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Joe Innes stopped Steve Lamacq in his tracks. At least, that’s what Lamacq claims and as far as primary sources to events go, you won’t do much better than that. Releasing his first album The Frighteners Joe calls to mind any number of other vocalists and musicians – not least among which is Magnetic Fields man Stephen Merritt. But there’s a depth of uncharted influences in them there waters, so we called in Joe to uncover them for us with our latest Six Albums.

Guided By Voices – Half Smiles of the Decomposed Um, I love Guided By Voices. Deciding which album to choose is a headache because there are a lot of good ones, but this one seems to be a good example of them as a band… Even though the band is pretty much just one guy + whoever he wants. This is somewhere halfway between their lo-fi basement noise and the clean nobs of a proper studio. At the time, this was heralded as the last Guided By Voices album, (this isn’t true anymore) which is possibly why it’s so good. I mean, I wouldn’t say an album was the last if it was crap, I’d wait till I did a good one before I called it a day.

Ryan Adams – Love is Hell Love Is Hell was released while I was an impressionable teenager, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. He can be a little too eager to be poignant sometimes, but the songs are brilliant. I sometimes wonder if he basis his writing on films, in ‘This House Is Not For Sale’ it seems to tell the story of Beetlejuice, and ‘Afraid Not Scared’ could easily be the end of Titanic… I wonder if I’ll ever know? OH, and the cover of Wonderwall is a bit nauseating, but you can skip it.

The Decemberists - Hazards of Love Probably the only album I’ll ever listen to while imagining how I would direct a school production of it – which would be my only reason to ever become a drama teacher. The sweeping story through the course of this epic is utterly compelling, and the guest performances from Shara Worden, Jim James and Becky Stark are incredible… not to mention from The Decemberists themselves. Colin Meloy is one of my favourite songwriters of all time, and his storytelling style really reaches its peak in this amazing album.

Tom Waits – Small Change This took me a while to love, but I love it a lot. It reminds me of going on walks in the middle of the night… and waiting for trains. His voice is amazing and a lot of fun to sing along with, which sometimes makes me cough.. In a similar way to Colin Meloy always recounting tales from the days of yore, Tom Waits is who I listen to when I want to go somewhere HBO… a little bit scummy.

Liz Phair – Exile In Guyville Apparently, this whole album is a song-by-song rebuttal of The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street… I don’t know much about that. I usually go for melody in songs, but this album is sort of tuneless, I guess the meat is in the words and attitude. Her delivery is incredibly deadpan, perhaps the complete opposite to Ryan Adam’s over emotional croon. I listen to this album when I’m doing the dishes, or hoovering.

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness On The Edge Of Town I used to work in a little coffee shop in Soho, hauling huge coffee sacks around on my shoulders on a daily basis. I used to smell so strongly of the stuff after a days work I used to get funny looks on the tube, not to mention how everything I wore turned brown as they slowly got covered in coffee grounds. If I walked home, I’d sing Racing In The Street at the top of my lungs, it’s the perfect fuck you to a hard day’s work “Some guys, they just give up living and start dying little by little piece by piece / Some guys come home from work and wash up, and go racing in the street”.. Love it.

Joe Innes and the Cavalcade released their debut album The Frighteners last week, and you can buy it from here and here and here and here.

So there’s this man. He’s a troubled man, but then most of us are. Someone once told me never to trust a man who has no troubles. Actually, that’s a lie. Nobody ever told me that, though sometimes I wish they had, because I’m fairly sure it’s true. Anyway. There’s this troubled man. He’s burdened with this faith in something bigger than himself, and with his alcoholism, and with the expectations not just of his loved ones (who, in fact, have learnt not to expect anything at all) and also those of people he has never met.

The Whisky Priest in Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory is perhaps my favourite literary figure of all. He’s such a beautifully realised character that – like all the truest fictional people – he can only be born from someone real. The Whisky Priest is this deep and troubled man who, rather than pretend he has no flaws, approaches them with an honesty only the bravest of us could offer.

I don’t know why it is, but I am reminded of the Whisky Priest whenever I listen to the debut album of Father John Misty. Fear Fun, released by former Fleet Fox J. Tillman on do-no-wrong label Bella Union. Perhaps it’s just the fact that Tillman sings under the name of a clergyman, and sings songs of dark vices (the video for lead single ‘Nancy From Now On’ features Father John’s mistress and more than enough evocation of his sexual misgivings).

