scott

Scott Walker made four almost perfect records between 1967 and 1969 called simply Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and, you guessed it, Scott 4.

The Walker Brothers weren't brothers, and none of their surnames were Walker. Nonetheless during 1965 and 1966 they had more members in their fanclub than the Beatles did in theirs. You would imagine that the three young Americans would have loved this state of affairs, and two of them did. But while Gary and John embraced the pop star lifestyle, hanging out at the coolest clubs and bars with the Rolling Stones and the like, Scott hated all this. An early 1967 tour with the Walkers headlining over Jimi Hendrix just proved to Scott how out of step the band had suddenly become. Hendrix managed to blow the Walkers offstage most nights just by the sheer power of his music - so much so that setting fire to his guitar seemed somewhat unnecessary. After that sort of histrionic stage display the Walkers' act now seemed rather staid. So they simply called it a day. 

Scott was now free to pursue a more esoteric style of music. But he was still constrained by the needs of his managers and his record label to produce hits. Scott Walker would have preferred to sing Jacques Brel covers and hide in the dark, but as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, he simply wasn't allowed to fade away like that. Scott was also pretty lazy, and frequently he was quite content to be led into recording songs just because his team said they'd be good. But regardless of the material Scott was simply unable to give a bad performance. Even the flimsiest of songs turned into a dramatic affair once it was sung by Scott's majestic reverb drenched baritone. 

His first solo record, called simply Scott, was an odd mixture. There was the middle of the road crooner direction that his managers wanted to push him into (both the smooth Jack Jones, and the slightly sexier Tom Jones were suggested as role models for Scott, who simply shuddered at the thought), but there was also the edgier side of Scott, the side that relished the seedy drunken tales of Belgian writer Jacques Brel and he managed to get a handful of Brel songs onto each of his first three albums. Perhaps the more syrupy, middle aged, MOR material was the trade off for being allowed to release Brel songs...

Of the Brel tracks "Mathilde" is perhaps the easiest, a brash and stomping whirl of a track. "My Death" however is the opposite, tucked away at the end of side one after perhaps the most MOR track on the album. The cloying sentimentality of "When Joanna Loved Me" does nothing to prepare the listener for the existential angst of "My Death". Both this song and the album closer "Amsterdam" were borrowed by David Bowie who used them in his early 1970s live sets (and in remarkably similar arrangements too). Of the MOR standards that peppered the album, "Angelica" is the most impressive, partly because the lyrics aren't far from those that Scott himself was writing, and partly due to Reg Guest's beautiful arrangement. Tim Hardin's "Lady Came From Baltimore" hints at a folky / country direction that Scott would actually take up a few years later with decidedly mixed results, though this track is lovely.

But there was also a third element, one which, over the next few albums, gradually took over. Scott blossomed into a formidable songwriter in his own right. He'd already contributed a handful of startlingly good songs to the Walker Brothers, though their singles were always carefully picked 'safe' songs, rather than Scott's kitchen sink dramas. But now, on his own, he could bring these mini dramas to the fore. On Scott there are just three self penned tracks, but every one is a masterpiece. "Always Coming Back To You" is perhaps the slightest of the three, continuing the delicate sound of the Walkers' "Genevieve" written by Scott a year earlier. In amongst the delightful arrangement Scott sings his tale of loss with such understated emotion that it's genuinely heartbreaking. And the delivery of the line 'We'd find we'd missed our bus, so we'd laugh, kiss, what the hell...' brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it.

But it's "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" and especially "Such A Small Love" that cement Scott's reputation for writing hugely dramatic, heartbreakingly sad songs. In the former, the poetic lyrics (check out the graphically striking imagery of 'the window sees trees cry from cold, and claw the moon' for instance) illustrate the gulf between the reality and the dream home of a young couple. The orchestra is held in check on the delicately pretty verses but is unleashed in force on the yearning choruses - 'we'll dream won't we?' sings Scott with such passion and emotion. It's brilliantly arranged by Wally Stott and recorded with precise clarity by Johnny Franz, two men who were vital to the shape and sound of Scott's first few records. 

