ALDOUS HARDING Train On The Island (4AD) AS SUBLIME AS IT often is, this may not be the album for you, it’s fair to warn. Do you need to understand everything? If you leave a film, a book, a painting or an album in varying degrees of frustration because you don’t think you got the point being made, or indeed if you leave angry because you think the artist deliberately obscured meaning, Aldous Harding is at best a provocation. You can guess at her intentions, but she is not

THE LEMON TWIGS Look For Your Mind! (Civilians) THE LAST TIME the brothers D’Addario – multi-instrumentalist, singing/songwriting duo and occasional musical theatre stars, Brian and Michael – were featured here they were accompanied by a caveat. The album was, as could be said of all their six records to date, an homage/love letter to pop music of a time before. Certainly of a time before them, given they were born at the tail-end of the 1990s and their influences clearly h

In the past week I’ve been digging into music online that gives every indication of being at best machine-tooled but most likely wholly artificial, built to meet logarithmic patterns. It’s sleek, it’s really well constructed, it’s very easy to listen to and even easier to think it’s real. And it comes in every form, every genre, well past the early days of this so-called AI music which focused on instrumental, “mood” tracks that might slip by on ambient-y playlists or tropic

KACEY MUSGRAVES Middle Of Nowhere (Lost Highway) GOLDEN AND GOLDEN HOUR? The synchronicity was not just in the titles and it was hard to miss. A few years ago, Kylie Minogue, not someone who had ever been described as anything but a pop artist, allegedly made a country record – she hadn’t, Gold was just a great pop record that picked up a few Nashville touches, but marketing is marketing - and silly pop media lapped it up more than country radio or fans did. At the same ti

The chill hits, the word goes out. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Rack up some more goodness like this with hundreds more playlist by me at Spotify.

Precariously perched but unfazed. Photo by Stuart Spence. Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence. Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a p

Maths lecturers let loose? Photo by JustPhotos NZ PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING City Recital Hall, May 4 IT WAS PROMISED and it was delivered, close enough to being bathed in blue blue electric blue too. For before the band appeared we did hear a song (by a certain D. Bowie) suggesting we should sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision. Sit we did, at least until the end of the set when bassist/keyboardist/flugelhornist JFAbraham roused us from our recumbent p

Well, wouldn't you be if you're new here and seen what we've done? CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Cheer yourself up with more playlists like this by me - hundreds of them. Really! - by searching Spotify for yon Bernard Zuel.

MICHAEL WESTON KING Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore (Continental Song City) YOU COULD, JUST ABOUT, get through this album without crying, though death suffuses, grief can’t be removed and answers aren’t readily available. It doesn’t smash you over the head demanding you “feel”, it doesn’t make everything solemn, it doesn’t hide the pleasures of an ascending guitar pattern, a group singalong or a soulful sway, a moment of Roy Orbison with Everly Brothers even. And it does say “I