LaRM day 111 (Julie Doiron-Donnas)

The really special Julie Doiron records start with the gossamer fragile Loneliest in the Morning (1997) which is a lesson in emotional restraint. You sense throughout that something truly heartbreaking is going on in these songs, but the resigned, gentle way in which they're delivered implies a simple melancholy instead, and the end result is extremely affecting. Doiron's clumsy, quiet guitar playing and wayward, delicate vocals fit each other so well that it sounds as if the whole thing is perfect rather than markedly untutored, and the songs create a wonderful rainy day mood that I always find gets me very deeply. There's no melodrama involved in any of this, just simple everyday experience and Loneliest in the Morning serves as a reminder that we're all allowed to sometimes feel a little blue about relatively mundane experiences. A different proposition, but equally good is self-titled album by Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars (1999). In some ways it's a surprise that Doiron's songs work so well in a full band context, but in fact fleshing them out brings out the innate textures in them in a really nice way, and provides a grounding for material that can sometimes seem a little shaky. Some of Doiron's best songs are on the Wooden Stars album, and she reworks 'Dance Music' and 'Sweeter' from Loneliest in the Morning to demonstrate the contrast between the band work and her solo approach.

2001's Desormais returns for the most part to the stripped back feel of Loneliest in the Morning, but this time out everything is even quieter, even more restrained and despite the occasional presence of a drum kit, it's all incredibly sedate. The songs are all sung in French and the overall mood is unremittingly downbeat. The introduction of some obscure electronic beats and noises is a nice touch but I don't think really adds much. Many people think this is Doiron's best album, but I don't think her songs are shown to best advantage when they're reduced so far. It's certainly very successful as a mood piece, but I don't hear enough melody in it all for my taste. Likewise the very similar follow-up, Heart and Crime (2003). Again, it's quiet and gloomy almost to the point of sounding despairing but I much prefer Heart and Crime to Desmormais, there's more immediacy to it. Nonetheless, if it's raining out and you want to feel wistful it's a pretty good choice, otherwise it doesn't really stand up as an album in its own right I don't think.

Finally we have 2004's Goodnight, Nobody. There is no great difference again between Goodnight, Nobody and the two previous albums. There is a lighter, airier feel to it than either Desmormais or Heart and Crime, but there's no real sense of development. It's still a lovely record, no mistake about that, but listening to all of the albums in one go hasn't really done them much of a service as the basic template remains too consistent throughout and I find myself wishing for something a little different by the time I've reached Goodnight, Nobody.

After her tenure in Throwing Muses and the Breeders and leading Belly, Tanya Donelly finally launched a solo career in 1996 with the double-7" Sliding and Diving. Lead song 'Bum' is a fizzing, lively tune, less directly pop than her work with Belly, but certainly more immediately accessible than the Muses or Breeders records. 'Restless' is a lovely low-key slow song with some plaintive pedal steel buried in the back of the mix which is nice touch. It always seems a surprise when Donelly turns out a delicate acoustic number, but she's certainly good at them. The other two songs are pretty decent ('Human' is a furious bit of indie-pop and 'Swoon' is a fairly rough early version of a fantastic song that would be properly fleshed out on the debut album) but it's the songs on the first 7" that are the real keepers. The debut solo album, Lovesongs for Underdogs is a terribly underrated album. It may be a glisteningly slick record, keenly produced and buffed up with a pop sheen that's almost blinding, but it's also got some superb pop songs on it, and Donelly's way with a slightly off, somewhat unpredictable pop melody is at a peak throughout Lovesongs for Underdogs. I think people were maybe disappointed that she was prepared to make something so unashamedly crowd pleasing, but when you've got the songs, you might as well show them off. If there is a difficulty it's maybe that the high polish makes the record start to sound samey, and you need to keep an ear out for the highlights, but there are many of them and worth making the effort for.

2004's Whiskey Tango Ghosts has none of the bubbling indie guitar pop that Donelly had been trading in for the most part and is instead composed of quiet, slightly countrified downbeat songs that trade in big melody for a kind of emotional honesty instead. A delicate but somewhat gloomy record, Whiskey Tango Ghosts has some of Donelly's most sophisticated songwriting, but it's lacking in the sprightly off-beat sensibility that she had made her own. As such it's an impressive but oddly cold record, one to admire more than adore.

One thing that has always confused me about those indie halfwits at Pitchfork is that while they fall over themselves to fawn over the most moronic mysogynistic rap records, they can't abide big dumb rock music. It's strange because the very things they seem to abhor in rock are often the self same things that they laud as challenging or exciting in the most unpleasant hip hop and rap. In any event, it's no surprise that they despise the Donnas, who quite brilliantly they have openly accused of being anti-feminist because they're women playing cruddy cock-rock. It's ironic that male writers for Pitchfork should accuse women of being anti-feminist for playing dumb rock music and not only not criticise but actively praise male rappers who spew out the most repellent women-hating shit imaginable, no? Anyway, I have no truck with this pathetic indie dork muddled thinking, and I enjoy the Donnas records a lot. But then I like rock music. Third album, Get Skintight (1999) was the first Donnas record that moved away from the Ramones-a-like stuff that they had churned out on their first two albums, and was tellingly the first that they wrote themselves, hence the timid post Alice to post Crue influences showing in the background. For the most part it's still buzzsaw guitars and "yeah yeah" chanting punk pop, with lyrics about going out, ripped jeans and not doing much. It's great fun, and has no great ambition to do anything but be a good time.