More likely though, is the confessional nature of the record – Tillman throws himself around into honky-tonk folk songs that you can only hope were half as cathartic for him as they sound to the listener. He wants to smoke with every girl he’s ever loved on ‘Funtimes in Babylon’, expresses uncertainty and fear in ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery’. As a record, it feels like therapy – a stream-of-consciousness release of thoughts and desperation. It’s beautiful. And it feels all or nothing.

‘Gonna take my life’, he sings. ‘Gonna take my life back one day.’

It’s hard not to believe him or, at least, not to want to believe him. The album, all harmony and introspection, echoes in so many ways Tillman’s background with Fleet Foxes, but is so much darker and – most importantly – much more coherent than the band’s most recent effort. Where Helplessness Blues was a invigorating but often fragile mess of ideas, Fear Fun is a more purposeful record where each song’s troubles lead directly through to the next.

But then, this was always why I loved the Whisky Priest so much. He was a troubled man, a flawed man. His vices were hated by the state (alcohol, religion for the Priest, casual sex and drug abuse for the Father), and he was in many ways completely separate from the culture that had birthed him. But he was a real man, and he was an intelligent man, and he was a man you wanted to listen to. All hail Father John Misty, the Whisky Priest.

Last night we were lucky enough to be invited along to a showcase for the second album by Six Albums alumna Rumer. This was all very exciting for us – trekking down to Hammersmith Working Men’s Club, a beautiful hall sitting just off the Thames and surrounded by very scary tall buildings where we’re led to believe the poor people live. Outside the venue Rumer had done some naughty flyposting with some massive pictures of her mug next to the album title, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. Inside she’d been even naughtier, and had graffitied her name all over the walls. In the exact font off the album cover. It was very neat (and probably quite removable) graffiti.

We lingered about and made friends with some members of Rumer’s fan club, which was nice. Especially as I didn’t think anyone had really bothered with fan clubs since A*Teens or Aqua, or one of those other Scandinavian pop groups that vaguely unnerved me in the late 90s. Every now and then pretty girls came past and offered us canapés. This was our favourite bit of the whole evening, and we took a great deal of jumbo king prawns and honey mustard sausages before we realised that the scotch eggs they were giving out contained quail eggs. QUAIL EGGS. We quickly worked out where the girls were coming from and positioned ourselves directly in their path.

After three miniature game pies, a little cup of prawn cocktail and no less than six glasses of (free!) wine, Whispering Bob Harris took to the stage to introduce the evening’s star. We asked him to speak up, because we’re terribly witty like that, but someone gave him a mic, and all was fine.

Now, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ is a departure of  sorts from Rumer’s platinum-selling debut record, ‘Seasons of my Soul’. ‘Seasons’ was written almost entirely by Rumer herself, drawing heavily on autobiographical blah blah blah… you get the point. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ plays a classic filler game – that is to say, an easy album knocked out between proper records. Indeed, it consists entirely of covers – normally a relatively cynical move employed by crooners in the latter stages of their career. The twist here is that not only are the songs all covers of songs originally written and sung by men, but also that you’ve probably never ruddy heard of them.

There’s no ‘My Way’ to close the record, or a pretty but superficial take on ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. Rather, Rumer draws on her famously eclectic musical knowledge and pulls out songs by Tim Hardin, Jimmy Webb and Paul ‘wrote the soundtrack to Bugsy Malone’ Williams. She sampled these tracks last night in a short set that came to little over half an hour. It was all that was needed, though. Though none of the songs stick out as singles, that was never Rumer’s end game with this record. Instead, she is looking simply to share her love for and reignite interest in some fantastic songs by some terrific writers.

Bob Harris whispered it best in his introduction, championing the fact that thanks to ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ he now had an excuse to play some great forgotten pop songs on his radio show. And you know what? We’re with Bob. The album will have its detractors – not least cynics eagerly waiting for their next chance to growl at MOR pop music for discerning middle-aged middle-class people – but not a single one of them has any right to look down on an album that is going to bring new attention to Todd Rundgren or Townes Van Zandt. Good on you, Rumer.

