LINER NOTES: I NEVER HAPPENED [2025]

      1.   Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys – The Smashing Times

      2.   SuperHwy – Big Supermarket

      3.   Get Found Out – Publicity Department

      4.   Map Like a Leaf – Autocamper

      5.   Ivanhoe’s Twopence – The Fall

      6.   Roman Litter – Felt

      7.   Blue Shadows – Lower Plenty

      8.   Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine

      9.   Dreamhorse – Workhorse

    10.   Doggerland – Vehicle

    11.   Mariella – Khruangbin featuring Leon Bridges

    12.   Comet 4 – The Soundcarriers

    13.   Listen Here – Eddie Harris

    14.   The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, Montreal Forum) – Bob Dylan

    15.   On Parade – Electrelane

    16.   Explosions – Devo

    17.   Teen Beat – Automatic

    18.   Year of the Books – The Green Child

    19.   Colour Television – Stereolab

    20.   Spike Island – Pulp

    21.   Baader Meinhof (Das Capital version) – Luke Haines

    22.   I Never Happened – Comet Gain

    23.   Trees – Pictureframes
 

December 2024. The Clientele have not long ago played a double set at the Village Underground, a wonderful music venue in Shoreditch that I've never previously been to. Within days of the event they then announce a gig at the Moth Club – another great venue – in Hackney, as The Butterfly Collectors, which was what they called themselves before they became The Clientele. They are to play material from their retrospective anthology It's Art Dad, with a few tracks from Suburban Light thrown in, and shall be accompanied by their original drummer, Daniel Evans. It’s on a Tuesday but to hell with it, I’m there, although my partner, who accompanied me to the Village Underground, will give it a miss.

London’s train network is undependable at the best of times – I reckon about one in three services are disrupted to some extent. Accordingly, when I travel across town I err on the side of caution, which on this occasion meant I arrived in Hackney with plenty of time to spare. I went for a drink at The Cock Tavern, which was part of the plan anyway, but didn’t get on with the beer nor the crowds. With nearly an hour left to kill, I decided to dodge the showers and take refuge in the JD Wetherspoon across the road: Baxter’s Court.

Whatever you might think about JD Wetherspoon and its extravagantly coiffured founder and chairman Tim Martin, a pint there is about half the price it is anywhere else. For a lot of people, that's the difference between going out and not being able to afford to. Moreover, their pubs tend to be well run. What they aren't is pretty. Although quite tidy, Wetherspoon's pubs are generally stuck in a 1990s time warp. I say generally because sometimes they occupy grander buildings that were once something else, such as a bank, an old cinema or a post office. Baxter's Court is none of these things, it’s purpose built, and so you have wall-to-wall carpet, low ceilings, overly bright lights, fruit machines, and too many bar-high tables and chairs. (The best pubs in the 1990s were the ones that hadn't undergone any significant change since the 1970s, which is as true now as it was back then. See also cafes and motorway service stations.) So I didn’t stay long, dodged more showers on my way to the Moth Club, and readied myself for the support act.

I am guilty of not always paying supporting acts the respect they often deserve. Had the Cock Tavern been less busy and less keen on serving up obscure IPA, or if Baxter’s Court was more like Hamilton Hall in Liverpool Street, I may have missed The Smashing Times, which would have been a shame. ‘Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys’ was the third of sixteen tracks they managed to squeeze in before the headline act, and the first off of the album of the same name.

Big Supermarket are/were from Melbourne in Australia, and released their only record, 1800, on the Hobbies Galore label in 2018, limited to just 300 copies, re-issued on green vinyl the following year on Tough Love Records, again limited to 300 copies, of which I now own one. That seems to be that. You can’t find a copy anywhere, not even on Discogs. Bizarre to think it was on Spotify that I discovered this band, because Spotify’s algorithms, be it by accident or design, aren’t usually so imaginative. I’m guessing it had to do with The Clean and the other antipodean groups that I’ve been listening to over the last couple of years.

Publicity Department are equally obscure, the solo project of someone by the name of Sean Brook, who’s also in a band called Brunch. You can't buy any records or CDs, but there are cassettes. In some instances there’s no physical artefact at all, and yet it’s all available on Spotify. Quality music readily available from the most high profile audio streaming provider in the market and yet almost impossible to own on any tangible format. Sure, it's all there on Bandcamp, and I do use Bandcamp, but if there's no actual record to sell, how do you go about marketing your music?

Autocamper are selling actual records. I know this because Monorail Music said so on their social media. Autocamper are from Manchester and appear to take inspiration from the sort of ‘indie pop’ you used to get a lot of in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Kind of like The Umbrellas, so perhaps it's making a comeback.

Satisfied that I'd now heard every track by The Fall up to and including the 1994 album Middle Class Revolt (see It's Raining Today) I decided to listen more closely to what they'd recorded since. Aside from compilation that would result – The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, Volume 4 –  I was determined to add something to this playlist, and ended going for 'Ivanhoe's Two Pence' from the 1998 CD single 'Masquerade'. Considering the alternatives, my choice may confound die-hard Fall fans. Steve Pringle describes it as ‘languid’, which is not meant as a criticism. It’s certainly one of Smith’s more laid-back vocal performances, complimenting the sampled film dialogue chuntering away in the background.

For my 50th birthday, The Wilkinsons presented me with a copy of Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson. It would be fair to describe Lawrence as something of an eccentric (what people these days needlessly like to term 'neuro-diverse') and this eccentricity can often carry over into his music. Take 'Roman Litter' as an example: the breathy ‘heys’ after every third line of the verse, or the way he stretches out ‘all right’ at the end of the chorus. These are not usual inflections, and yet they’re what makes the song interesting. (Incidentally, in June I found myself standing very near to Lawrence at an Escape-ism gig downstairs at The Dome in Tufnell Park, which makes me think his reputation as a recluse may have been overstated.)

The Lower Plenty are another Australian band from Melbourne. ‘Blue Shadows’ is taken from their album No Poets, released in 2023, and reminds me of the Irish indie-pop band Catchers, who were active in the 1990s, so perhaps this type of stuff already has made a comeback?

I'm not convinced half the people who own Loveless by My Bloody Valentine ever listen to it, or if they even like it all that much. 'Sometimes' is fairly easy going but the rest of it is a wash of dissonant noise. Which is not say it’s a bad record, just that it requires a bit of effort. The group's first album, Isn't Anything, is more forgiving, at least by comparison. 'Cupid Come' reminds me of a more abrasive version of 'City Girl', a song Kevin Shields wrote for the film Lost in Translation, which I love.

More Australian music, this time from Adelaide. Workhorse are fronted by Harriet Fraser-Barbour, who cites Julee Cruise, Chris Isaak and Mazzy Star as influences, which are not bad influences to have. On 'Dreamhorse' I'm also hearing The Handsome Family, so there's that alternative country thing going on.

Vehicle look to be in the same boat as Publicity Department. I wrote last year about how hard it was finding out anything about Vehicle, on account of their name, but there doesn't seem to be any physical product whatsoever. They even have an album out, entitled Widespread Vehicle, but it’s only available on Spotify or as a download from Bandcamp. I utilised both facilities, and in April I went to see them at the Sebright Arms just south of Hackney, but what I really want is an object I can hold in my hand. The gig was rather shambolic (technical issues, not the band's fault). They didn't play 'Doggerland' either, although they did finish with 'Uncle Roy Orbison'. I suspect the reason 'Doggerland' didn’t feature is because of its arrangement and Spector-ish production. That's the same reason you find it placed here, approaching the halfway mark, following on from the alternative country of Workhorse and before the laidback tones of ‘Mariella’ by Khruangbin.

