This is a Recording

One of the first few classical CDs I took a shine to, back in the mid-to-late '90s, was a disc of Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas performed on harpsichord by Andreas Staier. For twenty years it was just about the only recording of baroque music I owned. Not long after turning fifty, it occurred to me to seek out some more compositions for harpsichord. Staier's name being one I knew, I looked up his other recordings, of which this one in particular caught my eye: ...pour passer la mélancolie , a 2013 release on the Harmonia Mundi label. It's an excellent recital, bringing together works by six different French and German composers dating from between the mid-17th century and the first decade of the 18th. It's loosely-themed around notions of melancholy: there are laments and tombeaux in commemoration of the departed, along with sombre passacaglias and other plaintive pieces. The disc's title comes from an opus by Johann Jacob Froberger supposedly written i

I wouldn't usually write about a record I'd only listened to once, but in this case I'm at least slightly acquainted with most of the music on it; and unavoidably know some of it very well. In Chepstow a couple of weeks ago I picked several records out of a crate on the floor of a charity shop of which this was one: a 1978 double-LP Hendrix compilation. It cost me rather less than the £6.30 price sticker on the cover from a prior sale. As with any compilation I'm more in agreement with some of the editorial choices than others: we have 'Purple Haze' here but not 'Foxy Lady'; 'Little Wing' but not 'Spanish Castle Magic'; 'Burning of the Midnight Lamp' but, sadly, not 'Crosstown Traffic'. It also ventures beyond the three Experience records, with the last couple of tracks on Side C and all of Side D taken from some of the many of his posthumously-issued albums like The Cry of Love , Rainbow Bridge , and so forth. These, b

It would have been in 2015, between the release of her debut album and her first visit to the UK, that I first heard of Aldous Harding. I was intrigued from the outset, but not quite enough to make any purchases. Nor did what I heard of her second album Party persuade me to reach for my wallet. It was only when I saw the video for 'The Barrel', the first one made to promote her third album Designer in 2019, that things clicked into place, and I ordered it on CD. I'd already heard 'The Barrel' on the radio a couple of times, but I had failed to appreciate it before seeing it visualised . It's a soft and slow record that gets even quieter and slower toward the end. Recorded not so far from here up at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth, Harding was joined by some Welsh musicians like H. Hawkline, Gwion Llewelyn and Stephen "Sweet Baboo" Black. Producer John Parish also contributed a variety of instrumental parts and backing vocals. The closing two tracks,

For anyone in search of soundtracks to imaginary European art-films, the Tarkovsky Quartet's albums may be just the ticket. As an ardent admirer of the Russian auteur's movies, pianist François Couturier felt inspired to make music that strove to express something of their dreamlike essence. To this end he recruited cellist Anja Lechner, saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier. A first album Nostalghia – Song For Tarkovsky was released in 2006, this one following in 2011. There has since been a third: Nuit Blanche (2017) which I have yet to hear. It's not easy music to pigeon-hole. Is it jazz? Coutourier has a jazz background; and some of the pieces are improvised, but it doesn't feel jazzy. Is it classical? Lechner is classically trained, and the tracks on this album apparently incorporate references to Pergolesi, Bach and Shostakovich: it is, I think, chamber music of a sort, but it doesn't feel quite classical either. And nor is it re

Like John Cale in the UK and Irmin Schmidt in Germany, the Swedish musician Bo Anders Persson was much inspired by the American avant-garde, and in particular by the early minimalism of Terry Riley. His first group, initially called Pärson Sound, had made some recordings in 1967 and '68, but these didn't see daylight until the 21st century. Soon afterwards though, the band's name having changed to International Harvester, a debut album was forthcoming in '68 on a Finnish label: Sov Gott Rose-Marie : "sov gott" meaning "sleep well".  This album, along with the Pärson Sound recordings, and the follow-up record Hemåt (i.e. "Homeward", for which the band's name changed again, this time to Harvester), were all released on CD in 2001. My copy is one of these re-issues, but I didn't obtain it until considerably later. It wasn't until 2010 that I even became aware of Pärson Sound and its offshoots (having, for most of the previous dec

