Alisha's Attic - Alisha Rules the World

"Here we are again, the jangle of my ankle chain is the only sound I can hear..."

If you're in your 20s it's easy to like this album, you probably grew up with Alisha's Attic. It came out in 1996, when Britain was not very discerning about music (the Spice Girls were top of the album chart for eight agonising weeks), but Alisha Rules the World is not just an LP for those who want to reminisce.

It's a bloody brilliant pop record (in the best sense) on which almost every track is radio-worthy. I Am I Feel, Air We Breathe, Alisha Rules The World and Indestructible were all released as singles and tracks like Stone In My Shoe, White Room and Just The Way You Like It would probably have done as well.

Sibling harmonies are always pretty special and sisters Sharon and Kellie Poole's are no different, thier voices blend perfectly and they've taken inspiration from the the master of harmonic intricacy: Brian Wilson. Couple this thoughtful orchestration with seriously catchy melodies and imaginative songwriting and, in my book, you're onto a winner.

The one thing that may take some getting used to for the virgin AA listener is the lyrics: they're just so nineties. Jangling ankle chains, purple skirts and flickering candles are all indicitive of what a rubbish decade it was aesthetically. Lime-green velvet shirt, anyone? Thought not.

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

First things first: If you like music and haven't yet listened to Bob Dylan go out and buy Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks immediately.

Blood on the tracks (1975) is Dylan's 15th album, widely believed to have been penned during his separation from then wife Sara. It shows him at his most vulnerable. The lyrics are heartbreaking, the melodies some of his best, and the songs flow beautifully into each other, it feels just perfect.

The first two tracks: 'Tangled Up in Blue" and "Simple Twist of Fate" are two of my favourite songs, his esoteric rhythmic rhymes which are often coupled with acerbic, political lyrics, are this time used to convey longing and regret.

In a radio interview Bob said: "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying the type of pain, you know?" At other times he has claimed that the album is not autobiographical.

Whether Blood on the Tracks is a heart wrenching tale of lost love or a work of fiction, one listen and you cannot fail to be moved.

The Slits - Cut

The Slits’ infamous debut album is a master class in pure attitude. Merely touching the record will imbue you with the kind of witty, slightly weary cynicism that’s always seemed so unobtainable.

And when you realise that The Slits were the UK’s first all female punk/ post-punk band, you suddenly understand why ‘Cut’ is infused with such authenticity. Not only is The Slits’ sound a rebellion against the musical landscape of the time, it’s also a reaction to the almost exclusively male punk scene.

The sounds are raw. The vocals are raw. The dub-base - all chopping guitars and reggae rhythms interspersed with keys and the occasional recorder - is loose. Songs speed up and slow down. It’s all at once awkward and vital and unconventional, which just makes it all the more powerful.

As you might expect from three women very much operating in a man’s world, most of the songs offer razor-sharp (if you’ll forgive the pun…) insight mixed with some truly awesome scorn. ‘Ping Pong Affair’ is a real stand-out in this respect, “life with or without you, so I spend an evening, without getting my face cut, and another evening, without getting run over”. But even the former is trumped by the sardonic genius of ‘Typical Girls’, with its “don't create, don't rebel, have intuition, don't drive well” refrain.

The political nature of the record doesn’t stop there. Ari’s shrill of “I can’t but wonder what’s feeding my screen, what’s feeding my screen?” during ‘FM’ is an observation on media culture that’s as pertinent now as it was back in the late 1970s.

Consumer culture gets the treatment too, ‘Spend Spend Spend’ and ‘Shoplifting’ are as amusing as they are astute, in fact, the opening of the latter is immortal: “put the cheddar in the pocket, put the rest under the jacket, talk to the cashier, he won’t suspect… ten quid for the lot, we pay fuck all!”

Released in 1979, the record is as crucial now as it ever was. ‘Cut’ absolutely reeks of cool. It’s a wry, intelligent and entirely organic snapshot of a band at the very top of their game, and the very height of their genre.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- The Boatman's Call

For me, albums I truly admire can be divided into two piles: those I wish I’d written and those I wish someone had written about me. The Boatman’s Call is very much the latter.

When an album opens with a song as beautiful as Into my Arms where the sceptical Cave asks God and angels to watch over his lover, you know it is going to be a bit special. By comparison the bilge spouted by young pretenders like James Blunt looks trite and cheap.

