If you appeared in The Godfather, even if it was a relatively small role, chances are that'll take top billing in your obituary. For me though, when I think of Robert Duvall, I think of the man who loved the smell of Napalm in the morning. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now.
And taking us back to a story I wrote about a couple of weeks back, Bob Duvall also played one of the most famous fictional characters to give his name to a 90s indie band in the 1962 adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird.
And in case you're wondering (as I did), he was no relation to Shelly Duvall from The Shining (although her Dad was called Robert). But he did star in the TV adaptation of Larry McMurtry's western Lonesome Dove... and that gives me an excuse to play another tune by Larry's son, James. And if they ever made a movie out of the song below, Robert Duvall would have been the perfect casting...
We're here. At last. The end of this nonsense. My top three albums of 2025.
At various points throughout the last couple of months, I considered naming each one of these my Album of the Year. They're each so different, there's no way to compare them... and choosing which one goes on top inevitably says more about me than it does about the record in question. Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to say they're all the top, in their own distinct way...
3. Panic Shack - Panic Shack
Panic Shack are four young women from Cardiff, and they sound like that on every song. There's a pop punk thing going on in the music, equal parts Ramones, Runaways and Donnas, with maybe a splash of Cerys, and not just because they're Welsh.
When I started this countdown with Wet Leg at #25 (although actually it turned out to be #26... so strictly speaking, Wet Leg didn't even make this list), I said how much I'd been looking forward to their second album... and how disappointed I was that it wasn't half as much fun as their debut.
The fun came when I discovered Panic Shack, who in their own way are covering similar lyrical ground to Rhian Teasdale... but with a lot more self-awareness and without the lack of a vague whiff of misandry that's begun to seep into the Wet Leg ouvre. And if you're going to name your song after a TV personality (Davina McCall?) at least do it for a valid reason.
I've no idea what it's like to be a young woman in the 21st Century, I can hardly even manage being a middle-aged man right now, but Panic Shack provide a witty and endearing peek into their lives. The issues of body positivity (or negativity) - stick thin vs. large boobs - crops up in a couple of tunes, leery blokes obviously get a look in, and the tragedy of jeans without pockets is obviously a huge issue. Whatever the subject though, Panic Shack always remember to make it fun. If only Wet Leg could have done that.
2. James McMurtry - The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy
So the reason I didn't want to make Panic Shack my album of the year was purely that it stank of Old Man Trying To Sound Hip. The next two records then are far more what you'd expect... both from artists who have previously topped a year end chart too. I don't think either of these albums is quite as good as their predecessor... but those records were career bests in my humble opinion, and it's very difficult to follow a career best with something even better, But - as discussed with Pulp - weight of expectation can be a killer.
Anyway, James McMurtry's latest. It's another cracker from the finest grizzled Americana storyteller or his generation... makes you wish he'd write a novel or two like his old man. He inhabits his characters so well, be they the jaded South Texas lawman who can't keep pace with modern times...
South Texas lawman, the work just ain't the same
Used to you could clock 'em good if they called you any names
Now he's up on charges for showin' 'em who's the boss
There have already been some strong contenders for my favourite album of 2025, and Pulp were obviously leading the field... until James McMurtry played his hand.
Now it's anybody's game...
South Texas lawman, he brings 'em back alive
He hunts quail from horseback and he cheats on both his wives
One in Rio Bravo, one in Raymondville
He's never been to Houston, and he doubts he ever will
South Texas lawman, old time in his ways
He wore the cinco peso, and it dogged him through his days
The hours were long and lonesome, the paperwork's a bitch
His years are empty bottles now, tossed off in the ditch
I approach Cannonball with some trepidation. It seems far easier to write about songs, and artists, with whom I've had a lifelong connection - like Prince and Billy Bragg - or to select huge chart hits ready for reappraisal, like When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman. than to risk confronting a track that's so beloved by the cognoscenti, but that - until recently - I'd never really appreciated in all its glory. Then again, who said writing about music was supposed to be easy?
Let's backtrack. I was always a huge fan of The Pixies, but I never really paid much attention to Kim Deal's splinter / replacement project. Of course, when I say "always a huge fan", I don't mean that I was into the Pixies back in the late 80s when all the Cool Kids were. No, I probably discovered them just about the time the original line-up was breaking up, but as soon as I did I went out and immersed myself in their back catalogue, and that presumably kept me so busy that I didn't pay much attention to what the individual band members did next. Around that time I was also a big fan of Tanya Donnelly's Belly, but this was after Tanya had left The Breeders, so again, another missed opportunity.
