St. Vincent

On her 2007 debut album, Marry Me, St. Vincent, also known as Annie Clark, finally took centre stage, having previously been a member of the Polyphonic Spree and toured with Sufjan Stevens as part of his band.

Marry Me was a record that saw her flex her musical muscles, veering towards prog one minute, then dipping her toes into jazz the next. Throughout, however, Clark’s personality shone through; her lyrics were consistently funny, biting and honest, grounding her tendency to change time signature or style abruptly with a sense of humanity.

Two years on, her next record, entitled Actor and due in May, arrived with a certain amount of expectancy. The first taster, ‘The Strangers’, currently available for free on her website, hints at further experimentation, though it still maintains plenty of charm. “Paint the black hole blacker”, Clark sings ominously, over tinkling guitars, choral voices and rising woodwind that serve as a pretty backdrop. Things don’t stay pretty for long though, as Clark’s guitar erupts suddenly, effectively splitting the song in two; it’s like a Disney film suddenly being invaded by Quentin Tarantino. Clark’s barbed comments do little to chase away the uneasy atmosphere, as she paints images and snapshots of a relationship gone awry ‐ someone gets a black eye, a wedding turns into an argument.

In interviews, Clark has talked (less than seriously at times) about the influence of films and their soundtracks on her writing, and the tweeting birds and flutes on ‘The Strangers’ point to her using the conventions and clichés of film for her own means, with a dash of gallows humour and a nod to the Hollywood ideal thrown in for good measure. The humour and bathos of her lyrics will be familiar to fans of her debut, though here they’re used in a slightly more abstract way. As a result, ‘The Strangers’ takes a little while to fully reveal itself. However, as a brief pointer towards what can be expected from Actor, it certainly suggests that listeners, new and old, are in for a treat.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

The line between genius and madness is very thin indeed. Mr Rodriguez-Lopez seems happy to keep one foot on either side.

The busiest man in music presents us with another chance to delve inside his mind with his first musings on the follow up to 2006’s Amputechture (The Mars Volta). A bizarre experience with an ouija board, however, changed all that. Many fans of The Mars Volta will already be familiar with some parts of ‘Old Money’ with Omar and the rest of the band intentionally or unintentionally including parts in their live set.

Starting off in fine form with ‘The Power Of Myth’ (good enough to have been included on Amputechture or The Bedlam In Goliath) you forget that Cedric isn’t there. Bursting in with an abundance of energy and excitement, showing more innovation in one song than most bands do in a lifetime, you can’t help but listen in awe at the vision and technical proficiency of Omar. ‘Population Councils Wet Dream’ (where does he get these titles from?) bounces along with much the same vigour and intensity, deviating off the path at every given opportunity, managing to hold onto you without actually reaching the climax you hope for.

The pace is slowed down with ‘Private Fortunes’ as we get to see the mellow side of Mr Lopez. The latin tinged beats accompanying the erratic yet soothing wails of trombone sounding guitars gives you a chance to sit back and relax. The second half of the album is completely different. Lacking the focus and vision of the first few songs, the album floats in and out of intergalactic guitar solos and space jams. Offering little in the way of anything new and spending too long on less than interesting ideas. It is up to the title and final track to rescue us, which is does with great aplomb. Beginning with a spaced out intro leading into a multi-layered jazz groove, the mood is only dampened when Bixler doesn’t surface to murmur chaotic ramblings over some guitar trickery of the highest order.

Not since Hendrix has a man made a guitar sing so much. ‘Old Money’ shows the worst and best of Rodriguez-Lopez in equal measures. If you’ve never heard of him, this isn’t the place to start but if you’re already a convert then add another record to your collection. There’s certainly enough here to occupy your mind until The Volta return.

The Bishops

On this, their second full-length effort, The Bishops have eschewed the garagey sound of the previous album in favour of a broader, mod-ish palate. This doesn’t work too well, unfortunately, and I found the album a disappointment on the whole.

Referencing, be it with hooks, vocal effects or whatever, groups such as The Purple Hearts, Buzzcocks, The Coral and even Kaiser Chiefs, the band never seem to manage to come up with a particularly interesting tune on any of the 14 on offer here. Tracks one and two (’City Lights’, ‘Wandering By’) fail to grip and pretty much plod along. Things seem to be looking up on ‘Hold On’, as it has a bit of urgency a la Buzzcocks ‘Something’s Gone Wrong Again’ but immediately after we get back to meandering pace with the maudlin ‘Nothing I Can Do Or Say’.