"Such A Small Love" is one of my all time favourite songs. It manages to mix drunken despair, longing and loss with utter euphoria and hope for the future in such a stunning manner that I'm left breathless every time I hear it. It is full of remarkable touches that carry the listener from the very first highly strung note of the violin to the giddy inebriated conclusion less than five minutes later. I think it's about a funeral and the devastating loss of a friend as the narrator has a rush of memories of the good times and looks forward to when the hurt will lessen. But ultimately the kaleidoscope of images are far more important that the precise meaning. The verses are underpinned by slightly eerie sustained strings, but as with "Montague Terrace" the choruses surge forward like a tidal wave of emotion and excitement. The confusion of imagery as the song actually speeds up towards it's conclusion is astonishing - 'midnight mornings drenched in dago red' mixes Scott's love of cheap Spanish wine with everyone's memories of mornings after the night before; 'drunken madmen nights, ending up in jail' hints at incredible adventures and brings us back to Scott's love of seedy romanticism. Musically this song is near perfect, but it's Scott's peerless delivery that makes this song absolutely perfect. The listener is completely swept along with Scott's evocation of euphoric carefree youth, and his sudden switch to regret and a sense of loss with the last lines of 'perfumed pillows of girls that clung so near, such a small love, such a little tear...' is heartbreaking beyond belief.

Scott's utter command of his voice is something all his collaborators have remarked upon over the years, yet it's something that Scott has generally dismissed. Scott seemed to think that making records and singing on stage ought to be much harder than he found it, and he frequently commented that he had little faith in his singing voice. He continued with singing lessons throughout the 1960s and often felt that others had better range and control. But what makes Scott stand high above most other singers is his effortless ability to inhabit every song, to bestow every track with a different emotion, to create a whole new world with every new vocal. 

While Scott is perhaps the most varied of his first four albums, it is also closest in sound to the Walker Brothers' records and betrays a cautiousness on the part of Scott's management to allow him to depart too far from a tried and tested (and clearly very successful) formula. As Scott's independence grew, so did his ability to project more of himself onto his records. Having said that, the self penned material (and by extension, the Brel songs) on Scott display a remarkable and unique talent, and in "Such A Small Love" we already have one of Scott's finest ever songs.

Scott 2 would follow fairly rapidly, but that's another story...

she's a star

Whiplash was a 1997 album from the band James. It was two years in the making, two tumultuous years during which most of the original sessions were scrapped, guitarist Larry Gott left the band, and James discovered that due to financial mismanagement, they owed nearly half a million in unpaid taxes. Not the best of times. Yet they emerged with their most successful album ever, a stunning melange of danceable pop, anthemic singalongs and weirdly dark, techno tinged ambience. 

The initial sessions in early 1995 saw James reunite with producer Brian Eno. But all the band could come up with was unfocussed jams and songs that didn't really spark. Eno was disappointed and much of this work was eventually dropped. Later sessions found the band carrying on without singer Tim Booth who was in America working with composer Angelo Badalamenti. But his busman's holiday rejuvenated Booth who returned to the band bristling with bright ideas. Previously unpromising song fragments were revisited. "Star", a meandering, muddy track, became the defiantly positive "She's A Star", "Whiplash" which began life as little more than pounding techno track, was transformed by some wistful strings and a beautiful new melody into "Play Dead". And so on. Many of the songs that had been worked on during Tim's absence plowed a more trance / dance furrow than James had approached before. Heavy programming took the place of Dave Baynton-Power's usual light drumming. The lack of Larry Gott's guitar was covered by more emphasis on keyboards and violin. Eno guided many of these sessions but the final mix and glossy sheen that coated the finished album was down to Stephen Hague (a man who knew a thing or two about how to get a synth pop hit - his resume included production for OMD, Pet Shop Boys and New Order, as well as PiL and Siouxsie and the Banshees amongst many many others).

The album opens with perhaps the strongest four songs in James' history. "Tomorrow" was recycled from the Laid sessions in 1993, but whereas the earlier version is tentative, this version is totally in control. A hugely powerful opening for the album, pounding drums, manically strummed guitars and a wonderful vocal.

"Lost A Friend" takes it down a notch and is another of those peculiar songs that only James seem to do, namely a song that appears to have two choruses. And Tim sings in that defiantly English way of his, not a hint of the mid Atlantic voice that so many singers adopt, not a sign of any blues scales or obvious rock star flourishes. His yearning vocal is terrific. Similarly "Waltzing Along" continues this utterly English trend. The guitars swing with the slightly clumpy beat and there's lots of excellent Booth and Eno backing vocals. Eno once reckoned that most of the worlds problems could be solved with backing vocals. It's when you hear the delightful vocals here that you kind of know what he means.

The first single from the album was "She's A Star", a glorious return for James after the previous couple of years of hassle. It's so wonderfully upbeat and positive and perfect to sing along with. No wonder it was one of their biggest hits. The guitar work, from new member Adrian Oxaal, is an unforgettable sliding series of notes that apes, but doesn't copy, the guitar lines that Robert Fripp played on David Bowie's "Heroes".

