Everything Begins With An 'E' (and some with an 'F')

Ege Bam Yasi - Can
Elan Vital - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Elephant - The White Stripes
Ellis 2001 - Ellis
Emotive - A Perfect Circle
Empire - Kasabian
Entertainment! - Gang of Four
Everything All The Time - Band of Horses
Everything Is - Nine Black Alps
Everything Is Wrong - Moby
Excerpts From The Diary of Todd Zilla - Grandaddy
Excuses for Travellers - Mojave 3
Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair
Exit Planet Dust - Chemical Brothers
Eye to the Telescope -KT Tunstall
Eyes Open - Snow Patrol
False Flags (single) - Massive Attack
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (but only one song - I Will Survive)
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A mixture of work, end of year parties, last minute preparations for Christmas and my winter holiday, and good old-fashioned laziness is behind the recent lack of posting. All the elements have worked in their own different ways to prevent me from writing. Most obviously, if I'm busy working I'm pushed for time. So, even though I'm able to listen to music and scribble down notes on the train as I scoot around Tokyo, I haven't really had the time or the energy to write anything when I get home. This post was actually written in a notebook this afternoon when I found myself with an unexpected break (I bet you're amazed to find out that I actually put any forethought into this blog at all).

End of year parties cause a variety of problems but the two main ones are the following. Firstly, if I'm hungover there are certain types of music I want to listen to and certain types I don't. Brian Eno good, Throbbing Gristle bad. Basically, if I want to listen to music when I'm in this perilous state (and I often don't) I want something relatively gentle - acoustic guitars strumming away over burbling folktronica perhaps. Clanging metallic industrial thrash experimental avant garde death metal noise carnage from hell is not the soundtrack I'm after as I fight my way through the madding crowds of Tokyo's train stations like a horny homesick salmon desperately trying to make its way upstream. This means that I need to choose my music carefully, something the relatively random nature of this challenge precludes. Secondly, if I know I'm going out for three hours of all-you-can-drink carnage, I always think it's a good idea to leave my iPod safe at home, in case I don't manage to do that to myself.

I'm going to Cambodia and Vietnam next week so I've been spending time sorting out hotels and visas. I've also been trying to find presents for my family back home that are a) decent; b) a size that can be sent to the UK without me having to use my thumbs as collateral with a Yakuza loan-shark just so I can pay the postage; and c) a reasonable price here. Chocolate and calendars it is again then, much the same as last year. However, trying to find a calendar that's different to the ones I've sent in previous years is something of a challenge. Either I've been in Japan for too long or it's time I was starting to use my imagination a bit more when it comes to buying Christmas presents.

My final excuse - as I said, I'm a bit of a lazy bastard. Last night I had the choice of writing this and some other stuff that I had to finish, or watching Insomnia - guess what I went for. Anyway, am I actually going to mention music at any point in this post? Well, I can try. Listening to Everything is Wrong made me realise that Moby was actually decent once. This was of course back in the days when, if you wanted to hear his songs you had to buy his album rather than just watch an evening of commercial television. Instead of his current 'Best Of' album he should have just taken Everything is Wrong, tacked on a disc of bonus tracks (of course including Go), and re-released it as a deluxe edition. Whether he would allow the puritan anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist sleevenotes to be included in this re-issue is another question entirely.

Anything else? Exile In Guyville is fantastic but didn't it turn to be something of an albatross for the rest of Liz Phair's career? Exit Planet Dust is still a buzz and it is the ideal soundtrack for walking to the station at shite o' clock in the morning (when you haven't got a hangover). If Coldplay are MacDonalds then Snow Patrol are KFC - they're not quite as bad but they still leave you feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I was given Final Straw just after I'd ended a long-term relationship so my guard was down and I fell for it completely. Even now tracks from it make up the top 3 of the 25 most listened to tracks on my iPod. It's not a bad album but Eyes Open is little more than a rehash of it (apart from the song they did with Martha Wainwright).

All the 'F' albums are getting left for another post as I think this one has gone on for too long.

P.S - I haven't included any links from this post as I have done with the others because my computer is having one of its all too frequent go slow days. Must be casual Friday or something.

This post is brought to you by the letter 'D'

Do You Know Squarepusher? - Squarepusher
Dog On Wheels (EP) - Belle & Sebastian
Doolittle - Pixies
Dragonwyck - Dragonwyck
Dub Housing - Pere Ubu
Duello - Unicode

It's a bit twee, I know, but bear with me - things that make me happy:

• Glayva - it's getting mighty cold round these parts and nothing puts a heat in you quite as pleasantly as Glayva. I'm not getting paid for this, I'm just drinking it as I write this post and it's taking the edge of what is a bitterly cold night.
• Seeing vain people in Tokyo make utter arses of themselves - I was walking through Shinjuku tonight when some posing bint in sunglasses, big boots, a pout, and a strut that would put Liam Gallagher to shame, went arse over tit because she couldn't handle the ten inch spike heels on the boots that she'd chosen to wear. Her boyfriend, some gormless git in a cheap looking expensive suit and more Louis Vuitton than should really be seen on a man, was affronted and proceeded to give her a bollocking on the street. If only my mobile battery hadn't have been dead at the time; I may have had my first posting on YouTube.
• The letter 'D'