‘Pass Away’ picks up the pace once more but is again a very one dimensional outing. Next up come ‘For Now’ and ‘Laughter In The Dark’ which would both easily pass for Kaiser Chiefs album tracks from any time in their career. Just after the halfway point we get ‘If You Leave Today’, another sub-Squire thumper. Ninth comes ‘Slow River’ which sounds so much like its immediate predecessor that it’s painful. Roger McGuinn should possibly consider suing for the band naming the dreary ‘He Was A Friend Of Mine’ as such.

At 11 ‘Rain Dance’, with its Inspiral Carpets meets The Shadows sound is to my mind the best song on the album. After that we’re onto a Coral soundalike in the shape of ‘Train Won’t Stop’. ‘Free To Do What You Want’ rocks along pretty well but is really too little too late to lift the whole package and lastly ‘Carry On’, with the inclusion of trumpets throughout, reminded me of The Housemartins in a jaunty frame of mind.

Here the guitar distortion was maximized, the drums were pulsating with the intensity of a road drill, and the solos were flying about like accidental bullets released from the clutches of a junior soldier’s rifle. This was in the territory of Grunge, but there was much more than just screaming about nothing in particular, and assaulting your ears with feedback-drenched guitars.

By the time 1995 had recovered from Kurt Cobain’s shocking suicide, though, Grunge had reached a crucial stage in its existence; if it wasn’t for those ‘Heroin Chic’ supermodels wearing flannel shirts on Milan catwalks, and the increasing number of Nirvana duplicates flooding MTV with nicely packaged anthems of pseudo-despairing confessions, then the expectation and pressure on Smashing Pumpkins wouldn’t have been as great.

But let’s face it: Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness was one of the most anticipated album of the 1990s and the fervent attention directed towards the band was nothing short of phenomenal. Much like U2’s situation before The Joshua Tree was released Smashing Pumpkins could have released a sequel to Lou Reed’s controversial Metal Machine (quite possibly the most extreme, nihilistic album ever recorded) and added the sound of two copulating squirrels to the mix without sacrificing their chances of having a Billboard number one.

So what did Billy do, then?

The answer is: He dug out his old Cure albums, brought in the keyboards, found comfort in the doom of his Black Sabbath records, and went through a marriage break down during the recording process. Oh, and he also decided to give the public a 28-song double album that would take in the whole spectrum of Rock, from Thrash Metal right through to the basic pop melodies of The Beatles.

As you can imagine, then, many Grunge aficionados would have had a near heart attack when they heard the rich piano arpeggios and epic string arrangements of the title track and the now seminal composition, ‘Tonight, Tonight’.

These two opening songs are so far removed from the terrains of Seattle, that it was if Grunge had never happened! Think of The Cure and Robert Smith’s love of the grandiose and add some epic military drumming, and you could have been forgiven for thinking this was one of the proudest pop records to have ever confronted the masses.

Not surprisingly, though, there has to be a reason why an album goes on to sell 16 million records, and with this great ability to shift units comes the obligation of continuity from the last album.

So that means we are referring to the ‘G’ word.

The Pumpkins were releasing singles on Grunge’s original label Sub-Pop as way back as 1989; they even had a song on the pro-Grunge film Singles (the track ‘Drown’ was included), and by 1993 they were openly acknowledged as a breath of fresh air in a sub-genre that needed something to challenge the awesome intensity of Soundgarden.

Predictably, then, the likes of ‘Jellybelly’ and ‘Where Boys fear To Tread’ have all the necessary Grunge ingredients of fuzzy guitar riffing, angry lyrics and noisy dynamics that you would come to expect from a band that emerged from the same scene as 1991’s revolutionaries. To totally emancipate from these roots would have been commercial disaster, and if anything, it would have been disappointing because The Pumpkins always were the best band from this mainstream assault.

But for every Grunge song there is a progressive, psychedelic Rock marathon of ‘Thru The Eyes of Ruby’ or ‘Porcelina of The Vast Oceans’; just around the corner from the magnificent pop explosion of 1979 are the ultra-heavy, metallic blasts of ‘Tales From A Scorched Earth’ and ‘Fuck You (An Ode To No One)’; to juxtapose the glorious folk harmonies of ‘In The Arms of Sleep’ there are moments of synth-drenched rock introspection such as the irresistible track, Love, for this is an album that is rich in diversity, high in experimentation and brimming with classic song writing techniques.

Like any essential album, though, there have to be at least three exquisite compositions, and one listen to Zero will confirm that life-affirming feeling of being part of something special.