After "She's A Star" the album takes a turn into more experimental waters. "Greenpeace" is a weird mash up of an ambient verse, all gently chiming bells and stray piano notes, and a stridently chattering techno chorus. The verses seem to be a dialogue between a whispering Tim who at first seems indifferent to what's happening to the world and a sinister alter ego who speak / sings in a distorted voice and who wishes to destroy the environment. Then Booth turns into some sort of falsetto choir boy over the pounding and clattering choruses. And, you know, it works!

"Go To The Bank" is perhaps the weakest song here, losing it's focus about halfway through, but the following "Play Dead" is stunning. After Eno's voice saying 'music depresses me' we're catapulted into a terrifically powerful drum loop but just as you think you've got the measure of the piece it calms down somewhat and Tim croons over some gorgeous keyboards and synthetic strings which mesh with the stomping beats extremely successfully. The chorus is something that U2 would have given their right arms for, a keening melancholy that is also devastatingly beautiful.

"Avalanche" and "Homeboy" are more straightforward and are the most obvious links to the initial sessions. Both are great fun, perfectly played and contain some clever lyrics, with "Homeboy" rewriting some of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" rather cheekily.

Then we're back in darker territory. "Watering Hole" is all atmosphere and ambience with Booth crooning very quietly at times. The closer, "Blue Pastures" finds Booth ready to fade back into obscurity. Musically it's very pretty and a cousin to the similarly arranged "Out To Get You" on Laid. But where "Out To Get You" is shot through with steely determination "Blue Pastures" is resigned and tired - 'it doesn't really matter if I fade away' whispers Booth at the end of the song. It's a rather unsettling ending.

As usual with James the singles from Whiplash contained loads of great b-sides, many of which were at least the equal of the album tracks. Notably "Your Story" which is one of my favourite James songs - another song with multiple choruses and a truly stirring vocal; this should have been on the album, or a single a-side as it is way too good to be lost on the back of a single. Although nothing like as commercial, the wonderfully weird "Fishknives" is great fun, as is the eerie "Van Gogh's Dog". "Chunney Chops" is little more than an Eno processed jam, but there's a huge sense of the band having a ball with this track.

James would never achieve such sustained success again. Although subsequent albums and singles were every bit as good as those from the Whiplash era the public didn't embrace them in the same way. However I did, and James remain one of my most cherished bands.

There is another reason why Whiplash and the accompanying extra tracks have such a special place in my heart. "She's A Star" was issued at the start of April 1997 with the album coming out mid month.

This coincided exactly with Lucy's birth.

For perhaps the only time in her life she was early, about 5 weeks early, which was a huge shock for Nicky and for me. Worries about potential infections and concerns for her size meant that Lucy (and Nicky) stayed in the special care unit for nearly a month. During that time I went back to work, getting the train home from London each evening, grabbing something to eat, then driving 40 minutes up to Cambridge desperate to see them. I would stay until I was kicked out by the nurses and sadly drive back home. I did a lot of driving and worrying that month. And I listened to Whiplash in the car, a lot. And I sang along at the top of my voice to keep myself awake. So many of the lines in those James songs resonated with me. Off the top of my head - "Tomorrow" had lines like 'got to keep faith that your luck will change' and 'now your grip's so strong' which seemed so right for Lucy. "Waltzing Along" had these - 'may your heart beat strong', 'may your heart lead you on', and the title of "She's A Star" just seemed so perfect.

She IS a star. Happy Birthday, lovely Lucy. xx

rock 'n' roll animal - lou reed live in 1973

Lou Reed's Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal is simply a brilliant live album, but it could have been even better.

A few years ago I basically restored the whole gig into the proper song order by combining R’n’RA and Lou Reed Live. But even with the magic of CoolEdit it was a tricky job as, despite both albums coming from the same 21st December 1973 concert, the mix on Lou Reed Live is noticeably different to that on R’n’RA. I think actually that that Animal has received slightly more post production as the whole album sounds terrific compared with what are more likely the rawer tapes on Live. Lou Reed Live was an album that was quickly tossed out by RCA to make some money following the debacle of Metal Machine Music - they simply dug out tapes from a two year old gig and issued them in late 1975, and I can’t believe that anyone spent more than a few minutes working on Live.

Anyway CoolEdit and a few evenings’ work sorted out the differences in levels and smoothed over the audience transitions. I also had to flip the channels back on Live as, for reasons that no-one can explain, the stereo image is reversed compared with Animal. Guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner are rather neatly split into each speaker and their twin guitar attack is pretty spectacular at times. But Live has them the wrong way round. So I put it right.