Ella Swings Brighly With Nelson is one of half a dozen records on my shelves issued by the "World Record Club", a mail-order label set up in the UK in the mid-'50s. The records themselves (mostly) sound good, but the sleeve designs depart from the original ones in ways that don't improve them. The Verve issues of this album feature a photograph of Ms Fitzgerald & Mr Riddle, wheras here we have a rather muddily impressionistic drawing/painting of the singer. By 1961, as Alun Morgan's sleevenotes state, both Ella and Nelson were widely renowned and much in demand. They had already worked together on The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book in '59. This record is one of a pair arising from sessions in '61 that were released the following year, the other being Ella Swings Gently With Nelson . It's an album that isn't perhaps either headliner's finest work, but it's still a very good one, and makes for enjoyable listening. The sorrowful lyric

Between about 2011-16 I drove a car that must have been among the last made with a cassette player installed. I had no cassettes, so if I wanted in-car entertainment, it had to be via the radio. I found BBC Radio 3 to be the least annoying of the readily receivable stations. One afternoon while stuck in traffic on the way home from work I heard a delightful piece for violin and piano that captured my attention: checking the playlist later I learned it was one of Carl Maria von Weber's Violin Sonatas, performed by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov. A few months later I bought the CD of which that performance was a part. It includes a complete set of six such sonatas that Weber wrote in 1810 and a Piano Quintet dating from the year before. All, then, are youthful works from the composer's early twenties. Roman Hinke's booklet notes (given in French, English and German) tell us that the sonatas were written for a publisher who'd requested short and simple works meant f

For about seven months in 1997 I shared an apartment in Rome with a fellow ex-pat, an Englishman with a taste for the acid jazz and neo-soul music of the day, and it was through him that I first heard the likes of Erykah Badu, D'Angelo and Maxwell. For all its merits, it was a style I couldn't seem to get a proper grip on at the time, and indeed, it was only really during the recent pandemic that I gave these artists another hearing, at last developing more of an appreciation for them. About this time last year I spotted a few Maxwell CDs in a box at the local charity shop & thought the MTV Unplugged EP might provide a digestible introduction to his work. So it proved - it's a record I very much enjoy. At over 34 minutes I'd say it's more a short album than an EP. On the strength of this disc I also acquired a copy of Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite but I found that a bit too much Maxwell for me in a single sitting, succumbing as it did to a common late-'90

It's doubtless no accident that the majority of my 7" singles date back to the few years either side of 1980. Had I been a better-adjusted youngster, the period ca. '79-'82 might well have have been when I'd have bought singles with my pocket-money, instead of obsessing over aeroplanes, imaginary spaceships and, later, computers. For example: acquired three or four years ago, this 1980 copy of Martha and the Muffins' big hit single 'Echo Beach' in a picture sleeve. I'm a little surprised to learn it only reached No. 10 in the UK - it seems like it ought to have been more successful than that. Had the likes of eleven-year-old me actually bought it back then, who knows, that might have made a difference. The faintly sci-fi undertones of the phrase "far away in time" were likely a part of what attracted me to the song in the first place. I still love the images it conjures up, and, of course, it's a very catchy tune. The B-side, 'Te

Before wholeheartedly embracing jazz music in my early forties, I had made a few only partially successful attempts to get to grips with it over the prior decade. About five or six years before the lightbulb was finally illuminated, there had been some fitful flickerings ca. 2005/6, during which time I came to hear of Canadian saxophonist Michael Blake. The first of his albums I bought was one called Drift , which I'd found courtesy of an Amazon recommendation. I liked it well enough to acquire another of his records, again on CD: Blake Tartare . It's a 2005 release (on the Copenhagen-based Stunt label) of music recorded in 2002. The Danish angle ties in with Blake's backing band on this occasion coming from that country: Soren Kjærgaard plays piano; Jonas Westergaard bass and Kresten Osgood the drums. The (non-Danish) Teddy Kumpel joins them on guitar on three of the tracks. It's not an album that seems to have made much of a splash anywhere, but it's one I've