Starting off with a razor sharp guitar riff, the six-string octaves are subsequently assaulted, the duo guitar attack of Corgan ad James Iha is executed with engineering precision, and the mammoth drumming of Jimmy Chamberlain is at its peak. Meanwhile, Corgan’s voice is more potent than any of his contemporaries because everybody knows that no body sounds quite like Billy does.

“Intoxicated with the madness, I’m in love with my sadness” he screams with frightening intensity, as the song wanders through the heaven of Rock guitar perfection. Ironically, this is one of few songs from the Grunge era to actually acknowledge that every genre has its clichés – and misery and disillusionment were two of Seattle’s most obvious.

How many other singers would have the courage to admit that they are shallow, they find comfort in self-pity, and they know damn well that being neurotic is more fun than being moronic? Around this time, American Rock bands were too busy analysing their solipsistic world in terms of amateur psychosis, where as Corgan was bearing his psyche to a music world that had become obsessed by failure.

Listening to a Smashing Pumpkins song is like being caught up in the momentum of something incontrollable and life threatening; you never know if you will see it through, but the extraordinary, dynamic force of Billy Corgan’s angst-ridden voice is more captivating than an opportunity to turn back time.

For evidence of his bludgeoning anger listen to the incredible power of ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’. This song is as infectious as a fatal disease.

The disturbing self-loathing of the “despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage” mantra is more than just an acknowledgment of the chaos of youth. These lyrics can still affect a fifty year old man who is bewildered by his lack of influence in a paralysing, beaurocratic job. We have all felt useless and insignificant at one point in our lives and this song is the reminder that we can still lapse into that self-destructive world where tyranny takes priority over consideration for others.

Not surprisingly, though, the disintegration of Corgan’s marriage is one of the key factors in making this record what it is. If you listen to this album you will be led to believe that love is the domineering concern in the minds of all human beings. The constant indecision between devotion and resentment, the self-destructive obsession with ideal pursuits, and the inconceivable paradox of finding happiness and despair in the same phenomena almost makes you want to participate in this psychological drama that Corgan has concocted. If love is as life-affirming and essential to one’s personal identity as suggested on this record, then I have been leading a mundane, directionless life and I want to experience the same turbulence as this record illustrates!

I mean, how can any listener remain stoic after one listen to Bodies – a song that sizzles with some rocking guitar riffs and heart-felt lyrics? Even beyond the “Love is suicide” hypothesis of the chorus, Corgan also shows that rock music can successfully incorporate words with more than just two syllables into the mix.

This album is a fantastic work of art because it focuses heavily on writing lyrics that are evidently more than mere words tossed onto a piece of paper and hidden behind the loud guitar distortion of a Marshall Stack. Likewise, the band are not limited to the traditional Rock set-up of drums, guitar and bass, for you will find the unique melodies of the mellotron and the luscious samples of harps here, as well.

‘Cupid De Locke’ and ‘We Only Come Out at Night’ are songs that exemplify Billy Corgan’s ability to introduce these types of instruments into a Rock arrangement. If Kurt Cobain was worried about making another Nirvana album that had to avoid Grunge ideology at all costs, then Billy realised his vision and carried on where the 1990s pioneering spokesman started.

Essentially, though, this is the album where Billy Corgan completed the transition from scruffy Rock geek to Nosferatu the Vampire reincarnated. Yes, you’ve guessed it: This is where the hair was shaved off, that famous ‘Zero’ t-shirt was donned and the glittery, silver pants were paraded.

What’s more, Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness is the album that made Smashing Pumpkins the biggest band in the world bar none. It only lasted a while because of Corgan’s decision to take a two year break, but by this time he had pronounced Rock music dead, alienated the impressionable kids from buying his albums, and driven a wedge through the hearts of all Grunge sentimentalists.

It’s a shame, really, that Corgan got more press in 1997 than Pol Pot’s crimes against humanity court case, for his infamous “Rock is dead” prediction was justified, and the subsequent 1998 album Adore – a record that lost about fifteen million fans, if commercial sales are anything to go by – was as good as anything the band ever released.

It’s only when something has disappeared that we realise how essential it is, and right now the music world needs Billy Corgan more than ever. Like any album that is well over two hours in length, Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness has its flaws, such as including unnecessary songs like the distressingly dull ‘Lily (My One and Only)’. But for all its grand designs and promises to be the best of the best, it certainly tells us that Billy Corgan aimed for the universe and only gave us the world.

The world is most definitely enough, though, and you’ll only find one or two albums in your lifetime that equal this masterpiece.

