Category Archives: Top Five
Twenty French Records
INTRODUCING THE CONCEIT (tl;dr for the actual records)
Our purview of pop music is mostly Anglospheric, which (despite being convenient for a monolingual jerk like me) has more than its share of drawbacks; I find myself daydreaming of a world… Read More
Five Dismal Christmas Songs
During religious seasons, some of us will seek shelter from the tumult and disorder of the world by heading back to the commandments; inflexible, ancient guidelines that demarcate right from wrong, with no fussing around. Forget your liberal welfare state… Read More
Five Notes on the Intersection of Summer and Music
A. Robert Mitchum’s Calypso Album, and the Seasonal Pathology of Novelty
I’ll be honest: as the weather began to heat up, I started looking forward to putting Robert Mitchum’s Calypso is Like So on heavy rotation this summer. Having acquired the… Read More
The Top Five Arguments Against Downloading Music (Revised)
5. Doris Day’s 1959 compilation Showcase of Hits
One cannot put into words the impact of beholding this, the greatest record cover of all time. Like a volcano taking the form of a parachute, or Kim Jong Il wearing ballet… Read More
Five Ways To Lose Your Credibility as a Musician/Human
Times are strange, fate is fickle, fame is fleeting, don’t be a jackass, think before you speak, etc. Maxims to live by and put on page-a-day calendars, sure, but we’re bound to learn more from people who act as bulwarks… Read More
Five Records That Have One Really Great Song and the Rest are Naff
SCISSOR ME, BABE
Robert Christgau, the self anointed Consumer Guide, realised one day that his infamously truncated reviewing style had suddenly ceased to be a time efficient method. The backlog of records he had to review was growing at the rate of ex, yet… Read More
Top Five Dexys Midnight Runners Songs
OBITER DICTUM
Celtic sounds have been far and few between in popular music. Some might think that the quite successful ditty by Cuntford and Cunts, “Little Lion Cunt”, incorporates a real sense of the Celtic tradition, but that is… Read More
My Top Australian Albums
This is necessarily incomplete because I need to get some sleep. I wrote a list much earlier in the week and now it’s completely changed. So it goes. I didn’t rank the records either. Lazy! This is partially done to keep… Read More
The Top Five Cornflour Records
There are a lot of things I know about Cornflour, and many things I don’t. This is what I do know.
- it was a band of two men
– these men are my uncles
– they made five… Read More
THE TOP TWENTY RECORDS WITH TWENTY OR MORE SONGS ON THEM
Since I had a layoff (noticed only by me and my sleeping patterns), and this is the TWENTIETH top five list, here’s a TOP TWENTY. Contravening the rules of the column might seem off, but maybe sometimes Axel doesn’t drink… Read More
The Top Five Music Websites
Present company excluded, of course. Also, apologies to Stylus Magazine; you were too good for this world. Not being a totally web-centric dude I absolve myself forthwith of all claims to completeness or accuracy here.
As usual, let us… Read More
The Top Five Breakup Albums
These are for you if you have already hit the Tindersticks and Disintegration really, really hard. This is maybe not angsty enough. If you’ve got a better list of morose listening, sock it to us in the comments!
5. Hissing… Read More
The Top Five Opening Tracks
If you’re building a house you tend to start with things like flooring and council approval; with a painting you might buy a tube of blue paint or withdraw a lot of blood and start mixing it with some ochre… Read More
The Top 5 Soothing Pop Tunes
Being calm is important and difficult unless you want to have a stroke at the age of 23 and think it’ll get you girls or whatever. That is a dumb theory. A dumb theory. I guess I am not going… Read More
The Top 5 Mountain Goats Songs
I got halfway through writing about the top 5 songs for a flag ceremony but then, the lesson came back to me:
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
I am not one to obsess much, nor am I given to fits of phase and… Read More
Top 5 Reasons Why ‘Kinky Cinema’ Might Be The Greatest Record Of All Time
NB. ‘The Yummy Fur’ are not the mid-90s ‘Yummy Fur’ from Perth. ‘The Yummy Fur’ were a Glasgow band led by Jackie McKeown which existed from the early to late 90s, sporting a fluid membership which included future members of… Read More
The Top Five Beck B-Sides
Listening to a good Beck album is like eating a well made taco. You may enter it fearing that it will be too saucy, or that it’ll be overloaded with cheese, or that the whole thing will just fall apart… Read More
The Top 5 Methods of Making an Album
5. I TAKE PHOTOS WITH NATURE BY MY EARS/DIY tape experiments.
INGREDIENTS
–a single boombox or handheld tape recorder or something (tape up parts of it so you don’t get dirt in the holes)
–a shovel
… Read More
The Top 5 Songs for the Apocalypse
My sister is adamant the Earth will die screaming in 2012. “Why finish my degree?” she says, while searching through an online cocktail dress database. “I’ll be dead.” I mean to ask her how the apocalypse will come about, but… Read More