The buzz about Yeah Yeah Yeahs reached my ears in 2002, whereupon I bought their debut EP, which I loved. When their keenly-anticipated debut album followed in '03, I ordered that too (on CD), but found myself a little disappointed by it. Of course it has some great songs: 'Maps' especially has become a firm favourite for many, but as an album I didn't love it then, and I still don't. I'm also very fond of 'Date With the Night' and 'Y Control' (my personal favourite on the disc) and quite enjoy 'Rich', 'Pin', and 'Cold Light', but the rest of it leaves me more or less cold. It's an outstanding EP with some lacklustre padding. I never was taken by the artwork either, which is credited to one Cody Critcheloe, who, I just learned, has since become a recording artist, going by the name of SSION. It's a CD I've considered parting with a few times, but then I put it on and recall how much I enjoy the same few songs,

The Exciting Joe Williams is among the best of several big band jazz records I've acquired in recent months. It's one of those LPs which just sounds fantastic from the moment the needle hits it, despite getting off to what is, to my mind, a slightly shaky start, thanks to an inadvisably upbeat, jazz-hands waving version of 'Ol' Man River'. The second song, 'This is the Life', however, is much more like it, and puts things on a surer footing that's then maintained throughout. On 'This is the Life', among other numbers, Williams' smooth and strong baritone sounds somewhat Sinatra-like, and his delivery has a similarly (and justifiably) confident swagger about it. Frank may have had the edge when interpreting a slow ballad, but on uptempo numbers, Joe was at least as good.  Other favourites of mine on the record are 'Come In Out Of The Rain', 'Gypsy In My Soul', and, especially 'Last Love, Last Kiss, Goodbye'. The last-n

The budget Brilliant Classics label issued the Complete Piano Sonatas of Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) on nine CDs between 2018 and '20. I have volumes three and four. The task was split between nine different performers, all of them playing on fortepianos, that is, on restored instruments dating from around the composer's heyday, or on modern copies made to emulate them: these having a different, more rinky-dink sound to a modern concert grand. On Volume Three, the fortepianist is Alexei Lubimov, a musician whose name I already knew well, whereas on Volume Four, Tuija Hakkila does the honours, a Finnish pianist whose name was new to me. To my mind, both musicians acquit themselves with similar distinction. The four pieces on this disc, all of them two-movment sonatas, date from several phases of Dussek's itenerant career, from 1788 when he was in pre-revolutionary Paris, to 1806-7, when he was based in Hamburg. My favorite of the four is the Op. 43 Sonata in A from 1800

I have relatively little disco music on my shelves. I used to have damaged copies of Herbie Mann's Discothèque and Car Wash by Rose Royce, but now I'm left with some records by Barry White and his protegés Love Unlimited (which might be considered proto-disco); a couple of 7" singles ('Funky Town' & 'Supernature') and this glorious 12" one, which brings together three tracks by those masters of the genre, Chic: 'I Want Your Love', 'Le Freak' and 'Chic Cheer'. A 6:53 re-mix of 'I Want Your Love' occupies the A-side, with the other two tracks on the reverse. The label helpfully gives the BPM values for all three: 116, 120 & 113 respectively. I did enjoy some of Chic's music when it was new, 'Le Freak', in particular, though as disco was falling sharply out of favour by the time I reached my teens, I wouldn't have admitted as much to my peers.  Back then I would have been responding to the overall

After falling for the female voices featured on Broken Social Scene's You Forgot it in People ca. 2003, I was on the lookout for works by Leslie Feist and Emily Haines, ordering the former's album Let It Die in '04 and the debut by Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton: Knives Don't Have Your Back in '06. Come 2017 though, the release of Choir of the Mind passed me by completely: I'd heard nothing of it on the radio and hadn't so much as read a word about it anywhere either, until there came a time that I actively googled Haines' name. I found she'd done a good deal more with Metric (though their stuff hadn't quite appealed to me in the way her solo songs had) - and then there was Choir of the Mind . I liked what I heard of it on-line, but it took me a long while before I finally obtained a copy - only last year - on CD. But - all's well that ends well: I love it and have played it often. It's not without some flaws: its reliance on s

What we have here is a three-track "Maxi-Single" issued in 1977 including the third, first and fifth of the Small Faces' A-sides: 'Sha-La-La-La-Lee', 'What'cha Gonna Do About It' and 'All Or Nothing'. I'm far from the biggest Faces fan, but knew and liked the songs and thought it worth the outlay of a pound to give them another hearing. The label bears a few words that might strike fear into a purist's heart: "Electronically Re-processed Stereo" (though this only applies to 'What'cha Gonna Do About It'). To this casual listener's ears, however, it all sounds excellent: no-one involved in the recording, mastering or pressing can have put a foot wrong, and these songs practically jump off the disc, very much alive. 'All Or Nothing', in particular, here relegated to the B-side, sounds outstandingly good. Wikipedia tells me: "according to Kay Marriott, Steve's mother, Steve wrote this song about hi