Mansun were the original art-school musicians who preached Marx, indulged in all things epic and quoted Marquis De Sade in the chorus of a UK Top Ten single. Singer Paul Draper was an enigma, a real intellectual introvert who was part rock star and part recluse. But whether you saw him as the supra-sensual dilettante or the stoic philosopher of modernist music, you cannot deny that the guy could write a good tune or three.

After the success of their surprise number one smash Attack Of The Grey Lantern in 1996, this Chester four-piece somehow found themselves in pole position as the band to fill the chasm left behind by a declining Brit-Pop scene that had witnessed the temporary blip of Oasis, seen Suede fail to crack America once again and, ultimately, allowed the androgynous neo-Goth rock of Placebo to dominate the charts for a short spell. Of course Radiohead had provided us all with an extraordinary masterpiece, but 1998 was in desperate need of something special and, true to form, it was Mansun who would provide it with Six, a record that has had a significant influence on modern rock music.

You see, Six is everything that is bad about music, yet it somehow manages to triumph. It is over 70 minutes long in length, there are no three minute pop compositions anywhere, the lyrics are proud to dwell in intellectual ambiguity and the production is so extravagant you wonder if Michael Jackson could even make a record as slick as this!

But the ultimate triumph is both immediate and retrospective. One listen will captivate you like the sight of a beautiful supermodel-cum-nymphoid who wants to arouse you in all her naked glory. More importantly, though, the lyrical manifesto will have you scrutinising, analysing, hypothesising and scratching your head as you dig out your copy of John Paul Sartre’s Nausea to get you in the mood for some lyrical trainspotting.

In retrospect, then, Six is a success because it utilised a unique Tears For Fears meets Pink Floyd sound whilst most of Mansun’s contemporaries were still worshipping their favourite Beatles and Stone Roses albums without creating anything new.

If 1996 was all about guzzling Carling, staying out for the summer and growing your hair like Liam Gallagher (whilst unconsciously imitating the gestures of an ape) then Mansun were determined to change the pages of NME in 1998 by continuing to use synthesisers, turning up the guitar distortion and bringing in some operatic female vocals to accompany a Tom Baker-narrated poem written by former Rolling Stone, Brian Jones.

The opener and title track, then, is about as challenging as modern rock music gets. It is an audio assault of epic proportions, yet the schizophrenic switch from pseudo-Grunge guitar riffing to atmospheric introspection should not be underestimated. Mansun quite clearly identified the need for some coherence in amongst their wildly ambitious songs and the way they manage to keep the listener interested here is a success in its own right.

The surprising self-pity of Paul Draper’s “as you see I kind of shivered to conformity” mantra blended with his tongue-in-cheek metaphysical “I feel no pain, but punch me in the stomach and I’ll feel it again” statements are an early indication that Mansun would not be offering the indie crowd any Don’t Look Back In Anger sentiments to sing along to.

Indeed, when I bought this in the first week of its release I instantly noticed just how much heavier the band had become. There are parts of this song that could easily fit into a Smashing Pumpkins album, yet the middle parts (I say this because there is no conventional structure to the song) are so bewildering they could be compared to the legendary experimentation of Talk, Talk!

Like, what the fuck?

As you can imagine, then, five minutes in you know that Six is determined to avoid categorisation, yet in all their ignorance the British music press decided to call it Prog-Rock!

But before you start experiencing horrifying visions of Emerson, Lake & Palmer donning the head bands and jamming in an atrocious marijuana den, abstain and show some tolerance.

The likes of Negative and Legacy are snippets of pop genius put through guitarist Dominic Chad’s effects pedals and delivered by Paul Draper in the most charismatic manner. These two bass-heavy numbers are what The Cure would sound like if they were covering XTC with Magazine at the mixing desk.

The emotive chorus of Legacy perfectly captures that rare brooding of Richey Edwards at his most introspective. Like Motorcycle Emptiness, Legacy possesses a similar self-destructive romance where “all relationships are emptying and temporary” and “reading novels is banned by the Marquis De Sade.” The sense of desolation immortalised in these four special minutes is quite remarkable considering the song is a simple composition of guitar, bass and drums.

Admittedly, not many other songs on this album are simple, but that should not present itself as a major problem for any mature listeners, nor should it discourage any staunch Antonin Artaud/Theatre of Cruelty devotees to throw it in the bin. This is still pop music at the end of the day, yet it is anti-pop in the way it is executed!