Fourth album The Donnas Turn 21 (2001) reduces the scrappy punkiness further, making more room for simple rock riffing and more stupid stories of adolescent love, lust, angst and party going. It's a great record, buzzing from one 3 minute dose of rock pop with a punk edge to another. It's all knockabout, throwaway and silly, but it's still tons of fun. I think people see the Donnas as a kind of wannabe female Motley Crue, but the riffs are much closer to a rudimentary blues boogie and have a much closer affinity to AC/DC than to any hair metal. A lot is given away by the inclusion of a fine cover of Judas Priest's 'Living After Midnight'. The production is cleaner and the performances are more polished, and there's even the sense that they might nearly be able to play properly. I guess the ambition to be a rock rather than a punk act was sharpening everything up. I like Turn 21 a lot, it's stupid, it's fun and it knows exactly what it is and what at isn't and doesn't pretend otherwise.

And then by 2002's Spend the Night the punk is gone and it's all about the riffing. An even dafter record than usual, Spend the Night is a real rock record that clearly had potential chart action in its sights. Its super-shiny production and slick pop-rock styling is all pretty polished and there was clearly an ambition at play here (they nearly made it with a minor chart showing for the obvious single choice 'Take It Off'). They never actually pulled it off, but whatever, this is the album that the Pitchforkers particuarly loathed and it's the one I love the most. This is heads-down rock that only a really smart band could make sound so dumb. It's a fantastic bit of riff heavy rocking and to be honest I can't see what's not to love. Everything about it (including the ridiculous cover) is designed to be indeterminately anachronistic (I guess 1977 would be a fair guess at what's intended) and it works beautifully.

LaRM day 110 (Divine Comedy-Julie Doiron)

In 1999 a Divine Comedy best-of compilation was released entitled A Secret History. Almost everything on it has been covered already but there are three songs (two new, one from a various artists comp) of which 'Gin Soaked Boy' is great, 'Too Young To Die' is good and the disco cover of Noel Coward's 'I've Been To a Marvellous Party' is entirety inexplicable. However, early pressings had a bonus disc of rarities and live tracks. There are some fascinating things on the rarities disc, including a bunch of cover versions which speak volumes about Hannon's interests and influences (Bowie's 'Life on Mars', Kraftwerk's 'The Model' and most surprisingly but most tellingly Talk Talk's 'Life's What You Make It', together with a delicate rendition of the hymn 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' which Hannon performed on Irish TV in tribute to his father). The most interesting stuff by far though are the demo versions of songs, including an indie-pop version of 'The Certainty of Chance' which underscores how well written Hannon's songs are, 'Bleak Landscape' which is a great song that never made it onto Liberation, and 'Soul Destroyer', a song from the first, disowned and long unavailable album.

I haven't got or heard 2001's Regeneration which is reputed to be a downbeat rock record and I can't really imagine that working so well, so it's straight on to 2004's Absent Friends. Hannnon's stated ambition for Absent Friends was apparently to make an album that would simply be lovely to listen to on a cold night with a roaring fire, a tumbler of whiskey and a labrador at your feet. I think he pretty much managed it. It's certainly a relatively light record with much less of the grandiose orchestration and complex arrangement. Instead there a number of more or less charming chamber pop songs which are occasionally very slightly grating but mostly whimsically endearing. There are lovely songs on Absent Friends (the orchestration on the wonderful 'Our Mutual Friend' really confirms Hannon and Talbot's Poliakoff-esque musical approach to representing culture) and although not much of it sticks in the mind after it's over, that's sort of appropriate - I don't think it's intended to show the same vaulting ambition of old, more simply it's to entertain and amuse. And I think that has been pretty much Hannon's use for the Divine Comedy since. I haven't got 2006's Victory for the Comic Muse, but 2010's Bang Goes the Knighthood certainly has the same kind of feel to Absent Friends. It's relaxed, sometimes silly, sometimes showy, but almost always imbued with a simple charm, and although the song structures are still fairly involved, the orchestration is light and restrained, backing rather than lifting the songs, and it's all for simple spiritual pleasure. Some people will find this stuff more annoying than ever I suspect, but I can't help but feel a real affinity with most of Hannon's records.

