but I should also mention the 1975 Miami Showband massacre, whose anniversary fell a few days ago. This saw three touring musicians killed and another two left for dead by loyalist paramilitaries. Following this horrific event many bands gave up on playing gigs in Northern Ireland.

Boney M "Belfast" (1977) Boney M were a vehicle for German record producer Frank Farian. They had already had a hit with a song about Depression-era gangster Ma Baker and would go on to release one about Rasputin, so why not a disco song about the horrors of the Northern Ireland conflict? This song could really do with a spoken word breakdown explaining the Troubles or a closing explanation along the lines of "Oh, those paramilitaries" but it's still a classic and with a few lyric changes could surely become a theme song for the Belfast tourist board.

Stiff Little Fingers "Suspect Device" & "Alternative Ulster" (1978)

Anyone who has scene the brilliant film Good Vibrations will be aware that punk was a big deal in Northern Ireland, with some even claiming that punks played an important role in keeping Belfast's city centre open at a time when many were afraid to go out after dark. Stiff Little Fingers were not shy about railing against the shit situation in which they found themselves, with "Suspect Device" skewering the paramilitaries promising a bright future while "Alternative Ulster" seems more hostile to the forces of the state. These could be the two best songs in this compilation.

Gang of Four "Ether" (1979)

Gang of Four were one of the more political of the British post-punk bands. In this song they evoke the enhanced interrogation techniques British forces took to using on IRA suspects (techniques subsequently recognised legally as torture). The H-Blocks get another mention and the song hints at an economic reason for the British presence in Northern Ireland with its reference to possible oil reserves under Rockall, an uninhabited island north-west of Ireland whose ownership is disputed by Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Kate Bush "Army Dreamers" (1980)

The song does not mention Northern Ireland but in 1980 this was the only place where British soldiers were fighting or dying, something that was probably not lost on the half-Irish Bush.

Eric Bogle "My Youngest Son Came Home Today" (1982)

Australian folk singer Eric Bogle is best known for his anti-war songs dealing with the futility of fighting for the British Empire, notably "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "The Green Fields of France". Here he gives us an anti-war song about the Troubles, which I first heard sung by Billy Bragg. I gather this has subsequently been adopted by Irish Republicans; if so I think they understand the lyrics differently to me, as I hear the song as articulating the pointlessness of dying for the IRA.

Fun Boy Three "The More I See (The Less I Believe)" (1983) The lack of any coherent message here is what appeals to me about the lyrical content, with the vocals just enunciating a sense of "what the fuck, that shit is fucked up" while the music has an appealing post-punk oddness to it that makes me want to explore further this band's work.

U2 "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1983)

They used to say of peak-era method actors like Marlon Brando that you might not know what they were saying, but you definitely knew what they were feeling. And so it is here with Bongo and his buds. Reputedly the song has its origins in U2 being scheduled to appear at New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade but then withdrawing on discovering that the honorary grand marshal was likely to be deceased IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. Like Edwin Starr's "War", the song uses the classic device of combining anti-war lyrics to a martial beat.

Paul Brady "The Island" (1985)

Strabane-born Paul Brady started life as a folkie but over the years moved in a far more lucrative AOR and pop direction. This is another song about the pointlessness of the struggle, with Northern Ireland compared to Lebanon (very much the poster child at that time for countries tearing themselves apart in internecine violence), with Brady contrasting his disdain for the IRA's struggle with his longing for a bit of seashore shagging. I could probably do without the smutty content but I've always liked the piano line in this song, although some consider that the tune veers overly into schmaltz.

Spandau Ballet "Through the Barricades" (1986)

Belfast native Thomas "Kidso" Reilly worked for a number of British bands, including Altered Images, Bananarama, and Spandau Ballet. While on a trip home he was out with some friends and happened to fall foul of some British soldiers, one of whom shot him in the back, killing him (the soldier was convicted of murder but released on parole after two years). Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp subsequently visited Kidso's grave and met his brother; while traveling through West Belfast he was shocked by the sight of "peace line" barricades that separated Catholic and Protestant areas of the city, and so came the inspiration for this song (Joan Lingard's YA novel Across the Barricades might also have played an uncredited part here). The lyrics centre on that great cliche of Northern Ireland fiction, a cross-community love affair. And for all the Yeats-quoting lyrics it is a song I am including here for its noteworthiness but not because I in any way like it. I'm not sure if it is actually bad or if it is just my youthful dislike of Spandau Ballet being impossible to shake off, but it does feel too much like a "lovely song" for me.

The Pogues "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six" (1988)

In the first half Terry Woods sings from the point of view of someone who has had enough of Northern Ireland's political violence and is leaving, never to return. But then Shane McGowan sings of some of those who did leave, the people known as the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, who were convicted for IRA crimes (pub bombings in Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich that killed 29 people and injured 320) they didn't commit on the basis of confessions extracted under torture and, in the case of the Birmingham Six, deeply flawed forensic evidence. The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were subsequently exonerated but when this song was released its subjects were still in prison.Although doubts as to the safety of their convictions were becoming more widespread, suggesting their innocence and the moral corruption of the justice institutions was still controversial, and the Shane McGowan portion of the song was effectively banned from British television.

Simple Minds "Belfast Child" (1989) The title references Belfast, but the song appears to have been inspired by the 1987 Enniskillen bombing, when the IRA killed 10 civilians and one policeman. The melody draws on the folk tune "She Moved through the Fair", while the lyrics are somewhat oblique but suggest a certain "war is bad" sentiment.

Tina Turner "The Best" (1989)

What, you may be wondering, is this song doing here? Tina Turner has no obvious link to Northern Ireland and the song's lyrics do not suggest any link to the Troubles. But somehow this song became a loyalist anthem, often played when loyalists were celebrating a release from jail or a successfully completed sectarian murder. Loyalists are often portrayed as the irredeemable bad guys of the Northern Ireland conflict, their insularity, thuggishness, reactionary far-right adjacent tendencies and fondness for their links to a country that isn't that pushed about them making it easy to dislike them. There was also their tendency to really go for it with sectarian killings of random civilians, in contrast to the other actors who made a bit more of an effort to go after enemy combatants at least some of the time. And then there is their heavy involvement in the North's drug trade. So it isn't hard to see why some might describe them as simply the best.

The Cranberries "Zombie" (1994)

One tactic the IRA became quite attached to was detonating bombs in the commercial districts of English towns and cities. In 1993 the IRA hit the Cheshire town of Warrington twice, a few weeks between each attack. The first explosion caused extensive damage but no injuries, but the bombs exploded on 20 March on a shopping street injured 56 people and killed two children (one of them just three years old). Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries wrote this song in response. It's easy to scoff at the song's somewhat simplistic anger but I like how the lyrics reference "The Men Behind the Wire" and I feel it does capture the pointlessness of the IRA's struggle at this time. No longer could the Republicans claim to be defending Catholic communities in Northern Ireland and their efforts were not obviously bringing a united Ireland any closer, so it was hard to see what they were still killing and dying for. To many it looked like the IRA's war had become self-perpetuating and was continuing because the organisation's cadres could not see any way of stopping that would not be an admission of failure.

In the shadows though strange things were happening. Back channel negotiations were taking place between British representatives and figures close to IRA thinking, combined with more public discussions between the Irish and British governments and different nationalist-republican political leaders in Northern Ireland. Something was going on, even if no one quite knew what.

By the time "Zombie" was released as a single the IRA had already declared a ceasefire, which lasted until January 1996 before becoming permanent in July 1997, with loyalist paramilitaries eventually following suit. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is seen as effectively bringing the Troubles to an end (even though the Omagh bombing later that year by dissident Republicans was the single bloodiest incident in Northern Ireland during the whole of the conflict). Since then the troops have come off the streets, the prisoners have left jail, and the gun has largely been removed from Northern Irish politics, which now revolves around a somewhat dysfunctional but non-violent enforced power-sharing arrangement.