Anyway, in the correct order, this is a stunningly good show. Lou is really on form - at times he’s perhaps a little, shall we say, over-excited, but on the whole he delivers a fine vocal performance. The band is just awesome. All of the musicians bar keyboard player Ray Colcord would decamp to Alice Cooper’s band in 1975. (Colcord is interesting – he’d previously been in Don Maclean’s band and plays on American Pie. Since the Lou Reed tour he’s composed hundreds of TV themes. 

Best track – the opening guitar wig out which then dives straight into "Sweet Jane" - that takes some beating. Though the super funky "Rock And Roll" is mighty fine too (it’s worth noting that much of the funkiness of Reed’s bands between 1973 and 1975 is down to bass player Prakash John – he was born in Bombay, but moved to Canada as a child and had worked alongside Bootsy Collins and George Clinton for a few years in the early 1970s, hence the funk).

In between, there are excellent renditions of Transformer tracks ("Walk On The Wild Side" is almost identical to the studio version but "Vicious" is a full on assault rather than the somewhat fey original), some slightly ragged attempts Berlin tunes (notably "Caroline Says" on which Lou attacks the song with rather more enthusiasm than accuracy, although the lengthy "Oh Jim" and "Sad Song" are both pretty spectacular), and some souped up blasts through Velvet Underground songs. Although the amped up take on "Waiting For The Man" is perhaps a little too over the top, the other Velvets tunes are superb. "White Light / White Heat" takes David Bowie's cover as its template and Lou reclaims the song as his own. "Heroin" is a real tour de force. Stunning organ work combines with the majestic guitars of Steve and Dick to create a song that is both terrifying and beautiful at the same time. As mentioned before the extended "Rock And Roll" is another masterpiece and is a wonderful conclusion to 90 minutes of Lou Reed at his very best.

The next few years would see Lou descend the depths of addiction and issue some wildly variable records (along with some worryingly schizophrenic concerts). When he was up to it the 1974 / 75 gigs could be brilliant, with Lou really delivering the goods onstage (despite the turmoil of his personal life), but there were just as many gigs where Lou was all but incapable of performing.

I have a cracking show from Paris in May 1974 - his singing and phrasing is spot on; he sounds like a man possessed and urges the band to really deliver as well. The Sydney gig from August 1974 is one of my favourites and a recording that I first got as a tape off Chelmsford market, back when I was still at school. It's a terrific gig, and a very decent recording too - there's a truly chilling and very spooky version of "Heroin" with a creepy organ dominating the song, a firey "Vicious" and a full on "White Light / White Heat" although it all ends with a very messy and ramshackle encore of "Rock And Roll" which sounds completely unrehearsed (but it was played as an encore at virtually every gig that year, so there's really no excuse!)

Lou Reed at his best was pretty much unbeatable.

  

hunky dory - david bowie

Hunky Dory isn't my favourite David Bowie album, and although I understand the praise that this record rightly receives, I prefer many of his other records. But… having said that I really can’t fault anything about Hunky Dory. And listening to it again recently, every track reveals itself to be a little marvel.

“Changes”, for all its iconic status in Bowie’s canon (and virtually every feature writer can’t help themselves in referencing this song) but it’s perhaps my least favourite on the record. It’s beautifully put together, the lovely piano work, the dreamy saxophone, the overlapping vocals, it’s all good, but there’s something about this song that I’ve never warmed to.

“Oh! You Pretty Things” is better for me. The twisted sci fi lyrics could have come from The Man Who Sold The World, but music most definitely couldn’t, what with that tremendous clumping piano in the style of Macca’s “Martha My Dear” and a soaring vocal as DB hits some very high notes.

“Eight Line Poem” I always found rather Dylanesque – oblique and obtuse to the point of incomprehension. But it’s a very pretty little interlude before…

“Life On Mars?” which is truly epic. Mick Ronson’s gorgeous orchestral arrangement is astonishing (check out the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" timpani at the end) and Rick Wakeman’s lyrical piano is beautiful. But both are swept along by one of Bowie’s most stirring melodies in what is surely one of his most mature songs thus far.

“Kooks” takes it down a step with this charmingly gauche dedication his newborn son. Never mind that it’s largely a steal from Neil Young’s “Till The Morning Comes” even down to the playful trumpet. There’s another stirring string arrangement here too. And on the next song –

“Quicksand” which battles with “Life On Mars?” for the most beautiful song on the album. For my money “Quicksand” wins as it’s less obvious and the chorus creeps up but totally floors me every time.

