30/15 - Home Is Made For Coming From

I'm back in London, and suddenly I feel so very Swedish...

Kanye West - Black Skinhead

Let's just get going with some 'fuck up your whole afternoon shit'. How can you argue with this? Irresistible, iconoclastic, megalomaniacal production.

Kent - Du är ånga

The story of adulthood as a sickness. And the cure is not nostalgia; it's a new dream.

När vi var små så sköt vi kåda, bark och stål

Hank Crawford - Wildflower

The rain comes in bursts. I am in my bed, trying to write a to-do-list. London is grey and damp. And then a smooth 70s saxophone whirls around the room, gradually settling like a fallen garland out of season. Autumn slips a shoe in.

Håkan Hellström - Det är så jag säger det

Dedicated to Göteborg – no matter how much of an annoying, faultfinding emigrant I turn, my love for my hometown continues to grow with the years. I was on a late summer ferry-ride in the archipelago, watching the city-mouth from the sea, and was listening to this; the most disarmingly straight forward message of love set to a Mercury Rev pastiche that there is. My heart swelled with the waves.

Lee Marvin - Wand'rin' Star

But... you gotta keep moving. I've bought myself an uncertain future, and pushing on through the bogs of sentimentality and nostalgia, I still consider it a wise investment.

I've never seen a sight that didn't look better looking back...

Meow The Jewels is on its way! And when a piece of music has you simultaneously laughing out loud and gasping with awe, it is worth the wait:

29/15 - Corridors That Blister And Burn

Last list from Sweden this summer!

I also discovered I've got more than 1500 tracks in the Top 5-archive now, which means I've done at least 300 of these lists! (Actually quite a few more, since I didn't have an archive for the first year or two we made these lists, plus a lot of tracks have been taken off Spotify which were put on lists earlier)

Dungeon Family - Crooked Booty

Everything crooked here. The stuttering beat, stumbling over itself and into barricades of horns; the screeching, hurried, nasal voices pushing out southern slang; the slummy conditions papered over with a bit of gravy acting. Yet, if it's all so crooked, how come it feels so right? Might be cause you've got a crooked booty too...

Ghostface Killah - Metal Lungies

That high pitched sliding tone (a trombone?) that haunts the verses til the very end; on and on it repeats the same imitation of a squeaky door closing or opening. Or maybe it's just the furniture sighing? Cause these are heavy men. These are heavy blows, dealt with a heavy swing of a heavy arm.

The Relatives - It's Coming Up Again

After sampling a few I've finally found the show to fill the void after both Mad Men and Justified concluded. The show is Fargo. A pure dead brilliant homage to the Coen Brothers and a series that's got pretty much everything, including awesome closing music such as this song, which I know nothing about except that I will forever associate it with a beat up Martin Freeman. Say it loud. It's coming up again.... , sing a whole bunch of men who sound like they might be wrinkly southern baptist pastors from the early 1900s. Wah-wah guitar solo ensues. Funky basslines and muted rhythm guitar flutters up from some hidden Motown vault.

Kate Bush - How To Be Invisible

The sound of late summer floating on a colder breeze into early autumn. Is that a storm in a swimming pool?, she asks. There's no time to stay and inspect. Someone is whistling in the faraway. Or was that an echo from the past? Nostalgia envelops you, but there is no mooring to take here. On and on the guitar-lines sweep you.

Battles - The Yabba

The art of arranging disparate components. After adding what appears to be one too many ingredients the track seems to give up and wither away completely at 4 minutes, only to come back, throwing a cacophony of grooves at you. The second fade out is almost as satisfactory as the first, except that by then, it's really over...

28/15 - Spray Our Dreams On Any Surface Where The Paint Will Stick

A very, very summery week.

Mountain Goats - High Hawk Season

A barbershop call to arms from the kings of melancholy.

Rise if you're sleeping, stay awake

The Impressions - Fool For You

On the radio, in the car, on our way to some hard manual labour, came a reminder that I should seek out some more early Curtis Mayfield... Just listen to those stabbing horns, and look at those protruding teeth!

MC5 - Looking At You

Just random iTunes, picking out a song that I never thought much of in the context of the album, and showing me how tall and proud it stands on its own. That ascending guitar riff, shooting off out of nowhere! The whole song twisting and grooving claustrophobically. Like a tornado in a glass jar.

Cortex - 8-Oct-71

Thanks again to Run The Jewels for turning me on to odd tracks in their weekly radioshow.

bob hund - Bob Hund (live)

bob hund does everything right. Even the old cliche of a rock band performing with an orchestra is made into something brilliant.