Encouraged by how much I enjoyed his album The Big Band Sound Of Henry Mancini (aka Combo! ), I bought a few more Mancini LPs, always very cheaply, finding some of them less to my liking, but others that I thought were delightful. My favourite among them must be this soundtrack to the 1963 movie Charade , which, as the cover states, starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The opening ' Charade (Main Title)' begins with insistent woodblock, joined by other percussion until the memorable theme kicks in. The Parisian setting of the film is reflected by musical Gallicisms such as the third track 'Bateau Mouche'. The coolly jazzy 'Mégève' is a highlight. 'Bye Bye Charlie' is a mournful cue for string quartet, By sharp contrast, it's followed by the sound of a mechanical 'orchestrion' or something resembling one, in 'The Happy Carousel'. The variety of sounds and styles is balanced by a judicious use of reprised timbres & musical motive

Although the 'Etude sur les Mouvements Rotatoires' gets top billing, the main meat of this disc, and most of its appeal, lies in the '24 Preludes' that follow it, or, in full, the '24 Preludes in 13-tone diatonicised chromaticism in quarter-tone system for two pianos', op. 22, initially published in 1934 then subsequently revised over the course of the '60s. Ivan Wyschnegradsky, their composer, had been born in Russia, but spent most of his adult life in Paris. In the wake of a quasi-mystical epiphany in his youth, he felt compelled to compose microtonal, or what he sometimes referred to as "ultrachromatic" music. In practice, this most often meant composing pieces on a specially-designed piano he'd had made with two keyboards tuned a quarter-tone apart: for performances, in the absence of such a unique instrument, two differently-tuned pianos and two pianists would typically be called for. The theory behind the compositions is outlined in what

Fittingly for an album so much concerned with the seamy and the sleazy, the LP copy of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret I picked up seven or eight years ago was in decidedly mucky condition. While the sleeve is still tatty, after a couple of cleans the record now plays a lot better, despite clearly (and, again, appropriately) having been well used. I knew and loved the singles ('Tainted Love', 'Bedsitter', 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye') from when they were first released, and had been introduced to the notorious 'Sex Dwarf' at University, via some acquaintances who'd got their hands on a copy of the original banned version of the video. Tracks like 'Frustration' and 'Seedy Films', on the other hand, I'd seldom heard, if ever, and it was a delight to belatedly make their acquaintance. Now over forty years old, this is an album that, for me, still sounds vivid and compelling with its very British combination of camp comedy, 'kitchen sink

Johnny Hodges' Mellow Tone is a 1977 double-album which brings together two sets of tracks that I believe had both previously been issued on separate LPs. One disc is ostensibly a 1958 live recording of Duke Ellington's band (of which Hodges had been a prominent member for decades) in Chicago; the other a set of tracks recorded in Paris in 1950 by a smaller, eight-piece group. It's confusing as the track-listing in the gatefold contradicts the labels as to which disc is which. Nor are Charles Fox's sleevenotes exactly a model of clarity. And the Chicago tracks may actually date from 1959. Whenever they were recorded, those live big-band numbers are highly enjoyable; while the other disc I revisit less often. Its tunes are all brief, as if recorded with 78s in mind, and their sound quality, not surprisingly, isn't the best. It's another of the many albums I've bought as part of a 3-for-£10 purchase from the selection upstairs at St. Mary St. Collectables in

Here's another relic of the period, in the middle of the last decade, when I sometimes bought singles inspired by things I'd heard on the radio. This one came out on the Ra-Ra Rok label in 2016: 'Human Baby' by Phobophobes. It's a clear vinyl 7". This is a band that emerged from the same South London milieu that spat out the likes of Goat Girl and Fat White Family. It's slightly unusual in having two tracks on the A-side: 'Human Baby' itself, a satisfyingly shambling number with some clever lyrics & a strong chorus; and 'The Ground is Friend to All', a poem by deceased former band member George Bedford Russell (who had succumbed to a heroin overdose). The latter is read, unaccompanied, by the novelist Will Self, its contents amply illustrating what a tragic loss Russell's death had been. On the B-Side, 'Free the Naked Rambler' is a topical song about Steven Gough, then much in the news, whose determined insistence on public n