I heard ‘Mariella’ down The London Apprentice, drinking with my Cornish friend during Sunday Service earlier in the year, and we then listened to it when I visited him in at his flat in Plymouth a few months later. I’m also fairly certain that The Florist played it in his van on the drive to Alabarracin in 2024. I’m not sure where The Soundcarriers came from. I’ve been aware of them for a while, maybe because they’re often compared to bands like Stereolab and Broadcast. ‘Comet 4’ suited the mood, and I needed something that could work alongside jazz.

As mentioned, 2025 was the year I turned 50. What a diabolical thing to get your head around. Not that I feel particularly old, but I’m starting to look it. To celebrate being closer to death than birth – although this was more than possibly true the day I hit 40, even 30 – I headed down to Brighton and put the word out to anyone who might wish to join me and my partner (which turned out to be my Cornish friend, the former cohabitant from Brighton, No Eyes and, albeit briefly, Teleport Man). We had a few pints at the Heart in Hand, ate at Cote, drank some more at the White Rabbit and then the Albert, my coterie of friends leaving gradually as the evening progressed. My partner and I then finished off with a nightcap on the balcony of the Artist Residence overlooking Regency Square, the seafront just beyond.

The next morning, while getting ready to check out, my partner turned on the radio, which happened to be tuned to Jazz FM. That was fine by me, and so I drank my morning coffee to the sound of ‘Listen Here’ by the tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris.

Harris was known for playing an electric Varitone saxophone, developed by a company called Selmer. The Varitone itself – essentially an electronic amplifier – allows the user to manipulate the sound in a number of ways. The function that Eddie Harris liked to use was the ‘octamatic’ setting, which adds a pitch one octave lower to that emitted by the actual saxophone. The effect is a full-bodied bass sound, as if someone is humming in unison with the instrument. From what I can gather, jazz purists weren't keen on any of this and Harris's reputation suffered as a result, although he is more well regarded nowadays.

Antica Stuzzicheria

Bologna, to watch the football with a couple of old friends. On the first night of three we find a nice little Osteria called Antica Stuzzicheria run by a chap named Antonio, who's quite a character. We return there on the second night as well as the third, whereupon he as on The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings by Bob Dylan. It suited the environment, which was traditionally decorated and dimly lit, yet lively and welcoming. Dylan's voice can grate at times, but not here, he really belts it out.

Because ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ is recorded live, I was unsure of where it should go on my playlist. As I often do (but not always) I found myself implementing Stanley Kubrick’s theory of non-submersible units. Whereas Kubrick typically split his films into six to eight narrative components, I usually go for four or five, depending on the length of the compilation. With regards to this one, the delineation between the first and second quarter isn’t so distinct – more of a gradual wind down, starting with the Lower Plenty and culminating with Vehicle. As the year progressed, I’d amassed a number of more upbeat tracks that I realised would have to be grouped together in what would become the third segment. The question then was how to bridge over from the mellower tunes that comprise the second quarter to the upbeat ones that were to form the third. ‘Listen Here’ begins this process and ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ finishes it; while neither track has a particularly high tempo, they’re both more urgent than The Soundcarriers tune that precedes them, but less so than what comes next.

In truth, I’m not sure if the transition works. ‘On Parade’ by Electrelane is all high energy and possesses the same vocal quirkiness that infects ‘Sisters’ by Cate le Bon, maybe with a bit of Kleenex/Liliput thrown in. The segue into Devo’s ‘Explosions’ isn’t perfect but works better. In any case, we’re now firmly into the playlists’ third non-submersible unit.

‘Explosions’ is from Devo’s fifth album, 1982’s Oh, No! It's Devo, which I wasn’t overly familiar with. That all changed in February, around the same time as that trip to Plymouth I alluded to after I put together a Devo playlist to listen to on the journey. Which is apt because it was a girl from Plymouth who implored me to listen to Devo in the first instance, even if it did take me several years to heed her advice.

I saw Automatic play at 2022’s Wide Awake festival and liked them. I don’t think their second album, Excess, could have been out yet, because I only remember having listened to their first – Signal. Excess is an improvement on Signal. Their third album, Is it Now?, was released earlier in the year, but I’m still catching up. I’ve played a couple of 20-minute sets at The Sussex Arms in Twickenham this year, and ‘Teenbeat’ was one of the tunes I elected to play, which proved to be a success. 

The Green Child are yet another band from Melbourne, Australia. Boomkat product review: ‘Originally the recording project of Raven Mahon (member of Grass Widow, Rocky) and Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Shutdown 66), The Green Child now boasts Shaun Gionis (Boomgates) on drums and Alex Macfarlane (who runs the label Hobbies Galore) on guitar and synth.’ You can begin to see how Spotify goes about its business. At 5 minutes and 58 seconds, and falling apart towards the end, this is the compilation’s climax, rounding off the third non-submersible unit.

Different Stereolab records evoke different times and different places. Mars Audiac Quintet reminds me of the summer of 1994, specifically the walk from my parents’ house into Plymouth city centre. Emperor Tomato Ketchup recalls Hounslow, as does Refried Ectoplasm. Dots and Loops, the dive I lived in off Hanworth Road in 1996-7; Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and Aluminum Tunes, the poky flat my partner and I rented in Brentford. Will their most recent album, Instant Holograms on Metal Film, ever prompt me to think about St. Margarets and the flat I’ve resided in for the last 20 years? I doubt it. My circumstances don’t fluctuate as much as they once did, and nothing’s really gone on this year to distinguish it from the last. Not even turning 50.

What may end being more firmly entrenched is the memory of seeing Stereolab playing at the Electric Brixton. Prior to the event I had a couple of drinks in the Trinity Arms and The Prince Albert – pubs I’d not been to before. I had been to the Electric Brixton, but only in its previous incarnation as the Brixton Fridge (to see The Fall in 1994) and it looked nothing then like it does now. Unfortunately, Stereolab didn’t see fit to play ‘Colour Television’ but they did ‘Household Names’, which they hadn't on any of the previous five times I saw them.

Another Britpop affiliated band with a new record out were Pulp. (I don’t define Stereolab as a Britpop band in any kind of musical sense.) Pulp have fared better than many of their Britpop contemporaries, and it’s hard to imagine any of them producing an album that sounds so much like themselves without crossing over into pastiche or parody. If we overlook Jarvis's waning powers as a vocalist, 'Spike Island' could have been recorded 25 years ago. This is not to say that it sounds dated, just that Pulp's music hasn't dated much, if at all.

Pinakothek der Moderne

Munich isn’t as ‘German’ as I expected it to be. I’ve been to Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg, and I was expecting Munich to feel more ‘German’ than any of them. Sure, there’s plenty of lederhosen and Bavarian iconography knocking about, but it feels like an international place, probably on account of the city’s prestigious universities and research centres, the art galleries and museums. Munich is also home to the Olympiastadion, which Luke Haines once stood outside of to promote his side-project, Baader Meinhof. What you find here isn’t the iteration of the title track off of the self-titled album but an orchestral reworking that appeared on Das Capital – The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and The Auteurs in 2003, seven years after the original.

Comet Gain had a new record out: Letters to Ordinary Outsiders. It’s a grower, but the songs themselves are tied together by way of a series of spoken-word vignettes and sampled dialogue. In other words, the tracks don’t lend themselves to being put on miscellaneous compilations. No bother, because in the Comet Gain binge that followed I came across ‘I Never Happened’: 'a Rock and Roll Hymn to all the failed aspirations and the nobody feelings as we scream helplessly into the void in the busy streets we disappear.'

That was supposed to be the final track, but then a band called Pictureframes released an EP entitled Event on the Downs. Again, there’s no artefact, just a platform on Bandcamp. ‘Trees’ sounds a bit like the mellower end of Yo La Tengo, but what really interested me was the instrumental coda that kicks in after about three minutes, reminiscent of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac – maybe ‘Dragonfly’. Let’s hope they, and Vehicle and Publicity Department, can get it together and the support to press some actual records.