Written after his relationship with PJ Harvey and one divorce, Nick Cave penned the most poignant post-relationship album ever. The album is peppered with references to Polly Jean and I can only imagine how she must have felt when she heard songs like Black Hair and West Country Girl, but then she got her own back with Is This Desire.

As Cave himself put it in a lecture entitled ‘The Secret Life of the Love Song’, “the peculiar magic of the Love Song, if it has the heart to do it, is that it endures where the object of love does not”. And that is exactly what People Ain't No Good is about. In it, Cave laments his estrangement from Viviane Carnerio, his lover and mother of his son Luke. He charts the marriage through ultimately to the ‘death’ of the relationship where he asks “To our love send a dozen white lilies, to our love send a coffin of wood”.

The other favourite (a favourite among favourites, if you like) for me, Are you the One That I’ve Been Waiting For. A moody, pulsing track full of longing and frustration where Cave, in wait of his soul mate, questions the nature of love: “We will know, won’t we? The stars will explode in the sky. But they don’t, do they? Stars have their moment, and then they die”. Anyone who’s felt jaded and cheated by fairy tale romances will know exactly what he’s talking about.

For some, The Boatman’s Call may be too morose, gloomy even. But for me it is the most perfect commemoration to lost love.

Stars - Set Yourself on Fire

Set Yourself on Fire begins with a spoken: "When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire". Thus commences Your Ex-Lover is Dead the haunting opener. If Campbell 's simple, honest vocals don't floor you, then guitarist and singer Amy Millan's enchantingly pure delivery of the stunning line: "This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin" is sure to do so.

Although the former is certainly a stand out track, the remainder of the album is consistently good. There is not a single song that needs to be skipped, and several are excellent: The jazz-stained melancholy of The Big Fight sees Millan and Campbell assuming the roles of quarrelling lovers and Millan fronts the band on the beautiful, bittersweet Calendar Girl. Delicate orchestration is thoughtfully juxtaposed with guitar-driven electro-pop on this eclectic record.

"Live through this and you won't look back," intones Millan on Your Ex-Lover is Dead . The same could be said of Set Yourself on Fire.

The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow

It’s my belief that people who like pop music with guitars have every right to despair of our wretched decade and its tight-trousered ‘The … band’ sub-Ramones pop idols. Thankfully there is salvation out there is you are willing to find it. A good first stop would be The Shins’ delightful second album. A four-man attack on musical boredom with so much imagination that it practically oozes out of the CD.

“Just a glimpse of an ankle and I, react like its 1805” confesses James Mercer in ‘Turn A Square’; a fair claim to greatness in itself for my money and typical of his lyrical style, where nonsensical daydreams are peppered with razor-sharp one-liners. The music is rich too, with vocal harmonies and strings rising and falling around Mercer’s leads, which are delivered from a John Lennon solo-era type echo chamber. Song highlights come thick and fast; from the caustic ‘Mine’s Not a High Horse’ to the faux-Americana of ‘Gone for Good’ there really isn’t a bum track. And in the form of album centrepiece ‘Saint Simon’ (“the cruel uneventful state of apathy releases me”) the Shins may well have penned the anthem of our generation.

PJ Harvey - Rid of Me

Polly is honest; you need only listen to ‘Ecstasy’ to understand just how honest. Polly is also (whisper it…) neurotic - the dark suggestion of cutting off your lover’s legs to stop them from leaving in ‘Legs’ is somewhat of an indication. And Polly is candid: “I’m calling you weak, getting even” she confesses on ‘Rub ‘Til it Bleeds’.

But most of all, Polly is ANGRY. “Damn your chest-beating, just you stop your screaming” she yelps on ‘Me Jane’. This is a record that doesn't sugar-coat anything, least of all the feminism.

Title track and opener ‘Rid of Me’ sets the mood for the record: simultaneously disturbing and magnificent. The stark contrast of the quiet intro and the loud (and I mean really, really loud) chorus is frankly unsettling in its power. I defy anyone to not feel instantly filled with some kind of mercurial energy after screeching “lick my legs, I’m on fire” a few times. And if, like me, after such seismic beginnings, you feel unable to stop yourself, ‘Man-Size’ and ‘50ft Queenie’ are more than enough to satisfy.

Yet the record isn’t all yelling and pushing. ‘Missed’ weaves off-kilter rhythms with enviable purpose to create one of the melodic high-points of the album. And the string section in ‘Man-Size’ sextet would make the Brodsky Quartet jealous (not just about the two extra members either).

