LaRM day 122 (Bob Dylan-Eagles of Death Metal)

Our last dose of Dylan is volume 8 of the Bootleg Series, Tell-Tale Signs. The version I've got is the single-disc abridged edition which contains 12 songs from 1989 to 2006. It's all pretty Daniel Lanois heavy therefore, but interestingly the stuff on Tell-Tale Signs is surprisingly good. There's a loose, laid back feel to the material here and it sounds like Dylan has relaxed into the fluid, unshowy style that Lanois developed for him. The sound is one thing but the bluesy, conventional tone of the songs is really very, very good and suits Dylan really well, and bearing in mind these are all off-cuts, they are really decent songs throughout, and Tell-Tale Signs proves that even though the albums Dylan released throughout the period were hit and miss, he hadn't ever really lost it, and indeed, was writing and recording material that stands up perfectly well against most of his back catalogue.

As that brings us to the end of the letter D, we need to go back and cover things that I've picked up from A-D in the past few weeks. Therefore, next is 2012's album by avant-folk outfit the Act of Estimating As Being Worthless which is pretentiously entitled Amongst These Splintered Minds // Leaden Thoughts Sing Softly. As a practical demonstration of the viability of band names, they allow you to choose how much you want to pay for downloads of their records (which can be nothing if you want) and this idea fits the idea of the band well. The album itself is a lovely thing, quietly and unaggressive, acoustic songs with hushed male and female vocals and loads of strings and trumpet, and it's a charmingly low-key affair, kind of a cross between L'Altra and Ida. Opener 'Bones' is a great tune, quietly folky before suddenly erupting into a mass of brass and strings before quietening down just as abruptly, and it gives an indication of the musical ideals of the band overall. These are songs that seem inconsequential to a degree, but close listening reveals an attention to detail and some great song structure, and it's a really lovely record overall.

And finally before we move on to E we have the Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP (2009) by Deerhunter. It's an interesting one this, more straightforward than their albums it's also surprisingly uninventive (despite what the nerds seem to think). If anything it sounds more like a compilation of slightly quirky indie acts from the late 1980's rather than the groundbreaking psych-pop that is sometimes claimed. I mean, it's alright but it's nothing particularly special.

Right, let's dig some classic rock with everybody's favourite country-rock arena botherers, the Eagles, starting with 1973's utterly idiotic Desperado. What a stupid album Desperado is. It's really terrible. A concept album about Wild West outlaws, it set the template for MOR country-rock entirely. Starting with Jackson Browne's only contribution, 'Doolin' Dalton', you suspect the album is only going to be a slightly naff, stereotypical bit of technically proficient California rock, but then the dismal banjo led country of 'Twenty-One' starts up and you know you're in for a pretty rough ride. Next up is atrocious rocker 'Out of Control' which sounds like the worst Creedence reject ever. It's all dicey for the rest of the album too and to be honest it's mystifying why the Eagles were ever elevated to their insane level of popularity. There are a couple of songs that have just about weathered the test of time and both 'Desperado' and 'Tequila Sunrise', although corny, are undeniably delicately written songs, but they're pretty shallow oases in a desert of terrible rock.

The even worse One Of These Nights (1975) kicks off with the disco-rock of the title track and the line "One of these nights, one of these crazy nights". That kind of use of the word "crazy" in rock music should have been banned many years ago, it's kind of a lyrical calling card announcing the arrival of total cheese. Anyway, after the Bee Gees squealing of the title track we're back on familiar country-rock ground with 'Too Many Hands' and its silly harmonies, daft guitar solo and 12-string and tabla middle eight. Nonsense. Pretty much the only thing that One Of These Nights really has going for it is the fact that the absurd banjo-prog of 'Journey of the Sorceror' was used as the theme music for the awesome TV series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Does 'Lyin' Eyes' have to go on for 7 minutes? And there's more disco in the laughable 'Visions' as well, honestly, it's just a terrible, terrible album. 'Take It to the Limit' is a nice tune, but one nice tune on an album of unqualified crap is just no good.

In 1976 the Eagles released a retrospective compilation. Now, this seems like vanity to me bearing in mind that although they had fourteen hundred million albums, they had only actually recorded four in as many years. A bit previous for a best-of if you ask me, but there it is. Their Greatest Hits it's called and it's realistically probably as close to an almost half-decent album as they ever got. Culling two or three tracks from each album means that you've got 'Take It Easy', 'Desperado', 'Take It to the Limit' and a handful of other tunes of varying quality that means you've got a chance of coming across a decent track every second or third song, unlike the other albums where you're looking at much more depressing strike rate. Anyway, one listen to 'Witchy Woman' will remind you that it's still basically rubbish.

And finally for the Eagles it's the big one, Hotel California (1976). The country element is now vanished without trace and what we've got here instead is rock in it's most "classic" form. There's not really much to say about the title track, it's pretentious, bombastic, and ultimately supremely stupid. Then there's 'New Kid in Town' which is bland, 'Life in the Fast Lane' which is a serious rock number (and Joe Walsh's opportunity to prove that he had a part to play in the band) with a stupendous and stupendously dumb riff, and the blasted, rock weepie 'Wasted Time'. So that's side one, and all the stuff that everybody knows. Who knows what's on side 2 of Hotel California? No-one, surely? Anyway, what IS on side 2 is a crock of more dumb-ass 70's rock. It's rubbish, of course, but I have to say I do have a soft spot for the album. Blame growing up in the 70's.