Of course, it was impossible to ignore The Breeders - and Cannonball in particular - altogether in the 90s, and I'm sure they made their way into my record collection via indie compilations like Shine or The Best Album In The World Ever, so if you'd asked me back then, I would have told you, "yeah, good song... Kim Deal from the Pixies, right?"... but that would have been as much as I could have written. Right now, you may be wishing I'd submitted this post back then.
So why the reappraisal after all these years? The simple answer is that I finally started to listen to Cannonball in depth when I got round to adding it to one of Sam's in-car compilation CDs. And the more I listened to it, the more I wondered... what the hell is going on in this song?
Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I'm the last splash
I know you, little libertine
I know you're a real cuckoo
If you were to ask me what first draws me to a song, my answer would always be the lyrics. I love songs that tell stories...
That would be my answer, anyway: that meaningful words maketh the song.
Clearly though, this isn't always the case. I mean, I haven't a chuffing clue what Michael Stipe's on about half the time, and yet REM are one of my favourite bands.
(I always presume that Country Feedback is about the time that Michael went on Bullseye with Jim Bowen. He didn't win the caravan or the speedboat. That's why he sings, "It's crazy what you could've had" repeatedly towards the end of the song.)
Also, if words were everything, then why the hell do I like this?
I mean, that's just nonsense. And it's not even The Beatles ripping off Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll nonsense. It's just nonsense. Don't try and explain it to me.
All of which brings me back to Cannonball, a song with lyrics that, on the surface at least, are complete balderdash... and yet, that doesn't stop it being an addictive listen.
But wait! Detailed lyrical analysis has been provided by the web of lies, so let me clue you in on what Cannoball is really all about. First off, it transpires that when Kim Deal wrote the song, her sister Kelly was spending a little too much of her free time reading the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. Those crazy alt-rock chicks, right? Here's an extract from an interview with the Phoenix New Times in 1996...
KD: This magazine in Britain keeps faxing me the same question over and over. Let's see what they want . . . (Laughs) Check it out--they want to know what author has been a major influence on my work. Hah!
NT: You don't care for the question?
KD: I've just never connected music with books. Wait, that's not entirely true. "Cannonball" was inspired by the writings of Marquis de Sade.
NT: What? "I'll be the bong in your reggae song" was inspired by Marquis de Sade?
KD: Well, not that line specifically. But the message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him. Playthings. It was saying, "Come on, life's not a contest."
NT: So you're pretty much anti-Sade.
KD: Well, I don't know. Later on I found out he used to suck the snot out of people's noses, and I thought that pretty much ruled.
I think I could pretty much end this post there and call it a win, don't you?
However... that's not the only lyrical interpretation of Cannonball to be found on the interweb. Pop over to Genius, a website I spend far too much time perusing, and you will discover the theory that Cannonball is actually a barbed riposte to Pixies frontman Frank Black, who famously fired Deal, and Pixies drummer David Lovering, via fax in 1993. Speculation has it that Kim was sick of being beholden to Frank's vision, rarely allowed to contribute to the songwriting in the Pixies, creatively stymied until she started a band of her own. Which supposedly explains the repetition of the line "In the shade" and even the aforementioned "bong in this reggae song" bit.
If any of that's true, then I think there's a slight irony in connecting Deal's Marquis de Sade references in the most famous Breeders song with the references to an equally contentious piece of "art", Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou in arguably the most famous Pixies song... but I may be reaching here.
None of this helps explain the allure of Cannonball though... and if I can't put it down to the lyrics, then it must be the music, right?
Except... musically, from a layman's perspective at least, Cannonball is all over the place. It sounds like three or four different songs edited together - and they even left gaps at some of the edit points! Iffypedia informs me that the "demo was originally called 'Grunggae' as it merged 'island riffs and grunge'".
I can hear the grunge - that's when the really loud buzzsaw guitar cuts in out of nowhere, right? But try as I might, I can't hear the reggae influence in Cannonball, nor can I comment on the tempo, chord progression or the "bubbling bass line", "slithering guitar lick" or "slyly humorous vocal melody" delivered "with a seductive shyness". I mean, there's cuckoos and bongs, and they're quite funny, I guess... but that just brings me back to the lyrics. Despite getting a C at GCSE Music and doing Music Theory exams up to Grade 8, I've forgotten more than I ever learned about time signatures and major / minor keys... I'm always envious of bloggers like Swiss Adam for their ability to write about the musicky bits of popular music. As an English teacher, I have some confidence in commenting on lyrics, but sounds are much harder to analyse.
