Tag: Manchester

Categories
Albums

Best albums of 1990: Honourable mentions

It’s been nearly two months since I wrapped up my last mini series. So it’s about time to do another, right?

Right.

It actually occurred to me while drafting those comeback posts back in February and looking back over all the best albums series I’ve done over the years, that I hadn’t done a historical piece in a while. 1990 was the year that I opened up this blog with, starting a series on my top 30 tunes for that year so that seemed a good place to pick up, given I’m on a roll with this return to blogging. I’m actually reusing the above pic from the page that sums up that entire list, both for nostalgia’s sake and for taking the path of least resistance.

I won’t rehash all the words that I already spilled on said page but suffice to say, 1990 was an important year for music for me. It was just around that time that I was getting into alternative music and because it was pre-Internet, some of the albums on this list were discovered, and appreciation gained for them, in the handful of years following their initial release.

With this post, I am sharing a smattering of albums (in alphabetical order) that are great and mean a lot to me but landed just outside of my top ten favourites. I plan to post the rest of this series every week or so, intermingling them with our regularly scheduled programming. The next one in the series will feature albums ten through six and the posts that follow will each proclaim the greatness of my top five albums for the year. The series may take a month or two when all is said and done, but bear with me. It should be fun.

Cocteau Twins “Heaven or Las Vegas”: Not only my gateway* to the band but likely also for many others, given that the 6th full-length release by the legendary dream pop outfit was their most commercially successful – more intelligible lyrics from Elizabeth Fraser than usual and a very slight deeper leaning into pop from their typical experimentation were the likely culprits.
Check out: “Cherry-coloured funk”

Happy Mondays “Pills ‘n’ thrills and bellyaches”:  Eventually, I got over my prejudice against the mythical Madchester group for the part they played in bankrupting Factory Records** and moved past the couple of tracks with which I was already familiar, care of a mixed tape a friend made for me, and I fell hard for the ‘Mondays’ best selling record – yep, it’s druggy, danceable, and chaotic fun.
Check out: “Step on”

Inspiral Carpets “Life”:  The debut album by the Manchester quintet was chock full of dance floor ready boppers made distinctive by the singspeak vocals of Tom Hingley and the swirling organs of Clint Boon and it might even have cracked my top 10 had the wonderful standalone single, “Commercial rain”, actually been on this one.
Check out: “This is how it feels”

James “Gold mother”: Manchester stalwarts James first came to my attention with this, their third album, albeit a few years late***, but even still, I didn’t fully come to appreciate it until much later, after years of listening to later albums where the large group’s big sound became more fully developed. Nevertheless, a great introduction.
Check out: “Top of the world”

The Lightning Seeds “Cloudcuckooland”: Ian Broudie’s debut album as The Lightning Seeds was britpop before britpop was even a thing – and we know how much I love britpop****… so many great tracks that wouldn’t have sounded out of place at any point during the british alternative boom.
Check out: “Pure”

*This, after many years of trying and failing to find some common ground with the band and at least, a couple dozen spins of this particular album.

**It took a long time, though, because Northside, one of my favourite Manchester bands at the time, got caught up in said bankruptcy and never managed to release their sophomore album.

***After it was reissued for the US audience as the eponymously named album with the instantly recognizable flower on the cover and included a new version of the classic “Sit down“. A bunch of us were given copies of this CD at a high school CFNY video dance party and many never listened to it. Much like the Inspirals album here, “Gold mother” might’ve cracked the top ten if “Sit down” were on the original release.

****And as I’ve written about before on these pages, I came to The Lightning Seeds late – they somehow escaped my adoration for many years!

I’ll be back very soon with albums #10 through #6 for my Best albums of 1990 list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: James “Hey ma”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: James
Album Title: Hey ma
Year released: 2008
Details: original pressing, standard black vinyl

The skinny: James, one of my favourite ever bands, was recently announced as part of the lineup for this year’s CityFolk festival, one of the local music festivals, but unfortunately, I will unlikely be able to make the show given the timing. Still, it got me thinking about the other two times I saw the band, especially the first, when my wife and I drove to Montreal for their stop there on the tour supporting 2008’s “Hey ma”. We had already been big fans of their earlier work but this*, their 10th studio album and their first since reforming after an almost six year absence, made us even bigger fans. It was my very favourite album in the year of its release and this wasn’t just a nostalgia vote. “Hey ma” was a return to the sound of their best work and kicked off a string of very good albums that continues to this day. I picked up this original pressing more than five years after its release from one of my favourite local record shops. I just happened to be flipping through their racks one day and there it was. No hesitation, purchase made and there have been no regrets. It’s hit my turntable more times than I can count. So good.

Standout track: “Hey ma”

*And the show, of course.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #1 James “Sometimes (Lester Piggott)”

<< #2

“There’s a storm outside, and the gap between crack and thunder
Crack and thunder, is closing in, is closing in”

Monday, September 22nd, 2008. My wife Victoria and I took the afternoon off work and drove down to Montreal together from Ottawa to see one of our favourite bands live in concert*. The venue was an old movie theatre turned club in the quartier des spectacles called Club Soda. I remember us being quite excited, in particular because we had thought we’d never see James live after they had broken up in 2001. Also, because after reuniting in 2007, they released a new album called “Hey ma” the following year, which turned out to be my favourite by the group since 1993’s “Laid”.

The show in question lives on in our collective memory as our favourite ever concert, even after seeing them again a decade later at our local music festival. The set that night was varied, performing many of our favourite tracks. The band was big and bold, and all seven members were palpably amazed at the reception they received in a town they were told wouldn’t come see them. In fact, near the end of their show, their performance of the very song we are talking about today, “Sometimes (Lester Piggott)”, went on for well over seven minutes because the crowd refused to let drop the singalong refrain started up by frontman Tim Booth. It was an incredible moment, perhaps as much for the band, as it was for those of us in the audience.

“Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes
I swear I can see your soul”

“Sometimes (Lester Piggott)” was the first single released off of “Laid”, what is surely James’s biggest album. Much like the title track, which was also released as a single, “Sometimes” climbed into the top thirty of the UK singles charts, and is still obviously one of the band’s best loved songs. It certainly is one of my own personal faves.

It is a driving and racing number**, acoustic guitar strumming at a frantic pace and a drum beat that leaves you just as breathless, and with the typical big James sound reflecting in a steamed up mirror the raging storm portrayed in the lyrics. And it’s these words that elevate an already fantastic song into the pantheon of greatness of greatness. Booth creates for us an image of a tempest, a storm in a seaside town, expounding the naturalistic themes of man vs nature, perhaps an extended metaphor for the random and daunting elements of life. In it the protagonist laughs in the face of death and that passion in how Booth sings it and the images he creates has us all enthralled.

“He says listen, takes my head and puts my ear to his
And I swear I can hear the sea”

This is a song I could listen to over and over again and in it, find more beauty than the million times before. It is art and I just can’t get enough of it. This and all the memories over the years of listening to it and singing along with it is why it tops my best tunes chart for 1993.

*It would turn out to be the first and last time we would ever drive to Montreal and back on the same day to see a concert. Obviously, it was worth it but on the drive home, we were both exhausted and had to keep spelling each other behind the wheel lest one fall asleep.

**In fact, the high speed pace of the rhythm is the reason behind the name in parentheses in the title, being that of a well-known horse racing jockey.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.