The third Eagles of Death Metal album, Heart On (2008), is a great bit of mucking-about. It's a kind of rock joke, but the songs and the attitude are too good, too accomplished for it to really be nothing but some mates pissing around. While there's clearly a tongue in cheek feel to the whole project, they're simply too good at referencing the stompy glam rock and choppy post-Halen riffing that Josh Homme clearly loves. Bearing in mind also that besides being basically a laugh, the Eagles of Death Metal are another of many side projects that Homme has on the go and the fact that pretty much everything he turns his hand to a) turns out sounding like variations on a theme, and b) is at the very least interesting, at best superb is testament to just how well he's created a functional template. The "robot rock" idea that underpins his songwriting is in full force on Heart On and it's a pretty good adaptation, but there's none of the experimentation that occasionally shows up on the Queens of the Stone Age and Desert Sessions albums, this is all straight down the line three minute rock and it's really enjoyable. And there's a great melodic reference (ie rip-off) to Steely Dan which is nice.

LaRM day 121 (Bob Dylan)

Next up is my favourite Dylan album. I guess the main reason that I particularly love Desire (1976) so much is that it was the Dylan album that played the most prominent part in my childhood. It's one of the albums that defines many of my oldest memories and listening to it is a personally moving experience, because I'm a cripplingly sentimental idiot. It's strange because I don't really enjoy anything very much in the moment, but memories of pretty much anything have me on the verge of tears. Anyway, enough of this nonsense, Desire is a really wonderful album, messy, unpredictable, thematically unstructured, it's an album of loose threads, all of which have their own beautiful colours, and which despite its random and ramshackle nature is the most affecting and charming record that Dylan made. You've got all sorts here, the epic, politically charged 'Hurricane', the jaunty, spirited 'Black Diamond Bay', the mournful 'One More Cup of Coffee', the lighter than air 'Mozambique', the dense, sprawling 'Joey', the wistful and personal 'Sara' and 'Oh Sister' and probably best of all the rolling, enigmatic 'Isis'. Everything on Desire is a success in one way or another, even the silly stylings of 'Mozambique', and it's an album that takes the personal songwriting and reflections of Blood on the Tracks and builds on them, moving in a variety of different directions at once.

In 1985 a mammoth career overview was released entitled Biograph. This was presumably to act as a reminder of what a series of achievements Dylan had accomplished in the past, because by 1985 he had been dedicating himself to making some truly terrible records for some time. Biograph is a three and a half hour run through many of Dylan's highlights from 1962-1981 and it's a pretty inspiring set of choices throughout, taking in the most important songs from the major albums (and some crap from Saved and Shot of Love) but also including a substantial number of outtakes, alternate and live versions of big songs and some previously unheard material as well. Highlights for the new stuff are 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune' from 1963 and the Desire out-take 'Abandoned Love', lowlights are the 1981 B-side 'Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', and an angry rocked-up live version of 'Isis'.

So to the last Dylan studio album in the collection, 1989's critical comeback, Oh Mercy. Thanks to the gauzy, fluid production work of Daniel Lanois, who was everybody's darling in the late 80's, Oh Mercy has a less jarring sound and style than the rest of Dylan's 80's output so it's understandble that it was raised up as the return to form, but to be honest it's not exactly the greatest record there is. Neil Young and Lou Reed's great 1989 returns to form are considerably more impressive than Oh Mercy and although it's absolutely a perfectly decent record, it's not the grandstanding, blazing return of a great talent that people pretended for a short while. It's essentially a nice record, and that's about as far as it goes. It's languid, unshowy, and as usual for Lanois produced records, it's a little murky, a little spooky in its atmospherics and on the whole it's, well, it's alright. There are some decent songs on it (I have to admit I don't mind 'Ring Them Bells' and although it's Lanois through and through, I like 'What Was It You Wanted'), but the issue for me isn't so much that Dylan's songs are better than they have been for a long time, but it's that he had to give himself over to his producer pretty much entirely and that makes me uncomfortable (I've heard Lanois talk about the grinding down that he "has to do" to songwriters to make them agree to record the way he wants). It's a decent record, and it's an easy listen, and it's good to hear that it wasn't all over for Dylan's basic skills, but it's no Desire.

We go all the way back now, with the exhausting Volume 7 of the Bootleg Series, No Direction Home (2005) which covers the earliest part of Dylan's career, from home recordings in 1959 through to the release of Blonde on Blonde. Only a couple of tunes on the two and a half hours of No Direction Home have appeared anywhere before (as befits the Bootleg Series) so we have live and alternate versions of many of the serious numbers, and most impressively of all, the first six or seven songs are mostly home-recordings and very early out-takes which are very revealing. Tributes to Woody Guthrie and covers of his songs set out the political version of Dylan's stall from the off. But this stuff only lasts halfway through and, as with the studio albums, from about 1964, the lyrical preoccupations become more arcane and personal. No Direction Home does reveal just how direct Dylan was in adopting stylistic frameworks that suited his purpose or particularly interested him at any given time, and it's hard to work out whether he picked up on prevailing winds or if his restlessness set those winds blowing. The early stuff is interesting enough, but it's mostly rough approximations of the style and sound of the first few albums. More fascinating are the alternate and live versions of songs from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde that make up the second half of No Direction Home. You can hear the working-out that went on in the writing and rehearsing of these songs and that adds an extra dimension to the finally recorded versions, and although there's nothing particularly dramatic that comes out of any of these alternate versions, they do serve to demonstrate just how great the finished records were.