Dave Gerard, towering above even my six-foot-something frame has been one of my very favourite musicians since first we met. It was an early Folkroom gig – the best we’d put on thus far. O. Chapman had silenced the crowd, Jessie Moncrieff had riled them back up, and then Dave came on and everyone saw this glimmering, flickering candle that had only just been lit. Dave Gerard and his long-term right-hand-man James Frid shone with the sort of faltering beauty that you knew could only ever precede something far greater, warmer and brighter. We didn’t have much of an idea just how good Gerard could be, but I’m starting to think he himself always did.

They came back and played an unforgettable and absolutely devastating set unplugged at the Folkroom piano. The crowd fell silent. The bar staff stopped serving, clambered up on chairs and started taking photos. I almost cried, but then I’m like that. You can see from the video Gerard’s friends recorded that it was something special. It turned out that this singer-songwriter, when let free amongst wild musicians, roamed bravely and formed such affecting and heart-wrenching music that it almost defies my words.

Now Dave and his posse, under the guise of Gerard and the Watchmen (we pushed for him to call the band The Delicate Wash, but he wasn’t having any of it), are set to release their debut EP. It’s called ‘I Climbed A Tree’, and it makes me so happy the fact that I’m not literally bursting is testament only to the strength of my skin.

Of course, I was always going to love it – the opening track is a gorgeous and more developed take on ‘Stables’, the song that closed my record label’s free compilation last year. But it’s nice to see these sounds develop, these songs that I’ve known for so long sound so new; these songs that are so new to me seem so familiar.

The best song for me is ‘bonus track’ Sophia – something so warm and filled with love really comes to life with the full band behind it. That said, the EP has this tight, restrained feel that means the listener isn’t overwhelmed by the forcefulness that makes Gerard and the Watchmen such a live spectacle.

And they are a live spectacle. That much I can promise you. ‘I Climbed A Tree’ is not a Folkroom release, but we still leapt at the chance to help host the EP’s launch party this Friday. It is, in many ways, a Folkroom affair. Our great friend Josienne Clarke provides backing vocals on the EP, and the two support acts on Friday first met Dave at those two Folkroom gigs we mentioned earlier. As a live line-up goes, there isn’t much you could ask for beyond O. Chapman and Laura Hocking in support.

But this is still very much the product of Dave Gerard and his Watchmen. And what a product it is. Give listen to ‘Sophia’ below and watch a live Folkroom version of the EP closer above. Then grab yourself a ticket to come catch Gerard and the Watchmen’s launch on Friday here.

Sophia (Bonus track) by Dave Gerard & Watchmen

A little while back I was sent an album by a band called Herons! That’s their exclamation mark, not mine. They wanted to play the fortnightly gig that I put on with Folkroom Records. I popped the CD in, sat back and listened. What followed was thirty seven minutes of sprawling, exciting and entirely visual music. Lyrics that drew pictures between your ears and a musical hand that took you and carried you from track to track. We booked the band in to headline our April 11th gig immediately. I also grabbed the lead singer Ben Kritikos for an installment of Six Albums. Pay attention to his selection – I’ve been obsessed with a few of them ever since he wrote this! Over to Ben…

No way could I make a list of my six favourite albums. Not possible. The top of my “favourite” list is a tie — and it’s a three digit figure. And everybody tries to out-cool each other with strange and obscure indie records. Or 50s surf rock. So here are six overlooked or underrated albums that I think are simply beautiful. And probably not cool. Unless you think the Bible is cool.

Kíla & Oki – Kíla & Oki Kíla are an Irish band who play traditional Irish instruments (bodhrán, uilléann pipes, low whistles, etc.) and sing in the Irish language, making ecstatic music with catchy tunes and thumping beats. Oki is an Ainu Japanese music revivalist who plays the tonkori, a traditional Ainu stringed instrument. It’s as unlikely a pairing as you could imagine. But it works. The music is totally foreign but immediately accessible. You could play this at a nightclub and it wouldn’t sound weird, or you could get toddlers to dance to it. Drunks and toddlers will love it — what more could you ask from an album?