[Listen to here.]

STADIA: OLYMPIASTADION AND ALLIANZ ARENA, MUNICH

Because Olympic stadiums are often national stadiums it is not unusual for them to be used for football, be that by the national team, a local club, or for international tournaments. The Olympiastadion, as the name suggests, was built specifically for the 1972 Summer Olympics but with a view to both Bayern München and TSV 1860 München making it their home. It also hosted the final of the 1974 World Cup, the 1988 European Championship, and no less than three European Cup/Champions League finals. It will never hold a fourth. Nor is it likely that the German national football team will ever play there again. Instead, they’ll use the Allianz Arena up the road, just as Bayern Munich have been doing since its inauguration in 2005.

The Olympiastadion, designed by the firm Behnisch & Partner, was radical for its time, and deliberately so. The Association of German Architects had prudently advised against constructing anything monumental, anything that might echo the might of Berlin’s Olympiastadion and the associations with National Socialism that might come with it. The site earmarked for development was Oberwiesenfeld on the city’s periphery, a former airfield with few existing structures, large enough to accommodate not just the stadium but many of the facilities that would broadly constitute the Olympic Park: a multi-purpose arena (Olympiahalle), swimming pool (Olympia Schwimmhalle), Olympic Village, even an Olympic Tower (Olympiaturm). The games' motto was to be 'The Cheerful Games' (Die Heiteren Spiele) and was indicative of the governing committee’s approach. The complex was intended to be open and navigable by foot, helped along by Otl Aicher's revolutionary pictograms denoting what sport was attached to which venue. (Aicher's company also came up with the first official Olympic mascot, a multi-coloured dachshund by the name of Waldi.) This sense of visual cohesion – what today, although not back then, would be regarded superficially as branding – applied to the project as a whole: to the publicity posters, the iconography, and the architecture.

The idea to erect a sort of tent over various buildings that comprise the Olympiapark was inspired by the work of German architect and structural engineer Frei Paul Otto, who had designed the West German Pavilion for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition held in Montreal. So specific was this requirement that Otto was taken on as a development consultant, working alongside civil engineers Fritz Leonhardt and Wolf Andrä, under the direction of structural engineer Jörg Schlaich. A joint effort then, but born of Otto’s vision – the similarities between the roof of the Olympiastadion and that of the Expo pavilion are manifestly apparent.

The body of the Olympiastadion itself is predicable enough: a circular counter-sunk bowl, in the same vein of, say, the Rajko Mitić Stadium in Belgrade. This single tier sweeps upwards on its western edge, thereupon supported by exposed concrete brackets overhanging a single-story of atriums, offices and amenities. Inside, the seats are various shades of green, presumably to mitigate against the effects of sun bleaching, which complements the yellow-painted edges of the radial gangways and the dashes of pale blue that signpost the vomitories. A tired gantry of press booths overlooks the western terrace like an afterthought. Everything else is concrete and steel grey, and immaculately kept.

The roof is something else. Shaped like a crescent with the tips cut off, eight huge masts hold it in place by way of a multitude of cables, the transparent, panelled roof rising and falling between them. The square acrylic panels vary in condition, some discoloured, others distorted, but are collectively harmonious. And it really is like a tent, the canopy mimicking the effect of a taught flysheet. This plexiglass roof extends beyond the stadium’s concourse, blurring the boundary between the interior and exterior as well as the verdant and undulating landscape that surrounds it, which includes a lake.

The overall effect is satisfying but comes at a cost. For one, a large section of the ground is completely exposed to the elements, amounting to around 15,000 seats out of capacity of just under 65,000. Plans were in fact drawn up to add a second covering opposite the existing one, but all there is to show for that are the two anchoring blocks that were to hold the leading tension cables in place. Even with the extra protection the Olympiastadion was never going to be cosy. It’s just too big and lets in too much light, with large sections to the rear left open to the wind and the rain. It is a summer stadium, not a winter one, but that’s the point, that’s what it was created for. 

The Munich Football Arena – one of many Allianz arenas that have cropped up over recent years – was meant to address the shortcomings of the Olympiastadion. Again, it was also supposed to be the home of both of Munich’s football clubs, and was until 2017 whereupon TSV 1860 sold their share to Bayern and subsequently returned to the Grünwalder Stadion, which had consequences.

When the stadium was completed in 2005 the seats were coloured a ‘neutral’ grey. For context, the stadia built for the European Championships in 2004, held in Portugal, were big on colour, and the apogee of postmodernism. The Estádio Municipal de Braga was the exception, a brutally minimal structure furnished with grey seating. It won an award but set no trends. Munich’s Allianz Arena was bland by comparison yet at least made a virtue of it: three continuous tiers of comparable depth, with no discernible features to distinguish one side from the other. It was this uniformity and absence of visual clutter that rescued it from being just another modern football stadium.

In 2018, following TSV’s exit, Bayern embarked on a process called ‘Bayernization’. Arsenal did the same thing with the Emirates in 2009, and what it amounts to is a sort of gaudy populism. Raw concrete stairwells were painted red and the middle tier’s grey seats were coloured the same. The club’s name was spelt out among the chairs on one side of the ground, the motto ‘Mia San Mia’ on the other (in a proprietary font known as FC Bayern Sans) and the badge incorporated behind one of the goals. Beneath the terraces, the same grim underground carpark atmosphere prevailed (although the museum is impressive).

But the Munich Football Arena was never about what it looked like from within, it was all about the exterior. Supported on a lattice work of steel, the whole stadium – the roof and the façade – is covered in rhomboidal shaped cushions made from a material called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). These cushions – over 2,800 of them – are inflated to a differential pressure of 3.5 Pa, providing the stadium with an unusual visual texture. From afar the whole thing resembles a massive white tyre laid on its side. Up close the effect is of something less substantial. The panels are in fact translucent, to allow them to be backlit in a colour of your choosing, and look more vulnerable than they probably are. To regulate the amount of light that gets in, there are adjustable roller blinds attached to the underside of the roof. None of this is structural – it is to do with aesthetics and comfort. It’s the same approach employed at the San Mames in Bilbao, the Tarczyński Arena in Wrocław, and many other stadia besides, where the fabric of the building is covered up and left unseen.

There can be no doubt that the Munich Football Arena is a more comfortable place than the Olympiastadion or that it is better appointed. To some, it may even be prettier. What it isn’t is better located. It could be said that Fröttmaning is not too dissimilar to what Oberwiesenfeld must have been like in the 1960s, before the Olympic Stadium was built upon it – a barren wilderness on the outskirts of town. There’s a vast grass heath to the west (Südliche Fröttmaninger Heide), an Autobahn arcing to the north, a municipal sewage treatment works south-east, a train-depot south-west, and a large concrete esplanade leading from the U-Bahn to the ground, underneath of which is a carpark. Compared to the lush environment of the Olympic Park, and Aicher's lightness of touch, it all feels rather desolate.

STADIA: ESTADIO SAN MAMES, BILBAO

In 1986, the Everton manager Howard Kendall was earmarked as a potential replacement for Terry Venables, who was at the time considering his position in the wake of Barcelona’s defeat to Steaua București in the European Cup final. Ultimately Venables decided to stay put, and in an ironic twist then paid Everton £2.8 million for the services of their star striker, Gary Lineker. The following season Kendall won a second First Division championship with Everton, after which Athletic Bilbao sent a delegation over to Liverpool to offer him a job. With English clubs banned from competing in Europe for the foreseeable future, the lure of managing abroad was too much for him to resist.

It is difficult, though not impossible, to imagine Kendall holding court at Camp Nou, but Estadio San Mamés seems his more natural habitat. It was, in many ways, comparable to Goodison Park: hemmed in, dominated by a large grandstand, irregularly joined up at the corners, of a similar size. Indeed, the old San Mamés was atypical of Spanish stadia, which is not something that can be said of the present one.
 