The likes of Cancer – a poignant examination of the loneliness and helplessness of religions – and Anti-Everything are classic, unconventional songs that threaten to tantalize with luscious melody and glisten with a magical pop sparkle. But they never do and somehow this deliberate act of teasing pulls you in even more as if you are part of this non-conformist parade.

There is something so musically uplifting about Six, yet the band’s incongruent deconstruction of verses and semi-choruses suggests it is always going to be a superficial celebration to match the surprisingly dark tone of the lyrics – dark in both humour (there is plenty of that here) and introspection.

For instance Fall Out is a bizarre hybrid of Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy – it is actually sampled here – and David Bowie! But before you make any accusations of Paul Draper being pompous, let me tell you that this is a surprisingly marvellous arrangement that is certainly not a lesson in self-aggrandisement, but more an example of the band’s unique sense of humour.

So when we get to the “I’m emotionally raped by Jesus” sing-along of Cancer we do not know if this is a deliberate shock tactic, a satire of the banality of pop choruses or the confession of a warped mind. Should we applaud the band’s humour or enthuse at the candid courage of a tortured person?

Perhaps the best thing we can do when listening to this album, then, is appreciate just what Mansun did for a stagnant pop music scene in 1998. Before you had Kid A, before you had The Cooper Temple Clause and Blur’s 13 album, you had Six – a record that to this day still holds a cult following of people who will always acknowledge the best kept secret in the annals of British music.

If you thought the Manic Street Preachers were the finest alternative to the laddish party-sound of ‘Madchester,’ then Mansun were the late nineties anti-establishment unit that hammered the last nail into the coffin of Brit-Pop.

I doubt you could ever imagine Noel Gallagher writing a daring song like Being A Girl and presenting it to his Neanderthal brother to perform. Can you imagine Liam adopting his monkey pose whilst singing “my deodorant hides the real me, these things elevate me above animals and I feel like being a girl?”

Furthermore could any other band write a track as poignant as Television? This song could be punk, synth-pop, psychedelic or even something produced by Prince. When Draper croons “I scratch my knee, I have to scratch the other” as if he was reading his own suicide message, you begin to wonder just why this band did not get an A-level course named after them, possibly something along the lines of ‘Existential despair and the overt use of humour to validate conceptual pragmatism in contemporary music.’

Describing how this song alone captures the perfect balance of humour, satire and self-pity is more difficult than explaining what happens on every page of Marquis De Sade’s one thousand and odd pages of 120 days of Sodom – a book that appears on the front cover of the album’s artwork next to George Orwell’s 1984!

Essentially, Mansun were a band who offered the future of pop music to a nation obsessed by the mundane ramblings of the working class. In 1998, drinking lager at rock concerts, belching in your girlfriend’s face, wearing your Adidas track suits and laughing at all forms of experimental music were de rigueur. So why did we have to wait until Radiohead shattered our illusions in 2001 when the initial revolution had been augmented by Mansun with this era-defining album?

I’m sure Draper and co will have the last laugh, though, because the now defunct Mansun have ensured their longevity by making one of the greatest records of all time. If Tears For Fears can have a resurgence 15 years later, then what would happen if somebody was to cover Wide Open Space and put it on the soundtrack to a cult film?

I’m sure we can expect a re-release in ten years time when Mansun finally get credit for all the Franz Ferdinands and Cooper Temple Clauses of this world who have obviously listened to a few Mansun albums in their time. I doubt we will have heard from Draper in that time, though, because sightings of him are rarer than symbolic gestures of friendship between Israel and Palestine.

Bearing almost no resemblance to their alter-egos of the sixties, who stumbled through a haze of drugs while frivolously plucking at strings and nonchalantly crooning about bicycles and ancient gods, the nineties Pink Floyd gorged itself on great ensembles of sound, with backing choirs, multiple percussionists, booming synth backing and hefty effect-laden guitar noise.

The album was consequently scoffed at by reviewers as being nothing but a tribute to what once was great. And it would be true to suggest that the album is not their best. But, for me at least, it stands perfectly in its place as the end of a long tale: the closing chapter of an act that has undergone such change it is scarcely believable. And for that reason alone, listening to the songs is an absurdly moving and inspiring experience. With the role of epilogue, The Division Bell sums up Pink Floyd’s transcendence from its innocent and simple infancy to its roaring, commanding adulthood.

Whether intentional or not, the album makes several noticeable references to previous eras of Floyd. Cluster One – there’s the haunting organ sound from Shine On You Crazy Diamond. On Poles Apart we hear the same cheery acoustic guitar sound used in such songs as Fearless and Free Four. And A Great Day For Freedom speaks for itself with its opening line: “On the day the wall came down…” But this isn’t just more of the same; the tone is different – more powerful, less innocent and sometimes a lot moodier. It’s easy to understand why a die-hard fan of the original sound would have been so disgusted.

