5. Her father found a Newlove... but carried on with the old one too.
Kirsty MacColl's mum was Jean Newlove. Her father, Ewan MacColl "was also in a relationship with folk singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Peggy Seeger (a relationship that would continue until his death in 1989), and already had a son with Seeger."
Just in case you haven't noticed, Jez quietly brough The Chain back last week... so if you haven't dropped him a suggestion yet, get over to A History of Dubious Taste now and help restore the greatest interactive blog feature on the internet to its prime position.
Three more records that rotated frequently on the imaginary turntable of my soul during the past twelve months...
21. Mercury Rev - Born Horses
"Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev's ninth album Born Horses spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before? The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of Mt Tremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendary tapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys), plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass) and Jim Burgess (trumpet)."
Normally, I'd call bullshit on that kind of florid press-release gumphery, but there's actually something in it.
Three things I can tell you for definite about the latest Mercury Rev record.
1) If such a thing is possible, it's even more shimmery than anything else they've recorded in the past 35 years.
2) Jonathan's preferred delivery these days is a low, spoken, stream-of-consciousness blather. He sounds like an older, less camp version of 80s American stand-up comic Emo Phillips. Remember him?
3) It's very nice to listen to when you're stuck in traffic on the M1.
My mood swings and it swings and it swings Sometimes even without asking me Suddenly reminding me of deep down things The way my mother would sing over my father's mood swings How swiftly she could go from humming "Just the way, the way you are" To whistling, "Oh, the people you know" This immense loneliness flapping in her chest Like lady day, she knew why the caged bird sings And now, so do I, it sings and it sings Because each night it hurts just a little less Reminding me more and more and more Of deep down things And the way my own mood swings
20. Frank Turner - Undefeated
Frank Turner's last album, FTHC, was my second favourite record of 2022, beaten only by the might of Half Man Half Biscuit. Undefeated treads much the same ground as its predecessor... at times, a little too closely. It feels too conscious an effort to capture that same lightning in that same bottle, and ends up being, in places, FT-by numbers. Still full of great songs and lyrics that bring a wry smile of recognition... but no risks are taken in the process.
I'm fully aware that this contradicts everything I said yesterday in my reviews of the Eels and Pixies records... but hey, Frank, you placed above both those guys, so you must still be doing something right.
Fifteen-year-old Francis We need to have a word I know because I remember That you cannot stand The Verve But Richard Ashcroft had a point Now I'm old enough to see There's a million different people You will be before you're me
I know I'm not Everything that you had hoped and imagined that I would be But I did my best And I have seen things that you don't even know that you've never seen We need to find some common ground In the ruins that still stand Between you and me both of us want peace Ceasefire
19. Crawlers - The Mess We Seem To Make
The first CD I bought in 2024 was the debut album by Warrington's Crawlers. It seems so long ago now, like it should belong to last year's batch. Fiercely confessional lyrics from lead singer Holly Minto, and a pop-rock sound that's a little more polished than some of their contemporaries. The deluxe CD contains acoustic versions of some of the tracks, and I like those even more than the originals.
For a Top Ten Spider Songs, here's three Spider-Men. Rumour has it they may all appear together in the same film at the end of this year. That probably won't mean much to you, but to me it'll be like all my Christmases come at once.
Anyway, some web-spinning songs...
10. Not the French band.
Last week we featured the French band Space. This is the Liverpudlian band who stole their name.
Inspired by Swiss Adam's excellent Isolation Mixes, here's ten songs about keeping your distance. I make no apologies for the fact that the Number One song appeared here just a couple of weeks ago.
The latest Mercury Rev album is a bit of a curiosity. A reworking of Bobbie Gentry's second album, The Delta Sweete, it sees regular Rev vocalist Jonathan Donohue hand over his mic to a stellar range of guests, including Norah Jones, Phoebe Bridgers, Beth Orton, Margo Price, Vashti Bunyan and Lucinda Williams. This patchwork quilt of a tribute album shouldn't really work, and I half-expected to be grumbling that "none of them (even Lucinda) can hold a torch to Bobbie's originals", yet I've found myself getting sucked in with progressive listens.