The original San Mamés – known to its regulars as La Catedral – was built in 1913 and consisted then of a wooden grandstand on one side, a rudimentary crescent-shaped terrace on the other and shallow lines of terracing behind each goal. Its capacity varies depending on where you get your information. Simon Inglis reckons 10,000, Estadios de Espana concurs, StadiumDB say 3,500, while The Stadium Guide and Athletic Bilbao’s own website stipulate 7,000, which by 1920 had risen to 9,000. Regardless, the most significant structural augmentation was implemented in 1953 with the construction of a massive two-tiered grandstand on the ground’s western perimeter. Bookended by two five-storey towers, acting as buttresses, the roof was suspended from a huge steel arch spanning 115 metres. As a standalone structure it must have seemed immense, contributing 12,000 seats towards a total capacity of 47,000, dwarfing the more modest stands that surrounded it.

The southern end of the stadium – the Tribuna de Capuchinos – was rebuilt in 1956, the northern – Tribuna de Misericordia – in 1962. Both had two tiers, propped roofs and irregular footprints, the metropolis having encroached upon San Mamés in the intervening years. In an effort to maximise this diminishing space, the south-eastern corner was filled in with a bank of rudimentary boxes. The east stand was then built up in 1971, retaining its distinctive crescent shape, and now also comprised of two covered tiers.

The next significant changes were a direct result of the 1982 World Cup, to be held in Spain. The east and west tribunas remained as they were, while the northern and southern ends were knocked down and replaced with matching stands, providing a degree of uniformity. The towers either side of the grandstand were removed to allow the newly built ends to join up with it, which involved inserting cantilevered brackets to support the weight of the arch. The roofs over these remodelled stands were also cantilevered, with rear windows running along the top of their curved outside edge. The southern end retained its awkward shape, angled to accommodate the road behind it (rather like Everton’s Goodison Road Stand). The ground now held around 46,000 of which 36,000 was seated. By the end of the 1990s the corners between the north, east and south stands had been filled in and seating implemented throughout, reducing the overall capacity to just under 40,000.

 

South and East stands with corner section.

In 2006, Athletic Bilbao announced its intention to build a new stadium. Because the site of the new build overlapped with the old, it was to be assembled in two stages. Work began on the stadium’s first three quarters in 2010 and was completed in September 2013, by which time the original one had been demolished, leaving a gap where it once stood.

In his book The Football Grounds of Europe, Simon Ingles says of Dusseldorf’s Rheinstadion that: ‘Had the stadium been completely enclosed, instead of being left open at the south end, the effect would have been far less appealing.’ He is referring to the development of the stadium between 1968 and 1972, and the reason it was left open was because of the open-air swimming pool contiguous to it. It wasn't an aesthetic choice but a practical one. The National Stadium in Cardiff used to be similarly breached, in that instance to allow light into the adjacent buildings. Oxford's Kassam Stadium, on the other hand, looks like it does because the club didn't have enough money to finish the job. There's nearly always a reason. Estádio Municipal de Braga, built into the side of a quarry, is the only ground I can think of where the effect is intentional and permanent. It has also won numerous architectural awards.

Needless to say, San Mamés didn't remain in this intermediate state for very long – just under a year. Once complete, the predictability of the design revealed itself. Consisting of two continuous tiers, with a smaller 'club level' between them, it resembles a scaled down version of Munich's Allianz Arena. It differs in that the leading edge of the upper tier undulates, sweeping downward towards the ground's corners. Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and Benfica's Estádio da Luz employ the same strategy, but whereas those stadia leave their corners open, here they've been filled in with 'sky boxes'. Whatever you think about high-end corporate facilities, these suites have the satisfying effect of sealing the ground in, literally and metaphorically. Unfortunately, Bilbao have followed Arsenal and Benfica's example in decking out the interior in toytown red (my description), which isn’t so obvious on match days but is an affront to the senses when the ground is empty.

From the outside, things are a little different. The site of the stadium is elevated, overlooking the River Nervión, the district of Deusto on the opposite side, and the river’s southern bank. It is visible from a number of angles and can be seen as another building in a long list of them that have proliferated in and around the district of Abando. Abando is not the city’s heart, Casco Viejo is, but it used to be its industrial centre. Nowadays, it is where you’ll find much of Bilbao’s modern architecture: the Isozaki Atea towers, Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall, La Salve Bridge, the Guggenheim Museum. Bilbao has long been in the process of reinventing itself, and buildings are its means. With this in mind, San Mamés had to walk a fine line; it needed to impose without being imposing.

It does and it isn’t. The façade is composed of five rows of twisted, white, vertical louvres made out of Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene. Each row reaches out slightly farther than the one beneath and is capable of being backlit (another thing in common with Munich’s Allianz Arena).  Four large rectangular LED screens break the monotony, neatly encased within red-coloured frames. The roof is impressive too, although all that can be seen of it from street-level is a dark grey mantle angled inwards. It is enough to convey a sense of solidity, that there’s something substantial behind the permeable veneer.

And that was supposed to be that, but it rains a fair amount in Bilbao and it turned out the roof didn’t afford complete protection. Rather than live with it, like football fans used to, the canopy was extended in 2016 at a cost of €12.6 million. The visual quality of this extra coverage is debatable, and it has necessitated the use of artificial lighting to maintain the condition of the pitch, but at least everyone can keep dry.
 

On balance, Estadio San Mamés must be deemed a success. The old stadium was very old, and as interesting as it was from within it held little interest from without. The new stadium, although very much like other new stadiums, looks all right, is clean and comfortable, has excellent viewing angles (the stands are steeper than those at Arsenal) and can generate a good atmosphere. It’s that last point that really counts.

STADIA: STADIO RENATO DALL 'ARA, BOLOGNA

Like Turin, Bologna is loaded with porticoes. Unlike Turin, Bolognese architecture is traditionally Italian Gothic and medieval, as opposed to Baroque. It is the older city, or appears to be. Bologna's stadium is also older than Torino's, but not by much – just six years. Looking at it, you'd think at least 60. This disparity is all the more striking when one considers that both grounds were part of the same initiative. Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino began life as the Stadio Municipale Benito Mussolini, while the Stadio Renato Dall'Ara was originally known as Stadio Littoriale – ‘Littoriali’ being the name of the annual events organised by the Partito Nazionale Fascista to celebrate itself. Yet one is built in the International Style, and was thus architecturally contemporary, whereas the other is neoclassical, looking to the past.

The discrepancy is in part explained by the projects' respective architects. The stadium in Turin was designed by Raffaello Fagnoni (also responsible for Stadio Porta Elisa in Lucca) who was loosely connected with Italian Rationalism. Stadio Littoriale's architect, Giulio Ulisse Arata – working under the direction of Umberto Costanzini – is harder to pin down. Mannerism, Eclecticism, Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau have all been used to describe his work, but none of these really apply here. The greater consideration may well have been born of the city itself, the preponderance of red brick, the site of the stadium, and its connection – physically, literally – to the Portico di San Luca.

On Bologna's formation in 1909, they went about their business at Prati di Caprara, which was little more than a field, or parade ground, rented off the local military. After a couple of years the club relocated to Cesoia outside Porta San Vitale, which offered more in the way of amenity: changing rooms, a fence demarcating the perimeter, fixed goalposts. By 1913 Bologna were playing at Stadio Sterlino, outside Porta Santo Stefano, which had a sloping pitch but was otherwise well appointed – more fencing, an open terrace, a covered grandstand.

Bologna moved to their current home in 1927. The ground was actually part of a much broader scheme instigated by Bologna’s mayor, Leandro Arpinati, who also happened to be the president of the Italian Football Federation, vice-secretary general of the National Fascist Party, a citizen of Bologna and a supporter of its team. As well as including the obligatory athletics’ track, tennis courts and swimming pools (one outdoor, one indoor) were constructed to the rear of the tribuna. The six-storey Marathon Tower was added in 1929, overlooking the terrace opposite, serving as a platform from which Mussolini could spew Fascist propaganda. Both sides were straight, the ends semi-circular – conventional and inexpensive.