But of what value is The Division Bell to those of us less educated in the history of Pink Floyd’s music? Even more! Any critic stripped of Pink Floyd’s past accomplishments would surely be impressed by this album. Were it the debut of some adolescent anorak-wearing indie train spotters with a name like ‘The Cooling Vice’ or ‘The Mysterious Blanket’ it would probably gather rave reviews across the nation. I can’t help but feel that it has been widely rated in comparison with previous Floyd efforts, and is therefore subject to enormous prejudice.

The Division Bell isn’t an earth-shattering feat of achievement (despite the fact that the album begins literally with the sound of the earth shattering). But it proves, once and for all, that Pink Floyd has grown old gracefully. Once again in 1994 they gave us new music. And great music.

The White Album isn’t the Holy Grail that some fawners seem to be adamant about pushing, but it is still a terrifically diverse and, at times, frenetic artefact and as listenable on the hundredth playing as the first. Like the Libertines some 35 years later, the White Album is the stage on which the original boys in the band played out their soap opera. The artistic one-upmanship of Lennon and McCartney, the directional pulls, the self-obsessions, the nods to the most observant fans, the spin-off legendary tales of feuds and sojourns… And sometimes they even sound like they’re having fun: Wild Honey Pie.

Lennon gets to put all his rock n’roll sensibilities into a big prom dress and swing them around, pleading and whining to his heart’s content. McCartney gets to go mad with the studio equipment and branch into the sub-genre-plundering that would mark out much of his post-script work. Harrison gets his mates involved and Ringo… well, Ringo is just Ringo.

They bask in the ability to pastiche their heroes (Rocky Racoon’s not a long shot from a bad Bob Dylan impression) and Lennon’s well documented love of the rock and the roll (his infamous jukebox was of course stock full of the stuff) is as well-hidden as a ferret in Compo’s trousers.

Stupid songs, they’ve made a few. In no particular order: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Piggies and the irrepressible The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill. I know I shouldn’t… but I love it! The really wonderful thing about Bungalow Bill is that it gets you all silly and singing along and then plunges you headlong into one of the most beautiful guitar songs ever written.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps, with its dream line up of Clapton and Harrison, climbs and chimes, gripping your heart and forcing it upwards, forming a lump in your throat the size Andover. While My Guitar Gently Weeps, with its quasi-sexual moans and groans and unstoppable electric wail, is the stuff of wet dreams for any subsequent pretenders. And ha! In your face Lennon and McCartney, one of the most endearing, enduring tracks was written by the boy, George Harrison. I love that.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun follows, with it’s poster-ready phrases “Mother Superior jumped the gun…” “bang, bang, shoot, shoot”. Again Lennon’s rockabilly cravings are indulged, and this is surely an uncomfortable listen for anyone who knows the story of St John’s death. Which would be everyone.

I’m So Tired, while nice and cute, highlights that whatever people say about Paul, John was just as incapable at resisting cringing throw-away rhymes. “I’m so tired/I haven’t slept a wink/I’m so tired/My mind is on the blink”. But it’s all forgiven with the little rock-breakouts throughout.

The piece de resistance of the ‘little’ songs is Blackbird. So simple “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/take these broken wings and learn to fly”, so lilting, gentle and sweet.

And by stark contrast: Piggies. Less said about that the better.

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? serves more as a jaunty commercial break betwixt Don’t Pass Me By and I Will. A commercial that is advertising al fresco shagging that is.

And then there’s the ladies: Prudence, Martha, Julia, Sadie. Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn. I don’t know why it is but whenever there’s a girl involved, the quality of the song takes a nose dive. Hmn…

Birthday, the opening track of the second record, is a fantastic explosion of rock. Made to be played loud it isn’t a far cry from the White Stripes. Not a far cry at all. A blistering opening to another jam-packed record. And Yer Blues, again, indulges the explorer, nay tourist, at the heart of The Beatles. A rocksteady Blues number, not an overly great one, but a valiant crack at pacing out a much-trodden path.

Mother Nature’s Son could have been lifted – except for issues of era and logistics – from Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Lovely. And then in the style to which we’re now accustomed the tune, genre and pace takes a hard left and we’re thrown from the buggy and into Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey. Actually, while it’s a toe-tapper enough, the name is far better than the actual song. Don’t you just hate that? A bit like getting a cat just because you think of a great name for it (nearly did that myself… one day I’ll get my Chairman Miaow).