Even so, Northern Ireland remains a divided society, with Belfast reputedly featuring more peace walls now than before the Good Friday Agreement. Northern Ireland's government regularly collapses over issues that seem pretty minor and inconsequential to outsiders. And intermittent street violence remains a thing, with loyalist mobs driving immigrants from their homes in riots a few weeks ago. But compared to the early 1970s it's all pretty quiet.

"Zombie" has had an odd afterlife, becoming a popular stadium song for sports fans from Limerick (the Cranberries' home town) and further afield.

The Young'Uns "Lyra" (2023)

The gun has largely departed from Northern Ireland's politics, but not entirely. The IRA went on ceasefire and eventually left the stage entirely, but various dissident Republican groups attempted to continue armed struggle against British rule. Their efforts have been relatively unsuccessful, although their attacks occasionally kill or injure people, mostly members of the security forces. In April 2019 during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry, dissident Republicans shot at the police and missed, but one of their bullets fatally wounded journalist Lyra McKee. Dissidents have not staged a fatal attack since then, so for now Lyra McKee remains the last person killed in the Troubles.

English folkies The Young'Uns commemorated McKee on their Tiny Notes album. Like all the Troubles' victims she deserves to be remembered as more than just a statistic, with her LGBT activism and investigative journalism making her an inspirational figure. Like the other victims of the conflict, she died far too soon. Some readers might find this song mawkish, but it brings tears to my eyes whenever I listen to it. Born in 1990, McKee came of age when the Good Friday Agreement seemed to have consigned the Troubles to the dustbin of history and looked like someone who represented Northern Ireland's future, except the past still reached out to claim her.

image sources:

Billy Campbell after being beaten by loyalists at Burntollet Bridge (Derry Journal: "Fifty year ago the People's Democracy organised civil rights march from Belfast to Derry bravely completed its journey")

British troops on the streets of Belfast, August 1969 (Guardian: "Paul Hill’s best photograph: the day troops arrived in Belfast, 1969")

Bloody Sunday: Father Edward Daly waves a white handkerchief as he tries to bring the fatally injured Jackie Duddy to safety (Ulster Museum: Bloody Sunday)

Miami Showband massacre aftermath (Belfast Telegraph: "The Miami Showband Massacre: 'They tried to wipe out the entire band'")

The H-Blocks (Irish Central: "Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan and Pierce Brosnan to star in new H-Block Jim Sheridan movie")

Bananarama at Thomas Reilly's funeral (RTÉ Archives: "Kidso Laid To Rest 1983")

Mugshots of the Birmingham Six, showing the beatings they had received after their arrests (The Conversation: "Would the Birmingham Six be victims of miscarriage of justice today?")

Loyalist mural, Belfast (The Clairmont Colleges, Digital Library)

Cupar Way peace line, Belfast (Wikipedia: "Peace Lines")

Emmalene Blake's mural for Lyra McKee, Belfast (CNN: "Belfast mural memorializes journalist Lyra McKee")

Music in Film 03: Star Wars, The Long Goodbye, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

I am writing about films I saw last year that had a strong musical element. Previous episodes can be seen here and here.

Star Wars (1977)

The IFI had this idea of showing films from series sequentially each Saturday morning in emulation of the cinema serials of yore (but sadly did not preceed each screening with an episode of Flash Gordon or King of the Rocket Men). I took the opportunity to see this one on the big screen, even though it was the CGI bullshit version rather than the now buried original release. It's still a fun film and watching does transport me back to when I saw it first. And it features many exciting musical moments, of which the greatest is probably the opening 20th Century Fox fanfare and the switch from that to John Williams' main theme, with the opening salvo an orchestral stab to rival the popular ORCH5 sample. Beyond that there are lot of Wagnerian leitmotivs but the most memorable musical bits are probably the jizz [sic] band in the Mos Eisley spaceport and then the bombastic medal ceremony music.

While I liked the film well enough I did not bother going to any of the sequels or prequels. Star Wars itself is by far the best and the endless attempts to milk the intellectual property have sucked much of the enjoyment from the other ones.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

This is the Robert Altman cat film in which Elliot Gould plays a guy who owns a cat who pisses the cat off by getting it the wrong cat food in a scene that will resonate to all cat owners.

The cat guy is also private detective Philip Marlowe and the film is an adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel in which Marlowe is caught up in a complicated caper involving an old friend in trouble, gambling debts, murder, and so on. Only unlike the olde Humphrey Bogart films this is the 1970s and Marlowe is schlebbing through a world where everyone else has given up smoking and the dames are into space cake and yoga. It's also scripted by Leigh Brackett, previously the queen of space opera in the pulp era before moving successfully into screenwriting (she famously wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back, following extensive discussions with George Lucas).

Brackett isn't the only link to Star Wars, as John Williams also did the music for this one. The older tune "Hooray for Hollywood" also features but mostly we get endless re-arrangements of the title track (by Williams and Johnny Mercer): initially sung over the opening credits, then as muzak in the supermarket, then being sung by some guy rehearsing in a bar Marlowe uses as an office, later being played by a Mexican marching band, and so on. Apparently this was Altman's idea and it suggests a certain drift into surrealism but I wonder if it also was a way of saving money.

Arnold Schwarzenegger also features. He does not make any music but at one point he starts to take off his clothes.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)

This is a documentary about the coup that overthrew Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo. But it's got a lot of jazz music in it, as it tries to link the move towards Congolese independence and its aftermath with progressive jazz currents in the United States and also with jazz musicians being used as foot soldiers in the cultural Cold War. It is an odd film in any number of ways. I am not entirely convinced that director Johan Grimonprez successfully knitted together the jazz and Congo strands of the film, but as they are both subjects I am broadly interested in this was not particularly a problem for me. It is also formally interesting in that instead of having a load of talking heads appearing on screen to explain stuff it instead almost entirely featured archive footage, with onscreen text explaining stuff where necessary, combined with voiceover narration from the memoirs of various players in the Congolese tragedy (including our own Conor Cruise O'Brien, from back when he wasn't a reactionary, with excerpts from his book about the Congo read by his son Patrick).

The films is also pretty long (150 minutes), which might put off some people. However the Congolese content is fascinating and I think something people ought to be more familiar with, while the jazz footage is amazing and worth a trip to the cinema on its own, and not just for how funny Dizzy Gillespie is.

For me the two most striking moments in the film were non-musical. Firstly we had Belgium's King Baudouin arriving in Kinshasa (then probably still called Leopoldville) to mark the Congo's independence. At a formal ceremony Baudouin delivers a tone deaf speech pitching Congolese independence as the culmination of the great work of his predecessor, King Leopold II, who took over the Congo and ran it as a giant gulag for his personal enrichment, instituting a regime of such brutality that I sometimes think its main purpose was to make British and French colonial regimes look good by comparison. Lumumba launched an impromptu rebuttal denouncing imperialism, leading Baudouin to mutter to an aide "Is he [i.e. the Congolese prime minister] meant to be speaking?". What makes this all the more fascinating is Baudouin's physical resemblance to Ireland's own Enoch Burke.

And then there is the last known footage of Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was overthrown in a coup thanks to the machinations of the Belgians and the CIA, with the British security services and UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjold playing their evil parts too. The footage shows him just before he is about to be bundled onto a plane and flown from the capital to a region controlled by Belgian-backed faux separatist to be tortured and then executed by a firing squad commanded by Belgian officers. Lumumba was always a sharp dresser with great charisma, and even here, as he sits dejected in a white shirt while his guards stuff pages from one of his speeches into his mouth, he exudes a defiance that seems to diminish his enemies.

images:

Patrice Lumumba with his future successor, Joseph Mobutu (BBC: Patrice Lumumba - Why Belgium is returning a Congolese hero's golden tooth)

King Baudouin (Wikipedia)

Patrice Lumumba bound (IPOB Ontario: Last letter from Patrice Lumumba, First Prime minister of Congo (born in 1925, assassinated by Belgium and its Western allies in 1961) to his wife)

Music in Film 02: All You Need Is Death, Eno, The Colour of Pomegranates, Portishead, Lone Star

I continue my trawl through films I saw last year that had a strong musical element. See the previous instalment here.