In closing then, I've written well over a thousand words about this song, but not come close to answering the question of why I like it. Maybe that's an answer in itself.
P.S. If you're ever putting together a mixtape and want the perfect track to follow Cannonball, can suggest the following, from Sam's 153rd CD... it works surprisingly well.
I went to see the new Indiana Jones film at the weekend. It made me sad.
Not because it's a bad film. It's perfectly acceptable popcorn fare that occasionally recaptures the magic of the earlier movies, if only through the sheer force of Harrison Ford's undimmed charisma. I appear to be in a minority of finding Phoebe Waller-Bridges very, very annoying, and the action sequences relied too much on CGI for my liking, but that's the case with all big budget movies these days. More effort went into movies when I was a kid - building the sets, getting the right stunt people, setting off actual fires and explosions... nowadays it's all done on computers and it feels lazy. The suspension of disbelief required by the audience is the same, only different. Somehow I found it easier to accept cardboard sets and smoke bombs than green screen everything... but that's just Old Man Shaking Fist At Sky.
I was ready for all of the above, so it's not that which made me sad. Seeing Indiana Jones as an old man though... well, nostalgia can work two ways, can't it? It can remind you of your youth... or it can force you (once again) to face up to your own mortality. Harrison Ford will be 81 next week, and it's amazing that he's still cracking the whip and doing a fair few action sequences himself. But still...
Someone said to me recently that the worst part about growing old is that (if you're lucky), you have to watch all your heroes grow old and die before you. Despite hanging up the fedora after this final adventure, Harrison appears to be enjoying a bit of a career resurgence at the moment, and long may it continue. But there will come a point when I have to say goodbye to him, as I have so many others. When you're young, you think it'll all go on forever... lately, every day brings a new reminder that this isn't the case.
I'm reminded of a line from one of my favourite albums of last year. This in turn reminds me of Jim Steinman's Objects In The Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are, but that's more about the power of memory and how it constantly fools you into thinking 1989 was just last week. Instead, James McMurtry sings here that, "There's more in the mirror than there is up ahead," a sentiment I'm finding it hard to come to terms with. He does, however, manage to put a positive spin on the idea...
Now it's all I can do just to get out of bed
There's more in the mirror than there is up ahead
I smile and I nod like I heard what you said every time
So run another rack
Pour another shot
You don't get it back so give it all you got
While you still got a more or less functional body and mind
The McMurtry Spéirling "electric hypercar" can go from 0 to 60 in 1.4 seconds, faster than any other car on the internet. No, I wouldn't have known that either.
Last time I did a Top Ten Elephant Songs, more than 7 years ago (not that I'm running out of ideas or anything), Charity Chic complained that I hadn't included The Toy Dolls. There! Happy now?
This week we have another show that had finished production long before I was born, yet always seemed to be repeated when I was growing up. Robert Vaughan and David McCallum were the actors who brought Bond-esque espionage to 60s TV screens, making an indelible impression on the next generation of songwriters...
To get us in the mood, here's that funky theme tune from Hugo Montenegro...
We start today with a glorious slice of 70's nostalgia from Belfast's Ian Livingstone...
So I set off on a tack Along the rusty railway track Balancing on the steel rails Following the flow of the line On a journey, of an old world Where no trains have passed Since the old days And in this place I can be Tom Sawyer or Steve McQueen Or the Man from U.N.C.L.E. or me I can be Tom Sawyer or Steve McQueen Or The Sundance Kid or even me On the old railway line
Today's best new discovery is The Ragamuffins. They sound like a Scouse Arctic Monkeys and one of their EPs is called The Benefits of A Downhill Paper Round. What more do you want? Blood?
Let's up the ante like the Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Leave a trail of destruction
I can sense your reluctance, 'cos I'm just style over substance
I started feeling like I've lost direction
Could you be my compass?
My needle needs some adjusting, it's just style over substance
Neil Tennant was obviously a fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And before he got a job in the Pet Shop, he used to work for Marvel Comics, which probably explains why Captain Britain also gets name-checked in this tune...
As you no doubt remember, the two main characters in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. were Napoleon Solo (played by Robert Vaughan) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum). And here they are now...
That last one just keeps popping up on this blog, doesn't it?
There are also a number of artists that have stolen the name of Robert Vaughan's character for their own musical identities, like this Danish ska band...
I couldn't find any bands named after Ilya though.
For me, the obvious winner today was probably the most tenuous, though clearly Declan had Napoleon and Ilya in mind when he penned this deep cut from Get Happy!! Need a great pop song but only have 2 minutes to spare? Elvis is your man...