The critical view of Bonnie Dobson's Good Morning Rain (1970) is generally that it's a bland bit of post-folk countrified MOR that has little, if anything, to particuarly recommend it. What's interesting about this view is that it demonstrates precisely how aribitrary the critical view tends to be, and how determined it is to be moulded by itself. Good Morning Rain may not be a clearly groundbreaking or remarkable piece of work, but it's absolutely the kind of record that's due a purely arbitrary "critical re-evaluation". If someone on allmusic or pitchfork wrote an article declaring Good Morning Rain one of the great lost albums of the 1970's the reviews of it across the net would suddenly reverse, I guarantee it. Anyway, enough ranting about how mind-bogglingly stupid people are, and on to Good Morning Rain itself. It's a slight but an utterly charming record, and one which while being entirely in thrall to its time, also sits weirdly outside of it. It could never have been made at any other time, but it doesn't exactly sound of its time either. Dobson's high, clear vocals are extremely pleasant and the arrangements of songs by Jackson Frank and Ralph McTell, among others, as well as her own compositions, are quietly pleasing. I think it's a really nice record and one that is many times better than its reputation. Besides, I love the idea that she became head of admin for the philosophy department at the University of London after the singing career faltered.

While playing bass in Eric's Trip, Julie Doiron spent a bit of timing writing and recording on her own, and her first album, an eponymous release of singles and compilation tracks under the moniker Broken Girl (1996) is a essentially a collection of low-key home demos, which effectively set the template for her records for the next ten years. Simply recorded, just Doiron and her acoustic guitar, these are brittle fragments of an extremely tender nature, Doiron's wilful, untutored voice ringing with honesty throughout. Taken as a mood piece, it's a beautiful album, full of minor heartbreaks and weary days. In some ways Doiron is the antithesis of the popularly understood idea of female singer-songwriter with guitar. There's nothing showy here, it's all delivered with eyes to the floor, fringe grown out to hide behind, but conversely there's nothing hidden in the songs, everything is honest and very pure. Doiron's intent is mood rather than song as such, and so there's nothing remarkable about either voice or guitar playing, or indeed songwriting, and it's scrappy and unfocussed, yet there are plenty of pointers to the achingly lovely stuff to come.

LaRM day 109 (Dirty Three-Divine Comedy)

The Dirty Three, when not helping out old chum Nick Cave, make startlingly affecting, haunting records of a deceptive simplicity. Like Rachel's they rely on a kind of postmodern instrumental chamber music approach, but where Rachel's are skittish and try out all kinds of things in the search for emotional connections, the Dirty Three are more rigorous. There's no moving outside the strict format of guitar, drums and violin, and they explore every parameter there is to be explored within that limited framework. It's all lucid and descriptive whilst being simultaneously sedate and graceful and although there's always the sense of imminent collapse throughout their work, it holds because of the strict emotional drive that moves the music forward. It's occasionally sepulchral, often crepuscular but always deeply affecting, and the nautical theme that they have relied on often in titles and artwork is strangely appropriate - you could almost imagine sea-wrecked mariners hearing these pieces drifting over the seas in the night.

After Seefeel split up Mark Clifford released a couple of EPs and an album under the name Disjecta (not to sound like a sort of grime artist, but after a Samuel Beckett essay). It's similar to Seefeel's post-ambient electronica, but even more clinical. The album, Clean Pit and Lid (1996) is slick and slippery and it uses its status as a Warp release to show off just how much the Aphex Twin wasn't the only person capable of redefining the electronica genre, from keyboard noodling into a sort of post-Autechre mathematical project. It's determined and spacious, and it has a habit of breaking down into headache inducing, tinny repetitions. It's certainly clever and it's certainly compelling, but it's all head and no heart and the electronica by way of shoegaze that he made in Seefeel I think was much more engaging than the Disjecta work.

To kick off a Divine Comedy marathon should have been the 'Europop' single from 1992 but none of the three extra songs on it are anywhere to be found on the legitimate internet, so we have to start instead with the second album (and first widely available), Liberation (1993). As an album Liberation is something of a mess, but as a statement of intent it couldn't possibly be clearer. Neil Hannon's ambition to be simultaneously F Scott Fitzgerald, Anthony Trollope, Collette, Cole Porter, George & Ira Gershwin, Ray Davies and Oscar Wilde is remarkably well established by the personality he adopts and portrays on Liberation. The themes, the preoccupations, the effete Englishness by way of Ireland are all clearly set out and in many ways, although the album can be an irritation, you have to marvel at the completeness of Hannon's vision at such an early stage. Musically there's all sorts going on in the chamber pop framework of Liberation from stupid and annoying out and out pop song ('Europop', 'The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count' - always ironic though) to superb Brackhage style sound experiments ('Europe By Train'). There's Evelyn Waugh style throwback irony ('Your Daddy's Car'), to renderings of Fitzgerald in pop song ('Bernice Bobs Her Hair') by way of tributes to Mr Benn ('Festive Road'). There are a few pointers to the great records Hannon would make, and there's a truly beautiful piece in album closer 'Lucy', one of Wordsworth's most affecting poems turned respectfully into a delicate pop song, but the album is too sprawling, lacking in focus and sounds too much like a collection of disperate ideas rather than a coherent album.