“Fill Your Heart” – a throwaway cover, but a cheery, summery one. Bowie’s gleeful vocal stays just on the right side of twee.

Then we get the three tribute songs for Bowie’s 1971 heroes.

“Andy Warhol” is brilliantly constructed, all overamped acoustic anger and some cracking bass. The instrumental coda is marvellous.

“Song For Bob Dylan” is perhaps the most conventional song here. Straightforward 1971 rock and instrumentation, but it stands out because little else on this album is recorded this way.

“Queen Batch” was ostensibly inspired by Lou Reed - ‘some white light returned with thanks’ say the sleeve notes, but musically it owes more to songs like “Sweet Jane”. I love the way that Bowie’s 12 string is doubled by Ronson’s trusty ‘Black Beauty’ (a Gibson Les Paul that stuck with him for most of the 1970s) and at times Ronno overdubs a further guitar line. The superbly overdriven sound simply makes the song.

“The Bewlay Brothers” – no-one ever got a sensible explanation of this song from Bowie. One of his earliest comments about it ‘Star Trek in a leather jacket’ makes as much sense as anything. It is clearly about him and his older step brother Terry, a fact that was tacitly acknowledged many years later, but DB refused to go any further with that line of questioning. Terry had lived with David and Angie for quite some time during 1970 but despite their best efforts it was clear that his schizophrenia and manic depression were no longer manageable in the real world. One of the reasons that David would never discuss the song was that, by early 1971, Terry had been committed to the Cane Hill asylum. (This was a vast Victorian hospital in Coulsdon in South London, which could house 2,000 patients. Cane Hill closed in 1991 and was partially demolished a few years ago to allow for redevelopment but before work could begin the rest of the building was destroyed in a fire in 2010.) Anyway, Terry would call Cane Hill his home for the next 14 years; he never recovered sadly, and he took his life in 1985 by laying on the railway tracks nearby.

The song itself dislocates the mind of the listener, the disparate and fragmentary imagery exactly mirroring the frightening visions in Terry’s mind. (Many of the wilder lyrics on The Man Who Sold The World were also influenced by what Terry could apparently ‘see’.) That “The Bewlay Brothers” is underpinned by a gently strummed and very beautiful melody makes that song all the more sad. Ronno’s backwards guitar is another melancholy and disturbing touch. But it’s the astonishing coda that is really chilling. A myriad of varispeeded voices takes the cheekiness of the Laughing Gnome into altogether darker territory. A genuinely unsettling and discomforting end to this album. 

dead can dance - the early stuff

A recent encounter with some very early Dead Can Dance material prompted these thoughts -

Now I love Dead Can Dance, their music has sondtracked much of my life, but quite honestly the early demos and early John Peel sessions are pretty rubbish. In fact, apart from a couple of songs the demos are atrocious, and I’ve no idea why I’ve kept them. I think that these will be deleted from the iPod fairly soon… The Peel sessions are better, though, like the debut album, they are the sound of a band struggling to find an identity. The spectre of Joy Division – the same sort of heavy bass and frantic drumming, plus an identical guitar sound - hangs heavy over many of these tracks, particularly Brendan Perry’s.

But then you get Lisa Gerrard’s pieces. Her songs are similarly naïve and unstructured, and occasionally veer very close to early Cocteau Twins (especially stuff from the Garlands album). Lisa’s voice is sometimes uncomfortably close to Elizabeth Fraser’s too, so you can see why Ivo Watts-Russell was so keen to sign them to 4AD. But then, just occasionally, Lisa does something miraculous with her voice which lifts the song from a not terribly good second rate indie goth rip off into… what? Something magical and out of this world.

From the Peel sessions and also from the first album it’s impossible to tell which way DCD were heading, (even the later Garden Of Arcane Delights EP doesn’t really offer hints, though it is at least a step away from rubbish indie drumming and incessantly throbbing bass). I can’t imagine that anyone would have guessed that the majesty that is Spleen And Ideal would have followed just a year later. It’s another one of those bafflingly massive quantum leaps forward that occasionally happen. Spleen And Ideal lays the foundation for virtually everything that DCD would subsequently do and ignores virtually everything that came previously. Where this huge leap of imagination came from is anyone’s guess, but how fantastic that it happened.

more random songs

Over the weekend the iPod was churning out songs on shuffle - here's some of them:

"It's A Long Way To the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll") a classic slice of AC/DC rocks like a good 'un with a Stones-like mega riff that just doesn't let go. Weirdly there appear to be bagpipes at one point (really). This track came to my attention via the brilliant Jack Black film School Of Rock which is enormous fun and has become one of Charley's favourites.