Rachel’s - Music For Egon Schiele Rachel’s play instrumental music that has more parallels in Southern Gothic fiction from their home Kentucky than in any musical genre. This album is a departure from their usual unusual sound. A trio of piano, cello and viola create a stark, melancholy atmosphere. There’s long-settled dust all over this music. Music For Egon Schiele was originally written to accompany a play about the life of the Austrian modernist painter of the title.

Bill Evans Trio - Everybody Digs Bill Evans Bill Evans’ playing is subtly powerful, much like Miles Davis, whose famous Kind Of Blue is probably the most famous thing Evans ever played on. Everybody Digs… is equally great. Bill Evans set his own compositions against a selection of what were essentially slightly old fashioned songs at the time (1958). This allows his unsentimental, lyrical style of playing to demonstrate the huge scope of his musical vision. The long improvisational “Peace Piece” is one of the greatest piano recordings ever made, no matter what kind of music you like.

Moondog – Sax Pax For A Sax Not enough people know who Moondog was. Louis Hardin was a blind man who in the 1950s dressed as a viking, invented percussion instruments with which he busked on 53rd & 6th, near Manhattan’s famed 52nd Street, and wrote some of the weirdest and most beautiful music of the time. He’s the very definition of avante-garde. Sax Pax… is an album made later in his career, when he’d left the US for Europe. An ensemble of saxophones, accompanied by Moondog himself on a single large drum, play his kind-of jazz, kind-of-like-nothing else compositions. You’d probably recognize the track “Bird’s Lament” from Mr. Scruff.

Jinx Lennon – Know Your Station Gouger Nation The three stages of introduction to Jinx Lennon’s music are as follows: 1) raised eyebrows and struggle to pinpoint his Dundalk accent; 2) awkward laugh, like opening and shutting the bathroom door to find your flatmate naked; 3) “Holy shit, this guy’s amazing!” Know Your Station… is catchy in a way you didn’t know catchy could be. Jinx more often than not bellows instead of singing, spitting out poetry that is somewhere between flights of lyric imagery and plain good sense simply spoken. Some of Gouger Nation’s songs consist of one chord. Less than one chord. One note. Not even a note, just a violent scratching of the guitar and some bafflingly amazing shouting.

Louis Armstrong (and an uncredited chorus of singers) - Louis & The Good Book It’s easy to forget that the US has a culture. The narrative about itself and the associated paraphernalia are the US’s main export. But Louis Armstrong is, to me, at the heart of American culture. At its heart, American culture is predominantly African-American. And for good or ill, it’s often tied up with religion. On this album, Louis Armstrong manages to sing classic Christian songs in the evangelical tradition — mostly stories from the Old Testament — without letting the preaching detract focus from the music. The actual religious element is a bit too comical to take seriously. These are just cracking tunes, accompanied by the best uncredited chorus of singers this side of Looney Tunes.

Ben Kritikos heads up Herons! – the band behind So Long! (they really like exclamation marks). They’ll be headlining this week’s Folkroom gig at The Queens Head.

I learnt a new word yesterday. I don’t often learn new words. Not because I’m very clever and I already know everything but rather because I’m very stupid and never pay attention. The word, picked up from webcomic XKCD’s April Fool’s Day prank, is ‘umwelt’. It’s not a very pretty word, I’ll give you that. It sounds like a German sausage, or a caveman stubbing his toe. XKCD described it as ‘the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds’. I like this, and I can see how it works in our everyday lives as well – how it’s relevant to our existence, and our understanding of things.

Take the debut single by The Lake Poets, for instance. ‘City By The Sea’ is a bright and slightly bittersweet song about being from Sunderland. Though it might not be a real hub of British folk music it is home to Martin Longstaff, who is to The Lake Poets what E is to Eels or Mark E. Smith is to The Fall. We met once, some time back, when Martin came down and played at our Folkroom gig. We bonded over music and over Sunderland. It’s strange, and lovely, that in some sort of self-perpetuated Baader-Meinhof situation, I find Martin teaching me about umwelt only the day after I learnt about it.