I seem to remember reading something, either an interview with or an article written by Brett Anderson in which he claimed that the seventh track on any album is always the best one. I've spent the last ten minutes Googling variations on this theme but with no success. If anyone else knows what I'm talking about please post a comment and a link if possible. In a similar vein, my experience with the letter 'D' (at least as far as my iPod is concerned) has lead me to believe that it's somehow imbued with some kind of mystical significance. Just look at the evidence over the last few posts. Hell, even an album of early Seventies psychedelia that sounds like it was dreamed up solely for the Almost Famous soundtrack can't sully the power of the magical 'D'. I can't remember who pointed me in the direction of Dragonwyck, but it's well worth further investigation.

I've been looking for a link for Unicode, but I haven't been able to find anything (not doing to well on the Google front tonight). They (I think they're a 'they' anyway) are an experimental band from Italy. I saw Mattia Coletti (who may or may not be a member of the band) in Tokyo earlier this year and he was like nothing I've ever seen before. If you're looking for an escape from skinny ties and New Wave wannabes this is a fair distance from all of that.

It's bound to go pear shaped soon

Damage - Blues Explosion
Danny the Dog OST - Massive Attack
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Belle & Sebastian
Death to the Pixies (Double CD) - Pixies
Deftones - Deftones
Demo - Tokyo Sundown
Demo - Raddie and Weourus
Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes - TV on the Radio
Destroy Rock 'n Roll - Mylo
Different Class - Pulp
Dirty Hits - Primal Scream
Divine Hammer (CDS) - The Breeders
DJ Kicks - Daddy G

'C' was something of a traumatic letter with it's twin salvo of shite, Civilian by Boy Kill Boy and Costello Music by The Fratellis. As long as there was nothing too bad 'D' was always going to be good in comparison, but it's gone way beyond the call of duty to roll out a bunch of storming albums. Granted, the ones by Mylo and the Deftones are a bit flat-footed, but are harmless enough pieces of aural chewing gum. Different Class is an undeniable classic that manages to shoehorn anthropology, vivid prose, razor-sharp wit (of the kind that 'comedians' like Russell Brand can only dream about), scathing social critique, and cracking tunes into an album that's just a little over fifty minutes long. I haven't heard Jarvis Cocker's solo album but I intend to buy it sooner rather than later.

Dark Side of the Moon is another one of those albums that's always there or thereabouts in 'Greatest Ever' polls, but I'm still not convinced. Pink Floyd have always been a mystery to me in the same way that organised religion is. Both have millions of devout followers who don't react too kindly to criticism of any sort, both are huge money-making organisations, and both sets of believers are almost always proselytizers who think your soul/music taste is in mortal danger if you don't see the error of your ways and open your heart and mind to the true path. Dark Side of the Moon is interesting to me in the same way as evangelical TV channels are - it gives me a chance to look into the belly of the beast and see what all the fuss is about without giving myself over to it completely. Maybe I was born too late, or maybe I just didn't take the right drugs at the right time, but I still can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe it just makes more sense when you're fifty years old and listening to it as you drive your kids to school in the Range Rover.

I'm listening to Dirty Hits as I write this. As I mentioned on Tokyo Music I finally saw Primal Scream live this year, and they were worth the horrendously inflated prices that are inevitable when you go and see foreign artists in Japan. I wasn't too sure about their Greatest Hits album though, not through any doubts about the quality of the music, or whether this was a sign of them selling out, but because it made me feel like I was getting old. Over the last couple of years there have been a spate of 'Best Of's and '10th Anniversary Special Edition's released, and for the first time I can remember buying the records when they originally came out. Is it inevitable that as someone who's never really grown out of the music geek stage, this is how I'm going to measure the progress of my life?

Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

Saturday
Clandestino - Manu Chao
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clear - Bomb The Bass
CM - V/A
Come On Die Young - Mogwai

Monday
Community Service - The Crystal Method
Complete 'B' Sides - Pixies

Yesterday
Core - Stone Temple Pilots
Costello Music - The Fratellis
Crimson - Alkaline Trio
Curtis/Live! - Curtis Mayfield

This time the bumper post is not down to my laziness, nor is it even because of a hectic workload. I haven't posted for a couple of days because I have the misfortune to own a computer which is as reliable as the British rail services and is showing signs of artificial intelligence. However, it's not the kind of A.I that's going to make our lives any better - it's more like a moody teenager who decides to work whenever it feels like it.

Coming home last night and finding my computer was on strike pretty much summed up yesterday. As ever, Curtis was fantastic and some of the other stuff wasn't too bad, but The Fratellis hung over everything like a particularly sulphurous fart. They remind me of bands like Powder and Sleeper who were signed on the coat-tails of Britpop by cynically unimaginative record executives who were out to make a quick buck (mind you, is there any other kind?). Ten years later we have The Libertines as the band who started it all, and The Fratellis et al as the guests coming late to the party.