That album was follow-up, Promenade (1994) an arch, ornate record of remarkable sophistication, both musically and conceptually. Many people find the Charles Ryderish nature of Hannon's character, which is at its apex on Promenade, too much to take but personally I feel a great affinity for it. The entirely fictitious universe of rolling lawns, country houses and ballrooms that he creates is similar to that intellectual upper classism that Stephen Poliakoff finds so attractive, and so do I. The conceipt is one thing, the execution of it is another, and Hannon's masterstroke with Promenade is to populate it with beautiful, stately pop songs, performed with no pop instruments at all. The only concession is the drum kit, the rest is piano, woodwinds and strings and the result is a record that seems on the surface a fairly straight, if arch, pop album but that is in fact an acutely anti-pop/rock one. It makes no active concessions at all when you listen to it closely and this fits absolutely with the broader false-nostalgia theme of the album. It's really quite something. There are a couple of missteps with the rollicking 'A Drinking Song' and 'A Seafood Song' but that's only because they muddy the waters of melancholic, bucolic nostalgia that the rest of the album conjures. 'The Summerhouse' is the archetype of Hannon's approach at this time, graceful, and delicately paced, with cor anglais marking out the melody while he delivers a grandstanding vocal outlining what can only be a pretence of the romance of an upper-class childhood. It's lovely stuff. Really Promenade is romantic throughout with its tales of country house balconies, lovers running through the rain and freewheeling bicycle rides. It also ends with what I think is one of Hannon's most directly moving songs, 'Tonight We Fly'.

The next step was the one that finally divided critics once and for all. Casanova (1996) found Hannon turning his foppish, intellectual alter ego and making him a lascivious, leering creature, prowling Europe in search of prey. The songs are even more over the top and preposterously ambitious than ever and although there are some straight ahead pop songs, everything involves such ornate orchestration that it seems like a towering piece of showing off. It's a big, bold record and one that seems unprepared to make any concessions to accusations of vainglory. That's what hacked many people off and it's what I love about Casanova. I don't think Hannon has every knowing courted popularity in a mainstream sense and even though he has bemoaned a lack of financial reward in the past, I can't help but think that he knows as well as anyone that his career has been all about rowing against the tide. It's a band effort this time around and the music, although heavy with string arrangements, is for the most part principally based around the standard guitar, bass, drums set-up. There are very clear references to Scott Walker's records as well as to pop cultural ephemera and the orchestration is courtesy of Joby Talbot who plays an increasingly prominent role in the Divine Comedy records from this point. In fact it's Talbot's contributions that really make Casanova fly. The best songs are the ones in which Hannon reverts to the more pseudo-romantic mode and critical modes ('A Woman of the World' and especially closer 'The Dogs and the Horses' are fabulous, and 'Middle-Class Heroes' throws some successful cheap shots). It's an easy album to hate, I can understand that, but I think it's an easy album to love too.

I think Hannon sensed that it might be possible to take a similar approach to that of Casanova and up the ante in terms of the dramatic arrangements, but tone down the arch attitude and A Short Album About Love (1997) does just that. With its 30-piece orchestra foundations, it's an album of truly vaulting ambition and Hannon's deep croon is forced to reach new levels of control to maintain dominance over the music. The songs are great, indulging the Scott Walker fixation to the absolute limit, with lush, romantic leanings predominating throughout. 'Everybody Knows (Except You)' is lovely, 'The Pursuit of Happiness' charmingly snide, 'I'm All You Need' grand without being grandiose.

1998's Fin de Siecle assimilates all of the various approaches of the Divine Comedy's previous records and creates a monolithic piece of grandstanding pop, with a bitingly gloomy edge. There are massive pieces of orchestration from Talbot which drive along songs which in some cases might not otherwise stand up. It does also have the bitingly nasty, but sadly utterly irritating 'National Express', but in some ways that song is representative of an element of the album as a whole. There's something very dark and basically misanthropic about Fin de Siecle - elements which have never been much on show previously. Any romantic sense is completely taken apart by context. If 'Commuter Love' weren't so drily sarcastic it would be romantic and that's true of a lot of the album. It's as if Hannon is saying that if we didn't get that he was just being horrible before, he'd better make it crystal clear this time around. It's a shame because I think it's a fantastically well constructed record with some gloomily brilliant songs. There's silliness (the Kurt Weillisms of 'Sweden' for instance) and some tricksy but cheap social wordplay ('Generation Sex' is righteous but perhaps too easily curmudgeonly) - there always is with Divine Comedy records, but there's also some wonderful stuff ('The Certainty of Chance', 'Sunrise' which is a lovely finish).

LaRM day 108 (Dinosaur Jr-Dirty Projectors)

Loads more Dinosaur Jr today, starting with what I guess is generally regarded as the classic album, 1988's Bug. It is a superb album, there's no denying it. It's the purest distillation of the noise/melody structure that they used as their foundation and it has some fantastic songs. Kicking off with probably their most well-known song, 'Freak Scene', a three chord wonder that defines just how much melody you can combine with frantic guitar mangling in three chords and three minutes. It's an incredibly simple tune but it showcases just how brilliant J Mascis' way with melody is. The rest of the album follows suit, but you can already faintly discern a slight mellowing in terms of the dedication to noise. There are some slightly slower and more expansive numbers ('No Bones' for instance) that point to the direction Mascis would go in the future. In some ways I wonder whether that's why Lou Barlow's contribution to Bug is the brutally unpleasant guitar squall noise experiment of 'Don't'. The inevitable "musical differences" would lead to Barlow leaving the band after the release of Bug. Again, like You're Living All Over Me before it, Bug doesn't have a dud moment, it's all superb.