And then there’s the punk – yes PUNK as in “make my day” as in nearly ten years later officially – freak out of Helter Skelter. If you haven’t heard this, and you have previously marked Macca’s card as a Frog Chorus-writing, puppy faced, vegetable lover with a penchant for slightly battered looking blondes, you’d be right. But he also managed to write some amazing, Stand Up Today And Be Counted, corkers.

And then there are the Revolutions (1 and 9 respectively). Ridiculously over-indulgent of course but come on, at the time they were pretty much demi-gods and the fact ego didn’t take over for all 30 tracks is something of a small mercy. I think we can forgive two. Besides if you ever need to scare some animals out of a room or perhaps make insurgent terrorists talk, the track that put the ‘mental’ in experimental (Revolution 9) is handy to keep in the premises.

A cohesive unit of James Gurley and Sam Andrew on guitar, Pete Albin on bass and David Getz on drums, the band required that something extra. Boy did they get it when a Texan girl with a raspy voice joined the band. The vocal starlet, Janis Joplin, had arrived. Word spread following their appearance at 1967’s Monterey Festival, and Cheap Thrill was released the following year.

Gritty blues leaks from every pore in the songs I Need A Man To Love and Combination Of The Two, but this is an album that surprises you by the fact you know two of the songs, without realising: the mesmerising beauty of Gershwin’s Summertime, and the awesome Piece Of My Heart – a song which is taken for granted now. Joplin’s voice is astounding and breathes real soul, the kind that gives Joss Stone wet dreams. Indeed this is an album that could never be produced now. Joplin would be given a makeover and the title would be changed to The Blues Sessions to aim for some margin of credibility. But in the 60s this was the start of it all. Times were indeed a changing, and Joplin became what can only be described as the first true female rock star.

Turtle Blues is a honky tonk piano tune, which would now be associated with Jools Holland, but it sounds so fresh on Cheap Thrills. Then just when you thought the album was getting a little too easy listening, Oh Sweet Mary blows you out of the water with four minutes of dirty guitar licks that give a full-bodied representation of how I imagine those days to have felt. Ball And Chain then heads straight for the gutter to dig out those real blues enthusiasts with a nine-minute assault on the senses that demonstrates Joplin’s vocal range superbly.

Cheap Thrills has now been extended to include four tracks not originally available, including two live tracks from the Grande Ballroom, one of San Fransisco’s most eclectic venues of the era. All four are worthy of a place on the disc and really get your rock and roll juices flowing, just as much as Led Zeppelin did in the years to come. Ok, you don’t get Jimmy Page’s guitar genius, but the vocals from Janis Joplin pick you up and dump you in a dream world in the same way as Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, and leaves you feeling the ‘Summer of Love’ (number one) from inside.

Buying old albums can be a risky business, and with so many classics of the time available it’s easy to see past Cheap Thrills. With The Beatles, Stones, Doors, Dylan, Hendrix and Zeppelin having so many to choose from, where do you start? Well if it’s the 60’s spirit you’re looking for then you really can’t get any closer than this million selling album, without the use of psychedelic drugs. Peace!

Not surprising, really, coming as it does from a band that grew up amongst the bomb sites of a post-war London. Even the photo on the cover comes with two fingers attached. The steel obelisk the band found on a Sunderland slag heap looks inoffensive enough until you notice that they appear to have pissed on it.

A by-product of Pete Townshend’s aborted Lifehouse project, the awesomely ambitious musical happening based on a vision of a totalitarian future where people live in virtual reality and can only find salvation through the emotional release of rock ‘n’ roll, (sound familiar?), this is an album that grabs your attention right from the start. The first track, ‘Baba O’Riley’, based on the guitarist’s new discoveries of the time, synthesisers and Indian mysticism (the song’s title taken from the name of the Indian prophet, Meher Baba, who was to have such a profound affect on Townshend’s life), suggests a band you wouldn’t want to bump into down a proverbial dark alley. It’s a multi-layered affair – a stereo panned keyboard loop picking up first piano then bass (a magnificent John Entwistle), and guitar before Keith Moon’s drums come crashing into your head. Then Roger Daltrey sings, or rather, screams and you actually find yourself turning the volume up even louder.

The next couple of tracks, ‘Bargain’ and ‘Love Ain’t for Keeping’, showcase the fantastic (Townshend and Glyn Johns) production of this album, a much more polished sound than its predecessor, Tommy. The guitars, whether acoustic or electric, sound sublime and there’s a particularly fine solo on ‘Bargain’; proof if it was ever needed that Townshend was, and is, much more than just a purveyor of loud power chords.