I've been feeling pretty down lately, though that's hardly anything new. I guess I've fought against what the doctors kindly call 'low mood' most of my life. I don't often write about it here, because this blog is self-indulgent enough as it is. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge it and move on. There's nothing else to be done. Maybe watch some Tommy Cooper. He never fails to raise a smile. Except thinking about him, or Morecambe & Wise, or any of the old comedians I watched when I was kid, inevitably leads to feeling old. Old isn't the same as depressed though. Sometimes I'm happy to be growing old. "More in the mirror than there is up ahead," as James McMurtry puts it. Sometimes you welcome that.
The new Bonnie Raitt album is called Just Like That. I doubt Bonnie Raitt has any idea who Tommy Cooper, is, but the title track stopped me in my tracks. You know I like a good story song, and this one has a twist that kicked me in the guts. I didn't see it coming and I found it really affecting. Maybe you will too.
Knowing there are people out there who have far more reason to suffer "low mood" than I do really should make me quit the moping. Usually though, it just adds to my feelings of self-reproach...
I insisted that I'd wait till I was 50. Given that my back and my ears went a long time ago, I was hanging onto my eyesight as the last vestiges of some kind of youthful something, even though the small print has been getting harder to read for some time now.
Reading glasses, then. My head is having a hard time getting used to the adjustment. But on the bright side, maybe I'll read more, if I'm not struggling so much to read the print late at night. I remember grumbling a while back that Stephen King novels were getting harder to read because the text kept getting smaller. Now I'm wondering if the text hadn't changed at all, it was just my eyes.
I have two pairs, and I haven't lost them yet, so I can't play James McMurtry today. Instead, here's the always-reliable Chip Taylor...
I manage one of these Top Tens about every three years (although this one is slightly late). I collect them as I go along and when I've got enough for a Top Ten, I unleash them on the world.
In previous volumes, folks have entertained themselves by seeing how many they can get from the lines alone before clicking on the links to see if they're right. That might be a little harder this time...
My favourite album of 2021 comes from the son of novelist Larry McMurtry, the man who penned The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and even the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Although James went in a different direction creatively than his pop, he's obviously picked up much from his old man. The Horses and the Hounds reads like a collection of expertly crafted short stories, packed with the best kind of lyrical detail, showing not telling, and leaving the listener to fill in the gaps.
I heard you switched coasts, moved in with your sister
I doubt you'd have called it familial bliss
We met up in Brooklyn before it went hipster
You carried your keys in your fist
There's more going on in the above lines (from album opener Canola Fields) than most songwriters manage in a whole song. Subtle characterisation, wit, threat, social commentary, imagery... this guy is a master.
As with the Felice Brothers, James McMurtry is an artist who has existed on the periphery of my vision until now. I've got a couple of his records in my collection, but I obviously haven't devoted enough time to them to pick up the finer details of his craft. He's been in the game since the late 80s (Ricky Ross recently commented that a young McMurtry supported Deacon Blue on their first US tour), but he's clearly a fine wine... ever improving with age. (McMurtry would have made that metaphor work better, without the clunky explanation, but I'm nowhere near the writer he is.) He's also settled into the grumpy old man role well, with songs like Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call (that's the one with the "I keep losing my glasses" hook, as featured here earlier) and What's The Matter, Now? which feels like an uncomfortably autobiographical phone conversation between McMurtry and his long-suffering wife, but could well just be fiction. Both are very funny tunes, improved further by his rapper-worthy rhyming skills.
Made the exit and turned up Ponce
And I’ll be damned if I know what she wants
But we gotta get something to eat
Majestic Diner’s our best chance
Pork chop and eggs oughta save the romance
It’s maybe a mile up the street
My daddy told me, if you got any sense
Better feed the woman... many years hence,
I know what he meant and I got me a plan
But I can’t read the menu ‘cause damn
I keep losing my glasses . . .
The song I've chosen today is a much more serious affair though - devastatingly so. There's menace, foreboding and genuine tragedy in this tune. No wonder Stephen King calls McMurtry, "the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation."
I haven't started wearing glasses yet, though I have noticed that the small print is getting harder to decipher. Louise, on the other hand, has worn them for a couple of years now, and there's nothing more likely to get her in a rage (apart from me, obviously) than not being able to find her glasses when she needs them.
This is seemingly a big problem for another famous Grumpy Old Man of the Americana world, James McMurtry, who makes his own lost glasses into the chorus of one of the stand out tracks from his latest album, The Horses & The Hounds.
