Tag: Robyn Hitchcock

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Playlist: 75 tunes from 1991

Here’s a good long Apple Music playlist that could get you through an afternoon of chores, painting, or cooking. Perhaps a road trip from Toronto to Montreal. Or keep you company on a flight from North America to Europe.

I’ve done a few playlists over the years on this blog but never any that focused on the music of a particular year in the past. I’ve chosen to start with 1991 because it was particularly pivotal year for me in terms of musical discovery. It was the year that I started to dip my toes into alternative rock, a brave new world for me, a wave of music that included a huge variety of styles, very little of which sounded like the music of my parents. So even though I wasn’t listening to all of these songs at the time, I’d say that the majority are old friends, intimate acquaintances.

There’s seventy-five great tracks, representative of how I saw 1991. It’s not a ‘best of’. I’ve already done the list of my top thirty favourite tracks on this blog here. Some of the songs in that list appear on this playlist but there’s plenty others here and some that are much deeper cuts. I know that there are those of you out there who might catch some obvious omissions. Some of these might have been because they were not to my tastes but there are others, like My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” or The Real People’s “Open up your mind (let me in)”, that were not available to be added due to music rights and Apple Music or whatever. Still, there’s so many other gems that show the wide range of music that was coming out in those years just before Grunge exploded and changed everything for alternative rock.

For those who don’t use Apple Music, here is the entire playlist, with links to YouTube videos for each song:

  1. Primal Scream “Loaded”
  2. Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff “Dizzy”
  3. Blur “Sing”
  4. Teenage Fanclub “Star Sign”
  5. Lowest of the Low “Subversives”
  6. Electronic “Getting Away With It”
  7. Throwing Muses “Not Too Soon”
  8. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Under the Bridge”
  9. James “Sit Down”
  10. Chapterhouse “Mesmerise”
  11. R.E.M. “Belong”
  12. Spacemen 3 “I Love You”
  13. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians “So You Think You’re In Love”
  14. EMF “Unbelievable”
  15. Crash Test Dummies “Androgynous”
  16. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones “Where’d You Go”
  17. Pixies “Alec Eiffel”
  18. Levellers “Liberty Song”
  19. Big Audio Dynamite II “The Globe”
  20. Spin Doctors “Two Princes”
  21. Depeche Mode “Death’s Door”
  22. Slowdive “Catch The Breeze”
  23. Rheostatics “Record Body Count”
  24. Siouxsie & The Banshees “Kiss Them For Me”
  25. Jesus Jones “Right Here, Right Now”
  26. Northside “My Rising Star”
  27. Primus “Tommy the Cat”
  28. Morrissey “Sing Your Life”
  29. Pearl Jam “Jeremy”
  30. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Grey Cell Green”
  31. Big Audio Dynamite II “Rush”
  32. Ministry “Jesus Built My Hotrod”
  33. Paris Angels “Perfume (Loved Up)”
  34. Barenaked Ladies “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”
  35. Saint Etienne “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”
  36. Primal Scream “Come Together”
  37. Teenage Fanclub “The Concept”
  38. Billy Bragg “Everywhere”
  39. The Farm “All Together Now”
  40. Crash Test Dummies “The Ghosts That Haunt Me”
  41. Inspiral Carpets “Caravan”
  42. Morrissey “Mute Witness”
  43. The Tragically Hip “Little Bones”
  44. R.E.M. “Me In Honey”
  45. Meat Puppets “Sam”
  46. The Wonder Stuff “Welcome To The Cheap Seats”
  47. U2 “One”
  48. The Charlatans “Over Rising”
  49. Erasure “Chorus”
  50. Lowest of the Low “Henry Needs a New Pair of Shoes”
  51. Violent Femmes “American Music”
  52. Spirit of the West “D For Democracy”
  53. Blur “She’s So High”
  54. Spirea X “Chlorine Dream”
  55. Chapterhouse “Pearl”
  56. The Grapes Of Wrath “You May Be Right”
  57. The Dylans “Godlike”
  58. Lenny Kravitz “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”
  59. Levellers “One Way”
  60. Revolver “Heaven Sent an Angel”
  61. Barenaked Ladies “If I Had $1,000,000”
  62. Swervedriver “Rave Down”
  63. Rheostatics “Aliens (Christmas 1988)”
  64. Billy Bragg “Accident Waiting To Happen”
  65. The Farm “Hearts & Minds”
  66. Spirit Of The West “Far Too Canadian”
  67. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Kill Your Television”
  68. Odds “Love Is The Subject”
  69. R.E.M. “Losing My Religion”
  70. Pixies “Head On”
  71. Northside “Take Five”
  72. U2 “Until the End of the World”
  73. Blur “There’s No Other Way”
  74. Lowest of the Low “Rosy and Grey”
  75. Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

And here is the promised link to the Apple Music playlist. I hope you enjoy.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

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Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2022, part four

Saturday morning, December 31st, 2022.