LaRM day 120 (Bob Dylan)

So we begin our Dylan odyssey with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). It's going to come as a surprise to see just how random the selection of Dylan records that we own is. There's loads of big ones missing and yet we've got Oh Mercy. There's no explaining it. Anyway, Freewheelin' is, of course, a superb album and no matter how uncomfortable in retrospect I may feel about just what Dylan's motivations for anything he ever did really were, there's just no denying a) what a game changer this and the previous debut self-titled album were and b) what a brilliant record it is, no matter what the context. Everything here is exceptionally good, and although most people prefer Another Side, The Times They Are A-Changing or the debut, I think Freewheelin' is the absolute peak of Dylan's voice, guitar and harmonica work. Of the big songs, the obvious greats are 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' but I prefer the lesser numbers, 'Corrina, Corrina' and 'Oxford Town' particularly, and the vicious 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' (which gives bleak forewarning of Dylan's later physical demonstrations of his attitude to women) is my favourite song of the Zim's by far. (btw, due to a certain level of scrupulous attention on the part of Dylan and his record companies, there's no internet presence for the man UNLESS YOU PAY UP SCUMBAGS. Just another facet of the unpredictability of everyman's champion, Bob Dylan. Woody Guthrie would be so proud of him, don't you think? Therefore, no links.)

Freewheelin' is the only one of the first five Dylan albums that I own, so we move on to the second album he released in 1965, and the first fully electrified and with a full band throughout, Highway 61 Revisited. Again, it goes without saying that this is a fantastic album, and again, taking popular music into new and uncharted waters, and setting the template for the folk-rock that would become such a popular choice thereafter. As befitted the man, as the times changed and new bandwagons arrived, so too did Dylan's approach and music change and the folk element is pretty much sidelined in favour of a snide, cool attitude and rough rock. Once again, it makes no difference what I think of his intentions, Highway 61 Revisited really is one of the truly great albums. While there are one or two miscalculations in my opinion (the legendary 'Ballad of a Thin Man' which is often cited as one of his finest songs, I personally think is terrible), the album is essentially a remarkable piece of work and the good songs are among his very best ('Like a Rolling Stone', 'From a Buick 6' and the title track are phenomenal, and 'Desolation Row' set the foundation for some of his best work to come).

Dylan's assimilation of rock culminated and peaked with the sprawling Blonde On Blonde (1966). If anything, critical opinion of Blonde On Blonde merely increases with time and it is certainly one of the defining records of the 1960's, creating a series of formats which have remained not only hardy but essential for huge amounts of pop music since its recording. Pretty much everything is thrown into the album, garage rock, country, blues, anything Dylan could use and manipulate he grabbed and threw in. And it all works gloriously, it's a simply incredible record. It's all helped enormously by the band (ie, the Band, who were still Ronnie Hawkins' Hawks at the time) who create real texture and form for the songs. Lyrically Dylan was moving further and further into imagistic introspection and there's no trace of the hard-fighting, hard-talking political motivation of before (that was so yesterday, man) and instead we have some truly affecting poetic reflection (I of course use the word poetic strictly in the context of pop music lyrics) and the whole album works both in its big rock numbers and its slower, more introverted pieces. Standouts? Well, there's the epic, drifting, hazy 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' (that'll be a song he wrote for his muse (and later wife) Sara, as we'll find out later. Shame he apparently ended up punching her in the face and moving his other lover onto their estate. Ever the charmer, Dylan), 'I Want You' and 'Visions of Johanna', which really is a marvellous piece of work.

The second career overiew to that point, Greatest Hits Vol. II (1971) is particularly interesting for the inclusion of almost an entire side's worth of new material, all of which is regarded as being classic Dylan. Indeed it's surprising to think that 'Down in the Flood', I Shall Be Released', and 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' all made their first appearance on a greatest hits collection and not studio albums. Each one of those new songs is superb, and the rest of the choices on the album (which covers material from 1964 onwards, and takes in material from most of the many albums up to 1970) are exceptionally well selected. What's also odd about Greatest Hits Vol. II is that virtually nothing on it was a hit, it's composed mostly of album tracks that had become famous as opposed to single releases. In any event, it acts in many ways as a better career overview than a singles compilation would have done, because it takes in all of Dylan's stylistic shifts and presents them glaringly juxtaposed, and it's a very revealing demonstration.

Dylan's soundtrack to the Sam Peckinpah film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) is something of a surprise. Despite being a relatively slight record it does demonstrate Dylan's ability to utilise source material in a way that one wouldn't really expect. For a start it's clear that although unprepared to compromise his fundamental approach to writing music, he took the brief seriously and constructed a soundtrack entirely appropriate to the film. The tunes are shot through with a fictional version of old-fashioned country music that entirely suits the post-pioneer mentality that the film depicts, and are for the most part lightly lovely pieces of music. It's a gentle, elegaic mood that Dylan creates and although listening to the soundtrack as an album is a relatively slight experience, it is also a calm and thoughtful one. Mostly instrumental, when 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' appears it's slightly jarring, in that not only has its familiarity impaired it, but it also strangely breaks the languid mood of the album.

And Dylan, day 1, ends with one of the absolute highlights of his entire career, Blood on the Tracks (1975). Crumbs, what an album this is. Ostensibly (and somewhat abstractly) an overview of the nasty, brutal and tasteless demise of his marriage to Sara, it's an album overloaded with bitterness, recrimination, spite, self-loathing, blame and disgrace and it's absolutely brilliant. But that turbulent emotional element is strictly lyrically speaking, the tunes are just lovely. There's not a single song on Blood on the Tracks that isn't perfect within its own framework, every one is a miniature masterpiece, each revealing a new facet of either the artistic, personal, musical or emotional make-up of Dylan, and in many ways, despite its occasionally cryptic exterior, its probably the closest thing to honesty that Dylan ever allowed an audience access to. Quite apart from the importance of the idea of these songs, they also happen to be some of the most accessible and beautifully constructed and simply engaging of any that he has ever written. It's an album of almost endless treasures and it seems such a tragedy that such an unpleasant and disappointingly mundane situation should have led to such a remarkably accomplished, and such a remarkably universal set of songs. There is absolutely no point in singling out particular highlights so instead I'll just say that 'You're a Big Girl Now' and 'Meet Me in the Morning' are maybe slightly less extraordinary than the other eight on the album.