Perhaps the most significant feature was a pre-existing one: the incorporation of the Portico di San Luca along the stadium’s eastern perimeter, beneath the Marathon Tower, running south and upwards towards the Santuario Madonna di San Luca. The façade of the ground itself was comprised of a series of arched windows and doors on two levels, mirroring the arches of the portico and finished in the same terracotta brick. I say ‘finished’ because the external brickwork was not structural; reinforced concrete lay behind it.

The stadium was deemed a success. Architecturally it was an anachronism. The aforementioned Stadio Municipale Benito Mussolini in Turin, Fiorentina’s Stadio Giovanni Berta, even Napoli’s Stadio Partenopeo, all had cantilevered roofs. Stadio Littoriale's was flat and propped up by twelve posts. Where Raffaello Fagnon and Pier Luigi Nervi's structural endeavours were left on show, Costanzini's were hidden away. Of all the grounds selected for the 1934 World Cup, only the Stadio Nazionale PNF in Rome was stylistically comparable, and that dated back to 1911.
 

Renamed Stadio Renato Dall'Ara in 1983 (in memory of the club’s longest serving and most successful president) the ground underwent very little in the way of change until it was chosen as a venue for the 1990 World Cup. In fact, plans to modernise the ground had been tentatively drawn up as early as 1984 and would form the basis for its subsequent overhaul.

Overhaul is the right word. As with the Bentegodi in Verona and the Artemio Franchi in Florence, the standing structure of the Dall’Ara remained pretty much intact. An increased, all-seated capacity was achieved by adding three rows at the bottom, where the parterre was, and twelve at the top. The question was simply how to support those extra twelve rows without obfuscating what it was that defined the Stadio Renato Dall'Ara: the neo-classical façade and the colour of the bricks that comprised it.

The solution was both ingenious and brave. An exposed steel framework supported by 120 columns was aligned with the existing pilasters, supporting the extended terrace and providing access to it via a series of stairwells running around the stadium’s perimeter. That the external brickwork was partially obscured is undeniable, but the colour of the steel supports – somewhere between teal and turquoise – complements the terracotta masonry rather than overwhelms it. As do the yellow railings and the raw concrete of the extended terrace. The effect is that of a Victorian-era train station turned inside out.

The steel roof is a continuation of the exoskeleton, but more refined. It is a cantilevered structure reaching backwards 5 metres from the rear of the tribuna and seems to float above it. Laterally, it covers more ground than the previous canopy, following the curve of the terrace before stopping abruptly, as if satisfied that more than enough protection has been afforded to the spectators below. Finally the tower, which was built around and scrubbed up – the extended terrace drops down as it gets closer to it – and yellow seating throughout.

Not much has changed since, save for new seating – red and blue, placed randomly – and improved corporate facilities within the tribuna.

In 2016 Bologna Football Club began the process of redeveloping the Renato Dall'Ara. By 2019 they had a plan. Should it ever get off the drawing board, this will involve demolishing everything other than the original brickwork, which includes the tower, removing the running track and putting a roof over the whole thing. Capacity will be reduced, from something like 36,000 to around 30,000. The whole scheme is more than likely contingent on the ground’s selection as venue for the 2032 European Football Championship.

         Is the venture worth pursuing regardless? Probably. Despite its architectural interest, Stadio Renato Dall'Ara is at the very least in need of a heavy paint job. But that won’t solve the problem of the weather. The climate of Bologna is not that of Palermo (whose stadium is similar), and those northern Italian winters can be a real drag.

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: PALERMO, 1990-92 [ABM]

Same old story: Palermo got their colours after a laundry incident turned their football shirts pink. The club had previously worn a combination of red and blue, so it's doubtful that such a mutation is even possible. In any case, the more widely accepted explanation is based upon a letter sent to the club's president, Joshua 'Giuseppe' Whitaker, in 1905 suggesting the change to pink and black to represent the rosolio and amaro produced by Whitaker's family business, which was drunk after a game in accordance with the result: rosolio – which is pink, sweet – after a win, and amaro – black, bitter – in defeat. (It is not known what was consumed in the event of a draw.)

The new colours weren't in fact implemented until 1907, the same year the club changed its name to Palermo Foot-Ball Club. Hitherto, they'd identified as the Anglo-Palermitan Athletic and Foot-Ball Club, reflecting the team's English ties: the aforementioned ornithologist Joseph Whitaker, Viceconsul Edward De Garston, Norman Olsen, George Blake, who had previously been involved in the establishment of Genoa Cricket and Football Club, as well as Ignazio Pagano, a local Italian who had been introduced to football during his two years spent studying in England.

The opportunity to actually play football was scarce and centred around matches against the crews of passing British ships. Indeed, the only other team in Sicily at the time was Messina FC, founded in 1900 by Alfredo Marangolo, who had studied alongside Ignazio Pagano in London. In 1901, the two of them would get together and organise a match between their respective teams, and again in 1904, before the arrangement was solidified with the creation of the Whitaker Challenge Cup in 1905. This annual fixture ran for four consecutive years (honours even) before the 1908 Messina earthquake put a terrible stop to it.

In its place, and quite independent from it, came the Lipton Challenge Cup. One of the crews Palermo had played against had been that of the Erin, a privately owned yacht belonging Sir Thomas Lipton. Palermo had won, and the tea-magnate rewarded them with a formidable trophy. Unable to commit to a rematch, Lipton stipulated that teams from Sicily and Campania should compete annually for the cup, which effectively meant Palermo playing against either Naples Foot-Ball Club or Unione Sportiva Internazionale Napoli. This competition ran until 1915, cut short by Italy's entrance into the First World War.

In the wake of the conflict, a number of smaller clubs emerged: Trinacria, Itala, Esperia, and Racing FBC. Valentino Columbo, who'd played for Palermo prior to the war, purchased Racing FBC, who played in blue and white halved shirt, and rebranded them Unione Sportiva Palermo. Within a year, he changed the colours to pink and black, facilitating a sense of continuity between the new club and the older one. More mergers were to follow – with Unione Sportiva Leoni in 1922, Sport Club Libertas Palermo in 1923, and 'Vigor' in 1927 – and another name change, to Palermo Football Club. Meanwhile, the team muddled along in Lega Sud, struggling financially.

By the time of Serie A's inauguration in 1929, Palermo were playing in Group D – the 'Southern Directory Circle' – and came top of it, gaining promotion into Serie B. Coincidently, that same year the club commissioned a new badge, which is worthy of note because it was designed by the Italian painter and futurist Giuseppe 'Pippo' Rizzo. Comprised of a horizontally inclined rhombus set against a stylised, brown leather football, it was replaced as early as 1932 after Palermo won promotion into Serie A. This was the moment at which the club adopted the symbol of the golden eagle, derived from the city’s coat of arms, which remains in place to this day.
 
Like so many other Italian football teams, Palermo would soon fall foul of Fascist initiatives. First they were obliged to ‘Italianise’ their name, and not long after were pressured into taking on the colours of municipal Palermo – red and yellow. In the midst of all this, they were relegated. If that wasn’t bad enough, in 1940 the FIGC kicked them out of the league due to insolvency.

Not for the first time, Palermo were forced into affiliation with a lesser but more economically stable local rival. The team in question was Juventina Palermo, who just so happened to wear the same colours that Racing FBC had. The partnership was retitled Unione Sportiva Palermo-Juventina and within a couple of years were playing in pink and black; within four, they were called more simply Unione Sportiva Palermo.