A complete contrast with "Open The Kingdom" from Philip Glass's Songs For Liquid Days. This is one of my favourite Glass records and one I frequently return to. The operatic drama of this track is all the more surprising when you remember that David Byrne wrote it. I love the singing on this piece.

"Re-make / Re-model" - I'm sure I've mentioned this before but can you think of a better opening song from a debut album? I can't. It's perfect. Roxy Music encapsulated in a five minute blast. Showcasing loads of different styles and sounds, this IS Roxy Music. Wonderful.

"If There Is Something" - more early Roxy but this is the Tin Machine cover from 1991. Now Tin Machine got a lot of stick, and still do whenever anyone wants to take a cheap shot at Bowie. But TM was actually a very successful attempt at a Pixies style hard / alt rock band. And DB gave that band some great songs too. Even this cover works surprisingly well, with the only weak spot being Hunt Sales' blanket bombing drumming (something that blighted a few TM songs - the man had no restraint). Bowie was obviously going through a bit of a Roxy kick at this point as he'd often insert verses from "In Every Dream Home..." into the breakdown parts of TM's "Heaven's In Here" during the 1991 tour.

"Banks Of The Ohio" - Johnny Cash singing a very traditional sounding country song. But then you listen to the lyrics and, like many of the best Cash songs, it's all about a girl pleading with her man not to murder her - 'I'm not ready for eternity' she rather poetically cries... but he still throws her into river anyway... All because she didn't want to be his wife. Not surprising is it, if he's that unstable!

"2,000 Light Years From Home" - the Stones recorded live at Atlantic City in late 1989. This was the last gig on the Steel Wheels USA leg and the show was broadcast live on US tv. Special guests abound (Clapton on "Little Red Rooster", John Lee Hooker crops up on his own "Boogie Chillum" and you can see the looks of awe on Keef and Ronnie's faces, and Axl Rose & Izzy Stradlin sing and play on a one off performance of "Salt Of The Earth" (Guns 'n' Roses were the support band on many of the US dates)). Anyway, it's a cracking gig. This song had never been played live before this tour and is played wonderfully with lotsa psychedelic lighting going on. It all dissolves at the end into a couple of minutes of mysterious swirly keyboards and dry ice everywhere which gives Jagger time to take the lift to the gantry high above the stage and put on a glittery top hat and billowing red cape. The swirls give way to Charlie bashing out the voodoo rhythm for "Sympathy For The Devil" and demonic Jagger yelps can be heard, but from where? It takes the crowd quite some time to realise that he's now perched atop the stage set bathed in blood red lights and he sings the first half of the song from there. Keef's first solo allows Mick time to get back down to the stage where he has enormous fun swishing his cape around and annoying Keef for the rest of the song.

"The Me I Never Knew" from one of Scott Walker's less well regarded albums, 1973's Any Day Now. These albums from the early 1970s may not contain any Walker originals and a couple of them veer a little too much into soft country rock, but Any Day Now is a fine album and Scott's vocals are arguably some of his best as he's just languidly crooning and enjoying the songs. The song may be fairly standard MOR fare, but Scott delivers the goods. The man is incapable of a bad vocal.

"Computer World II" which is basically the coda to "Numbers" but is so delightful anyway. Kraftwerk's synths are beautiful - so crystal clear.

"One Night" – I have a handful of Elvis songs on the iPod and this is one of them. And it’s terrific. What a voice that man had, and what a shame he wasted it on so many terrible MOR ballads and Vegas schlock before his way too early demise.

Part of the "Green Park Suite" from Robert Fripp’s soundscape performance in Bath in 1996. Here is where Fripp started incorporating those bell and piano sounds into his soundscapes. And it’s one of my favourite soundscapes. Very moving. The performance took place over some hours on a cold November day. Green Park Station had long closed to trains and had been converted into a shopping mall of stalls and bijou boutiques. No idea why Fripp was playing there, but he was. The performance was scheduled to last all day but Fripp packed up after just three hours due to a combination of the cold, the DGM team’s late arrival and over 100 complaints from the shoppers. Stallholders claimed that their takings were down and one even threw up, apparently because of the volume of the music. Because of this less than enthusiastic response, Fripp wrote in his diary - "Our overall impression was that it would be better for us to stop, and even better for us to stop very soon."