With the departure of Barlow, Mascis seems to have decided that nobody could really get the job done the way he wanted and when it came to recording fourth album, Green Mind (1991), even drummer Murph was only allowed into the studio for three of the songs. Instead Mascis played and recorded everything himself with the exception of some small parts added by luminaries of the indie scene. All told then Green Mind is sort of a solo project rather than a band album, and as such it really is mightily impressive. A lot of the grungy, squalling guitar is stripped back and there's a lot of acoustic guitar instead. Admittedly it's then buried in fuzz-bass and deep drumming recorded at the top of the mix, meaning that it's all still pretty heavy. The songs are great, engaging bits of indie rock melody and (although nobody really agrees with me) I think that some of the songs on Green Mind are the best Mascis ever wrote. Follow-up, Where You Been (1993) carries on in direction of Green Mind. It's cleaner, more precisely produced and although some of the songs are superb ('Start Choppin'', 'Get Me', 'What Else Is New') it's perhaps a little too secure and clear. There's not much of the messy, thrilling unpredictability of the earlier albums. I suppose Mascis was mellowing into the kind of singer-songwriter that he always idolised but never emulated (Neil Young being the most glaringly obvious touchstone, due to his wilful switching from scrappy electric guitar workouts to delicate acoustic numbers) and that's no bad thing. Where You Been still has its due amount of huge solos and solid guitar chops and most of the songs really are great and it's only in the context of what went before that it sounds a little jaded. Without the precedents it's superb.

Although there were some great songs still in Mascis (the mighty 'Feel the Pain' for instance) it was all diminishing returns and I never got round to picking up the last two albums (Without a Sound and Hand It Over) before the band called it quits . After many years of blisteringly acrimonious feeling (understandable bearing in mind that Mascis had sacked both Barlow and Murph) the three original members reunited in the mid-2000's (much like every other band that ever split up has) for a tour, which led in turn to the recording of Beyond (2007). It's a grandstanding return. Sonically it's as if nothing has changed in the world, the chugging, thudding rhythms and the muddy, propulsive guitar combined with Mascis' melody and drawling delivery are all present and correct, but it sounds like a band energised. It's a great, lively, enthused record and Mascis' songs are really strong again. Even Barlow is allowed a couple of tracks which must mean that all was well in the Dinosaur camp. Only two years later and another Dinosaur Jr album appeared, 2009's Farm. Farm is slightly more subdued than Beyond, but that's not a bad thing, as the songs are as strong as ever. Indeed, some of the slower songs are really lovely ('See You' is gorgeous for instance) and there is still the sense that the band are working together well. You don't have that dramatic tension of old, but then we're all a lot older and a lot less impatient now aren't we?

Now much as I should be inclined to absolutely slate everything about Dire Straits, I can't do it. I can't do it for a number of reasons, but primarily because they were a big part of my childhood (my mum and dad were big fans) and they were the first band that I saw live (Wembley Arena, 10 July 1985. I had just turned 12. The whole concert is on YouTube for some reason), and I loved it. Obviously Brothers in Arms is pretty awful and everything after it is absolutely unforgiveable. But the early records, I can't help but like. It's the same thing we've discussed before - I have no idea if they're actually alright or appalling because all I hear is being young again which is a great thing. So, the eponymous first album is probably genuinely the best. It's the one on which Knopfler indulged all of his burning love for JJ Cale's albums and it really does sound like an Anglicised version of Cale. Hilariously, on a couple of songs ('Water of Love' particularly) Knopfler's vocals are recorded with exactly the same level of reverb that Cale always uses and he sounds identical. The songs are langourous, smooth but occasionally loping and always subtle. There's some nicely cynical lyrical content too which seems surprising considering the anodyne nonsense that would constitute lyrics on later records. I don't know but I think it's probably a genuinely decent record.

I've never had any reason to pick up the other albums, but I couldn't say no to a mint copy of the double live album Alchemy (1984) when I found it for 50p. As overblown, showy live records go, Alchemy even gives the notorious live sets by Humble Pie, the Floyd and Rush a run for their money. It's preposterous. Every song goes on forever but the crowd love it - listen to them clap along to the one note bassline of 'Private Investigations'! Despite my innate affection for Alchemy, I have to admit for the majority of its 90 minute running time it's pretty bloody boring. Finally for "the Straits" we have the 1998 catch-all compilation Sultans of Swing: The Best of 1978-1993. As you can imagine by 1993 any notion of "best of" is looking pretty anaemic. But there are some choice early numbers - I have to admit my weakness for 'Lady Writer', 'Tunnel of Love' and even 'Romeo and Juliet'. It's a shame there's no 'Skateaway' or 'Portobello Belle' though. Balls, do I have to get Communique and Making Movies now? Please God, don't make me. Anyway, Sultans of Swing has five decent tunes at the front and one at the end and a whole load of unspeakable garbage in between.