By far the most primal and polarising of all Polly’s records, Rid of Me cannot be described as anything other than a glorious work of art. It took a pasting from a lot of critics, and true enough, it is abrasive, it is visceral, and you will have to work at it. But I quite simply don’t care. This album is monumental.

Dry was the sort of debut that most artists can only dream of producing. The fact that Rid of Me is actually a superior record both lyrically and musically should be impossible. But not for Polly.

The Libertines - Up The Bracket

A whirlwind ride through seedy London streets, taking in crumbling tenements and decrepit music venues, Up The Bracket is that rare beast of an album that taps into the very culture around it with stunning perceptive clarity.

Charting the formative years of a band destined to destroy itself through drug addiction, infighting and Pete Doherty’s increasingly wayward behaviour the Libertines' debut stands as a monument showcasing all that was stupefyingly brilliant about the band - a snapshot of a group at the very height of their powers before the almost inevitable spiral out of control.

Despite the apparent shambolic overtones Up The Bracket throbs with the chaotic elegance of a Waltzer, dipping, spinning and rolling through a set of songs performed with the raw power of the punch to the face it is named after.

The album’s dazzling centrepiece, Time For Heroes, forms a perfectly constructed vessel for Doherty’s natural storytelling ability covering the struggles of the working classes, his own health problems resulting from cocaine and heroin addiction (“He knows it's eating, it's chewing me up, it's not right for young lungs to be coughing up blood – oh it's all, it's all in my hands, and its all up the walls”) and the sad rise in chav culture destroying his own idealistic, rose-tinted view of England in the 50s and 60s in the immortal line: “There are fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap”.

All at once this album has the feel of the Libertines' first gig, last gig and best gig rolled into one, and the bum notes and slurring vocals are only bees swarming across the surface of a hive harbouring inside it something intelligently constructed and beautiful.

Kristin Hersh - Hips and Makers

Here’s the thing about Kristin Hersh: she’s a fucking goddess. A goddess, I might add, to whom far too little attention is paid. She’s also lead singer and guitarist for Throwing Muses, but that’s another story.

I first happened upon Hersh as an angst-ridden fifteen year old, but unlike many of the albums I came to depend upon at that tender age, this one remains indispensable.

The incredible impact of the title track is characteristic of the whole album, based as it is on phenomenal impressionistic lyrics, accompanied by beautiful accomplished acoustic guitar, with the occasional violin or piano murmuring in the background.

The imagery in her songs often takes one unawares, wrenching the everyday into an entirely different register to present it anew (Eichenbaum would be impressed). In ‘Your Ghost’, the simple act of awaiting a phone call becomes a riveting encounter with the rawest human experience. Quite possibly the most beautiful song ever written, it also happens to be a duet with Michael Stipe.

Alongside all this delicate, fragile beauty come bestial songs such as ‘A Loon’ and ‘Sundrops’, in which Hersh violently beats her guitar into submission whilst her impassioned vocals grow fiercer and louder to the point of collapse.

Cuttingly, fearsomely intelligent in her poetry, Hersh is in a class of her own. Forgive my hyperbole, but I simply couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this album.

Phil Ochs - In Concert

Can music and politics be successfully mixed? Nay-sayers could build a strong case on the back of the George W era; Springsteen, Neil Young, Steve Earle and Greenday all had a stab at fusing political critique and music, with the results often as clumsy and misguided as the politics themselves. Time then, to consider the case for the defence, Phil Ochs’ under-appreciated third album In Concert; a high watermark of articulate, witty, well-observed and politically aware pop music.

First-time listeners will notice first Ochs’ fine talent for melody, and the resonant tenor through which his songs are delivered. But the accessibility of his style betrays a radical and bilious tongue; from the opening bars of the proclamatory ‘I’m going to say it now’ Ochs launches a cutting attack on sixties America’s “Great Society”. Rampant militarism, social injustice and political hypocrisy all come under fire, as in the brilliant ‘Love me, I’m a liberal’ sung from the perspective of a bleeding-heart liberal with Not-in-my-back-yard syndrome.

Ochs’ tale is ultimately a tragic one; in his heyday he was always unfairly compared to Bob Dylan against whose poetic tapestries Ochs’ self-styled ‘singing journalism’ always came out second best. His career after In Concert increasingly veered towards self-parody and broken by his own perceived failure, Ochs committed suicide in 1976. Yet his trilogy of albums recorded for Elektra represents a remarkable legacy. Buy In Concert, please, and then fork out for his earlier albums as well. Between them they stake a claim for Ochs to be the most talented, and most wrongly neglected artist of the sixties.