I was unaware, on seeing the exotic figure of Steve Strange in Bowie's video for 'Ashes to Ashes', and then, more prominently, in the one for Visage's 'Fade To Grey', that he was a South Wales Valleys boy like me, from Newbridge, about twelve miles' drive away from my grim home town. I was very much taken with both the song and its video at the time, though the latter looks more than a little ridiculous now. The song, however, still sounds great - which perhaps owes more to the talents of Billy Currie and Midge Ure than Strange himself, who wasn't that much of a singer. He was, however, the focal point of the band, and of a broader moment in pop culture, in his brief tenure as arbiter of all that was fashionable in London. On the B-Side, 'The Steps' is a moody instrumental incorporating heartbeat-like drums and synths suggesting organ chords and brass fanfares. I had always supposed 'Fade To Grey' was the debut Visage single, but no - w

Opting to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on TV when I was ill with chicken-pox as a teenager wasn't the best choice, as the flashing imagery and discordant music only served to make me feel worse than I had before. If I thought about it at all, I may have supposed the more terrifying soundtrack cues had been composed specifically for the film. Not so: this was an unhappy early encounter with the music of György Ligeti. In 1999 a colleague was listening to something on a Discman-style personal stereo that provoked a variety of grimaces and, ultimately, a big smile. Upon my inquiring what it was, he lent me the CD - called Wien Modern - which included Ligeti's works 'Atmosphères' (one of the pieces used in 2001 ) and 'Lontano'. Startled and moved to similar facial contortions by what I heard, I would have bought a copy for myself had the album still been available. A couple of years later there came the first in a series of five CD releases collecting Ligeti's

I caught Frankie Goes to Hollywood's debut TV appearance when a performance of 'Relax' was aired on The Tube in February 1983. I was impressed by the song, and meanwhile conscious of its being daringly risqué for early evening viewing. After it had been reworked and polished up by Trevor Horn et al , it sailed to No. 1 despite a temporary ban by the BBC. I found my copy of it in a Swedish junk-shop about twenty years later. Thanks to Discogs I know it's a 3rd press UK version of the 12" single on which the A side is misidentified as the 'Sex Mix' rather than the so-called 'New York Mix' it really is. The 12" single was issued in a money-grabbing plethora of versions with a variety of sleeve designs, this one being known as the "Two Bodies" sleeve. On the B-Side are the band's version of Gerry & The Pacemakers' 'Ferry Across the Mersey' along with the original version of 'Relax'. One hopes drugs were invol

When I heard the track 'Malukayi' on Don Letts' radio show in 2015 I had to find out more about it - which wasn't immediately straightforward as the track had been mis-labelled on the playlist and was still, at that point, very new. Not much later I'd gathered it was the work of the Congolese group Mbongwana Star, whose debut album (and so far their only one) was released in May of that year. I ordered a CD copy. "Tired of pre-conceptions around African music, Mbongwana Star are creating their own identity, fusing traditional Congolese rhythms with post punk and electronics inspired by life in the townships around them, 'making magic out garbage.'" So a promotional blurb at the time explained their music. The masterminds behing the project were singer-songwriters Coco Ngambali & Théo Nzonza (formerly part of the band Staff Benda Bilili), and Irish-born, Paris-based produder Liam Farrell, aka "Doctor L". Aside from the mesmerizing '

Here is a 1974 7" single by Kevin Ayers on the Island label. It was released a few months after his ambitious (but, to my mind, lacklustre) album The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories , and one month after the June 1 1974 concert featuring Nico, John Cale and Brian Eno; which may have been a happier occasion had Ayers' dalliance with the then Mrs. Cale not been brought to light shortly before it. 'After The Show' itself is rather a tepid number, and an odd choice for a single. The attraction for me is all in the B-Side, 'Thank You Very Much', a song I dearly love. Ayers sings it soft & low, accompanied only by acoustic guitar. It's a refreshingly simple and direct recording, in sharp contrast with the overcooked production that prevailed on Dr. Dream .  Neither of the songs on the single were on Dr. Dream nor on Ayers' next album Sweet Deceiver . I bought it two or three years ago from one of my usual haunts in Chepstow. It cost me a poun