Dinosaur Jr and Dire Straits. Whoever would have thought? Oh well, I'm no indie snob, I'm prepared to admit that there's a Dire Straits or two in the pile. Anyway, finally for the day it's the superb Dirty Projectors album from 2009, Bitte Orca. As angular art-rock goes this is the business. It's an expertly structured piece of disconcerting experimentalism but it's shot through with melody and as far as showing off goes it takes some beating. The greatest trick it pulls off is staying the right side of tediously pretentious, it's pure stuff and it's really pretty clever. The juddering, skittering songs are the ones that get the attention (the clattery 'Stillness is the Move' and twitchy 'Cannibal Resource'), and rightly so because they're fantastic, but it's the simple beauty of 'Two Doves', showcasing the vocal graces that the band can conjure up, that is the cornerstone of the album as far as I'm concerned.

LaRM day 107 (Neil Diamond-Dinosaur Jr)

More Diamond, this time 2008's Home Before Dark. Like 12 Songs before it, this was another Rick Rubin produced effort, clearly designed to effect the same career revival as Rubin's work with Johnny Cash before it. The crucial difference though was that Johnny Cash was a great musical artist whose style was adaptable and being put through the Rubin grinder brought out both subtle and sharp contrasts within Cash's singing and playing styles, whereas Neil Diamond is Neil Diamond. Nobody can do anything about that, so stripping down the instrumentation and making him more vulnerable musically doesn't really make much difference, he still sounds like the naff old crooner he is. Personally I think Home Before Dark is a much better album than 12 Songs, but it's still corny, overblown and pretentious, just like every other Neil Diamond album.

Alela Diane's records are perhaps something of an acquired taste, but personally I absolutely love her mixture of Karen Dalton folk with the more esoteric style of Espers. First album, The Pirate's Gospel (2006) is a rejigged version of a self-released CD-R that she put out in 2004. It's a supremely confident record as far as self-recorded and self-released stuff goes and there is a singular personality to it which is quite arresting. It's a dark, moody folk record which centres exclusively around Diane's voice and untutored acoustic guitar. There are some great songs, but ultimately it suffers slightly from its unprofessional recording, despite being extremely well done. No such issues with second album, To Be Still (2009) which is a wonderful record. The songs are better written, more structured and the whole album has an unassailable coherence to it which makes it sound like a journey rather than a series of steps. The instrumentation is added to, with occasional banjo and brushed drums, but it's still all about Diane's remarkable voice (she throws in some breathtaking vocal curlicues) and the deceptively subtle simplicity of the melodies. It's a great record.

Third album, Alela Diane and Wild Divine (2011) is a more band oriented record, but it retains the essential character of To Be Still. There's more of a driving feel to the album, it has more fire in its belly (but that's not saying much to be honest), and in some ways it's an improvement, in some a detriment to what preceded it. The band arrangements for some of the songs are spectacular ('Elijah' for instance is fabulous) and some fall a bit flat and would have worked better if they were recorded with just Diane and her guitar ('Heartless Highway'), but the spooked out folk and old-time Americana feel remains perfectly and timelessly intact throughout nonetheless and on the whole its a really grand album.

From one great voice to another, but a marked contrast. Cara Dillon has possibly the clearest, purest singing voice I've ever heard. I think only Sandy Denny had a better voice in the folk genre, but even Sandy's voice had an edge of grit. Dillon's is crystal, absolutely pure, it's really quite remarkable, and she puts it to probably it's most perfect use. There's little folk purism about Dillon's albums, they often veer scarily close to a kind of lightweight folk-pop, but they're always just grounded enough to stay the right side of corny. In truth, even when they sound a bit light, they are still stunningly beautiful, and it's all because of the voice. Second album, Sweet Liberty (2003) is to my mind her best record (I don't think anybody else agrees though) because it has exactly the right combination of traditional tunes and originals (all co-written with husband Sam Lakeman) and they are all played and recorded with great care, and all showcase not only Dillon's voice but also her excellent interpretation. It's a beautiful album, full of a delicate melancholy leavening what can seem at first an excess of sweetness.

Third album, After the Morning (2006) is another great bit of interpretive modern folk, and although to my mind not as immediately successful as Sweet Liberty, it is still a wonderful record. The difficulty is that the band play more of a prominent role and it brings out the pop side of their approach too strongly. This isn't the Corrs by any nightmarish stretch of the imagination, but it is perhaps a little too well produced and a little too clean. It's a minor gripe though because Dillon and Lakeman's songwriting is as strong as ever and her voice is its usual perfection. Her most recent album, Hill of Thieves (2009) is an improvement again, showcasing Dillon and Lakeman's superb ability to interpret traditional songs in a way that makes them seem fresh and relevant, as well as writing originals that sit perfectly in amongst the traditional tunes. It's a lovely album, again shot through with an innate sadness that suits modern folk so well. It's no surprise that the mini folk supergroup Equation drafted Dillon in to replace Kate Rusby who is in many ways an earthier kindred spirit to Dillon. It's a charming album, much more deeply rooted in the folk tradition than After the Morning, and one which proves that folk music as a moderately mainstream concept doesn't have to sound like the kind of hideous stuff that tends to get churned out under the name of "folk". And that voice, good heavens.