"All The Young Dudes" – Bowie live at the LA Amphitheatre in September 1974 just as the Diamond Dogs Tour was morphing into the Soul Tour. DB had very rapidly grown tired of the massive and complex set of Hunger City that was used on the Diamond Dogs Tour. After a month’s break (during which the bulk of Young Americans was recorded) the tour was due to resume on the West Coast, but DB decided to ditch half the numbers in favour of the new Young Americans songs, and restructure existing tunes into more Soul / disco arrangements. He also wanted to dump the massively expensive stage sets, but was persuaded to keep the sets for the weeks run in Los Angeles where he would be seen by loads of Hollywood stars (Liz Taylor came three times), would be filmed by the BBC for the Cracked Actor documentary and would upset Bob Hope. Really. Hope complained that the show’s volume was too high and such was his standing in Hollywood that the DB show had to keep the noise down over the remaining four nights. Anyway, the stage set was dropped completely after this week of gigs and the Soul Tour got underway in earnest with Luther Vandross and his friends helping DB out on a bizarre show which tried to be like a Night At The Apollo but fronted by a very skinny, very white honky with orange hair, who looked horribly out of place among these large black soul divas and seriously cool black dudes. This version of "All The Young Dudes" is slow, not terribly anthemic, and is thus rather dull. Which is a terrible shame when you consider how good the actual song really is.

"I Spit Roses" – from Peter Murphy’s last album. Superb stuff as always. Ninth is right up there with his best records I think. It sounds so alive and so exciting.

"There Ain’t half Been Some Clever Baskets" from the delightfully clever mind of the late lamented Ian Dury. And no of course he doesn’t really sing Baskets, but I can’t use the real word for fear of falling foul of the filters. (And how’s that for a bit of f'ing alliteration?) Great lyrics as always from Dury – one of my favourite lines is about Van Gogh "He didn’t paint the Mona Lisa, That was an Italian geezer." And at one point after the line "there ain’t half been some clever baskets" he says "they probably got help from their mum" which really makes me laugh.

More another day.

lettie - good fortune, bad weather

Lettie has been releasing her music since 2008's excellent debut album Age Of Solo, on which a charming and beguiling mix of old fashioned synths, guitars and clever looping combined to create startlingly original folky electro songs. This was rapidly followed by the more acoustic Everyman. Both albums mixed personal reflections with dashes of sci-fi, ecology and loads more to create hypnotic, dreamlike songs. Both albums were intelligent, catchy and hugely inventive and if there was any justice in this world then both should have reached a much wider audience.

2009 found Lettie occupying an excellent support slot on Peter Murphy's European tour (Murphy's producer David Baron had worked with Lettie on her albums), plus she gained some valuable exposure via the BBC Electric Proms, and in 2010 she was performing on the BBC Introducing... stage at Glastonbury.

Then it all seemed to go quiet. Occasional new songs trickled out onto you tube, there were indications that a new album, probably called Other Days, was underway but then everything seemed to grind to a halt. Lettie had to keep what seemed like several day jobs running in order to fund her music, but the daily grind appeared to be robbing her of her passion for songwriting. Her online blog hinted at more personal relationship problems too with the result that a number of completed tracks were then abandoned.

In the autumn of 2010 Lettie spent a couple of weeks with David Baron at his studios in the US and it was there that the bulk of the new album took shape. As on her previous records Baron co-wrote the music but this time, instead of it being mainly the two of them creating all the music, Baron called in some formidable talent to assist with many of the tracks. Among them were drummer Zachary Alford (Bowie, B52's and many others), bassist Sara Lee (Robert Fripp, Gang of Four, Robyn Hitchcock, B52's and tons of others) and guitarist Danny Blume (a massive array of artists from Kid Creole and the Coconuts to John Cale).

Over the course of 2011 the album was slowly tweaked and teased into shape - a few tracks were dropped as newer improved songs were added and by the end of 2011 David Baron had mixed and mastered the final version. The long and troublesome gestation period has been well worth it, as the new album is surely her strongest collection of songs yet. The title Good Fortune, Bad Weather obliquely hints at the ups and downs endured in trying to get this record finally ready (even the cover photo caused problems as the original photographer turned out to be a con man who ran off with Lettie's hard earned money!) But all those trials are forgotten when the songs kick in, for the album is a wonderful collection of uniformly strong tunes.

These songs (the fourteenth was added when Lettie decided that it would be bad luck to have only thirteen) cover all of Lettie's styles and add considerably more. Her vocals are stronger than ever across the whole collection and her lyrics range from what appear to be personal and intimate to rather more oblique subjects such as technology and robotics.

"Swirl" starts the album off with an amusingly sly lyric having a dig at X Factor and similar talent shows (surely that's Cowell as 'the puppetmaster'?). The irony is that while this song is 100 times better than anything ever produced by a TV talent show, I doubt Lettie would ever get anywhere on X Factor as she's too original to fit into any of their shallow pigeon holes. Thank goodness.