All You Need Is Death (2023)

This is Paul Duane's odd folk horror about these two song collectors who head up to Enniskillen because they hear there is a crazy lady (played by Olwen Fouéré, obv.) who knows a song that is indescribably ancient but has never been recorded or transcribed. Aspects of the film are deliberately enigmatic, like the early scene where the song collectors meet a client in a car park like they are conducting a shady drug deal rather than engaging in an entirely legal activity. And some of it is pretty funny, like when they meet an old singer (played by Brendan Gleeson), whose daughter makes sure they hand over any money for his songs to her and not to her alcoholic dad.

The soundtrack is by Ian Lynch. He is one of the Lankum people, so you probably have a bit of a sense of what the music sounds like: droney, trad adjacent, etc. He doesn't noticeably lend his vocals to proceedings, with the soundtrack mostly instrumental apart from a couple of points where we have characters on screen singing: the aforementioned Brendan Gleeson (who as well as being an actor has some interest in the world of traditional music), one of the song collectors (played by Simone Collins, who has a background in musical theatre), and then Olwen Fouéré herself singing "Old God Rising". That's the ancient tune the plot revolves around, a song in the language people spoke in Ireland before there was Irish, a song passed through the female line that no man is ever meant to hear. It is deliberately harsh and unnerving, sounding as much like a curse being called down as anything approximating to music.

But is the film any good? One of my friends said that she admired it more than liked it, and I see what she is getting at. You could argue that it is does well at first with the tension building as the song collectors move towards Enniskillen but that it becomes less coherent once the film has to deal with the complicated results of finding the song as opposed to the more focussed quest for it. And the film also has to roll with the limitations of its modest budget as it tries to portray the horrors unleashed by the cursed song. There might also be a sense that the film accelerates a bit too much in the last half or third, with perhaps a bit too much exposition left out in the interests of keeping things moving forward. Perhaps so, but I still like its enigmatic atmospherics and find myself interested in the idea of seeing it again. It is on IFI Home so Irish readers can check it out in the comfort of their homes.

Soundtrack available here.

PNYC: Portishead - Roseland New York (1997)

A film of a live performance by Portishead in New York some time after they released their second album. It made me think of a few things. Firstly, there is Portishead's second album, which manages to sound broadly like the first album except not as good, despite being recorded in a rather different manner: instead of the music being mostly put together from samples it was created by weaving together pieces of original music. The other thing I found myself reflecting on is that while Beth Gibbons is great on record she is less brilliant at fronting a live band: there is something very draining about her way of hanging onto the microphone for dear life while singing every song, with a never changing look on her face suggesting she is dying of the anguish.

The Colour of Pomegranates (1969)

There is music in Sergei Parajanov's enigmatic telling of the life of 18th century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova but really the film is all about the visuals. It is a stunningly beautiful work that repays trips to the cinema whenever it is shown while also being the kind of film that would annoy plot-oriented people. I have developed a theory that this film is a major influence on Wes Anderson, particularly the more recent of his works that did not trouble themselves too much with narrative. As well as going beyond narrative, Wes Anderson films share a commitment to making things look great and might even have recourse to a similar colour palette.

Lone Star (1996)

John Sayles directed this greatest of films, which features a star turn in flashback sequences by Kris Kristofferson as Charlie Wade, the terrifying sheriff of a Texan border community, with the rest of the film set in the then present day after the body of the long vanished Wade is discovered, triggering a murder investigation for which the current sheriff's late father and former sheriff is the prime suspect (there are a lot of sheriffs in this film). A big thing is the way buried secrets of the past don't always stay buried, while the film also interrogates the history of border communities in parts of the United States that used to be in other countries. I really can't recommend this film enough: I think it is one of the five best films I have ever seen.

Music isn't a big presence in the film but there is a bit of Tex-Mex-Mariachi style stuff going on, which fits the whole Mex-American theme.

Eno (2024)

Gary Hustwit made this film about the popular producer, but I think Eno himself had input into the film's central gimmick: that it is different every time it is shown. I only saw it once so I don't know how different it is each time or whether the film has some stuff it always covers with the variation being in how much of it appears, or if the film sometimes leaves out entire sections of Eno's career. What I saw was broadly chronological, interspersed with present day stuff in which Eno yapped away about stuff (either past stuff he had been doing or his curious eating regimen). There was little-to-nothing about Roxy Music but quite a bit about his time working with U2, which was actually very interesting (and possibly would be even to people who are not that pushed about the popular Dublin band). They had quite a bit of footage of Eno and U2 in the studio ("That's great Bono - now could you do it again with a bit more passion") and I was fascinated by how they interacted. I got the sense that one of Eno's strengths as a producer might be a natural aptitude for plámásing people and avoiding confrontation while still pushing them in particular directions. You also got the sense that the members of U2 (who were all still pretty young at this stage) were in awe of Eno as someone who had worked with Bowie and Roxy as well as releasing cool albums of his own.

Eno generally came across as someone who has worked out how to live.

image:

All You Need Is Death (FilmGrab)

Music in Film 01: The Zone of Interest, Perfect Days, and others

Let's talk about some films I saw last year, but only where they have a significant musical content.

The Zone of interest (2023)

This is the Jonathan Glazer directed film about the guy who was in charge of Auschwitz, with almost all the action taking place in his house and its garden, which was located just outside the main camp. It features a stunning Mica Levi soundtrack of discordant noises that merges into the sound design, becoming at one with the strange and unnerving noises we hear continuously in the background (shouts, screams, clanking machinery, shots, etc.). The music contributes strongly to the sense of unease that permeates the film. I spent most of my time watching this on edge, waiting for something terrible to happen; then I realised that the something terrible was happening all the time. It does not surprise me that many people picked this as their film of the year, and the music and sound design combo is one reason why I pity people who did not see it in the cinema.

Perfect Days (2023)

Wim Wenders goes to Japan and makes a film about a guy named Hirayama, who cleans public toilets. initially it feels like is a film about the importance of just getting on with it and doing every day stuff as well as you can, with the film starting off by showing a typical day for Hirayama and then repeating that for a bit so you think "OK, this is not a plot film", but then there is a bit of a transition and gets a bit more plot-oriented.

Where does the music come in? Well Hirayama listens to music as he goes about his day. The music he listens to is from the 1960s and 1970s. Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" features (obv.) but also tracks by Nina Simone, the Kinks, Otis Redding and Patti Smith. And he listens to all his music on cassette, which I think is meant to suggest the extent to which he is aloof from contemporary trends. There is also a suggestion at one point that the music Hirayama listens to is somehow more real and engaging than the digital music of the young people, but that's a bit OK Boomer.

Some of the way cassettes are treated in the film seemed a bit fanciful. Like, people are always able to play particular songs from the start and never have to spend ages scrolling backwards and forwards to get to the right point. And at one point Hirayama's idiot co-worker brings him to a second-hand cassette shop, where it is established that second-hand cassettes are very expensive in Japan and that the various cassettes he owns could be sold for a pile of money. I had definite "O RLY?" thoughts at this point but it has long been established that any claim about Japan is somewhat credible.

Nearly all the music in the film is western, although I see from Wikipedia that there is a track by Sachiko Kanenobu; I don't remember when her track comes up in the film but reading about the album it is from on Wikipedia makes it sound like it might be worth investigating (influences of Pentangle, Donovan, and Joni Mitchell) and she so impressed Philip K. Dick that he later produced one of her singles (er wait, did I really read that?).

But there is one striking piece of Japanese-language music. At one point Hirayama listens to "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. And then later he is in one of those tiny Japanese bars you see in films and the patrons ask the manager to sing her song, and she sings a Japanese translation of the song, except the subtitles reveal that the Japanese lyrics are much more explicitly about prostitution and the song's narrator being trapped in that world (as compared to the English lyrics being so oblique that they make almost no sense when listened to closely).

Anyway, a good film and one I recommend to all cassette fans.

Poor Things (2023)

There is a bit in this Yorgos Lanthimos film where Emma Stone's character dances to music, yes? Overall though I wasn't really sure about this one. While never boring it felt like maybe it was a bit exploitative and wasn't really saying anything.