LaRM day 119 (Dukes of Stratosphear-Dump)

In the mid-80's XTC recorded a couple of records under the pseudonym The Dukes of Stratosphear, and they are possibly the greatest works of parody/homage ever recorded. Ostensibly a pastiche of pretty much all counter-cultural 60's music, the Dukes of Stratosphear records sound like Pink Floyd, the Hollies, Jefferson Airplane, late Beatles, you name it, they sound like it. It's really the most remarkable achievement, the production is perfect, there's almost no distinguishing them from the real thing, either in terms of the sound, the songwriting, or the lyrics (which are superbly nonsensical throughout). First mini-LP, 25 O'Clock (1985) sets the template from the off with the title track which is a brilliant piece of pastiche psychedelia (in fact it's the psych-out pop song that they are particularly perfect at skewering). Andy Partridge's songwriting is so singular and crafted that there are occasional moments where you can hear XTC clearly through the parody (the chorus of 'What In the World??' is a giveaway), but on the whole you could convince anyone that didn't already know otherwise that this is a discovery from 1967 with ease. The full album proper, Psonic Psunspot (1987) is more of the same, but with the whole exercise turned to a more straightforward pop bent (the XTC-ness of it all is much clearer on Psonic Psunspot than 25 O'Clock). It's another great record, but it doesn't have quite the same incredible degree of care in its parodies than 25 O'Clock. Nonetheless 'Vanishing Girl' and 'You're a Good Man, Albert Brown' are two of the best 60's songs ever recorded, that just happened not to have been made in the 60's... What's fantastic about both of these records is that it might seem like an utterly pointless exercise, making pastiche 60's songs, and for most people it would be, but XTC are so steeped in this stuff, so brilliantly self-aware, and such exceptional songwriters that these may be pastiche but it's done to a beautifully artful degree, and they are also simply great albums in their own right.

If there's one not very good record from the last few years that I can't explain why I love, it's the Duke Spirit's Neptune (2007). It's a fairly bog-standard rock record (and it's got an appalling sleeve), but there's just something about it that I really, really like. It's probably in no small measure down to Liela Moss' cig-blasted vocals. Anyway, it's a rock record, and that's about the size of it. But as far as British bands playing bluesy-rock goes (and that's not far), this is as good as it can get. Highly polished yet strangely scuzzy, the fuzzed-up guitars and four to the floor drums make for a pleasingly propulsive sound, and the songs although on close inspection a tiny bit corny sound on the surface really great. It's one of those records, I don't know if it'll weather time, to be honest I doubt it, but there's just something about it that I think really works. I haven't any interest in finding out about their other albums, which is telling I suppose, but Neptune really works for me. Btw, don't confuse them with the ghastly records by the dreadlocked idiot calling himself the Duke Special. His records are just terrible.

A little bit more from Greg Dulli now with the sole album released under his name, Amber Headlights (2005). It's an odd record this, strangely uncomplete, but it was cobbled together from pieces that he had recorded as preliminary work before the death of his friend Ted Demme derailed the project, so the fact it sounds a bit disjointed is not surprising. What is surprising are the problems with the record. Most of the tunes are decent versions of Dulli's standard soul and R&B infused big indie-rock, but although hugely enjoyable these are tunes that he does better on other records and they sound strangely flat. Openers 'So Tight' and 'Cigarettes' are really good, vicious bits of boogie-blues rock, swaggering and arrogant, but they're hidebound by some of the most surprisingly cliched lyrics he's ever written, and considering much of the strength of Dulli's songwriting lies in his blisteringly uncomfortable lyrics, this is a real disappointment. None of this is to say that the record isn't a great listen, but it is in comparison with Dulli's other work that Amber Headlights falls disappointingly short.

The first Dum Dum Girls album, I Will Be (2010) is pretty much a solo effort from lead Dum Dum Girl Dee Dee. It's deeply indebted to Psychocandy, but as we've mentioned before, if you're going to rip something off to this extent, you might as well be sure you're ripping off something decent. The 60's girl-group harmonies echo the Jesus & Mary Chain's surf band vocal lines, and the dense, muddy, echoey production is also as derivative. But I Will Be is a great record, one buzzy, fuzzy ramalam song follows another with barely a discernible difference between them, but that's no problem, because this is an album where the fact it has one really good song repeated eleven times simply doesn't matter. The trash aesthetic behind the whole thing means it's the mood of that one song, the super-8 summer day roadtrip feel, that matters and this stuff works. By the time the second album, Only In Dreams (2011) was recorded Dee Dee had recruited three other members to the band, and the album feels much more "proper". From the very start of the album it's clear that Dee Dee has been encouraged to approach her vocals much more confidently and the mumbled, half-buried in the mix approach on I Will Be is gone in favour of a much more upfront singing style. Surprisingly she has a really decent voice and the move of the vocals to the front of the mix changes the whole sound of the band (if anything they sound a bit like an early Pretenders on Only In Dreams), and the songs are much, much better. Undoubtedly the hardcore indie kids will have been dismayed at how mature Only In Dreams sounds, but boo hoo, it's a great record, with much more solid guitar-rock. The 60's influence is still as all-encompassing as I Will Be, but this time out they sound like a great band writing really decent guitar-pop songs.