And so on to something completely different. You're Living All Over Me (1987) was Dinosaur Jr's second album and the first to really crack the pop melody crossed with blistering noise combo that they made their own. J Mascis' songs really are lovely and the fact that they came out of a morass of squalling guitars and pounding drums really works beautifully. Everybody knows what Dinosaur Jr sound like pretty much, but You're Living All Over Me is a highlight primarily because it's messily recorded, leaving all the most grungy, scruggy mess of noise at it's most overwhelming, which is precisely what the sweet melodies need to make them really stand out. You're Living All Over Me also has Lou Barlow's first properly successful sound experiment in 'Poledo'. Of Mascis' songs the real standouts are 'Little Fury Things', 'Sludgefeast' and 'In a Jar' but to be honest there isn't a wasted moment on the album, it's all scrappy, messy, noisy gold. A single of 'Little Fury Things' was released with the album and it has 'In a Jar' and a superb (is it ironic? who will ever know) cover version of Pete Frampton's 'Show Me the Way'.

LaRM day 106 (Derek & the Dominos-Neil Diamond)

Back from holiday and immediately into hell, both with work and with the musical odyssey because we start with 1000 e-mails and, much worse, the 1973 double live album In Concert by Derek and the Dominos. Now I don't have much time for Clapton at the best of times, but this endurance test really takes the biscuit. There's scarcely a song under the 10 minute mark and at least two break the quarter of an hour mark. And why? Because if you're playing generic blues riffs in a "jam" then you obviously need to keep going forever and ever and ever, whether the audience cares or not. Honestly this stuff is like that scene from American Werewolf in London where the lead character wakes from a nightmare to discover that he's in another one. As each song on In Concert ends you think, to quote the title of one of the hideous workouts on this album, it's 'Got To Get Better Soon'. By God it doesn't though. This is one of those records that are sometimes described as "musician's albums". By that is meant that it's one tedious dose of showing off after another, designed to appeal specifically to people who think that playing like either Gary Moore or Yngwie Malmsteen is a reasonable ambition. It goes on forever and it's awful. This incidentally was another gift from Patrick who rejoiced in discovering that it was released in 1973 and could therefore excise it from his collection and foist it on mine.

Jackie DeShannon was one of the first key female singer-songwriters and amongst the Beatles covers she made some great records. However, by 1972 her style was getting a little glitzy and a little pat and her self-titled album from that year is something of a disappointment. There are some decent covers of songs by, amongst others, John Prine, Van Morrison and Neil Young, but it's DeShannon's four originals that are the most interesting songs here. It's all a little controlled and a little flat and as a result it isn't as engaging an album as it could or should be with the material on it. Going back a bit, the brief compilation album Classic Masters (2002) covers the singles that she released between 1963 and 1970 and there is some wonderful stuff here. It basically covers the biggest hits that she had in that period and it is woefully short of material that would give a proper overview of just how wide-ranging her approach and how wonderful her voice was. Nonetheless the 12 songs included are all top-notch. Her versions of 'Needles and Pins', and unexpectedly the Band's 'The Weight' are great but it's her Bacharach & David songs that are the definitive versions. 'What the World Needs Now is Love', 'Come and Get Me' and 'A Lifetime of Loneliness' are simply wonderful. The real glory though is in DeShannon's talent as a songwriter which was shown in this early material - 'When You Walk in the Room', 'Put a Little Love in Your Heart' and 'Love Will Find a Way' are truly classics of 60's pop music.

Can anybody explain to me why I thought that Destiny's Child were anything other than abject garbage? Whatever the reason, listening to The Writing's On the Wall (2000) helps only to further prove that most pop music is shit, even half decent pop music. I suppose I quite liked the big singles 'Jumpin Jumpin' and 'Say My Name' but it turns out they're appalling. I mean, this is a terrible album and it's one that demonstrates how easy it is to be wrong footed by pop and also what a remarkably short lifespan most of it has. The Writing's On the Wall sounds terrible: tinny, sharp and processed to the nth degree. Hollow and vacuous both musically and intellectually, it's utterly bereft of charm, grace or style and it's a mystery what it's doing in my collection. And the damn thing goes on for almost an hour and a half. Oh, and incidentally, if the lyrics to '8 Days of Christmas' aren't the most egregiously offensive ever written then I'll be most surprised.