Dune 2 (2024)

The music was not as memorable as in part one. That might be because it was broadly the same, but also there was no Sardauker throat singing in this part.

Birdsong (2024)

A short-ish documentary by Kathleen Harris about Seán Ronayne, who is on a mission to record the singing of every bird in Ireland. That's nice, birds singing and stuff, except lots of the birds are becoming extinct due to climate change and habitat loss, so it's a bit sadface. I did find myself thinking that for all my sense that meaters are people with no moral compass there might be something to be said for eating wild and unfarmed deer, as they lack predators and are stripping the cover off the landscape that ground nesting birds need to hide in. There might also be something to be said for eating meaters. Or for reintroducing wolves to Ireland.

Devo (2024)

Not mentioned in this documentary is the bit in Watchmen where Laurie finds the night vision goggles Dan uses when he dresses up as Nite Owl and she says they remind her of Devo; then she has to explain to Dan what Devo are, as he is not really into new wave music. And a bit later Dan for some reason is wandering around in the nip but wearing the night vision goggles and he says "I guess I look pretty Devo, right?".

Some more records: ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and Irish experimental music

ØXN Cyrm (2023)

This is a multiple side project band featuring Radie Peat of Lankum, Katie Kim of Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of Percolator, and John "Spud" Murphy, a producer of records by Lankum, Katie Kim and Percolator and various other acts. Lankum you may well have heard of. Percolator I am not familiar with but I have some limited prior exposure to Katie Kim, having seen her play in one of the Santa Rita Concert series in the Little Museum of Dublin. Investigation suggests that on this record the vocals are by Peat and Kim (easy to tell apart), drums & percussion are by Myler, production is by Murphy, and other instruments are by everyone. The songs are mostly of a dark folk variety, with the opening version of the "Cruel Mother" setting the scene with its lyrics about a woman giving birth in a wood and then killing her newborns. It's a song I've heard versions of before but this one seemed more centred on the woman's suffering, giving some background into how she came to be pregnant and the sheer misery of feeling like you have no option but to give birth in secret and then kill your babies.

Then we have "The Trees They Do Grow", a beautiful Scottish folk song about a young woman unfortunately married off to a much younger son of some rich guy. And then "Love Henry", a murder ballad (previously recorded by the Furrow Collective and adapted into "Henry Lee" by Nick Cave), the ominous "The Feast" (an original tune), and "The Wife of Michael Cleary". The last is a song by Maija Sofia and it deals with the disturbing 1887 incident in which Mr Cleary became convinced that his wife Bridget had been replaced by a changeling, so he killed her, burned her body and buried it in a shallow grave. Michael Cleary was convicted of manslaughter and spent 15 years in prison.

The final tune is a cover of Scott Walker's "Farmer in the City", sung by Katie Kim, which I have heard her play live at the above mentioned concert, shortly before Walker's death. The song originally appears on Tilt and I get the impression it is the standout track in Walker's mostly tune-free late oeuvre, as it sounds quite odd but is still recognisably music. It was noticeable when he died that "Farmer in the City" got a lot or airplay on forward thinking radio programmes. The version of the song here is also pretty ominous, with Kim almost intoning rather than singing her vocals to a largely droney accompaniment.

So there you have the Øxn record. It's pretty short but unlike the last Lankum album it is all-killer-no-filler and does not feel like it has been padded out with drone noodling to make it seem weightier. I recommend it to be people interested in this world of music.

v/a Under the Island: a Compilation of Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994

From Nyahh Records comes this compilation of Irish weirdo music. Various big names appear here, like Roger Doyle (an early work recorded when he still lived with his parents), Desmond Leslie (perhaps most famous for punching Bernard Levin on live television), Olwen Fouéré (big local stage actor who also shows up in films, also sometime Roger Doyle collaborator, with her track here having music written by him), Daniel Figgis (a former Virgin Prune). It's an odd record in that although it collects music from a lot of different people over quite a long period of time, the record ends up sounding almost like something by a single artist, with the tracks flowing into each other in ways that make it hard for casual listeners to tell where one ends and the other begins. Top marks though to Danny McCarthy's 1988 piece "Music For An Electric Hurling Stick", which is illustrated in the sleevenotes by him posing with a hurley to which he has fitted strings and pick-ups (an iconic illustration which seems not to have made it onto the internet, so you'll have to use your imagination).

Bandcamp

Mohammad Syfkhan I Am Kurdish (2024)

Another Nyahh Records release, in this case by Mohammed Syfkhan, a Syrian-Kurd who has found himself living in Ireland. He plays bouzouki and occasionally sings, mostly to a programmed accompaniment but occasionally to cello by Eimear Reidy and saxophone by Cathal Roche. See my review of the album launch concert.

Bandcamp

My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult Confessions of a Knife… (1990)

This is not a completely new to me record, as I have had a copy of it on vinyl since 1990 or 1991, but I decided to download a digital copy for I can listen to it more conveniently. For the sake of readers who have never heard of or forgotten about My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, they were a Wax Trax industrial act whose schtick initially was camp disco Satanism. On this record we get some industrial pop on which their Satanism is combined with samples from trash films of yore. The most striking track is probably the opener, "A Daisy Chain 4 Satan", with its repeated spoken word sample 'I live for drugs' (occasionally interspersed with 'I can't afford, I would never buy drugs'), while other stand-outs are "Kooler than Jesus" (featuring the repeated refrain "I am the Electric Messiah! The AC/DC god!", apparently taken from obscure 1972 film The Ruling Class, which means that the line is probably being spoken by Peter O'Toole) and "Ride the Mindway". But it's all good and I am enjoying binge listening to it again.

Looking back into the past, I think shoegaze and industrial were my big musics of the late 1980s and early 1980s. Very different, obviously, but variety is the spice of life. I may be falling down an industrial nostalgia rabbit hole, so don't be too surprised if you see me reviewing Revolting Cocks' Beers Steers & Queers in the near future. And also don't be too surprised if you hear about me putting on my vintage My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult t-shirt and heading into Dance to the Underground (Dublin's premier queer goth club).

images:

CYRM (Discogs)

Under the Island: a Compilation of Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994 (Bandcamp)

I Am Kurdish (Bandcamp)

Confession of a Knife… (Wikipedia)

Four Records Old and New

Loula Yorke Volta (2024)

I'm basically so impressionable that when one of my social media buds said that a former classmate of his had released a record and that it was quite good I went straight to Bandcamp and downloaded a copy. It is plinky electronic music of a relatively downtempo variety, with a retro sound to it. Verdict: appealing.

Buy it on Bandcamp.

v/a Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981 (2024)

This is an Ace Records compilation put together by Bob Stanley & Jason Wood of late 1970s tunes supposedly inspired by David Bowie's Berlin period. It is kind of a sequel to their Cafe Exil record, which is meant to evoke the music Bowie was listening to before recording Station to Station, Low, Heroes, The Lodger, etc. It is a top notch collection and I recommend it to all readers. Most of the tracks are by UK artists imagining what it would be like to be living in somewhere like Berlin, but there is also "Eisbär", sung in German by actual German-speaking Swiss people (I gather the song is quite well-known and deals with a man who would like to be a polar bear).

The album features many great tunes, often of an edgy electronic quality, but top marks go to the compilers dredging up a tune from the strange period when Daryl Hall released a Robert Fripp produced album. The other amusing track on the record is the Walker Brothers "Nite Flights", from the album of the same name. One hears of this record as Scott Walker's first step along the road to weird unlistenability but the track is a surprisingly groovey number, almost cheesy, and one that you could happily play to your most conservative disco loving aunt.

Buy it from Ace Records

Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

OK so yes I had this before on vinyl but I thought it would be a good idea to pick up a digital copy I can listen to on my iPod. If you haven't living under a stone you will surely be at least aware of this record: Gainsbourg's masterpiece, produced in collaboration with arranger Jean-Claude Vannier and an army of top notch session musicians, very influential on artists as diverse as Air and Beck. And this is the extended version, with a load of extra tracks that are mostly extended versions of the main tunes or else a couple of tracks that were left off the original release for reasons.