I have to presume that most people who know anything about records know that old Blue Note LPs are collectable and worth money. Their striking cover designs mean they'd be hard to overlook. I don't think I've ever seen a '50s or '60s Blue Note album in a charity shop, and if I have happened to catch sight of the odd one anywhere else, a glance at the asking price has sufficed to make me forget it existed. In the '80s there were a few stabs at cashing in on the Blue Note brand, among them a series of 50th Anniversary Collection double compilation albums (released in '89), one of which, Vol. 3 - 'Funk & Blues' - I was lucky enough to spot in the wild. Also in the series were 'From Boogie to Bop' (Vol. 1); 'The Jazz Message' (Vol. 2); 'Outside In' (Vol. 4) and 'Lighting the Fuse' (Vol. 5). Of those, the track-listings on Vols. 2 & 3 are most to my taste, so it worked out well I found one of those two. The compil

'Midnight at the Oasis' was very often on the radio when I was five years old, and occasionally thereafter. I wasn't especially fond of it as a young child, though it has since grown on me. For a long time I wouldn't have been able to link that song with Maria Muldaur's name, and it was probably only within the last 5-10 years that the connection was established in my mind, a connection that chimed when I saw a copy of Waitress in a Donut Shop on sale locally last summer, I was happy to wager a few pounds on it (and another few on Barry White's Can't Get Enough ) in the hope I might like them. It proved a small risk well worth taking. Barry White, of course, is a genius, and Waitress in a Donut Shop, while not the sort of album that tends to feature on "Best Of" lists, is excellent entertainment, beautifully made. Having a supporting cast of such notable artistes as Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Linda Ronstadt, Spooner Oldham, Paul Butterfield, Klaus V

Last year someone donated a carefully-curated collection of vinyl to my local charity shop, including a variety of '70s and early '80s electronica, much of it obscure enough that I'd never heard of the artists before. There was some new-age stuff, Moog-based compilations, numerous LPs by Kitarō and Tomita, etc. Given the music involved, I'd not be surprised if there had also been Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre albums that had been snapped up before I got to see what was left over. I must have bought eight or nine of those albums in all, and found about half of them to my liking, donating the remainder back to the same shop. Among the successes was Prisms , by Michael Garrison, a 1981 release, the artist's second. Garrison, it seemed, had been a great admirer of "Berlin School" electronica, but, hailing from Oregon rather than Central Europe, he was very far removed from the action. In isolation, he nevertheless acquired a variety of synthesizer equi

Here's another 4-CD 8-album jazz compilation of dubious provenance, this one on a label called "Enlightenment", the estimable Julian "Cannonball" Adderley its subject. The albums included are Portrait Of Cannonball ; Jump For Joy ; Things Are Getting Better ; Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago ; Blue Spring ; Cannonball Takes Charge ; The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco and Them Dirty Blues . As the title states, all eight date from between 1958-60, but aren't a complete accounting of his recordings during that period, with the renowned Somethin' Else notable by its absence. Blue Spring is an outlier, being co-credited to trumpeter Kenny Dorham and Adderley, and predominantly featuring the former's compositions. Adderley has a co-star on Things Are Getting Better too, in the shape of The Modern Jazz Quartet's Milt Jackson. ... in San Francisco , as its title implies, is a live album, and a terrific one at that. (Supposedly am

I think I must have first heard of Low about twenty years ago, but whichever of their songs I encountered at that time didn't make much impact. By a decade ago I knew them as the performers of  'Just Like Christmas', already on the way to becoming something of an alternative end-of-year fixture: a song I admired, if not enough to explore their other work. The release of Double Negative in 2018 garnered them a great deal of praise, and after hearing some of the songs from it on the radio, and more on YouTube, I was intrigued enough to buy it on CD a few months later. As many commentators have noted, it's uncommon for an artist or band to break fertile new creative ground decades into their careers, but Low, together with producer BJ Burton, succeeded admirably in doing so with their twelfth studio album. My favourite tracks include 'Always Trying to Work it Out' and 'Poor Sucker'. It's a disc I played relatively often, until I acquired their thirte