Yoss

Live music is basically great isn't it? Tastes differ, obviously, and there are loads of gigs get mentioned on here that I'd have no interest in myself - but you almost never get anyone coming on here saying "I saw x last night and they were a bit shit tbh". I go to maybe a couple of gigs a month and there have been better ones and and not-so-great ones but I can't remember the last time I went to a duff one that hadn't been worth going to. (At least, if I'm excluding festival sets, which have a greater element of pot luck.) One of life's great pleasures.

I think Pom Poko might be my favourite band in the world right now. Tremendous stuff at the Mash House this evening. A word for Personal Trainer too, can't say I'd heard of them before but they pretty much stole the show supporting Pip Blom the other night. Any highlights? I couldn't get to it, but would have liked to have seen Squid, Calva Louise and maybe one or two others.

He's playing Glasgow again next month. (With, I think, the added bonus of support from Pom Poko.)

UFOF was one of those albums that I immediately recognised as being great when I first listened to it - and yet have hardly bothered to listen again since.

Oh, no argument but that Thornton were the better side, sure - not least because you kept forgetting to defend. And I was being a bit flippant with my previous post - but, as a neutral, it didn't feel like 7-0 better.

Aside from End of the Road at the start of the month I think it's going to be a gigless September. Pom Poko and Pip Blom lined up next month, though; Ezra Furman and Richard Dawson in November, and dates are starting to come in for next year.

Been decent albums from Ezra Furman and (Sandy) Alex G in the last few weeks, and Taylor Swift's is pretty good if you like that kind of thing, but otherwise there's been a bit of a lull. Love the new Angel Olsen single, really looking forward to that album now. Couple of weeks off, I think.

Fairly even game apart from the goals.

Another tremendous End of the Road last weekend. Oustanding sets from Stella Donnelly, Parquet Courts, Kikagaku Moyo, Pom Poko; very good ones from Pottery, Wand, Bodega, Mitski, Kero Kero Bonito, Lewsberg, BC Camplight among others. Still my favourite weekend of the year.

The entirety of The Black-Eyed Peas' "Where Is The Love?". It's a bit like the poetry I'd write when I was twelve.

In the midst of a quiet few weeks for both albums and gigs, but the first single from the upcoming Richard Dawson album is as good as anything I've heard all year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGiQ_-Ktpvc

Ah, it's been re-released with extra tracks? Fair enough then, carry on.

Wasn't that 2018?

Add Jackie Cohen to the list of albums that have grown on me after a couple of months.

I think "[insert_artist] doesn't belong at Glastonbury" claims actually predate the existence of the festival itself.

I think of MSPs as pop, and there's nothing to be defensive about in the use of the term - pop is a broad church, and encompasses so much more than just chart music. Wouldn't call them britpop, though.

I found them distinctly underwhelming at End of the Road two years ago; rattled through a pretty perfunctory set and finished ten or fifteen minutes early. Haven't paid them any attention since, but they're back again this year so I may give them another go, clashes permitting.

Idles have come a long way quickly haven't they? It's only a year since they were playing as a support in Greenock Town Hall.

Black Midi album out yesterday. I think it transfers to record better than I thought it might, but maybe it helped that I'd heard most of it already - not sure what I'd have made of it if I were coming to it cold. A nod to the Palehound album the other week as well. And some albums from earlier in the year that I might or might not have already mentioned but that have grown on me in the interim - Wand, Rozi Plain, Calva Louise.

Oh, and I meant to mention Mammoth Penguins - excellent at Howlin' Fling the other week. It's nice when you discover someone completely new to you at a festival.

Jeffrey Lewis (with Los Bolts) very good as ever the other night. Goes a bit quiet for the summer now - July always seems to be a slack month for gigs.

Garbage are American, Manson aside, yeah. There's a few others there I wouldn't count as Britpop either, just British bands who happened to be active in the 90s. Still though, it's not until someone lays it all out like that that you realise what grim times they were.

hahahahahahaha

I like it but it's not going to change your life.

House Tornado, fine record though it is, was not Throwing Muses' debut.