Belgian indie outfit dEUS have had their moments over the years and early single 'Via' (1994) is a good example. It and B-side 'Violins and Happy Endings' are both decent bits of slightly dated lively and angular indie rock but which point towards more than simply Pavement rip-offs. A single from a couple of years later, 'Little Arithmetics' (1996) shows just how quickly the band were developing. A delicate and graceful, unshowy and charmingly low-key song, 'Little Arithmetics' is leagues ahead of what many indie rock bands were capable of at this point. The other three songs included are not as good by any means, but they are a decent bunch of indie B-sides. There's a big gap then to the only dEUS album I've got, which is 2008's Vantage Point. Vantage Point is interesting in that it highlights that weird disjunction between UK, American and European indie music. There's something that feels faintly naff in even the best European indie rock and it's hard to define exactly what it is, but I think it's mostly in the minds of a UK audience. Vantage Point is a great album, pretty much every song is a brilliant example of how a fairly typically 90's indie band should have developed into the 2000's but there's still something that feels not quite right. It may simply be that the production concentrates just slightly too heavily on keyboards and noises to let the songs really breathe, but whatever, it's all minor quibbles because Vantage Point really is a fine record. It's bold and alive to the fact that you don't need to compromise just because you've been at it forever (a lesson REM would have been wise to have learned for instance) and there are some interesting guest spots from Karin Deijer Andersson and Guy Garvey (who has been something of an evangelist for dEUS for some years now), and in 'Smokers Reflect' it has the song that shit bands like Coldplay and Keane have been trying and utterly failing to write for years, a great work that demonstrates that writing and playing "emotional" songs involves so much more than pretending.

DRRRRRRR, it's Kevin Rowland his Dexy's Midnight Runners, starting with the superb Searching for the Young Soul Rebels (1980). What a great record, eh? This is the stuff. If punk was to have any valuable legacy, it was that people could try out all kinds of stuff without having to fear failure, and one of the earliest bands to benefit was northern soul revivalists Dexy's. A bizarre and unpredictable amalgam of punk, soul, old-fashioned R&B and white soul, Dexy's were an absolute tour de force, an unstoppable ball of confidence and unshakeable self-belief. Searching for the Young Soul Rebels is a bold and unapologetic record with an old-fashioned sound delivered in a new ideology and with it's formalist arrangements and horn section, allied with Rowland's fantastic songs, it's one of the iconic and key albums of the early 1980's. It may have the smash hit 'Geno' but there's so much more going on here, from the swooning 'Keep It' to the propulsive 'Tell Me When My Light Turns Green', it's all great.

True to his notoriously whimsical nature, Rowland sacked pretty much the whole band and recruited a new outfit and designed a whole new look for follow-up album Too-Rye-Ay (1982). In many ways it's a better album, and the addition of a kind of mythological folkishness (those dungarees!) to the soul and R&B foundation creates a kind of new kind of neverland Englishness. The songs are fantastic, from the obvious ('Come on Eileen') to the less so ('Let's Make This Precious', 'Liars A to E'), and the whole album feels bright and alive, and absolutely bursting with an almost arrogant self-confidence. Rowland's transparent debt to Van Morrison is repaid with a legendary cover of 'Jackie Wilson Said' (we all remember the superb edition of Top of the Pops when Dexy's performed the song with a huge picture of darts player Jocky Wilson in the background). But as Rowland was so determined to make clear, the whole album is all about rising above influences and creating an almost self-contained mythology, and for the second time in three years, he completely succeeded.

By the time it came to record third album Don't Stand Me Down (1985) the band was reduced to essentially Rowland and two other members of the Too-Rye-Ay line-up. Once again, there was a wholesale change of image and style. The look was suits and neat hair, the sound was a very staid and sanitised version of the folk/soul of Too-Rye-Ay. That's not to say that Don't Stand Me Down is a bad record, it's far from it, but it's a very different proposition to what had gone before. This isn't lively, livewire stuff, this is endless hours in the recording studio pinning down perfection and losing the exuberance as a result. It's a very clean record, a very considered and orederly one, but it's a grower. The songs may unwind themselves over the course of ten minutes or so on occasion and first listen might leave you wondering where the melodies went, but repeated listens reveals a fantastically well structured and written album and if you approach it in more "adult" terms than the earlier album, it's very rewarding indeed. The public in 1985 weren't having it though, it bombed and that was the end for Dexy's. (Incidentally, listen out for 'One of Those Things''s ironic riffing on Warren Zevon's iconic piano motif from 'Werewolves of London'.)

Another curse of being born in 1973, Neil Diamond's soundtrack to the terrible movie of the terrible book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is his usual overblown nonsense, but this time with added pretentious pomposity thanks to the ghastly post-hippy crap of the book. It's awful. There's nothing else I need to say. Now, I know that sticking it to the Diamond won't go down well with my lovely friend Vicky, but I cannot understand the rennaisance of the man, which occurred in 2005 with the release of his 12 Songs album. It's just more of the same singer-songwriter come music hall barker by way of second rate street poet that he's always traded in and it's as naff as it ever was. I don't get it I'm afraid. I'll accept that 'Cracklin Rosie' is a fantastic tune and there have been a few others over the years, but honestly, he really isn't any good.