When not defining Yo La Tengo's wonderful sound, bassist James McNew spends his time knocking together ultra-lo-fi recordings at home and has sporadically released these under the moniker of Dump. The first Dump album, Superpowerless (1993) covers home recordings he put together over the course of the preceding three years and is necessarily a fairly scrappy collection, without a cohesive feel. But, as is the case with everything McNew touches, this is the most graceful, delicate and utterly winning lo-fi stuff you'll ever hear. It is the sound of a nice person making music for a gentler world and it's heart-melting. Personally I find Superpowerless the least successful of the Dump albums but that's only tracing the finest cracks between one lovely record and another, and although it is certainly the muddiest sounding, it has all the usual charm coursing in its veins. McNew's own songs are always understated and take their time to insinuate, which is I suspect one reason why he always includes a number of cover versions, and in keeping with YLT's musicologist reputation, his choices are always, cool, clever and knowing and his covers always get to the delicate heart of even the hardest songs.

Probably the best Dump album is A Plea for Tenderness (1998). It's another hour of lovely lo-fi mucking about with a heart, and this time out it's a more solid and fluent album. There's some really lovely stuff on A Plea for Tenderness, McNew's originals soft and insinuating and the covers as smartly eclectic and deconstructed as tenderly as ever. As lo-fi as these records are there's no getting away from either McNew's musical deftness or his superb interpretative skills - he thinks wholly like a composer rather than as a performer and brings his smartness then to bear on the performance. There are lenghty drone pieces on a cheap organ, delicate little pieces on tinny guitar and everything in between, it's all utterly charming. McNew's high, weak voice suits his style of writing and playing and the real skill of this stuff is that, unlike most lo-fi which is entirely insular, McNew's records openly invite the listener in. While the choices of covers is always surprising, there's never any sense of parody so even when he's doing Everlasting Love in a totally stripped down way, you're reminded that no matter how cheesy the original seems, it's a great song. And that's McNew's greatest trick, he's solely about the songs.

And it's that dedication to the song that goes some way to explaining his next Dump project, a covers only album dedicated exclusively to Prince songs, That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice (2000). As a lo-fi interpreter, yet again, McNew is second to none and the totally deconstructed nature of these songs makes you listen to them again with totally fresh ears. All of Prince's natural desire for excess is taken to its opposite extreme and you're left hearing these fantastic songs is if for the first time. Of particular note are McNew's achingly sad reading of '1999' and 'The Beautiful Ones'. Again, there's no parody or pastiche intended in any of this, it's simply someone who is the polar opposite of Prince (McNew is not someone who would pretend to be "sexy" and flaunt it about. Not with his figure), in both musical intent and presentation, but who absolutely loves the records, loves the songs and fancied trying his own approach to them. It's not all entirely successful, and really couldn't be, but it's as near as possible.

Tomorrow we begin an extremely lengthy journey through that old bandwagon jumper Mr Robert Zimmerman's back pages. Deep breath.

LaRM day 118 (Dr John-Anne Dudley & Jaz Coleman)

Oooooh, it's spooky voodoo swamp blues from the creepy Dr John, starting with the 1968 debut, Gris-Gris. This is a fantastic album, totally spooked out, it sounds like some kind of evil voodoo ceremony being performed in a misty distance. The rolling, repetitive chanting and clanging and banging noises redound throughout the album and although there are some great melodies buried in amongst the funny noises, it's primarily about the creeped out atmosphere. The Dr's rasping, swamp southern voice is wholly appropriate for this stuff and he really gives the impression of being master of ceremonies at some disturbingly weird rite. The cover says it all, Dr John's ceremonial headdress adorned features blurred in the heat haze of a ritual fire, it's all superbly atmospheric and in album closer, 'I Walk On Guilded Splinters' the album has one of the defining songs of the smarter end of 1960's countercultural music.

Second album, Babylon (1969) is something of a let down after the brilliance of Gris-Gris. It's a straighter record, composed of clear individual songs and although some of that weird atmosphere remains, it's a much less thematically aligned record. There's some great, odd stuff on here (the kids singing 'America the Beautiful' in the background of 'The Patriotic Flag Waver' for instance) and there are some fine songs ('Black Widow Spider') but there's something a little flat, a little disappointing about Babylon. Pretty much the same comments apply to 1971's The Sun, Moon & Herbs. It's a mix of straight, blues-led songs, some of which are really fine ('Familiar Reality'), but some of which are a bit nondescript, and that evil swamp-blues that Gris-Gris was composed entirely of ('Pots on Fiyo'). Both Babylon and The Sun, Moon & Herbs are great albums, no mistake about that, but there's something missing from what would be expected from such a remarkable and unique debut album. In any event, all three of these albums are perfect sultry high-summer night records.

There is something of a change of style for 1972's Dr John's Gumbo, which is an album of covers of New Orleans and deep south tunes that defined Dr John's approach to songwriting. So, although on the face of it, Dr John covering 'Iko Iko' and 'Let the Good Times Roll' seems like novelty record-making, it's actually far from it. This is invigorating stuff, full of life, and indicative of Dr John's dedication to the self-mythologising of the south. It's all good fun, there's nothing spooky going on here, just rolling, lolloping piano blues with New Orleans horns and casual drumming, it's totally relaxed and an open invitation to have a good time. Interestingly, despite being the stylistic opposite of Gris-Gris, it's another of his best albums, and the fact that they are different is not demonstrative of a shift in Dr John's approach but is instead because they are the two sides of the same coin. In the Right Place (1973) was his next set of mostly original songs, and it's probably his finest of all. In the Right Place is a fantastic album, building on the good time New Orleans vibe of Gumbo it's a long way from the swamp blues of Gris-Gris, but this is a fantastic example of how grand musicianship and a singular vision can create great pop music. Everything is delicately placed to sound as relaxed and casual as possible, it's immaculately constructed deliberately to sound as if it just got thrown together in the studio. The backing vocals, the horns, the easy vibe, all contribute to the out and out coolness of the good time that's being had while the record's on. It's charming and effortlessly cool. Some big songs are on, the title track and 'Such a Night' for instance, but there's nothing on it that's out of place or doesn't meet the mood or the high standards of performance or songwriting.