Even the song-writing space given over to another band member is well filled on Who’s Next, with Entwistle’s ‘My Wife’, a catchy tale of booze and marital strife, more than rising to the mark and a perennial favourite at gigs for decades. There’s a change of pace next with ‘The Song is Over’ (a slow atmospheric piano track with great Townshend vocals), the quiet lyricism of ‘Getting in Tune’ (with its closing verses of ‘Pure and Easy’, a song included on the 1995 re-issue cd that gives a neat resume of what Lifehouse was to about), and ‘Going Mobile’ (a song about personal freedom: “I’m an air-conditioned gypsy, that’s my solution”). Next up is another live staple, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ – the lyrics may be angst ridden (“no one knows what it’s like to be the bad man, to be the sad man”) but its beautiful harmonies are a great showcase for Roger Daltrey’s magnificent singing. And you’re a better man (or woman) than me if you manage to sing along during the hard bits.

Who’s Next ends, much as it begins, with the sound of an angry rock band battling against a hypnotic synthesiser loop. The epic ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ is perhaps The Who’s most overtly political song, yet it resolutely refuses to take sides. “Meet the new boss, he’s the same as the old boss” sums it up pretty well. Don’t trust your leaders, because they’re all as bad as each other – sound advice that’s even more convincing when screamed alongside the thundering noise of the world’s loudest band.

A classic album that no collection should be without.

Second Coming was obviously going to be the band’s “difficult second album”, especially with the deserved adulation heaped upon the band after their baggy anthem-filled debut. Their experimentation with the blues feel, headed by Squire, was panned by critics, who were disappointed with the new sounds and the glaring contrast between the first album and this. There are no “sore-thumb” tracks that stand out begging to be a single; this is a fluid album, delicate, intricate and subtle.

Opener Breaking Into Heaven is Brown’s manifesto: “I’m gonna break right into heaven/I can’t wait anymore… I have a dream/I’ve seen the light”. The extensive jamming and improvisation that we heard a glimpse of on Stone Roses’ lengthy epic I Am The Resurrection is played out with less inhibition on Second Coming. It is minutes before the song proper begins, segued cleanly into after a load of disconcerting monkey noises (something of a pun on Brown’s nickname, King Monkey).

With the first track acting as a veritable introduction to the album, we start again at track two with the rolling bassy riffs of Driving South. Sounding like Jimi Hendrix’s exuberant blues blended carefully with Johnny Marr’s pop sensibility, Squire takes to the helm on this track; it soon becomes apparent to the listener that this is most definitely Squire’s album.

The heartfelt indie ballad Ten Storey Love Song is next, with Brown’s crooning pairing with drummer Reni’s angelic harmonies. This folds gently into pounding funk-out Daybreak, with bassist Mani’s lines underpinning the song’s groovy exterior. That Beatlesy feel runs all through Your Star Will Shine, a quiet and slow affair – less gutsy and rousing than Ten Storey Love Song but similarly heartfelt.

Track six, Straight To The Man, follows Daybreak’s lead but is more chilled-out and has an aura of ’stoned’ about it. Begging You is so indie-dance; bands like The Music have been well-informed by tracks like this. Brown’s soft laments are layered across stuttering, psychedelic guitar riffs and speedy drumming. The bluesy-folk of Tightrope continues the erratic switching between fast and slow on the album’s tracklisting. Tightrope has a live feel to it, with voices painted onto a strummed guitar and simple percussion. This is The Roses stripped bare and hiding behind nothing.

Up-tempo Good Times is one of the stand-out tracks from Second Coming; it starts with a slow blues tune over drums and bass, before Squire’s standard Roses riff comes in and takes the song to full speed. It reminds me most of early single Made Of Stone with its stature and effect, combined with Squire’s guitar noodling. The heart-rending Tears is possibly a nod to the impending “second split” that bthe band would soon face: “I’ve seen the future in the tracks of your tears”.

How Do You Sleep continues the album’s trend of chilled out balladeering, the song’s negative subject matter juxtaposed with a major key melody, topped off with a grated Parmesan guitar solo. Love Spreads is the perfect end to this excellent album, its garage-rock blues riffs stolen straight from Detroit.

The extended jamming at the end just shows a band at its best – experimenting with styles and pushing the boundaries of the four-piece rock group. Though to some this album marks the demise of one of Britain’s favourite groups, I see it as The Stone Roses at their very best.