The 1950s and 1960s would represent a period of relative stability for Palermo. Flitting between series A and B, the most dramatic thing that happened to them was another change of name, to Società Sportiva Calcio Palermo, a by-product of the club listing itself as a joint-stock company. At some point during this period – probably the late 1960s – Palermo started experimenting with stripes. By the 1970s, this trend seemed to have passed, a decade that was spent almost entirely within the confines of Serie B.
 

1979-80

The idea that the football shirt, and sportswear in general, is something other than utilitarian came about in the 1970s. If you wanted to identify a 'year zero' then 1972 might do, when Adidas launched their trefoil logo in the run up to the Munich Olympics. Up until then, branding in football had been low key, often non-existent. By the end of the decade it would be ubiquitous, thanks to the efforts of firms such as Admiral, Umbro, Puma and, of course, Adidas. In Italy, the company that led the charge was Pouchain.

This golden age of footballing couture would last until the end of the century, whereafter sports kit started to become more technical – or would pretend to be. Even though the notion of the football shirt as high performing sportwear is slightly disingenuous, it is fair to say that the invention of manmade fabrics has been of some benefit to the game, has it has for many other sports. When Pouchain were active, acrylic was the material of choice, which had itself superseded wool and cotton. Ennerre favoured acrylic, before eventually getting on board with polyester in the early 1990s, while ABM liked to mix polyester with cotton.

Palermo have had gear manufactured by all three: Pouchain from 1979-80, Ennerre from 1980-86, and ABM from 1990-96. Designed by Pierro Gratton, Pouchain’s shirt had by far the best badge: the silhouetted profile of an eagle's head framed within the outline of a diamond. The problem with it was that the fashion of the day dictated that the jerseys were tightly fitted. The Ennerre shirts were more forgiving but suffered from the fact that they didn’t incorporate the club’s insignia, which wasn’t so unusual back then (see also Como, Avellino, even Juventus). After two years with Ennerre’s offshoot company Ennedue, who were equally negligent, Hummel stepped into the fold. Again, the Danish firm didn’t see fit to incorporate a badge, but otherwise showed promise. Finally, ABM took over, and knocked the ball out of the park.

Palermo’s 1990/91 shirt might be their best. For one, it had a badge, although not Gratton’s, which the club had got rid of in 1987. Instead, a Iberian style shield, of the type Inter used throughout the 1980s, with an oblique pink and black stripe running through the middle and the basic outline of an eagle’s head over the top. The template itself was the same that was being used at Fiorentina, Piacenza, Messina and Ternana: collar, trimmed V-neck, ABM's logo running in vertical micropatterned lines within the fabric of the shirt. The sponsor was ‘Citta di Palermo’ in what I can only assume was some sort of tourism initiative, which let it down a bit.

For the next season, the minimal club crest was dropped for a more complicated rendering of an eagle almost in flight. The collar was now black, while the new sponsor – consumer electronics producer Sèleco – was printed in blue. ABM also produced a pink and black striped third version with diagonal micropatterning, which hardly seemed necessary but looked good all the same.
 

1991-92

The 1990s saw Palermo – or Unione Sportiva Città di Palermo, as they were known from 1994 onward – yo-yoing between series B and C. The new century brought with it a revival of fortune, with the club qualifying for the UEFA Cup/Europa League on three separate occasions. The bubble finally burst in 2019, whereupon Palermo were forced to reregister as Palermo Società Sportiva Dilettantistica and ply their trade in Serie D. Upon promotion into Serie C in 2020, they were permitted to restitute the name Palermo Football Club, and are currently playing in Serie B wearing gear supplied by Puma.

LINER NOTES: AS DOES THE SUN [2024]

 

        1.   She Knows – The Goon Sax
        2.   Slab – Wombo
        3.   David’s Dead – A. Savage
        4.   Canines – Lewsberg
        5.   Uncle Roy Orbison – Vehicle
        6.   Doubt – Stereolab
        7.   The Games You Play – Broadcast
        8.   You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure) – Mount Kimbie
        9.   Lember Kuring – Yanti Bersaudara
      10.   Engine Number 9 – Wilson Pickett
      11.   I Want to Thank You – Otis Redding
      12.   Happy Survival – Ifeanyi Eddie Okwedy & His Maymores Dance Band
      13.   The Rain Falls Down – The Rising Storm
      14.   Tudo Comeca De Novo – Nelson Angelo E Joyce
      15.   This is the Way – The Chills
      16.   The Fix – Jon McKiel
      17.   Sin – Rick White and The Sadies
      18.   As Does the Sun – Look Blue Go Purple
      19.   Dart – Joel Gion
      20.   Dust – Parquet Courts
      21.   Memory Man – The Lovely Eggs
      22.   IDGAF – Sam Evian
      23.   Tell Me Myths – SHOLTO (featuring Elle Musa)
      24.   Look at You Now (You’re Crying) – Comet Gain
      25.   Palliative Care – Jeff Clarke
 
 
'Goon sack' is Australian slang for bag-in-box wine – specifically the bladder itself contained within the box that holds the liquid. The word 'sack' is self-explanatory, but 'goon' is an abbreviation of the word 'flagon', a vessel often associated with the storage of booze. The advantages of such a delivery system is its enhanced capacity, light weight, the reduced price, and a slower rate of oxidation. The disadvantage is the quality of the wine, or lack of.

The Goon Sax are from Brisbane, Australia. ‘Sax' is clearly a reference to ‘saxophone’, so what we’ve got going on here is a play on words. Such punnery is usually a bad sign, but The Goon Sax are actually rather good. Or were. They split up in 2022 after releasing three albums over a six year period, which isn't a bad innings by any means.

It should perhaps be said that lead-vocalist Louis Forster is the son of Robert Forster, co-founder of The Go-Betweens. He doesn't sing on 'She Knows', James Harrison does, whose father I know nothing about. I heard this song playing in the St Margarets Tavern at the tail end of 2023, and a year on I'm not remotely bored of it.
 
Made up of 25 tunes, this year's compilation comes in at around 1 hour and 20 minutes. Compare this to the playlist I compiled in 2023, which was 24 songs long and lasted 1 hour 43 minutes. Or the one in 2021 that amounted to just 23 songs but went on for 1 hour and 39 minutes. This is to say that many of the tracks on this year’s anthology are on the short side, which was not premeditated.

At 1 minute 48 seconds, 'Slab' by Wombo is a case in point. Spotify recommended it in March, along with a load of other stuff I’ve already added to previous playlists. Wombo are another three-piece, but from Louisville, Kentucky. Lead singer and bassist Sydney Chadwick reckons she’s a concrete slab and ‘don't align with nothing’. ‘Slab’ is taken from the EP of the same name, released in 2023.

A. (for Andrew) Savage is co-frontman of the indie-rock band Parquet Courts. He’s also recorded two solo albums: 2017’s Thawing Dawn and 2023’s Several Songs About Fire. Driving somewhere or other, Gideon Coe played ‘David's Dead’ on the radio (a BBC 6 session version, dated 7 Feb 2024) off of the latter (subsequently purchased on sale from Eel Pie Records in Twickenham). Savage has a wonderful way with words, and ‘David’s Dead’ is no exception: ‘... and I remember what you wore: a turquoise dress and tequila grin, a mirthful mess when you walked in the door.’

Lewsberg are from Rotterdam. I was introduced to them during the same Spotify session that introduced me to Wombo. My musical impression of Rotterdam is derived from a squat party I went to in the year 2000 where the order of the day was drum and bass and hard techno. Lewsberg are not that. Their sound, if their 2023 album Out and About is anything to go by, revolves around a Parquet Courts/Velvet Underground type of groove with words half-spoken over the top. ‘Canines’ even adds a violin.