I've been an admirer of McMurtry's for some time, but I do think his latest record may be the best thing he's ever done. So many good tracks, great lyrics, just really strong storytelling throughout. I may well return to it, because the track below isn't even the best song on the album... it just seemed an ideal pick for a Mid-Life Crisis tune...
10. Almost like a lone cuckoo, above its nest, on a rack, surrounded by water, screaming.
OK, McMurphy was the character Jack Nicholson played in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest... so this guy almost sounds like him.
An island is surrounded by water. If it were on a rack, it would be a long island. The screams would be the sound it made as I stretched it to make this clue work.
I was genuinely surprised by how many elephants I found in my record collection. So many great songs featuring playful pachyderms, I couldn't even find room for 'When I See An Elephant Fly'...
Special mentions to Cage The Elephant, The White Stripes (classic album) and to Elephant Elephant by Evelyn Evelyn which, much as I love Amanda Palmer, is a bit too quirky even for this blog...
After two classic albums and a well-regarded debut in three consecutive years, the Rats took a year off and let the quality slip on their fourth, 1981's rather muddled Mondo Bongo. It was the beginning of the end for a once-great group, and the second single, Elephant's Graveyard, ably demonstrates why. It's not a bad song - but neither is it I Don't Like Mondays or Rat Trap. The ridiculous B-movie is an object lesson in record company excess ripping the soul from a band as it pours on the cash.
Some debate recently over on Charity Chic's blog when he had the temerity to throw a bit of Vashti Bunyan on the playlist. A bit too hippy-dippy, twee-diddly-dee for some, but I always liked this one myself.
Bad Seed Mick Harvey also did a song called Pink Elephants as the original title track of his excellent album of Serge Gainsbourg covers. Can't find a link for that though.
Down through the heavens Choke in the cotton clouds Arctic sheets and fields of wheat I can't stop coming down Your shrunken head Looking down on me above Send me home like an elephant stone To smash my dream of love
Who says the drugs didn't work?
Apparently, the Roses are currently in the studio recording their first new material in 20+ years. That should be interesting...
From
1970, so pretty damned late in Bo's career; this is interesting because
it takes the familiar Diddley guitar sound (which, let's face it, had a
pretty big hand in the creation of rock 'n' roll), then wraps it in a
kind of Steppenwolfy organ of the day. The lyrics tell of how Bo
actually created the elephant... which, as we've just established, isn't
too far off the truth.
Lesser spotted hit from the man who sang Honey, the song Tony Blackburn used to dedicate to his wife Tessa while their divorce was going through (cruelly parodied years later by Smashie & Nicey). When I was putting the longlist together for this post, I didn't think this track stood a chance. Then I listened to it again. Just call me an old romantic...
Well, the monkey forgot you The hippo forgot you And so did the kangaroo But me and the elephant, We'll never forget you...
On
first hearing, this is a song about a kid wanting to go see the
elephants at a travelling show. The commentators on youtube claim that
it's also a metaphor for a young soldier going off to face battle in the
Civil War. By the end of the song you start to hear more hints of that
as Pete and Johnny are "dressed up in their navy blue". "Seeing the
elephant" is an American expression for growing up and realising the
world's a bit of a shitty place, really.
A lot of fuss was made about Tame Impala off the back of this single: understandably as it's a classic slice of fuzzy glam that owes more than a little to the Doctor Who theme tune. Couldn't get into the album though. I'm coming around to the idea that I'm getting too old for a lot of this stuff now...
You may think you've never heard this, but if you're over a certain age (I dunno, 29?), chances are you'll know it very well. It was written for the movie Hatari, which I've never seen, but I always loved the tune.
I've been looking for a way to get some Jason Isbell on this blog for a few weeks now as his latest album, Something More Than Free, has been a firm favourite in my car since I bought it a couple of months back. Typically, when I do get the chance, it's a track from his previous album, Southeastern, that fits the bill. But as an example of why he's making serious waves in Americana at the moment, this'll do fine... a heartbreaking story about a guy who falls for a woman with cancer. A sensitive subject, but Jason pulls it off with class.
But I'd sing her classic country songs and she'd get high and sing along She don't have a voice to sing with now We burn these joints in effigy and cry about what we used to be, And try to ignore the elephant somehow, somehow
1. R.E.M. - The Great Beyond
In which Michael Stipe pushes an elephant up the stairs to give REM their biggest UK hit. Taken from Man On The Moon, the biopic of Andy Kaufman, and one of the very few Jim Carrey films I can bare to watch (see also Eternal Sunshine & The Truman Show). What's it got to do with elephants? Why is Stipey pushing one up the stairs? As with all R.E.M. lyricism you'd be better off looking for answers from the great beyond...
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