You see, like Martin, I have an association to Sunderland. I’m not from there, and neither are any of my family; in fact I think the first time any of us went to the city was in the early noughties. We were there because, for reasons not really interesting enough to explain, my mother and I (those two Sussex natives who never visited the city until 2002) are supporters of Sunderland AFC. We cheer when they almost steal three points from Manchester City, and shout at the TV when the captain Lee Cattermole does something particularly dickish (which is, as far as I can tell, most matches). We even take pleasure when Newcastle lose to Brighton. We are Sunderland supporters.

So when I think of Sunderland, I think of football. I think of my few visits to the Stadium of Light – perched on the edge of some great chasm, like a giant structural echo of John Cusack at literally any point in the film 2012. I think of the fat, rowdy locals sitting topless in the stands on a November afternoon with S, A, F or C painted on their hairy pot bellies. I remember the trips around those footballing visits. The boarded up windows of the dying shops, or the aching rows of terraced houses that crawl their way over hills. I remember the grey skies and grey water of the North Sea. I remember the bitter coldness. I remember my sister throwing up on the roof of the National Glass Centre (which, it should be noted, is also glass and thus affords a vaguely terrifying view to any patrons of the centre happening to look up at that moment in time). I have an affection for Sunderland, perennial underdog, but I can’t help but think of it as kind of… grim.

What’s strange about this all though, is the effect a different perspective can have on a place. What’s strange about it all, I suppose, is umwelt. The Lake Poets’ single is a lovely affair. ‘City By The Sea’ and its b-side ‘Small Town’ both share the same theme – Martin Longstaff’s affinity for his hometown. On top of Springsteen-harmonica and light, breezy vocals is a message that is both at odds and entirely in tune with my memories of Sunderland. Martin feels the same coldness as I did, remembers the same run-down places as I do. “A town where it’s freezing/A town where you wind up dead” he sings on ‘Small Town’.

Nevertheless, even though Martin sees the exact same world as I do – no rose-tinted vision, no sentimental dishonesty – his experience is an entirely different one. He loves this place. He accepts all the flaws and he admits that he needs to be there. “Its shores and its waters have become a part of me/And when I die it’s where I want to be”.

I can’t recommend The Lake Poets highly enough – their single is a wonderful, warm and affectionate love letter to Sunderland. As a pair, ‘City By The Sea’ and b-side ‘Small Town’ offer a complete portrait of the city seen through the eyes of one of its most caring, accepting but ultimately hopeful children. If only everyone’s opposing view points were this affecting, we’d all live in a much cosier world.

Buy the single here.

In terms of pop music, there are three things I adore more than almost anything else. Strings. That’s one thing. Strings only ever terrifically sad or horrendously fun. The latter are the best, obviously. They can make you feel like you’re in a Bond film, and that can only be a good thing. Fun choruses. Also a good thing. Singalongs! I love a good catchy singalong chorus. In short, I want my pop music to make me happy. I want the ruddy thing to be so fun it almost – almost - makes me want to go jogging to it. Hello Gemma Ray. Hello you wonderful thing, whose song Runaway ticks off every one of my boxes. Who has covered Sparks with Sparks. Welcome to Six Albums. Please tell me what you listened to that made your music SO DAMN FUN.

Van Morrison – Astral Weeks I got turned onto this album in my late teens. I love the way it swings, the grove is amazing and the bass playing has so much movement and freedom. It feels like the entire album is one special moment after special moment – it’s impossible not to get sucked into it. If I could make a record that captures even half the spirit of this, I think I might die happy. It a constant source of reference to me when I’m recording and looking for a take with a certain something to it.

Portishead – Dummy My big sister had this on cassette, and it quickly became a comforting second home to me, a world full of reverb, mystery and intrigue. I think this may have become lodged in my subconcious when I started recording and experimenting with sound and the space around it. I listened to it from beginning to end again recently, and heard it with totally new ears – it stood out in stark contrast to this current trend for soul-less, over-singing, and I couldn’t believe how fresh and inspiring it still sounded.

Krzysztof Komeda – Astigmatic This is a more recent influence. After becoming a big fan of his soundtrack work with Roman Polanski, I got a bit frustrated listening to the audio releases of his soundtracks as obviously the nature of film scores mean they often end up being cut up randomly. I delved into his other work which led me to open my mind towards a new way of listening to music and the way melody and harmony can be presented. I listened to this a lot in 2011, and quite enjoyed the album, but was initially more intrigued than absorbed by it. However, by the end of the year I became hooked – something just seemed to click.