Melody Nelson is an odd record. It's very short for one thing, and it begins and ends with what sounds suspiciously like the same very long song. These tracks, "Melody" and "Cargo Culte", both feature Gainsbourg muttering rather than singing over freakouts by the musicians. And the music really is amazing, with what sounds like jazz influenced drums combining with throbbing bass and sensuous guitar licks to create an incredible sonic groove. Gainsbourg does actually sing on the other tracks but it his spoken word pieces that are the most memorable, particularly on "Cargo Culte" where they are offset by the music building, building and building.

And of course if you are a non-francophone like me you only know what the record is about by reading a summary of it on Wikipedia. People who can understand French generally talk about how it greatly improves one's enjoyment of Gainsbourg's music to get what he is saying, but there are times when I have my doubts about this. For Melody Nelson is a concept album, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage girl, brings her to a hotel and shags her, after which she dies in a plane crash, leaving the dirty rotter to feel sad. It's not really the sordid story that I like about the record so the full details of the lyrics are perhaps left unknown to me.

Because it is the music that is so striking about the record you would have to wonder whether Gainsbourg is coasting here and it is actually Vannier we should be crediting with everything likeable about it. Vannier is only credited aa a co-writer on some of the tracks, and not on the key ones, but he arranges all of them and arguably that is the key thing here. And yet, I have heard a Jean-Claude Vannier solo record, and while it is enjoyable enough to listen to, it does tend a bit towards tuneless nonsense, which makes me think that maybe the Melody Nelson X-factor is Serge after all.

Extended versions of albums are often terrible but here the addition of extra material works by giving you more of what you want, in particular an extended version of "Melody" and an instrumental version of "Cargo Culte". If you already like Melody Nelson you need this. If you don't already like Melody Nelson then you still need this as you should give it another listen.

Mary & the Pigeons Like Water (2024)

I would love to say that this is a record by a woman who has trained pigeons to play instruments but this is not the case. Instead it is a record by Mary Barnecutt, with the Pigeons being the extra musicians she plays with. I first came across Barnecutt when she played at the first Stoneybatter Festival concert, impressing me with her idiosyncratic music. Like her previous music, this album is fronted by Barnecutt on both voice and cello, with other people coming in on other instruments on different tracks. It sounds completely adrift from anything else going on in music at the moment and doesn't even sound that much like most of the other music I am listening to these days, which I think is a good thing. It's very song-based and maybe nods towards modern composition (that could just be me being seduced by the cello) but there maybe is a slight jazz influence to the drumming.

Actually I did find myself thinking of one thing the record kind of reminds me of: Dresden Dolls. The record has the same kind of slightly bouncey cabaret-esque sound to it at times, and not just because it features piano-keyboards, but it doesn't have the gothic angst of Amanda Palmer's vocals and lyrics, which some might consider a plus point.

Buy it on Bandcamp.

Mohammad Syfkhan / E the Artist (Bello Bar)

This was a launch concert for Mohammad Syfkhan's I Am Kurdish album. It was taking place in the Bello Bar, which is one of Dublin's pokiest venues but also somewhere that hosts a lot of forward thinking music put on by Vinnie Dermody's Enthusiastic Eunuch organisation. The venue's annoying feature is that there are very few good seats giving you a reasonably clear view of the stage, so if attending you need to get down early. My friend "Eoghan" and I were in the queue when doors opened but we still weren't able to nab seats right at the front of the raised bit, but we were at least able to grab stools in front of the stage. From here we had an unobstructed view of E the Artist, who did laptop stuff (and occasional guitar stuff) while also using his voice as an instrument. I am generally a bit wary of laptop musicians but this guy seemed to have something and I hope we see more of him. He has a short record on Bandcamp that might be worth investigating.
Mohammad Syfhkan himself is a smartly dressed Kurdish fellow who used to live in Syria but has left there for a country where he is less likely to be killed. He plays the bouzouki and sometimes sings, while a programmed instrumental track accompanies him. I found the sound of his bouzouki fascinating… it had a quality that made it sound like it might have been electronically treated, but maybe that is just the way bouzoukis sound when played Kurdish-style.

In some ways he is a bit like Omar Souleyman, in that they are both Kurds, the music is also from the world of Dabke and they both played lots of weddings. Nevertheless they are still different: there is a definite groove to Syfkhan's music but it's nothing like as frenetic as Souleyman's. This is maybe music for a wedding of respectable older people who still like a boogie, not for completely mad for it young people who've drank too much sugary tea and are now buzzing their nuts off. Nevertheless, by the end of the set everyone was up and grooving.
And he kept playing and playing. Eventually I felt that I could only take so much music so I slipped away into night, stopping to buy a copy of the album and the Under the Island compilation. "It's past my bedtime," I commented to Vinnie Dermody as I was going. "It's past a lot of people's bedtime," he replied.

Check out Mohammad Syfkhan's album on Bandcamp.

Kim Carnes "Bette Davis Eyes" (1981)

The IFI has been showing a season of Bette Davis films and it is indicative of how many great films she made that the programme didn't include loads of her films I think of as total classics. These include Marked Woman (based on real events, with Bette Davis playing a "nightclub hostess" (it's not a pre-Code film so use your imagination) whose evidence takes down a fictionalised Lucky Luciano; Humphrey Bogart also appears as an analogue of district attorney Thomas Dewey (of "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" fame), Juarez (in which Bette Davis plays Princess Carlotta, whose husband somehow becomes Emperor of Mexico), and The Nanny (a disturbing domestic drama made by Hammer before they went big on what we think of as Hammer Horror).

In the season I did see her play the titular lead in Jezebel (1938), which was given to her as a consolation prize for missing out on the lead role in Gone with the Wind as it provided her with an opportunity to play a Southern belle. I'm not sure it is a great film but it was striking how negatively the white Southerners are mostly portrayed (the men are honour-obsessed idiots who spend their time fighting duels and scoffing at anyone suggesting the South would lose in a civil war), while the various enslaved African Americans (all admittedly minor characters) come across as real people and not the "Lawdy massa" stereotypes seen in other films of the era. All About Eve (1950) meanwhile could be seen as Davis's Sunset Boulevard, with Davis playing an ageing actress (all of 40 years old) facing a young rival. All About Eve is something of a camp classic and might also represent the point where Davis herself pivoted to playing full-on older ladies, somehow making a successful career of this in a business that is not normally considered too welcoming of older women.

The final film I saw was Another Man's Poison (1951), a British made film in which Davis plays a successful crime writer who finds things getting a bit awkward when the criminal accomplice of her estranged husband shows up at her house looking for him. I felt that it maybe suffers from a moralistic ending (the same might be true of All About Eve) and if it weren't for that the film would be almost like Bette Davis appearing in a Patricia Highsmith adaptation. It also features Emlyn Williams in a supporting role, a man whose other claim to fame is writing the book that formed the basis of The Smiths' "Suffer Little Children". There were other appealing films in the season (notably Now, Voyager and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), but I skipped those as I had seen them relatively recently.

Being the age I am, the first I ever heard of Bette Davis was when Kim Carnes had a monster hit with the song "Bette Davis Eyes". Watching all these films had the tune going through my head all the time, so I've downloaded it and have been listening to it obsessively ever since. It's a great track, with Carnes' expressively raspy vocals combining with a very 80s backing to create an endearingly proto-goth sound. Carnes was herself a singer songwriter, but she did not write the tune. It first appeared as an album track on its co-author Jackie DeShannon's New Arrangement. It is worth giving the original a quick listen as it is so different from Carnes' version, sounding almost like something from a vaudeville show. It is a far less effective recording.