As you'd expect from a Mercury Rev record, the arrangements are lush and sparkly and trippy, like something out of a dream, a hallucination, or a David Lynch film. For the most part, the guest vocalists rise to the occasion, either by being faithful to Bobbie's interpretations... or, particularly in Lucinda's case, being true to themselves. Actually, Lucinda is given the toughest draw - a cover of Ode To Billy Joe, which wasn't even on the original album but... well, it's Ode To Billie Joe. How could they resist?
Only occasionally does the odd vocalist betray her more contemporary roots by indulging in the kind of histrionics favoured by modern chart divas and X-Factor contestants... but I won't name names. Bobbie wouldn't approve. For the most part though, I think she'd be pretty chuffed with this tribute. We may never know, since she's shunned the celebrity life for over 40 years now. But let's at least hope she earns a few pennies towards her retirement from this...
Only one band could illustrate the moment that Life Begins in our Hot 100 Countdown (even though, like Benjamin Button and the hero of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, we're aging backwards). I was never s huge UB40 fan, and I prefer the Neil Diamond original of the above song to their hit version, but I always quite liked their famous "I'm a prima donna" mondegreen. (Apparently they sing "Ivory Madonna"... but I don't believe it for a second.)
...which is always welcome here because it features Leonard Nimoy in the video. And if you're wondering how The Bangles know what a UB40 is/was, they probably didn't. The original was by Katrina & The Waves.)
Anyway, as you can imagine, there were a hell of a lot of songs with the number 40 in the title. I'm not even getting onto lyrical nods this week, unless you guys specifically brought them up. Let's see how quickly we can rattle through the list...
Starting, as if often the case, with The Swede, who kicked us off with a serious contender...
Longtime readers will know that I've always got time for Jimmy B - I may even be a parrothead. As with many of Jimmy's songs, this one has a nautical theme... yet it also tackles the mid-life crisis in a beautiful way.
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late
Ian McNabb does a pretty cool version of that too, but sadly I can't find it on the interweb and don't have time to upload it right now.
Onto The Swede's other fine suggestions, the last of which opens up a whole avenue of possibilities...
And now I shall hand you over to our Canadian correspondent, Douglas McLaren, making a welcome return this week with a whole bunch of fine suggestions...
I felt like I had to keep up the Canadian side once again when we hit 40. A fun one, for starters, is by Canada's (former) house band...
Then there is, of course, the granddaddy of Canadian folk rock, Gordon Lightfoot, who can teach you how to be an Auctioneer. And no, we don't actually have a forty-five dollar bill here in Canada.
Perhaps that's because the original came from the USA, Douglas (it's featured here before as my dad used to be an auctioneer when I was a boy).
From Canada we then journeyed halfway round the world to Australia, with another welcome
return from my old pal Deano who's just about to celebrate a rather relevant birthday. Remember, Deano - "life begins!" Cough cough.
He describes his first offering as "a silly, but oh so much fun, one hit wonder from New Zealand." Sounds perfect!
Next, "a Tasmanian-via California-via Nashville country singer
that I have really started to enjoy recently. She’s lived those forty
years (“I got battle scars around my eyes. I got old boyfriends with
bitchy wives. I look back and I wonder why.I’m forty.”) Sadly, she died
young after a cancer
Deano's final offering comes from a classic country songwriter: "In the process of discovering Tom
T Hall at the moment, and enjoying every moment of it. What a
songwriter. In this one, he talks about a funeral, and reflects on the
fact that the dead guy owed him $40."
All of which leaves me with just a handful of my own selections that nobody else mentioned, so I thought I'd make this post even longer by counting down my Top Five 40 Songs. I actually did a Top Ten 40 Songs seven years ago when I did turn 40 and three of these (as well as a bunch of your suggestions) featured there. That was on the old blog though which exists now only in my archives, so no link, I'm afraid.