Nina Simone – Forbidden Fruit I think this may have encouraged my already slightly unorthadox song arranging instincts to go for what felt right rather than a traditional song structure for the sake of it. I love the way some recordings of hers can evoke a time, tale or mood and feel more like a free piece of music than a ‘song’ as such.. I liked the groove of the band, the sudden mood swings, and the way she really leads both her band and her songs. I loved her ferocious piano playing and the pure joy and release captured within it alongside a feeling of frustration which gave it an edge I could identify with from a young age. I think this gave me some reassurance when I first started playing live to do it my way, and to go off on a tangent and play what I felt in the moment.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – No More Shall We Part I love the way this record swoons and sweeps – it’s so atmospheric. Thomas Wydler’s drumming dynamics, feel and mood inspired me very much, and the whole bands sense of drama really got under my skin. It captured an odd but exhilarting period of time for me when I first moved to London and I rented a very sparse room from an Egyptian belly dancer in West Hampstead with lots of cats. To me, it recalls the feeling of living truly alone in a big city for the first time, with an excited but heavy heart, dreaming of a romance but feeling very isolated. I had a big songwriting binge as a result and listened to this album a lot.

Lee Hazlewood – Poet, Fool or Bum Though I’m a huge fan of the songs themselves, I think the production of this album influenced me more. Ambitous, grand and cinematic but uncluttered – great soulful musicianship but playfulness too. I love the way the production rubs against some lyrics, but most of all, I’m obsessed by the bass sound! (and playing). I heard it was achieved by blending upright, plectrum electric and semi-acoustic bass but I’m not sure if that’s true. I love Lee Hazlewood, and would love to have had the chance to work with him or be a fly on the wall when he was making records.

Go buy Gemma Ray’s fantastic EP ‘Runaway’ right now – it has genuine shades of early Bond soundtracks mixed with occasional tinges of Björk’s vocals. Which is my way of saying that it’s bloody excellent.

Feminism is literally everywhere today. EVERYWHERE. Apparently it’s International Women’s Day or something. Everyone’s celebrating international women. I saw an old Japanese lady on the bus earlier and I shook her hand. “Well done,” I said. “On being a woman.”

There’s always been this sort of feeling towards feminism that plays out very well for people who don’t want to put the effort in to ‘letting everyone be equal’. I’ll admit, I’ve accidentally read a bit of feminist literature recently in the form of Tina Fey and Caitlin Moran’s autobiographies. It’s my own fault – you’d have thought that the latter book being titled ‘How To Be A Woman’ would have been a clue.

Nevertheless, it’s kind of opened my eyes to all the fallacies of perceived feminism. The man hating. Feminists don’t hate men. I’ve learnt that now. Or, at least, I’ve learnt that if they do hate men it’s normally because we’re being dicks, or because we keep telling them to keep up but we haven’t had to march around London in these three inch heels for the past six hours thankyouverymuch.

The best bit is that I don’t have to do anything different to be a feminist! I just have to continue grimacing whenever a smarmy MP patronises a woman. I just have to continue thinking Chris Brown is a dick. THIS WILL NOT BE A CHALLENGE AT ALL.

Our inaugural Hg Prize winner Emmy the Great has been celebrating women today in the only way any of us know how – musically. She’s posted a Spotify playlist of her own construction for the world to hear and this Sunday she’ll be playing some of her own songs with an all female string section down on the South Bank in London.

We’ve been celebrating in our own special way – listening to songs from that era of 90s pop where everyone started singing about being a girl. Beyoncé, in her various guises, has had four or five massive hits about being a self-reliant and strong woman. It’s weird to see that the pioneers of 90s Girl Power – the Spice Girls – didn’t really have any songs about the concept itself. But then, like all the best feminist pop acts – Blondie, Peaches, The Pretenders, the first and third incarnations of Sugababes – Spice Girls spoke out through simply being people rather than directly through their music.

It’s that sort of approach to life that it’d be good to see the music world adopt as a whole – feminist or otherwise.

