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 – 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 venue in Shoreditch that I'd never previously been to. Within days of the event they then announce a gig at the Moth Club – another great music 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 unreliable at the best of times – I’d estimate that 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 in The Cock Tavern, which was part of the plan anyway, but didn’t get on with the beer nor the crowds. With another 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 Wetherspoons 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, 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 track off 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, 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 something 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, only some of which are listed on Discogs. 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 eccentric, and this eccentricity can often carry over into in 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 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 upbeat and abrasive version '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. 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, but more so. I commented 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. What I really want is an object I can hold in my hand. The gig was actually quite shambolic (technical issues). 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 on a Sunday earlier in the year, and we also listened to when I visited him in Plymouth. I’m fairly certain that The Florist played it in his van on the drive to Alabarracin in 2024 – it’s certainly his sort of thing. 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 got myself 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 leave, my partner turned on the radio, which happened to be tuned to Jazz FM. That was fine by me, and I kicked back and 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 the sound emitted by the actual saxophone. The effect is 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.
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 third, whereupon he’s playing The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings by Bob Dylan. It suited the environment, which was traditionally decorated, dimly lit yet lively. Dylan's voice can grate at times, but not here, he really belts it out.
Because of live nature of ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, 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 levelling out with Vehicle. As the year progressed, I’d collected a number of more intense 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 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 train . 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 them 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 listening 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 this year, and ‘Teenbeat’ was one of the tunes I elected to play, which could be described as ‘synth-pop’.
So could ‘Year of the Books’, to an extent. 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. Anyway, 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.
Antica Stuzzicheria
Different Stereolab records evoke different times and different places. Mars Audiac Quintet reminds 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 (still Hounslow); 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 remind of the St. Margarets and the flat I’ve resided in getting on for 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 Brixton Electric. Prior to the event, I had a couple of drinks in the Trinity Arms and The Prince Albert – pubs I’d never been to before. I’d been to the Brixton Electric, but only ever in its previous incarnation of 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 I’d never seen them play before.
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 much better than their Britpop contemporaries. It’s hard to imagine anyone else producing an album that sounded so much like themselves without crossing over into pastiche or parody. There was no question of me seeing them live however – not at the prices or the size of venues involved.
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 a lot more ‘German’ than any of those. Sure, there’s plenty of lederhosen and the Bavarian iconography knocking about, but it feels like an international place, probably on account of the city’s prestigious universities and research centres. Munich is also home to the Olympiastadion, which Luke Haines stood outside of to promote his musical 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.
Comet Gain had a new record out: Letters to Ordinary Outsiders. It’s a grower, but the tunes themselves are tied together with a sort of spoken word narrative and sampled dialogue. In other words, it the tracks didn’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 single dating back to 2010.
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 in was the 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 it together to press some actual records.
[Listen to here.]