We skip forward 25 years to 1998's Anutha Zone. What is it about British musicians that makes them want to show off about how much more they know about music than each other? It makes them look like dicks (and I particularly mean you Bobby Gillespie) but it certainly works in the favour of the people that they "rediscover". Anutha Zone came about as a result of various British musicians doing such said showing off and boasting about liking old Dr John records. So, a bit later and we have Dr John recording in the UK as well as the US with the likes of Paul Weller, members of Spiritualized, Primal Scream, Portishead and Supergrass. It's sort of absurd the jostling for position, but it did lead to a surprisingly good record. Anutha Zone has a seedy, slow-motion kind of feel to it, and it revisits to a large extent the mystical, mythological voodoo sounds of his earliest albums. His voice has lost some of its imposing grittiness but it's turned to good use on some half-sung, half-spoken numbers ('The Olive Tree' for instance is nicely, understatedly creepy). Although limited by the musicians involved (these are uptight Brits, most of whom can't really play very well, as opposed to Dr John's usual selection of exceptional loose-limbed New Orleans session players), the album does create a nice, crawling, sultry vibe throughout and it really is a very satisfying album.

One of America's first My Bloody Valentine copyists, the Drop Nineteens debut, Delaware (1992) was a fine sun-kissed example of how well the American indie kids could absorb stuff and turn into something more culturally applicable. Despite sounding alarmingly similar to the two MBV albums, Delaware sounds specifically American. The gauzy, fuzzy guitars and muddy bass belie their provenance all too clearly but there's something quaintly earnest about the Drop Nineteens and I find it impossible not to melt every time I listen to Delaware. The album is a mix of bleary pop songs and atmospheric drone-outs, and it's the more immediate pop songs that stick out ('Winona' is a great song for instance), but there's some real quality in the other stuff (the blatant rip-off/mix-up of MBV's 'Soon' and Slowdive's 'Morningrise', 'Kick the Tragedy' is great (it even has the 'Soon' drum machine and running time!), and when the second side calms down a bit, it's got some charm to it too. Imitation is sincere flattery in the case of Delaware, and anybody copying some of my favourite records, and doing it charmingly naively, is fine in my book.

Three of the founder members left the band, dissatisfied with the sound they were following, and Greg Ackell, clearly stung by the criticism and the pointing out of just how much he was copying other bands, decided to take them in a decidedly more confrontational direction. National Coma (1993) is an almighty mess of an art-rock album, with songs that turn in a moment from charming indie to snarling, nasty-minded freeform breakdowns. It's not a pleasant album and it's a fairly unimpressive one, but it is an interesting and admirable attempt to do something different. I saw the band play around this time and they behaved like a bunch of self-satisfied snotty little brats. It's a shame because I think if they could have acted a bit less like children they could have gone on to make a fine album at some point.

Finally for today we have something very different. Not many people are aware of the existence of one of the most peculiar and peculiarly impressive records of the 1990's. It's an album by Anne Dudley (from The Art of Noise and occasional TV composer) and Jaz Coleman (from art-punk pioneers Killing Joke) called Songs From the Victorious City (1990). How this record ever came about I simply can't imagine and don't really want to know. Dudley and Coleman apparently took a number of trips to Cairo, researching modern and ancient music of the city and meeting, writing, rehearsing and recording with local musicians there. After bringing the tapes back to the UK they then put the parts together into coherent whole tunes, and they are absolutely fantastic. This is truly an exceptionally good record, not only for the boldness of the concept, the brilliance and delicacy of the execution, the grace that's exhibited throughout the performances, but also for the fact that the melodies are great, the tunes absolutely superb. These are all instrumental pieces but they all have found sounds throughout, donkeys in the street, market sellers shouting, all the atmospherics of a vibrant modern city that is still ancient in its bearing. The only slight downside is that the UK production is slightly too clean, slightly too reliant on what presumably was "cutting-edge technology" in 1990 (that'll be Dudley's Art of Noise leanings to blame I guess). But it's easy to ignore any production failings when listening to this enlivening and simply brilliant bit of cultural assimilation.

LaRM day 117 (Drifters-Drive Like Jehu)

More of the Drifters, and the first stable line-up, for 1964's Under the Boardwalk. There's a heady mix of the pop-soul and more gritty R&B on Under the Boardwalk which makes it a really pleasing listen. Although songs like 'Up On the Roof' now sound appallingly twee (to be fair it's all Heartbeat soundtrack material) at the time it will still have been the absolute pinnacle of pop music. There's plenty on Under the Boardwalk which is superb though, and much more interesting than 'Up On the Roof'. 'One Way Love', 'Didn't It' and 'If You Don't Come Back' are fine songs, 'Rat Race' is charmingly bizarre and on the whole, although the album leans towards the bobby-soxer pleasing, it's still pretty good overall. Finally for the Drifters we have I'll Take You Where the Music's Playing (1965). It's another uncomfortable mix of sickly string arrangements, pop chart bothering and brilliantly bitter balladry. Easily the best thing on the album is the lush ballad 'I Don't Want To Go On Without You', which is a superb bit of songwriting, with a fantastic lead vocal performance from Johnny Moore. The rest of the record is OK, there are some good pop songs in 'At the Club' and 'Answer the Phone' but the shift away from solid R&B to pop is essentially consolidated with I'll Take You Where the Music's Playing.

