Fuck the world. Music time.

• Fontaines DC - Romance. 2024. Their sound gets bigger and bigger with every album. Their first record was raw brutal minimalism. But, three albums later, they're doing interesting dynamic and harmonic changes, layers of sound, and vocal melodies (!). Which is all great. As electric as that first record was, it was obvious even then that there was only so much they could do with that sound; expanding their palette is working-out for them.

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• Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms. 2022. Not a huge change from their previous two, but that's fine! They have a great sound and they know how to work it. I can listen to them do their thing all day (and have, many times).

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• XTC - Drums And Wires. 1979. I bought "Oranges And Lemons" back in college, when "Mayor Of Simpleton" and "King For A Day" came out. I liked it, but it was a little too fussy for my tastes at the time and I didn't explore them any further. A few years ago I picked up their giant collection of singles from 1977-1992, "Fossil Fuel". That introduced me to some of their earlier stuff, which I didn't know aside from "Making Plans For Nigel", "Senses Working Overtime" and "Dear God". And last month, on a whim while driving somewhere, I asked Spotify to play this album. I was shocked. And I bought it as soon as I got home. So much energy, so many ideas, so clever, so catchy, so much of that restless 1979 nervousness. I wish I'd bought this in 1989, instead of "Oranges and Lemons"!

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• The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World. 2024. While they remain a top-3 favorite band, I haven't really listened to a new Cure album since 1992's "Wish". They've tried a few sounds, but none have really grabbed me. But this one is somewhat of return to 1989's epic "Disintegration", or the slower songs on "Wish" - sonically enormous, slow but majestic, with Smith's vocals pleading over it all. So, that's nice. Robert Smith's voice sounds just as it has since the early 1990s, amazingly. There are some nice guitar freakouts. The bass is huge and growly. All good. The songs are pretty good, too. But... I'm just not in the mood for this stuff these days. I don't even listen to "Disintegration" anymore.

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• Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas. 1990. Swirling, vibrating guitars, layers upon layers of vocals that might be singing in actual English, or at least English words, or possibly whatever sounds Elizabeth Frazier thought would work at the time. It's all very disorienting. That's any Cocteau Twins album. But this one does it perfectly. I can't think of an album, from anyone, that shimmers as much this one. On many songs, there's a high-pitched part that just sits and scintillates while everything else pulses and bounces around it. Quite magical. And, of course it would be nothing without the great songs.

  They're yet another band that I've listened to for a long time, but somehow I missed their best work. I've had a couple of their earlier records since the early 90s. I like them, but I've listened to them enough that I somehow thought I had the band all figured out, that their other records couldn't possibly have anything else to say. It's a dumb way of thinking.

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• Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll. 1988. No matter how many times I play it, my brain simply refuses to engage with this. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. My brain just refuses to latch on. I think the problem is that it's clearly the album before "Heaven Or Las Vegas" - you can hear them heading in that direction - and I just want to hear HoLV over and over instead.

• Mount Eerie - Night Palace. 2024 A guy is softly singing while a hypnotic tremolo vibrates the sound around your head. And sometimes a building falls on him. Or he's the building, mid-crash. Another fine entry in the list of sludgy psychedelic bands that I love from the past 35 years (Bardo Pond, Dino Jr, Sebadoh, Codeine, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, Holy Sons, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, so many more).

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• Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us. 2024. Looking for intelligent lyrics and extravagantly-orchestrated melodies? For four albums, Vampire Weekend has been eager to provide. Number five is more. They even work in motifs from, and references to, their previous songs. And miraculously, rather than seeming cheap and lazy, the references make this album feel like a reflection on, and a continuation of, a bigger project.

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• Robyn Hitchcock - 1967: Vacations In The Past. 2024. In 2014, Robyn put out "The Man Upstairs", which was half covers. He also had an outtakes album from that, which was 40% covers. He also has a whole double album of Dylan covers. (Next to Miles Davis, he's the most prolific of anyone in my music library. I count 49 albums (some partial) from him and his projects, in my collection.) This one is almost entirely covers, and all from 1967: Procul Harem, Small Faces, Hendrix, Kinks, Floyd, Beatles, Incredible String Band and more. The sole original here is the title track. Most of the songs are him and a guitar, with piano, second guitars, vocal harmonies on a few - a mode he's been in and out of since 1984.

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