To do list

Roberts

• Neutral Milk Hotel - In the aeroplane over the sea
• Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Ballad of the Broken Seas
• Eels - Daisies of the Galaxy
• Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
• Jeff Lewis - It's the ones who are cracked that the light shines through
• Frou frou - Details
• Bright Eyes - Lifted
• Nick Drake - Five leaves Left
• Alisha's Attick - Alisha Rules the World
  
• Paul Simon - Graceland
• Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
• Anthony and the Johnsons - I am a Bird Now
• Willy Mason - Where the Humans Eat
  
• Rufus Wainwright - Poses
• The Decemberists - Picturesque
• Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
• Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
• The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
• Brian Wilson - Smile
• The Beach Boys - Wild Honey
• Bob Dylan - Hard Rain
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - No More Shall We Part
• Tom Waits - Closing Time
• Warren Zevon - A Quiet Normal Life
  

Didymus

• Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II
• Morrissey - Vauxhall and I
• The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
• A - A vs. Monkey Kong
• Radiohead - OK Computer
• The Smiths - The Smiths
• Muse - Origin of Symmetry
• Terrorvision - Regular Urban Survivors
• The Libertines - Up The Bracket
• The Strokes - Is This It
• Doves - Lost Souls
• Green Day - Dookie
• Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
• Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
• Muse - Absolution
• Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock And Roll
• Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory
• Stone Roses - Stone Roses
• Air - Moon Safari
• The Horrors - Strange House

Hamblin

• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- The Boatman’s Call
• PJ Harvey- Is This Desire?
• Brighteyes- Fevers and Mirrors
• Songdog-Time of Summer Lightning
• The Clash- Combat Rock
• Damien Rice- O
• Jamie T- Panic Prevention
• Jeff Buckley- Mystery White Boy
• The Smiths- The Queen is Dead
• Amy Winehouse- Back to Black
• Ryan Adams- Heartbreaker
• Manic Street Preachers- The Holy Bible
• Imogen Heap- Speak for Yourself
• Rilo Kiley- More Adventurous

Legg

• Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights
• The Knife – Deep Cuts
• PJ Harvey – Rid Of Me
• PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love
• Kate Bush – The Kick Inside
• The Cure - The Head On The Door
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell
• Blondie – Eat To The Beat
• Weezer –Pinkerton
• Television - Marquee Moon
• Architecture in Helsinki – Places Like This
• Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
• Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowed West
• Arcade Fire - Funeral
• Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
• Bjork – Debut
• Bob Dylan - Desire
• Saturday Looks Good To Me – Sound On Sound

True

In no particular order:

• Belle and Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant
• Cocorosie - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
• Rufus Wainwright - Want (One and Two)
• Willy Mason - Where the Humans Eat
• The Carpenters - A Song for You
• Crowded House - Woodface
• David Kitt - The Big Romance
• Dolly Parton - Country Girl
• Eels - Electro Shock Blues
• The Folk Implosion - One Part Lullaby
• Guillemots - Through the Windowpane
• Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
• Kristin Hersh - Hips and Makers
• Muse - Absolution
• Pulp - We Love Life
• Radiohead - In Rainbows
• The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow
• The Strokes -Is This It
  

Just to clarify my philosophy, these are not necessarily the albums I consider to be exemplary for each artist, but they are the albums I would save if all the music in the world was being burned.

Brown

• The Kinks – Kinks are the village green preservation society
• The Zombies – Odessey and Oracle
• Big Star – Number One Record
• The Flying Burrito Brothers – Gilded Palace of Sin
• Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield
• Leonard Cohen – Songs of Love and Hate
• Bert Sommer – The Road to Travel
• The Velvet Crush – Teenage Symphonies to God
• Phil Ochs – Live in Concert
• The Byrds – Sweetheart of the Rodeo
• Richard Thompson – The Old Kit Bag
• Dillard and Clark – The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard and Clark
• Kelly’s Heels – Blunt Cut
• The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow
• The Jayhawks – Tomorrow the green grass
• Bob Dylan – Bringing it all back home
• Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
• Beau Brummels – Bradleys Barn
• Antony and the Johnsons – I am a bird now