I became curious then about Kim Carnes. It is her performance and the production that makes her "Bette Davis Eyes" great, so could she perhaps have other hidden classics from that era lurking unheard by modern audiences? Sadly this does not appear to be the case, with the couple of other tracks I listened to from the album "Bette Davis Eyes" appears on not being that great: neither the songwriting, the production, nor Carnes' own performance is up to much on any of them. The one thing that did kind of impress me was a live rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" I stumbled onto. As you know, that is a deeply problematic song with its lyrics about the kind of coercive control that is now recognised as a crime in many jurisdictions. On the live performance I saw, however, Carnes really gave it socks and there is definitely something interesting about a woman singing a song normally read as being about a man dominating a woman. It's not as good as "Bette Davis Eyes", but it's still worth a listen.

image:

Bette Davis in All About Eve (Wikipedia)

The 30 Greatest Albums in the World

Since the early 1990s I have been part of Frank's APA, the amateur press association for people who like music. Amateur press associations are a niche form of writing endeavour where the contributors write self-contained zines which are then compiled together into one package and distributed to all the APA's members. They're a great format for long form and slow conversations, making them a strange relic of the past in our accelerated world.

Frank's APA has just celebrated its 200th issue. To mark this momentous occasion one of the APA's members ran a poll to identify once and for all the greatest albums of all time. Former and current contributors were invited to submit a list of their 30 favourite albums, ranked or unranked, and then an arcane process was used to compile an aggregated list. Compilations (both single- and multi-artist) were explicitly in scope, as were e.p.s. and even home-made compilations that had previously been put together for the delight of Frank's APA members.

And here are the 30 records I submitted in my ballot. I picked the albums first, applying a self-imposed rule limiting myself to one record per artist, and then I ranked them. Feel free to scoff at my pedestrian tastes while sneering at me for presenting a list that excludes or under-represents certain important categories of music or creator.

While reading through the list, you can also listen to a YouTube playlist of key tunes from the albums I picked:

30. Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here (1975)

What is it? It's the album Pink Floyd released after the colossal and terrifying success of Dark Side of the Moon.

What is it like? Most of it is taken up with the long track that starts and ends the album. Lyrics have a general air of looking back at a past before things went wrong. The short title track is meant to evoke Syd Barrett, the band's lost founder. Other lyrics complain about the music biz. The music is austere.

What do I like about it? It's melancholic, atmospheric, and beautiful. I still remember listening to it for the first time, when I still lived with my parents, its brooding opening in my ears as I ate the macaroni cheese my mother had left for me.

Key track: "Wish You Were Here"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)

29. The Who Who's Next (1971)

What is it? It's the fifth album by The Who, which was originally meant to be a concept album about something or other but ended up being a more traditional album of songs (mostly by Pete Townshend) that they had ready for release.

What is it like? Rock! Or power pop! Or whatever they call this kind of thing. Lots of up tempo songs with storming guitar solos but then buried in among all that nuggets of sensitivity.

What do I like about it? There's an unapolegetic "woaahhh!" rockness to it that is very appealing, with it being very hard not to stop writing this and air guitar along to it, but there's also a sense of artistic ambition to it that ticks the brainy music box for me. But you can't knock the rock and the awesome power of Roger Daltrey's scream on "Won't Get Fooled Again", which closes the album.

Key track: "Behind Blue Eyes"

Frank's APA poll placing: 182nd

28. Cate Le Bon Me Oh My (2009)

What is it? It's the debut album from Welsh sensation Cate Le Bon.

What is it like? Melancholic tunes, lyrics about pet death and depression, Le Bon's mannered and sometimes soaring vocals.

What do I like about it? Look at this stage you should know that I love sad music. The real question is why do I am so fond of this when I find much of Cate Le Bon's other music disappointing. One thing with this is that the record is largely devoid of the mid-tempo chuggers and pointless guitar soloing that bedevils her subsequent albums. Le Bon is not playing on her own here but it feels like a very intimate experience. And her voice is so beautiful on this record. She never plays these songs live and she never really sings like this either; she must really like the mid-tempo chuggers. Or maybe My Oh My comes from a dark place she does not want to revisit.

Key track: "Eyes So Bright"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

27. The Velvet Undergound White Light / White Heat (1968)

What is it? It's the Velvet Underground's second album.

What is it like? There's no Nico on vocals and the Lou Reed Brill Building stylings that occasionally sneaked onto the first album have been completely excised. Instead it's a collection of mostly abrasive tunes with lyrics about drug use, gender reassignment surgery, people sending themselves through the post, and the kind of party you wouldn't actually want to find yourself at.

What do I like about it? It's uncompromising and relentless, the kind of record the cool kids love and the squares hate. Key track: "Sister Ray"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

26. Ween Thom's Ween TOAD (2011)

What is it? It's a compilation of tunes by Ween put together by "Thom", a member of Frank's APA.

What is it like? It is like everything. Ween encompass all music and all music is here.

What do I like about it? It's a window into a strange world. The opening track rocks out but then you have a thrash rock tune that's over before it starts, and then you have a track that sounds like it could be from Spinal Tap's hippy phase, and then you have a song with a child singing about how he is dying of meningitis, then what seems to be a recording of stoned people ordering food from a taqueria server except it's the same guy doing all the voices, and so on. Some of it is funny, some of it is pastiche, but it's not always funny and there is more to it than just pastiche. But what? But what? This is the mystery of Ween.

Key track: "Your Party"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

25. Belle & Sebastian Tigermilk (1996)

What is it? It's the debut album from Glaswegian sensations Belle & Sebastian, but it originally received a release so limited that most people didn't hear it until B&S had released three subsequent albums.

What is it like? Lots of Stuart Murdoch written songs with poetic lyrics about sensitive subjects set to lush arrangements.

What do I like about it? It's the one all-killer-no-filler B&S album, with every track not just being great in and of itself but a key exemplar of the B&S aesthetic.

Key track: "My Wandering Days Are Over"

Frank's APA poll placing: 49th

24. David Bowie The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)

What is it? It's David Bowie's fifth album, in some sense a concept album about the eponymous oddly named character.

What is it like? You know what it is like. A collection of songs, some up tempo, some less so, all hanging on Bowie's strange otherwordly persona.

What do I like about it? It is the most Bowie of Bowie albums. I could have played it cool and picked Low or Station to Station but we would all have known I was lying. Plus the other albums do not have Mick Ronson (well some of them do, but they are not contenders).

Key track: "Ziggy Stardust"

Frank's APA poll placing: 45th

23. Kraftwerk The Man Machine (1978)

What is it? It's Kraftwerk's seventh album, the one where they wear the red shirts on the cover, and the one with "The Model" on it.

What is it like? It continues the mechanistic sound of previous Kraftwerk albums (despite probably being played on analogue instruments) and further moves the band towards the dancefloor.

What do I like about it? It's a retro-futurist classic that unapologetically celebrates technological progress.

Key track: "The Robots"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 147th (with two others)

22. Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs (1970)

What is it? It's the debut solo album from the former Pink Floyd frontman, recorded when his mental deterioration was becoming more extreme while still being within limits that allowed him to record music.

What is it like? Barrett sings and plays acoustic guitar while the other musicians struggle to keep up. There's an oddness to the sound that might derive from Barrett's mental state.

What do I like about it? I think it's the voice, the sound of someone's sanity draining away. Why would I want to listen to that? And yet at time it is so beautiful, with songs like the opener "Terrapin" a fauvist love song like no other. The record is let down a bit by a couple of out-takes that sound like they have only been included to burnish Barrett's "Mr Mad" credentials but the best tracks sound like someone struggling and failing to stop themselves from spiralling over the edge.

Key track: "Late Night"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

21. Nico The End… (1974)

What is it? It's Nico's fourth solo album, produced by John Cale.

What is it like? Nico sings in her subterranean voice of doom, accompanying herself on harmonium and with a fairly minimal accompaniment from other musicians (mostly Cale but also at times Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera).

What do I like about it? It is music from an underworld of despair and hopelessness.

Key track: "The Valley of the Kings"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

20. Kate Bush The Dreaming (1982)

What is it? Kate Bush's fourth album, her first without another producer, which underperformed commercially when originally released.

What is it like? It's odd.

What do I like about it? There is no compromise to this record. The track most akin to a conventional single is the opener, "Sat in Your Lap", but even that is a relentless percussion led tune that you can't imagine overly troubling the singles charts (though it still made no. 11). Bush has no qualms about using her entire vocal range here (sometimes on single lines of songs) and goes for it with the Fairlight sampler. Also Rolf Harris appears on the title track.