A few Drive By Truckers albums now, starting with the third, mammoth record, Southern Rock Opera (2002). This is a truly massive record, and a grandstanding demonstration that a concept album needn't be hidebound by the notion of a narrative. As a southern fried rock album it's second to none, but it's also a kind of inverted postmodernist prank in that it's an album about southern fried rock, ostensibly and obliquely telling the story of a young guy in the 70's digging Skynyrd and dreaming of being in a band. So it's clearly lead Trucker Patterson Hood's own life-story really, except that in this case the fictional band start to emulate the experiences (and ultimate demise) of Skynyrd. It's a deeply-felt tribute to the south and its rock music, and the way in which both have been, as Hood has it, wholly misunderstood by the rest of the US and the rest of the world. As a band the Drive By Truckers have kind of inherited Skynyrd's sound and style anyway, but use it in a very clever, very literate way and make fantastic records as a result. Personally I have never been able to get quite used to the sense that it's a little bit fabricated, but even if it is it hardly matters, the records are great and none more so than Southern Rock Opera. Hood's cracked, deep southern voice plays a large part in the success of their sound and it's in fine form throughout the album. Bearing in mind it's over an hour and a half long it's remarkable that it never loses momentum or interest, and the band were smart to load the second half with big hooks and showy rock-outs.

Many people rate Southern Rock Opera as the band's best work, but personally I think that the follow-up, Decoration Day (2003), is much better. Decoration Day is, I think, a superb rock record, beautifully textured, alternately vicious and delicate, and it's got some of Hood's best songs by far. The breadth of influence is extended significantly on Decoration Day and that must be due to the addition of Jason Isbell as third guitarist, and the overall mood is much more subdued and gentle. In amongst Hood's standard Skynyrd stylings are a number of lovely low-key slow numbers which show a solid country influence which had been previously entirely sublimated by the rocking out. There's a really fabulous four song run early in the album from 'Marry Me' (which sounds like a cross between a new wave band, the Stones and Little Feat) to the absolutely lovely 'My Annette', and 'Outfit' and the really gorgeous 'Heathens'. The narratives in the songs, although clearly outside the real scope of experience of the band, work as convincing short stories and the whole album really is very, very fine indeed.

Fifth album, The Dirty South (2004) returns to the Southern Rock Opera template, it's another double album, very specifically about growing up in Alabama, and it's amps are turned right back up. There's very little of Decoration Day's quieter moments, it's mostly serious rock music, but when things do tone down a bit it's great ('Carl Perkins' Cadillac' is really good for instance). But for the most part The Dirty South is all about the rock, and it delivers in spades. One element that's often overlooked on the Truckers' albums is the contribution of bass-player Shonna Tucker, whose lithe lines really give the songs a sense of structure, underscoring the straight-ahead guitar parts by adding real texture. Anyway, unlike Southern Rock Opera, The Dirty South keeps it relatively short for a double album and doesn't outstay its welcome in any way. It's a slightly more disjointed record, but it still plays well enough as a whole and the songs on an individual level are, as usual, really fine, smart, college-boy versions of southern rock. And it has a wonderful semi-tribute to the Band in 'Danko/Manuel'.

Finally it's 2006's A Blessing and a Curse. The first Truckers album to come in at under an hour, A Blessing and a Curse is a more straightforward rock record all round. It doesn't have an over-arching theme, it doesn't have a storyline or album length structure, it's just some songs. It almost comes as a disappointment to hear what by their standards is a relatively loose collection of songs until you remember that's what most albums are. Most of the tunes on the album are as tight as ever and there are some real winners. Unfortunately there's also a tendency to ape the Rolling Stones just a bit too closely and it's when this temptation proves too hard to resist that the record goes off the rails a bit. It also has an unusually high miss to hit rate, in that there are four or five songs that aren't up to their uncommonly high standard. Nonetheless, even minor DBT songs are pretty decent and although A Blessing and a Curse is an accurate title, it's still a more than decent record. Incidentally, the Drive By Truckers are one of the most spectacularly rock live outifts going, if you get a chance to see them, even if you don't particularly dig the records, it'll be worth it.

One of the most singularly brilliant pieces of post-hardcore appeared in 1994 in the form of Drive Like Jehu's second album Yank Crime. If anybody ever wondered where At the Drive-In stole absolutely everything from, well, this is it. John Reis was dividing his time equally between the schtick of Rocket from the Crypt and the furious, and furiously complex Drive Like Jehu. Yank Crime is made up of nine astoundingly convoluted and unpredictable pieces of livid post-hardcore rock, with time signatures which contort and twist and collapse under the weight of an absolutely relentless grinding guitar assault. Even when things calm down a bit, it's still spectacularly intricate. Rick Froberg's screaming vocals are the very definition of early emo (ragged, obtuse and howling), but they are doing little more than riding over the top of the blistering pre-post-rock (do forgive that absurdity - pre-post-rock! But that's what it is). In any event, this is such a monumental album, it kind of makes everything in the genre that came after redundant. Which I suppose is why emo ended up being such a sappy lily-livered waste of time.

LaRM day 116 (Dressy Bessy-Drifters)

The second Dressy Bessy album, Sound Go Round (2002) is slicker and more cleanly produced, but it's still loaded with bright, lively pop songs that make a summer day even better. Despite the sweetness, it's still not cloying and is instead just lovely, brisk indie-pop that comes and goes without leaving a trace but while it's passing is great fun. The girl-group vocal melodies are as jaunty as ever and the fuzzy guitars and motown drums are all present and correct. If anything the hooks are even sharper and the melodies even brighter and although there are a couple of clunkers, on the whole it's another lovely, lively power-pop album.