Another Spotify suggestion, but this one came later, in July. Vehicle are from Leeds, and as much as I approve of the name it makes finding information on them rather difficult (try running an internet search for Vehicle band Leeds and see what you come up with). They have an Instagram account but that doesn’t give much away, other than that they’re snappy dressers. ‘Uncle Roy Orbison’ is the group’s second single and sounds a bit like The Stranglers with Steve Harley standing in on vocals.

In my liner notes for 2002’s Come on Let’s Go I claim that I own most of Stereolab’s albums. Although this is strictly true there’s an awful lot of their material I don’t have, if only because of the sheer weight of it. I keep meaning to buy the first Switched On compilation to add to volumes one and two (there are five in total) but have yet to do so. In the meantime I’ve downloaded ‘Doubt’ off of Stunning Debut Album, which is neither an album nor a debut; it's their second single.

'The Games You Play' by Broadcast is taken from Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006–2009, the third and penultimate posthumous release since Trish Keenan's untimely death in 2011 (not counting reissues or repackaged compilations). It is in fact a re-working of the instrumental track ‘DDL’, a kind of noise experiment that appeared on a ‘various artists’ compilation entitled All Tomorrow's Parties 1.0 and was later included on The Future Crayon, a collection of rarities and B-sides that Broadcast put together in 2006. Thereafter Trish Keenan added her vocal melody, possibly with the intention of including it on the album Broadcast were working on when she died. Given in its nature, there’s a lo-fidelity, unfinished quality to it that is quite pleasing. The vocal, though, is crystal clear.

‘You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure)’ by Mount Kimbie, featuring Andrea Balency-Béarn, is another hangover from 2023, again heard in the St Margarets Tavern. [As with the London Apprentice in Isleworth, the Tavern is owned by Greene King, and they often play the same tunes.] Mount Kimbie are part of the post-dubstep scene, such as there is one, and have in the past collaborated with James Blake. I wouldn’t know if ‘You Look Certain’ is typical of this genre, but I suspect not. In some ways, taking into consideration Balency-Béarn’s vocal, it doesn't sound too dissimilar to what you could imagine Broadcast doing if they were still around. It's no coincidence that I’ve put these bands next to each other, or that Stereolab precede them.

I don’t watch much television. I have no idea what precipitated the decline, but it's been like this for a while. After travelling to Naples in March and Rome in April, my partner persuaded me to watch the Netflix mini-series Ripley, which is set mainly in Italy. I was captivated, by the performances, the dialogue, Steven Zaillian's direction, Robert Elswit’s black and white cinematography, the sparing use of music, the clothes, the stone pines, everything.

We would all do well to dress more like Dickie Greenleaf, Marge Sherwood and Tom Ripley. Instead, modern society has variously embraced: tattoos, fake tans, fake nails, fake eyelashes, multiple piercings, augmented lips, re-formatted eyebrows, a panoply of beards and moustaches, the occasional mullet, more tattoos, sportswear, trainers you can’t train in, ‘hoodies’, socks with sliders, shoes without socks, items of clothing designed to be worn indoors worn outdoors, an overly loose fit, an overly tight fit. Generally speaking, there is nothing you can put your finger on, no defining look. The unifying quality is that there is no unifying quality.

Ripley doesn’t impose on the viewer the era in which it is set – the early 1960s. To do so would be to invite pastiche and distract from the characterisation and the narrative. It would be equally diverting to disregard the period altogether, so we get a subtler version of it, and probably a more authentic one. It’s not just about what the characters wear but the whole mise-en-scene. The visual detail isn't beholden to any particular time or place, and the cinematic compositions might rather invite painterly comparisons to Caravaggio, Edward Hopper or de Chirico (as well as film noir).

But the clothes! There’s not much to them really, but if you want a description then you might reach for the adage ‘less is more’.

'Ripley'

In January I was summoned to Leeds for a company meeting and a sort of belated Christmas do, which meant staying the night in a hotel. The following day I had a couple of hours spare before my train back to London, and so took the opportunity to walk around town, Kirkgate Market, the Victoria Quarter and the Corn Exchange. I noticed how many more older buildings there were in Leeds compared to southern cities, in a variety of architectural styles, and that it was all the better for it.

The Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen is a bar on the northern edge of Leeds City Centre, specialising in pizza and live music. On my visit there the DJ played some interesting records, and one in particular caught my attention: ‘Lember Kuring’ by Yanti Bersaudara, an Indonesian group comprised of three sisters. The self-titled album it came from was released in 1971, re-issued in 2023, and is described on Discogs as belonging to a genre called Indo-Pop. To my ears it sounded soulful and slightly psychedelic.

I found ‘Engine Number 9’ by Wilson Pickett while trying to identify the samples used in ‘Fade to Black’ by LA Star, a rap tune dating back to 1990, and an old favourite of mine. She borrows two elements: the percussion that kicks in towards the end of ‘(Get Me Back On Time) Engine Number 9 (Part II)’ off of Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia, and the organ that features in both parts I and II as well as ‘Engine Number 9’, which is merely a shortened version of the same recording released as a single. The extended mix is better, but I felt the abridged iteration was more suited to this compilation.

The soul ballad ‘That's How Strong My Love Is’, written by Roosevelt Jamison, is covered by the Rolling Stones on their album Out of Our Heads. That same year (1965) it also turned up on The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, a record that I do not possess. Jagger’s performance on ‘That's How Strong My Love Is’ is a strong one, but because I already know it, it’s not allowed on this playlist. Nor is Redding’s rendition; it also crops up on The Best Of Otis Redding (1972, ATCO Records), a record that I do possess. I’d somehow overlooked this fact, but it didn’t matter. On listening to The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, it was another track, ‘I Want to Thank You’, that grabbed me. Highlights include Steve Cropper's guitar and the way Redding enunciates the line 'all of your sweet loving charm' at the end of the second and third verses.

Not for the first time, I tried tracking down the samples used by Billy Woods on the 2022 track 'Haarlem' (still no joy). In the process I somehow ended up listening to 'Happy Survival' by Childish Gambino, featuring Khruangbin, from his latest album Bando Stone and the New World. The tune is credited to both Khruangbin and a Nigerian musician by the name of Eddie Okwedy, who produced the song in its original form in the early 1970s. It is entirely appropriate that I found the song this way, given that the Billy Woods record from whence 'Haarlem’ comes from – Aethiopes – deals with slavery and colonialism, while 'Happy Survival' concerns the effects of the Nigerian Civil War, which was indirectly caused by the very same thing. 'Happy Survival' is an example of (Igbo) Highlife, a genre that originated in Ghana around the turn of the 20th century, combining traditional melodic and rhythmic structures with western instrumentation.

The Rising Storm was a garage rock band from Andover, Massachusetts, known for their 1967 album, Calm Before. A lot of bands of this ilk are recognised for individual songs rather than whole albums, which makes them something of an anomaly. An original pressing of Calm Before can fetch a four-figure sum, and it's hard to understand why. It is certainly a good record, but is it any better than those of their contemporaries: by The Sonics, The Seeds or The Left Banke? Is it just down to scarcity? In any case, it’s worth a listen, even if over half the tunes are covers. Written by The Rising Storm’s guitarist, Rich Weinberg, ‘The Rain Falls Down’ isn’t one of them.

Rome

In February, to support the release of his new book, In the Jingle Jangle Jungle: Keeping Time with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, online magazine The Quietus invited Joel Gion to detail the thirteen records that helped shape his life – his ‘baker’s dozen’. Some artists seem to look at this as an opportunity to impress the reader with their musical literacy, reeling off names you’ve never heard of, which is not to say that their choices are disingenuous. They are, after all, in the music business and we should expect them to know their stuff. But no such grandstanding where Joel Gion’s concerned, he shoots straight from the hip. Beggars Banquet by the Rolling Stones, Revolver by The Beatles, What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, Scott 3 by Scott Walker. These are not wilfully obscure selections but works that are integral to the canon. He even throws in A Storm in Heaven by (The) Verve, describing Nick McCabe’s guitar as sounding like a ‘giant wave’.

