For Halloween... The Shinning

I've mentioned this before, nine years ago when only three of you read this... but anyway, it's Halloween. Enough to justify a repeat viewing for this homage. Might not be up for long...

Your Capricious Soul

Despite the hoo-ha surrounding the 25th anniversary deluxe edition treatment of Monster, this release from Michael Stipe nearly passed me by. It's his first solo work and R.E.M. fans hoping for Everybody Hurts are going to be disappointed. But have a listen. What do you think?

If you pay to download it from his site, all profits got to Extinction Rebellion, so there's that too.

Oh, and if you're thinking back to Monster and recalling it as a Marmite album, this recent interview with Stipe and Mills is worth a read.

Sunday shorts: Getting Nowhere Fast

Later, they would come to regret the drum machine, but still...

Sunday shorts: Song For The Asking

I love that this was the last song on their last studio album together. It feels like Paul saying, "You know what, I'm going to go on and do loads of great stuff on my own. You... maybe not so much."

Blue Friday: My Ever Changing Moods (piano version)

Have always preferred this version to the poppier, more upbeat, fuller version that followed later.

So beautiful, so blue.

Still 0-0 after (a lot of) extra time

In the late 80s and early 90s, a jangly sound emerged from Slough in the ten-legged shape of Thousand Yard Stare. With their own label (the splendidly named Stifled Aardvark), a distribution deal with Polydor and Stephen Street on production duties, the outlook was promising. There was a whole host of EPs, often released (and re-released) in multiple formats (including 10" and coloured vinyl), chasing the mainstream breakthrough. In 1991, they played the Reading Festival; a year later, their debut LP, Hands On, was released. It is really quite good, and musically head and shoulders above a lot of the bands they were often grouped with.

Of course, a crucial 'but...' is coming. The Yardies' jingle-jangle sound and obtuse lyrics were somewhat at odds with the post-Nevermind interest in a heavier sound. Why be a Giles or a Dominic when you could be a Kurt or an Eddie? And so the second album, 93's Mappamundi, failed to live up to commercial expectations and didn't trouble the charts, despite a big push from Polydor. The band called time soon after, and that was that.

Except that is rarely that, these days, not when the reunion market is so lucrative. And so Thousand Yard Stare have reconvened, at first just for a few live shows but now, excitingly, for some recorded material. Here's their new single, It Sparks, in which all TYS hallmarks are present and correct, including vocalist Stephen Barnes's Marmite-delivery.

They even have some new merchandise, in the shape of this works-on-so-many-levels How Soon Is Slough? t-shirt; a Smiths reference, Betjeman and TYS... what's not to like?

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this post, it comes from this.

Anyway, here's the band's shiny new website and Twitter feed, if you're interested. You're probably not, it's probably just me... but that's okay.

Sunday shorts: Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes

So many short HMHB tracks to choose from, but this one gets the nod for its opening line...

Let Me In

I seem to have featured R.E.M. a lot lately. I make no apology for that. A new remix of Let Me In has emerged, ostensibly to tie in with the 25th anniversary of Monster. Given that it was written in response to Kurt Cobain's suicide, and that yesterday was World Mental Health day, it seems a good time to make some noise about it. The Beeb has a better article than this about the song and it's raison d'être right here.

Basically, this was a song written one night, recorded the next day, with Michael delivering a raw vocal (that is very much more to the fore in this new remix) and Mike strumming along on Kurt's electric guitar. That's it: guitar and voice, Mike and Michael, nothing else.

And I don't know about you but, as lyric videos go, this one takes the biscuit, I think. Imagine if the words and thoughts in your head swirled around like a hurricane, occasionally coalescing into moments of clarity like a murmuration of starlings, before breaking apart again. Imagine that...

Asking for a friend

Is there a way to say that something isn't as good as it used to be, without sounding like the worst kind of terrible old fossil? When there is no empirical evidence, just personal opinion involved?

Asking for a friend.

T's and C's

Following on from my previous post about going to watch an episode of Dave Gorman's new TV series being filmed, it seem only right to add the news that it starts on Monday 21st October, 10pm, on Dave (the channel, not the comedian).

To prove I haven't made that up, here's the trailer.