Strangely, probably the best Dressy Bessy album is the 2003 compilation of singles and odds and ends, Little Music, which covers the period 1997-2002. The songs on Little Music are great, perfect and pure examples of power-pop at its brightest and most enlivening. Tammy Ealom sounds completely thrilled on these records and the songs are simple, sometimes silly, but mostly deftly put together. These are 2 - 3 minute pop glories and although the sound is occasionally a bit muddy, it's a great record and probably the closest of their albums to replicate a sunny day. The next studio album was 2004's self-titled effort. Things do start to go a little awry on Dressy Bessy, the songs aren't as immediate, the sense of abandoned joy is also on the wane. The songs are too densely constructed for simple pop songs and although it's still a real treat to listen to, this time around when it's over virtually nothing has stuck in your head. The killer hooks have been tempered and you get the feeling that possibly ambition has got the better of Ealom's songwriting. It's still great fun, but there's a strange sense of strain in the records which is a sense. The general feeling is that the two albums that followed are really bad and I can sort of imagine and don't want to find out.

Kris Drever is a key figure in the most recent renaissance of traditionally founded folk music, alongside the likes of John McCusker and Kate Rusby. All of them have found a way of making traditional folk sound wholly modern without taking the Cara Dillon approach of turning it into (albeit very respectful and very good) pop-folk. Drever is probably the least modern of the lot, but his records are absolutely without any trace of historical folky corniness (Bellowhead do the folky corniness for everyone else). Mark the Hard Earth (2009) is a really wonderful record, a cool album, but one that is really lovely to listen to, deeply grounded in folk traditions but rendering them into something very personal and emotionally true. There are some great songs, both traditional and original and the interpretations of the traditional tunes are extremely clever. One thing that is interesting about Drever's two albums is that he never shows off what a truly exceptional guitarist he is. We went with my parents to see him perform and both my dad and myself left feeling really glum that we would never be able to play like him no matter how hard we tried. To explain just how well this album works within its genre I'll just say that Zoe hates the English folk tradition with a burning passion and will only just grudgingly accept Sandy Denny and Kate Rusby, but she loves, absolutely loves, the Kris Drever albums.

In 2008 Drever teamed up with contemporary John McCusker and, more unexpectedly, Roddy Woomble from indie-rock also-rans Idlewild. I never got Idlewild, although I know some people who adored them, and it's a surprise to see Woomble reappear as part of a folk act, but it works in a strange sort of way. Before the Ruin (2008) is very different to a traditional folk album, in many ways it's more of a low-key rock album, but McCusker's superb fiddle work and the obligatory accordion mark it as an album of its genre while not really belonging to it. It's all pretty smart and the songs are likewise clever and unexpected, twisting around and shifting without announcement. It's a strange record and it's a difficult one to really get to grips with, but if you don't try to work it out, it's weirdly affecting and surprisingly delicate.

Another one from the endless stream of records from members of the Broken Social Scene, this time Kevin Drew's Spirit If... (2007). Closer in sound and spirit to the early BSS albums than Brendan Canning or Jason Collett's records, Spirit If... is full of the huge, bustling, anthemic indie-rock that we all know and (sometimes) love. It's a slightly more mixed bag, scrappy and occasionally losing concentration, but it's still a big, untameable record, bursting with ideas, good, bad and indifferent. It's that abject disinterest in quality control that's both frustrating and endearing about a lot of the BSS crowd's records and it's demonstrated at its best and worst on Spirit If... There's too much of it for a start, going on for over an hour, and the confused character of the album means that it's hard to keep focussed on it throughout, but when it's good it's excitingly good, overflowing with exuberant enthusiasm and life and wholeheartedly celebratory in its denial of limitation.

The first Drifters album, Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters (1956) was something of an anomoly in that Clyde McPhatter had left the group over a year before the album was released. It's basically all of their single tracks compiled and that goes some way to explaining the superb nature of the album. This is pretty much all gold, template-setting post-doo-wop pop music created for swooning teens, and there's not a dud in amongst this supremely smooth dance music. It's the foundation of R&B as it would become, and it's fantastic stuff. It's strange to listen now with such turbulent times distancing us from the record, knowing that this is absolutely game-changing music, because, of course, it sounds so dreadfully quaint now. But I suppose that's the point, just as Elvis sounds unthreatening, just as so too do the Sex Pistols, time neuters pretty much all culture, but pop music has been particularly susceptible. Anyway, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters may have a ghastly, cloying version of 'White Christmas', but that aside, it's fabulous. And incidentally, it's got probably the best cover of any contemporary music album outside the jazz world to that date.

More of the same for 1958's Rockin' & Driftin', but slightly less so. There's a disjointed feel to Rockin' & Driftin' that is the direct result of its construction. Like Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, this album was compiled of a series of singles released over the preceding two years, during which the group struggled to find a vocal identity following McPhatter's departure. Hence there are different people singing these songs and it gives the album an uncertain feel. The songs aren't as directly strong either, and you wouldn't necessarily peg the Drifters of Rockin' & Driftin' as the same ground-breaking outfit. Nonetheless there are still some fantastic pre-rock n roll songs here ('I Got to Get Myself a Woman', 'Fools Fall in Love' and the heartbreaker ballad that people simply haven't got the skill to write anymore, 'I Know') and it certainly stands up as a grand example of its time.

Finally for today, 1962's Save the Last Dance for Me. By the time the album was released Ben E. King had joined, sung with and left the group over a year before, and it's a compilation of single tracks. Typical arrangement for the band it seems. Anyway, King's contributions are relatively few and it's Rudy Lewis who takes the lead for the most part. Save the Last Dance for Me is a smoother, string-laden affair than anything that preceded it, and saw the Drifters start to participate more fully in the straight pop genre, leaving the doo-wop pretty much behind. This is slick stuff and extremely well put-together, but it lacks the rough edge that had distinguished the band. As ever, there are some fine songs here, but you can almost hear the sound of rustling jackets as the synchronised dancing kicks in.