Here we are at the precipice of another year. And though I honestly didn’t have high hopes for this year, it was an improvement on the previous two, which makes me think it can only get better from here. Right?

Right.

If you’ve been paying attention to these pages over the last couple of weeks, you’ve seen me counting down my favourite albums released in 2022, the number one album seeing the light of day just yesterday. And now, keeping with the tradition I started over the last couple of years, I’ve left the final instalment of my annual four-part playlist sharing some of my favourite new tunes released during the year to post on this last day of the year. You are welcome to go back and revisit parts one, two, and three, which include songs from the first three quarters of 2022. This final playlist, much like the previous three, collects twenty-five bangers from the last three months. Usually, I would have to bolster this last part with the b-sides, or tracks that I just missed including in the previous three parts, but there was plenty of great new music this time around and I only needed to add a small handful.

Before I carry on, I just wanted to thank those of you who have been reading and listening along this year and for the past handful. I write these words and share these thoughts and it’s all just for the passion of it, for the love of music. So let’s just enjoy this moment and the music that makes it. These here are the final twenty five tunes of the year that have made it all bearable. Highlights include:

      • Where else would I start this last playlist but something from the newest album Canadian indie pop heroes, Alvvays, and “After the earthquake” is everything that we would have hoped it would be
      • “Let the lights on” is a grimy ear worm that begs repeat listens and Sorry is not apologizing for it
      • Don’t be fooled by the moniker, Skullcrusher is not death metal but delicate and lilting indie pop and “Whatever fits together” is just that
      • “Hurricane” and its country/folk delight has us hoping for more from Plains, the collaborative efforts of Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson
      • Canadian quartet Sloan shows us that power pop is still safe in their hands with their latest album and this new single “Magical thinking”
      • Canadian indie folk troubadour Dan Mangan is the latest in a string of artists to pay tribute to former Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, promising everyone that we’ll be “In your corner”
      • I’ve let Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess close things off with a ray of sunshine and hope and “Here comes the weekend” and a brand new year

Here is the entire playlist as I’ve created it:

1. “After the earthquake” Alvvays (from the album Blue rev)

2. “Satellite” Courtney Marie Andrews (from the album Loose future)

3. “Let the lights on” Sorry (from the album Anywhere but here)

4. “Baby don’t you know” Ciel (from the EP Nor in the sun, nor in the dark)

5. “Into the blue” Broken Bells (from the album Into the blue)

6. “Whatever fits together” Skullcrusher (from the album Quiet the room)

7. “Part of the band” The 1975 (from the album Being funny in a foreign language)

8. “Emily smiles” The Lightning Seeds (from the album See you in the stars)

9. “My very best” The Big Moon (from the album Here is everything)

10. “Hurricane” Plains (from the album I walked with you a ways)

11. “See you better now” Wild Pink (from the album ILYSM)

12. “Warm wine” Batts (from the album The nightline)

13. “Abigail” Frankie Cosmos (from the album Inner world peace)

14. “Magical thinking” Sloan (from the album Steady)

15. “One day (it’s being scheduled)” Robyn Hitchcock (from the album Shufflemania!)

16. “Swallow” Girlpuppy (from the album When I’m alone)

17. “In your corner (for Scott Hutchison)” Dan Mangan (from the album Being somewhere)

18. “Out of my head” First Aid Kit (from the album Palomino)

19. “Come on sun” Jason Collett (from the album Head full of wonder)

20. “Morningstar” Smut (from the album How the light felt)

21. “Children of the empire” Weyes Blood (from the album And in the darkness, hearts aglow)

22. “Working for the knife” Mitski (from the album Laurel Hell)

23. “Jackie down the line” Fontaines D.C. (from the album Skinty fia)

24. “Civil liberties” Fake Palms (from the album Lemons)

25. “Here comes the weekend” Tim Burgess (from the album Typical music)

Those of you who are on the Apple Music train can click here to sample the above tracks as a whole playlist.

And as always, wherever you are in the world, I hope you are safe and continue to be well. Above all, enjoy the tunes.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.