"Lucky" initially sounds like a throwback to an earlier Lettie sound, all simple keyboard and breathless vocals but with every passing line the sound grows and deepens and by the midway point you realise that a full band is playing. This is then topped off by a delightfully playful piano which joins the band and jauntily plays until the end. Such a fun song. 

"Bitter"- an incessant acoustic guitar underpins the whole song, but layers of other instruments all but bury it at times. This is a cracking tune with a terrific chorus. Great drumming from Zachary Alford. 

"Never Want To Be Alone" is a brilliant dance floor stomper, and would be great to hear on the radio. Interestingly it seems like Lettie and David let their influences run riot on the track. It might just be me but in the ghostly synth intro I can hear the choral fade out of Bowie's "Word On A Wing", the jumpy keyboard melody sounds a bit like "My Sharona" and the heavenly backing vocals on the choruses remind me of Kraftwerk's "Metropolis", but it's all stirred together in a perfect slice of infectious electro pop that manages to sound totally fresh. Possibly the catchiest track on the album, and certainly the most upbeat.

"Sanctuary" is up there with "Mission" as one of my favourite Lettie tracks. Again there's a rhythm track with skittering electronics mixed with Alford's powerful beats. I love the desultory 'oh, ohh's which come in faintly on the verses. As with many of the tracks on this record it's the little details that impress. Nearly every song allows the listener to find more and more happening in the backing tracks. The more you listen the more you discover. David Baron has managed to create fascinatingly complex musical beds for the songs, but at no point do any of the songs sound cluttered or overly busy, which is quite an achievement. 

"Digital" has some very amusing lyrics which seem to encapsulate Lettie's love of mixing the old and defunct with the modern, shiny and new. 'I've still got VHS, and tapes inside my car', yet everything is going digital... like the brilliant little synth solo in the middle eight which sounds like an updated version of Eno's analogue VCS3 freak out on Roxy Music's "Editions Of You".

Without a pause we move into "Pandora". Truly funky and full of little guitar licks from Danny Blume. Great bass work from Sara Lee. The chorus is beautiful, and the track is the seventh song in a row which would make a very commercial single.

"Fitter" - another one which could easily be a hit, given the chance. Great lyrics and I love the little touches again. The stuttering synths after the choruses are terrific, and the handclaps are lovely. (Another bit of back up to my argument that many songs are immediately improved with the addition of either handclaps or oboes - of course that depends on whether the song is upbeat or melancholy...)

Mind you, violins also really help with an introspective mood. "Mister Lighter" was available last year for a while but didn't have the beautiful strings or vibes that this version has. And both really complete the song. It's a lovely arrangement too, almost like chamber music. Gorgeous vocal, really intimate and up front, as if Lettie is right beside you. 

"Aluminium Man" was also up on you tube last year with a funny video. The idea of a robot boyfriend made out of recycled aluminium cans seems both very amusing and very ecologically sound. Much fun to be had from this song with the delightfully robotic synths and the rigidly clattering drum pattern.

A total change of mood with the title track as Lettie solemnly intones "Good Fortune, Bad Weather" over a dub reggae backing, all shuffling beats and heavily echoed rimshots. It's as if we're deep inside the speakers as the whole song takes on a very dreamlike quality. Gentle whistling and half heard guitar only add to the faintly spooky air. I could happily have more of this sort of stuff.

"Come Back" is a rather sad little song of yearning, but again it's full of detail and invention. Based around a pulsing guitar "Come Back" is expanded by some great swirly keyboards as well some incongruously jaunty whistling, which actually works perfectly.

"Crash And Burn" harks back to the sparser sound of "Everyman", but there's nothing wrong with that. Is it perhaps about the crook who ripped off Lettie over the album photos? Seems like it could be... 'can you forgive yourself?' But although the lyrics hint at retribution the song's arrangement is kept fairly light with some gentle piano accompanying the guitar for most of the song, along with some more of David's synths. 

"On And On" closes the album on a quiet note. Choral synths start us off before guitars and cheery keyboards join in, with slide guitar taking us to the fade out. It sounds to me as if it could have gone on longer, but the song decided that, once it's achieved what it needed to, it simply chose to fade away. Which again somehow fits perfectly with the sometimes dreamlike quality of many of the tracks.

Basically this one hell of an album. Every song is strong, different from each other, original, inventive, charming, supremely catchy and above all extremely entertaining. It's a great way to spend 45 minutes, and another 45 minutes, and another... Because I'm pretty certain that after one listen almost anyone would be hooked.