Piney Gir. Pronounced like in ‘girl’, since you asked. It made sense to have Piney Gir write us a Six Albums post – her music is hard to pin to any one genre or influence. When you have an artist like that, you know they’ll have a lot to say – and boy, did she. Sit back and enjoy Piney Gir’s six choices – diverse and wonderful as they are. Catch her live across the UK in the coming weeks – Chelmsford, Oxford, Bristol, Bath and Cardiff.

Rufus Wainwright – Poses I love Rufus! His gorgeous voice is like a rich treacle tart; his piano playing is like Liberace meets David Helfgott and for me this album treads the perfect line between Gershwin schmaltz and indie pop. He wrote this album when he was staying at the Chelsea Hotel for 6 months and you can hear the legacy in his lyrics, the revolving door that highlights the characters he’d come across there and the ghosts that wander its historical halls. Debauchery is the primary theme of this album, and I guess until recently I’ve had my fair share of debauchery. Debauchery is fun! It’s not without its second thoughts, self-loathing and hangover regrets though. This album has it all; it’s honest and raw with a sparkly, musical sheen covering the highlights and lowlights of New York City glamour and its undercurrents. It takes me back to memories of time spent in New York with a dear close friend who lives in Queens. I try to hang out with him at least once a year and this album reminds me of him. He’s like my family, when I miss him I listen to this album.

The Kinks – The Village Green Preservation Society I first discovered The Kinks with The Village Green Preservation Society. From the downbeat I was enthralled with its cool 60’s sounds and distinctly British themes. It seemed so exotic the first time I heard it! The lyrics really speak to me too, because I’m an old-fashioned kind of girl and this album is all about nostalgia, hanging on to the rustic inspiration of community, camaraderie and the charm of yesteryear’s innocence. The Kinks didn’t really cross the pond like other British bands of the 60’s and they were a late finding for me. God save the Village Green I say, here-here!

Dolly Parton – Legends Is it a bit of a cop-out to pick a box set? You see, Dolly is my ultimate song writing idol! I love her so much I couldn’t pick just one album; she worked her way up and out of her impoverished background in the Smoky Mountains (where she was poor and happy) & she wrote about it, honestly. Coat of Many Colours made me cry when I first hear it. She touched on some edgy subject matters for the time in songs like ‘Dumb Blonde’ and ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’ and her version of ‘In the Ghetto’ is absolutely mind-blowing, there is a real sense of pain and empathy in her voice. ‘Jolene’ is a gutsy account of a real plea, woman to woman. ’9-5′ is a total anthem for me, when I’m getting on the tube and travelling to the ol’ day job… that song gives me a sense of humour about my ’9-5′ persona. Dolly is smart, hanging on to her own music publishing, saying no to Elvis when he wanted a share of ‘I Will Always Love You’ to cover it. Later Whitney Houston would make a big hit of it and she did it on Dolly’s terms. She sticks to her guns and pioneered the music bizz; I look up to her for it. She has talent and beauty; she plays every instrument, very well and with very long fingernails. I love what she’s doing with Imagination Library, which is a charity that promotes early childhood literacy. Basically she’s a legend and this box set has it all.

Paul Simon – Graceland This album reminds me of childhood, there was a point in my childhood where we moved around a lot, and we were always in the car driving for days with our possessions stacked up around me in the back seat (good preparation for going on tour!). We didn’t really listen to much secular music when I was growing up but for some reason we listened to Graceland. I loved it! It was the first time I’d heard some of those African instruments and the vocal stylings of Ladysmith Black Mambazo fused with Zydeco and classic-rock reminiscent of the Shadows or the Everly Brothers to create a really refreshing album. I loved Linda Ronstadt’s voice too and would try to imitate it in the back seat with my little girl’s voice. The album sounded like sun and fun but the subject matter stemmed from political issues like apartheid as well as Paul Simon’s mid-life crisis (which in hindsight is a pretty brave thing to write about on both counts). It really worked, and I love this album still.

The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico I didn’t discover The Velvet Underground until I moved to England (I’m still playing catch up from the no-secular-music days) and from the moment I heard them they seemed like the coolest band ever. Lou Reed treats poetic lyrics like throwaway sentences. John Cale adds a sort of minimalist/classical sheen with his experimental viola, adding art-house credibility to what is otherwise a pop record. Nico guested on a few tracks and her Teutonic drony singing as well as the drug references and allusion to sexual deviancy truly make the album a Zeitgeist of the 60s. The Velvet Underground is elegant and understated, they rock but you know they are holding back a little, they could rock more but they are too cool to do that. This album was a real inspiration for Geronimo!