Key track: "Suspended in Gaffa"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

19. New Order Substance (1987)

What is it? It's a compilation of singles by New Order, although one or two of them were re-recorded for this collection.

What is it like? The first songs evoke the more electronic end of Joy Division's music but as the listener moves through the songs the dancefloor influence becomes stronger. Tracks also feature the most distinctive element of the New Order sound: the Peter Hook bassline.

What do I like about it? Cool tunes that often manage to sound angsty while still being tracks that call you to the dancefloor. It is a DJ truism that "Blue Monday" will fill any flagging dancefloor despite its mopey lyrics.

Key track: "Temptation"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

18. v/a Das Beste aus der DDR - Teil 3: Kult (1995)

What is it? It is a compilation of music from the German Democratic Republic, a country that no longer exists. Volume 1 and 2 in this series dealt with rock and pop music and were a bit dull, while this third volume collects music that is a bit more leftfield.

What is it like? Stylistically it is all over the place: children's choirs, dissident rock, pro-regime folk music, novelty hits about how people from Saxony have funny accents, TV themes, DDR space rock, schlager, and much much more.

What do I like about it? I think its place at the overlap of my interest in music and German history is what draws me in here. Some of this music is genuinely great, some of it is "interesting", but I love it all as a picture of a country that no longer exists and whose span was so short there are people still living who were born before its formation.

Key track: Sandow "Born in the G. D. R."

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

17. Godspeed You! Black Emperor Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada (1999)

What is it? It's an e.p. the length of a short album from popular Canadian funsters Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

What is it like? GYBE's sound sees them combining more traditional rock instruments with cello and violin, creating textured music that embraces quiet-loud dynamic shifts. The first half is entirely instrumental while the second features field recordings of a street poet who helpfully shares his freeman philosophy and recycled Iron Maiden lyrics masquerading as original poetry.

What do I like about it? The music is beautiful and enveloping, a balm in our troubled times. The field recordings are fascinating and superbly combined with the music, which seems to shift sinuously around the poet's words. That the poet is a self-important nutjob who seems to think having to pay a speeding ticket is some mark of America's descent into totalitarianism is not an issue here: his endlessly parodyable speech patterns remain oddly memorisable.

Key track: "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

16. Baader Meinhof Baader Meinhof (1996)

What is it? Luke Haines, frontman of The Auteurs, takes a break from his band to record a collection of songs about popular West German terrorist group the Red Army Faction.

What is it like? Sonically it moves away from the kind of indie music Haines had been associated with. His guitar playing is all over the record but it also features slow handclaps and string flourishes that evoke Arab classical music. The title track in particular owes a debt to "Space Blues" by Felt, one of the few acts that Haines speaks favourably of in his Britpop memoir Bad Vibes. But at times it heads off in a direction that I might describe as mutant funk. Lyrically it's a tour through the crazy world of West Germany's violent underground of the 1970s, with various stars of the era making an appearance.

What do I like about it? I think that like me Haines must have read the "Televisionaries" issue of Vague so with this it's like he is making a concept album designed to appeal to me personally. And the tunes are great, with Haines' rasping vocals perfectly suited to the strung out sounds he is conjuring up.

Key track: "There's Gonna Be an Accident"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

15. Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs (1999)

What is it? It's a triple album of love songs from Magnetic Fields, the vehicle of songwriting powerhouse Stephin Merritt. He sings most of the songs but vocals are also provided by bandmate and manager Claudia Gonson as well as various other collaborators.

What is it like? It is song-based music, highlighting melody and lyrics. Merritt plays lots of instruments while his bandmates and guest musicians play others, with rehabilitated banjo surprisingly prominent.

What do I like about it? The songs! They're great songs. OK they are not all great songs - with a collection of this many tunes there will be peaks and troughs, but even the filler tunes have their charms, particularly in context. Lyrically the tunes run through every kind of love: happy, sad, doomed, failed, gay, straight, disturbed, carnie, etc. Some tunes are funny, others touching, others still deeply moving.

Key track: "Yeah! Oh Yeah!"

Frank's APA poll placing: 5th

14. Orbital [The Brown Album] (1993)

What is it? It is the second album from Orbital. It has no obvious name but the cover is brown so while some people call it Orbital II, others refer to it as The Brown Album.

What is it like? It starts off with a looped vocal sample of Worf from Star Trek talking about time becoming a loop, but that gives way an album of electronic dance music.

What do I like about it? Time and place, happy memories, but also these are great tunes with a definite euphoric energy.

Key track: "Halcyon + On + On"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

13. Ride Nowhere (1990)

What is it? It is the debut album from Ride, the Oxford shoegaze band.

What is it like? Ride have listened to My Bloody Valentine but they take that sonic template or shimmery guitars and effects pedal rock and marry it to a more muscular sound with vocals whose words can actually be made out.

Why do I like about it? So there was a period in the early 1990s when it seemed like indie music and dance music were in dialogue with each other, with indie musicians feeling like they had to up their game in competition with the strange new sounds luring the kids out to orbital raves. This is in no way an indie-dance crossover record but it gestures towards the same euphoric quality that dance music suggests. Also for a record by a bunch of well spoken soft lads from the Thames Valley it rocks like motherfucker, with a lot of this down to the savage drumming of Loz Colbert.

Key track: "Seagull"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 150th (with one other)

12. The Shangri-Las Myrmidons of Melodrama (1995)

What is it? It is a collection of songs from the brief mid-1960s heyday of the Shangri-Las.

What is it like? The Shangri-Las were a girl group. Mary Weiss sings lead most of the time, with the others providing harmony vocals or assisting in call-response tunes. The lyrics typically involve doomed teenage love in which the singer finds herself mixed up with some disreputable youth from the bad part of town.

What do I like about it? A big part of the appeal here is Mary Weiss's big voice and ability to inhabit these songs about teenage misery. Before picking this up, the only Shangri-Las tune I knew was "Leader of the Pack", but there is a rake of songs here of similar calibre, written for them by a range of collaborators. It's easy for jaded cynics to dismiss this music, but they're missing out on recordings that manage to present both intense misery and hilarity, often in the same song.

Key track: "I Can Never Go Home Anymore"

Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced

11. Air Moon Safari (1998)

What is it? It is the debut album from French duo Air.

What is it like? It owes a debt to Jean-Claude Vannier's arrangements for Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, especially the basslines on "Cargo Culte". Overall it combines some electronics with delicate rock instrumentation and orchestral touches. Some tracks are instrumental, others feature vocals by guest star Beth Hirsch, while others again feature the Air boys on vocoder.

What do I like about it? Partly again it is time and place. This is not a dance music record but it was for people who like dance music. But also it is a collection of beautiful and enveloping music that encourage listeners to sit back, relax, and let the tunes take them away.

Key track: "La Femme d'Argent"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 64th (with four others)

10. Massive Attack Mezzanine (1998)

What is it? It's the third album from the Bristol trip hop sensations, except on this one they go all goth hop.

What is it like? With its samples and drum loops, it remains true to the band's trip hop origins but the overall sound is claustrophobic and oppressive. Various guest stars provide vocals, as do members of the band themselves.

What do I like about it? Well I love things that are claustrophobic and oppressive, as anyone who has ever visited me will note.

Key track: "Inertia Creeps"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)

9. Tricky Maxinquaye (1995)

What is it? It's the debut album from erstwhile Massive Attack collaborator Tricky.

What is it like? More trip hop, but again of the somewhat claustrophobic variety. Tricky provides odd ball rapping on some tracks, but the main vocalist is Martina Topley-Bird whose mannered voice is a key part of the record's sound; there are also other guest vocalists. As well as original tracks there is also the well known cover of Public Enemy's 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos'.

What do I like about it? The claustrophobia, the oddball vocals, the weird samples.

Key track: "Ponderosa"

Frank's APA poll placing: 134th

[it was at this point in proceedings that I realised I had forgotten to vote for Portishead's Dummy.]