There’s still room for paths less travelled, and I followed him down a few of them. The most intriguing was Nelson Angelo E Joyce by Nelson Angelo and Joyce Moreno, a one-off collaboration between two Brazilian singer-songwriters, released in 1972. It’s got a sort of folky bossa nova vibe to it, with another hint of psychedelia. The track you find here – ‘Tudo Comeca De Novo’ – is reminiscent of ‘Friends’ by Led Zeppelin, with added percussion, a softer vocal, and bells.

In 2023 I discovered the Dunedin Sound. It was The Clean that did it, and Spotify soon started suggesting other bands that were part of the same scene, like The Chills, whom I had heard of, and Look Blue Go Purple, whom I hadn’t. The Chills are probably the best known of all the Dunedin bands, as became evident from the press coverage that followed when founding member and principle songwriter Martin Phillipps died in the middle of the year. The way defined by him in ‘This is the Way’ is to, ‘Fill your head with alcohol, comic books and drugs.’ When I was listening to this in late spring I assumed he was pointing a negative finger at people who withdraw into themselves. Turns out that although Phillipps had been living clean for quite some while, it hadn’t always been that way, which was a contributing factor towards his relatively premature death. The lyrics, then, may well have been directed towards himself, and bring with them a sense of tragedy and loss.

I found out about Canadian singer-songwriter Jon McKiel after indulging the Spotify algorithm, prompted by the realisation that my compilation was short on minutes. Despite having never self-imposed the stipulation, I also wanted more tunes that were current, just because I think it’s a good way to anchor my playlists in time. ‘The Fix’, from McKiel’s latest album Hex, helps on both counts. ‘Sin’ by Rick White and the Sadies was discovered earlier, in June, but serves the same purpose. They’re also Canadian but have more of an alternative-country thing going on.

Look Blue Go Purple were one of the Dunedin scene’s later bands, and as a result less well known. This might also be attributable to the fact that they were an all-female group and thus not taken as seriously as some of their peers – or didn’t ask to be, or didn’t want to. It certainly wasn’t down to the music, which is great. They only released three EPs, all on Flying Nun Records – the Dunedin Sound’s primary means of communication – repackaged in 1991 as Compilation, and again in 2017 as Still Bewitched. ‘As Does the Sun’ is fairly typical of Look Blue Go Purple’s work, but maybe not so much of the Dunedin Sound. What sets it and them apart is Norma O'Malley’s flute, as if Jefferson Airplane had been reincarnated as a Sarah Records’ band.

Talking of which, after I finished reading These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story by Jane Dufus – quite a hefty tome – I finally made a start on In the Jingle Jangle Jungle: Keeping Time with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Aside from the amusing anecdotes, it describes in some style what it’s like to be young and skint but somehow having the time of your life, of not being in a position to have separate summer and winter wardrobes and how a particular item of vintage clothing can mean so much. Such was my appreciation, I thought I may as well check out some of Joel Gion’s own music. I went for Apple Bonkers, and it’s surprisingly good. ‘Dart’ is its best track, which is comparable to something off of Their Satanic Majesties Request, replete with Mellotron.

Readers of my liner notes might recall how the 2020 Tour de France highlights on ITV4 contributed to that year's compilation: specifically, ‘Broadway Jungle’ by The Maytals, which played over the end credits for Stage 13. (They might also recall the phrase 'Readers of my liner notes might recall' which I used in the corresponding liner notes: ‘Readers of my liner notes might recall that The Poets kicked off my 2005 anthology with “That’s the Way It’s Got to Be”.’) Whoever makes these thematic connections normally does a good job, as they did on this year’s Stage 9. Stage 9 incorporated no less than fourteen separate gravelled sections, much to the consternation of the cyclists challenging for the general classification. Chaos reigned. Entering one of the steeper, narrower sectors, many of the riders lost their momentum on the chalky surface and could be seen frantically pushing their bikes up hill. Where traction was sustained, dust kicked up all around them. Hence ‘Dust’ by the instantly recognisable Parquet Courts.

Musical artistes I have seen live two times or more: Stereolab, Tindersticks, Pavement, Pulp, Corduroy, Delta, Dylan Rabbit, The Fall, The Research, Field Music, Weird War, Chain & the Gang, Escape-ism, Comet Gain, Herman Dune, Holiday Ghosts, Sleaford Mods, Public Enemy, The Clientele. And, as of October 2024, The Lovely Eggs.

My partner and I went to see The Lovely Eggs at The Garage in July 2021, an event that was scheduled for April 2020 but pushed back, numerous times, because of Covid. That had been a lot of fun, so this year we decided to go and see them again. It is that sense of ‘fun’ which sometimes gets in the way of the music. What with the wacky online presence (see EGGS TV), amusing song titles and the duo’s good nature, you can sometimes forget just how good The Lovely Eggs really are.

Less than a week later I was off to Albarracin in Spain with my bouldering pals. We flew into Valencia on the morning of the 30th October, the day after a catastrophic flood that resulted in over 230 dead. We hadn’t known the extent of it when we left England, or even immediately after we landed. The devastation was revealed to us once we’d picked up our hired van and driven away from the airport and towards the centre of Valencia itself (which was pretty much unaffected). From there we began our steady ascent through the mountains towards Alabarracin. The Florist was in control of both the vehicle and the music, as he had been when he’d driven us to Fontainebleau in 2022. It didn't begin well, and after a few of us complained he put on some randomised playlist more in keeping with atmosphere engendered by our surroundings: long roads, rolling hills, wide open plains, that sort of thing. This was the point at which I became aware of Sam Evian.

‘Tell Me Myths’ by SHOLTO (all caps artist’s own) was something Huey Morgan played on the radio. Adding it to my playlist was impulsive, but I was still short on minutes and it’s another contemporary release. Hard to describe precisely what it is, but SHOLTO’s Bandcamp page alludes to a fondness for ‘jazz, soul, and ‘60s and ‘70s soundtracks’. Gilles Peterson would probably play it – probably has played it.

Bilbao

Back in February I was seconded to the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell for what ended up being about a month. Despite the hour long commute, I quite enjoyed it. After work on Fridays I would stop off for a quick pint in the Betsey Trotwood, a lovely pub and respected music venue. It was here that I returned on my way to see Comet Gain at The Lexington in July. Stephen McRobbie of The Pastels had the same idea, although he was with friends whereas I was alone, having found nobody to accompany me.

The week before I had spoken briefly with Comet Gain's Rachel Evans at The Garage (to see The Gories), who warned me that her band was under-rehearsed. (I think she vaguely recognised me from when I'd accosted her at the Make Up gig at The Dome in 2023). She needn't have worried. It was a great show and triggered a detailed investigation into Comet Gain's back catalogue, filling in the gaps. A good place to start, for anyone with similar inclinations, is Broken Record Prayers. A collection of singles, B-sides, Peel Session tracks and various oddities, it includes 'Look at You Now (You're Crying)', their contribution to Fields and Streams, a double-CD compilation released on Kill Rock Stars in 2002. The song starts off predictably enough but at the beginning of the second verse descends into a wall of noise and distortion. Against this backdrop, Rachel Evans holds steady, her intonation just right.

Jeff Clarke is yet another Canadian but resides in Berlin, or at least that's where he recorded the single ‘Palliative Care’. According to his record label, Jeff's recent output represents ‘a stripped-down, melancholic change of pace’ from his previous work with garage rock outfit Demon’s Claws. I infer from this that their brand of garage rock must be quite different from The Rising Storm’s. At any rate, Bretford Records’ description seems apt, and it's exactly the sort of note I like to end a compilation on. Unless, that is, I happen upon anything in Bilbao at the end of the month. 

[Edit: I didn't.]

[Listen to here.]