Depeche Mode – Speak & Spell I have a real soft spot for synth pop and this is the ultimate synth pop album for me! It was one of the first albums I bought; it was in the bargain bin at the record shop in the mall (well it was about 10 years old when I bought it on cassette and people were starting to buy CDs at that point) and I used my babysitting money to buy it (I was a bad babysitter, errrr… yeah). I remember my friend’s cool, older brother had it so I figured it must be good. And it was better than I could have imagined, the monophonic synths are layered one on top of the other with riffs and riffs and more riffs. It’s like melody overload! Vince Clarke is some kind of pop-writing genius if you ask me. At risk of sounding pretentious I could compare these intricate layered parts to the counter fugues of Bach. All of this blissful sound was wrapped in a tidy little, 3 minute pop song package, and every track is hooky and good… In my adult life I went on to work at Mute and had a massive unrequited crush on Daniel Miller. If I had told my young self that that was going to happen I would have never believed it. My first day at Mute involved an after show party at a Depeche Mode concert at Wembley and I ended up arm in arm with Andy Fletcher, alco-pop in hand. I later went on to tour with Erasure and had dinner backstage with Vince Clarke almost every night. Living the dream started with that bargain bin cassette.

First things first: I’m not a twitcher. Second things second: by that, I mean to say that despite the title of this blog I’m not particularly into birdwatching. Third things third: I also don’t have any notable twitches, apart from when people argue for the continued existence of Nickelback.

Herons! are a band. Herons are a bird, yes, but add that exclamation mark and you find yourselves faced with one of those wonderful little discoveries you only get when you run a sporadic and ever-faltering music blog. In fact, it’s not entirely fair to say that I discovered Herons! for myself. They discovered me. Ben Kritikos, the band’s songwriter-in-chief, contacted me and essentially said “Hey! Listen to our music!”

Well, Ben, I’ve listened. And you know what? I ruddy love Herons! In the spirit of WWL, let me count the ways:

1. You’ve got the aesthetic all right. I open my little parcel and inside is a little note written personally to me on just about the nicest paper. Seriously, world, you need to see this paper. It’s just terrific. All sturdy and off-white and textured and posh. You could build a house with this shit, it’s so thick. And the album artwork! Have you ever seen an album cover as lovely as this?

Well, probably you have. But there’s a lot of album covers out there, and you know, this is still a pretty damned snazzy one. It has an air of nostalgia about it, but also harks back to other great albums of the past fifteen or twenty years. Not least this one:

But we’ll get to that later.

2. Herons! really shouldn’t be this good. You self-recorded this shit? Where? In the effing recording studio of Aasgaard itself? You have it all, guys. Like, everything. Your harmonies are down like a Black Hawk, your instrumentation is subtle without ever being forgettable. You know how to build a track – the way you build up ‘Chamber Music’. Man. It’s like watching the barn-building scene in Witness, only without Harrison Ford and Karl from Die Hard sharing secretly erotic glances.

3. I don’t want to make out that the album is anything less than it is… any less unique an effort, any less worthy of standing on its own two feet, but you know what? So Long! by Herons! is the closest England has yet got to Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. It’s big and brash and experimental one moment, but reclusive and contemplative the next. It’s also much less interested on the ins and outs of feedback.

4. “We are sinking in the morning, so we don’t get too high/We digging deeper trenches, so we can touch the sky”. Lyrically, So Long! is ace. Just ace. Angry, biting satire and breathless cynicism. And then, gentle and affecting. “What can I do/What can I be/What can I say/To reach you, to reach you?” Ben’s lyrics are quick-witted but unpretentiously functional. He might not match the poetry of, say, Guy Garvey (our greatest lyricist), but he’s more than a match for The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. That’s a good thing. A very good thing.

5. We ruddy love Herons!, but man, you guys ruddy love exclamation marks, don’t you?

So Long! by Herons! is out now, released independently by the band. I don’t know if it’s available on vinyl but it really bloody should be.