8. Bob Dylan Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1966)

What is it? It is a recording of a concert from Bob Dylan's first electric tour of the United Kingdom. Despite the title, it was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, but it does feature an irate audience member shouting "Judas!".

What is it like? The first disc has Dylan playing with his acoustic guitar the sole musical accompaniment; the attendees like this. Then the second half has him playing an electric set backed by The Hawks; crowd reaction is more mixed, with applause mixed in with slow handclaps and boos.

What do I like about it? It feels like the record hasn't just caught a concert but a moment, with Dylan shocking his fans by going electric and turning his back on folk purism. The first half lulls them into a false sense of security with its sensitive acoustic performance, but then in the second half the sound of the Hawks blasts out and you can just hear all the conservative folkies going "What is this shit?", like if someone booked Scooter to play at the Bowlie Weekender. The contradictory audience responses to the electric set (some digging it and applauding, some booing and clearly wishing for a power cut) makes this all feel very immediate.

Key track: "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 168th (with ten others)

7. Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi OST (1983)

What is it? It is Philip Glass's soundtrack for Godfrey Reggio's film.

What is it like? It sounds like music by Philip Glass: slow bits, fast bits, slow bits.

What do I like about it? It was my introduction to minimalism. And it brings to mind the film, with its mix of speeded up and slowed down footage that makes-you-think about the problems of the world. I suppose also it was like nothing else I was listening to when I heard it first, and it does still sound pretty strange (I have lead a sheltered life).

Key track: "Vessels"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 152nd (with eight others)

6. Spacemen 3 Playing with Fire (1989)

What is it? It's the third album from Spacemen 3, who were kind of a proto-shoegaze spacerock outfit.

What is it like? Most of the songs have a gentle, enveloping narcotic quality, but there are two notably more uptempo tracks: "Revolution" and "Suicide". I remember hearing it said that while it appears to casual listeners that some Spacemen 3 songs are about drugs while others are love songs, on closer listening it turns out that they are all about drugs. This album does not contradict that.

What do I like about it? It might also be a set and setting thing as this album first came into my orbit one summer when I was in a manky squat in London and going out to see cool bands playing gigs (cool bands in this context being Primal Scream (in their not-actually-that-cool phase), the Telescopes, Eat (now largely forgotten), and Spacemen 3 themselves (twice)). The record lends itself to sitting around and getting in a relaxed frame of mind, with "Revolution" perking up listeners and encouraging them to stick it to the man.

Key track: "How Does It Feel?"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 137th (with eight others)

5. Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets (1974)

What is it? It is the first solo album by Brian Eno, erstwhile oddball keyboard player with Roxy Music, who had been expelled from that band on the basis that it only had room for one frontman.

What is it like? Oddball pop. Eno sings in a non-standard manner while various of his musical friends and former bandmates play various other instruments.

What do I like about it? It's weird but it's goovey. Art music you can tap your toes to. Music with a good beat that makes you feel brainy for liking it.

Key track: "Baby's on Fire"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 120th (with ten others)

4. The Smiths Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)

What is it? It is the last album by The Smiths, recorded when they knew they were about to split and then released after the split had become public.

What is it like? It is an album by The Smiths. Surely everyone knows what The Smiths sound like? They pretty much define the mid-1980s indie sound. This arguably has a slightly more elegiac sound but that might be projection based on it being their last album.

What do I like about it? I like that it is by The Smiths, a band for whom I used to make the claim that all their albums are better than all albums by other artists and something I might still believe at least some of the time but not while putting together this list. The Smiths were all about Morrissey's lyrics and Johnny Marr's guitar playing and composition, and both are in fine form on this record. Very few people would count any of the songs here as their favourite by The Smiths, but there is something about the way the set hangs together that makes it a fitting final record for the band.

Key track: "Paint a Vulgar Picture" (which is my official favourite song by The Smiths)

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 29th (with one other)

3. Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

What is it? It is a concept album by the popular French singer, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage English girl, shags her, and then is sad when she dies in a plane crash on her way back to Sunderland.

What is it like? Gainsbourg largely speaks his vocals over arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier based around virtuosic drumming, bass and guitar, with occasional orchestral flourishes. It's also very short (under 30 minutes), and with the first and last tracks being variants of each other it feels almost like one long song with a break in the middle. And the words are all in French, which means that most anglophone listeners cannot understand them.

What do I like about it? It is beautiful and atmospheric. As previously noted, I wonder if understanding the lyrics would make me like it more or less. Either way I love how it builds to the closing track, which starts off echoing the one that opens the record but then becomes increasingly epic.

Key track: "Cargo Culte"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 69th (with ten others; it's what Serge would have wanted)

2. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

What is it? It is the eighth Beatles album and arguably their last as a functioning band who didn't all hate each other.

What is it like? By this point in their career the Beatles were musically ambitious and keen to utilise the tools of the recording studio. They were also at the peak of their songwriting game. So we have tunes that evoke musical traditions from outside the world of rock and roll but also superbly crafted songs.

What do I like about it? OK first of all I am aware that picking this as a favourite album is a massive cliche and I am also aware that it has become common to pick other Beatles albums as one's favourite by that band. But I don't think anyone listening with an objective ear can really pick any other of their records over this one. It has some great tunes (arguably "A Day in the Life" is their very greatest tune) but the background tracks are really solid too. But it's also a sad record, capturing the band when they were still buds and when Lennon and McCartney were still writing songs together at least some of the time, something that would change.

Key track: "A Day in the Life"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 15th (with one other)

1. My Bloody Valentine Isn't Anything (1988)

What is it? It is the debut album by the popular Irish-English band, released on Creation after a couple of e.p.s had suggested a radical change of direction from the jangly indiepop of their earlier singles.

What is it like? Strange shimmering and distorted sounds that might once have been guitars, buried male and female vocals, drums that may or may not be programmed, tunes that approximate to songs but might be something else entirely, etc.

What do I like about it? Bought on a whim with a record token having previously heard one track by them, the album felt revolutionary, even compared to what I was listening to back then. And a lot of other people felt the same way on hearing this, with the album inspiring a whole wave of music, some of which was not terrible. But going back to the album itself, it full of really beautiful music, which is hard to imagine when given the basic description of it being based on distorted guitar sounds.

Key track: "Several Girls Galore"

Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 33rd (with nine others)

They also served: Portishead, Hawkwind, Cornershop, Laibach, the Rolling Stones (Beggar's Banquet), many jazz musicians, The KLF (for Chill Out), The Pixies, The Breeders (Pod only), Underworld, Elastica, Leftfield, Fever Ray, U2, Teenage Fanclub, P. J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, Morrissey, Talking Heads, The Sugarcubes (Life's Too Good only), The Sisters of Mercy, Broadcast, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Transient Ambient Noise Bursts (With Announcements), Songs for Swinging Celibates, etc. etc. etc.

images:

Wish You Were Here (Wikipedia)

Who's Next (Wikipedia)

Me Oh My (Wikipedia)

White Light/White Heat (Wikipedia)

Ween (Wikipedia)

Tigermilk (Wikipedia)

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Wikipedia)

The Man Machine (Wikipedia)

The Madcap Laughs (Wikipedia)

The End… (Wikipedia)

The Dreaming (Wikipedia)

Substance (Wikipedia)

Das Beste aus der DDR - Teil 3: Kult (Musikzirkus)

Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada (Wikipedia)

Baader Meinhof (Wikipedia)

69 Love Songs (Wikipedia)

The Brown Album (Wikipedia)

Nowhere (Wikipedia)

Myrmidons of Melodrama (Discogs)

Moon Safari (Wikipedia)

Mezzanine (Wikipedia)

Maxinquaye (Wikipedia)

Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (Wikipedia)

Koyaanisqatsi (Soundtrack Collector)

Playing with Fire (Wikipedia)

Here Come the Warm Jets (Wikipedia)

Strangeways, Here We Come (Wikipedia)

Histoire de Melody Nelson (Wikipedia)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Wikipedia)

Isn't Anything (Wikipedia)