The Libertines were a very welcome blast but looking at what they've spawned perhaps we should be careful with our praise. Pete Docherty's tedious 'solo career' wouldn't have come into being without them for a start. I find it hard to believe that fifty odd years after the birth of rock 'n roll a musician taking drugs, getting into trouble with the law, and shacking up with a model is still front page news. Would The Fratellis have stood a chance of getting signed without The Libertines having gone before them? I doubt it. Their glottal stop ridden tales of cities and the strange characters that inhabit them are a weak imitation that leaves you wanting to listen to the bands they're obviously trying to emulate, but who did it so much better - The Kinks, Blur, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, Ian Dury, and of course The Libertines. Singing in a mockney accent and rhyming 'city' with 'pretty' does not a gritty album make.

That album alone would have been bad enough to send me scurrying to the fridge for a beer when I got home, but the circumstances I had to listen to it in have now burned it forever in my consciousness as one of the worst things I've ever heard. Iidabashi is one of Tokyo's busiest business districts - Toyota has a large office there, as do Ericsson, Astra-Zeneca, and a number of other foreign companies. It's not a good place to be walking in and worrying that your trousers are going to fall down at any moment, as I did yesterday. My belt snapped when I pulled it a little too hard, and I was left shuffling like a tramp as I made my way to the station with my hands shoved in my jacket pockets trying to hold up my trousers. Not one of my better days.

The JAMMS (KLF) It's Grim Up North Live on Top of the Pops

Buffer all to do with the music on my iPod but I'm just testing if this video posting works. It's taken me a while to get it set up properly.

Clint Eastwood's curry

Bryter Later - Nick Drake
Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 4 - Woody Guthrie
Bummed - Happy Mondays
Canadian Amp - Neko Case
Carboot Soul - Nightmares on Wax
Chairs Missing - Wire
Chicken Skin Music - Ry Cooder
Civilian - Boy Kill Boy

If variety be the spice of life then today has been a veritable vindaloo - a mixture of the good, the bad, and the utterly shite. Might as well get the rant out the way first - Boy Kill Boy, what is the point of your existence? Maybe it was just unfortunate that you followed Wire on my iPod because it was difficult to avoid making comparisons between them and you. The biggest one is that Wire were original, visionary, and genuinely fresh; you on the other hand sound like every other guitar band out there at the moment. You know a band are in trouble when the most noticeable thing about them is the fact that their singer has the most irritating voice out of the current crop (quite an accomplishment given the competition), and the highlight of the album is when you can remember what song it is they're ripping off. Everything on here sounds like something from the late 70's/early 80's but is naggingly difficult to pinpoint - however if Paul Weller doesn't sue and win a case for plagiarism (listen to the first track, Back Again and tell me they haven't lifted the riff from Eton Rifles wholesale), then Wire ought to return the money they got from Elastica.

I'm listening to the last track of this album as I write this. It said ten minutes and I shat myself. Then I thought they might partly redeem themselves by turning out an epic change of direction to close, i.e a krautrock tinged cosmic jam. My initial, scatalogical reaction was the correct one though - it was that old chestnut, the hidden track. All I can say was I wish this whole fucking album had been hidden. Another indication of the dangers of drunken downloading, although I think this one was because someone recommended them to me. Bastards.

The good? Bummed. Hadn't heard it for a while but it brought a smile to my face, a swagger to my walk, and a desire to neck loads of pills and go out and cause some carnage. It was so good in fact that I'm listening to it again right now in the hope that it'll wipe out the memory of Boy Kill Boy. Fool's Gold is usually held up to be the ultimate 'Madchester' song, or the finest example of what could be achieved when you mixed indie/guitar rock with dance music, but I'd disagree. Go back a year to 1988 and listen to Wrote For Luck, surely the Ur-track for a whole swathe of the next decade's music. It's the musical expression of Liam Gallagher's swagger, the forerunner of all those Chemical Brothers/Noel Gallagher/Bernard Sumner collaborations, and the best thing you've ever heard in a sweaty club at three in the morning after an hour of faceless indie pap.

The ugly? The inside cover of Bummed.

B is for boring and bastards

Bows and Arrows - The Walkmen
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene

I'm sure I've probably heard albums as boring as Bows and Arrows by The Walkmen, but I'm struggling to think of one off the top of my head. I'm even listening to it again as I write this to make sure the fact that I played it on my way to work on a national holiday didn't colour my judgement. It didn't. Every song sounds exactly like the last one - a wash of bog standard guitar rock, fronted by Hamilton Leithauser's pained, Dylan-down-the-bog vocals. Shit, it's grim. It's another album that's going to be making space for something more deserving, and an indication of the dangers of downloading music that you've listened to on MySpace while drunk.

Lying somewhere at the furthest end of the spectrum from The Walkmen are Broken Social Scene. Their eponymous album sounds joyously eclectic at the best of times, and following The Wankmen it was the aural equivalent of leaving the turgid heat of Tokyo in summer and heading for the hills. Simple summary then: Social Scene good, Walkmen bad.