Moonlit Britpop and Wired Art Pop in Velvet Afterhours
AI Generated · 34 min read ·
Come On Feel The Lemonheads by The Lemonheads 🍋
🎙️ A messy creation, turned into a sharp pop record
Your 2014 Music On Vinyl pressing captures an album first released in 1993, when The Lemonheads were moving from cult favourite status into the centre of alternative rock. It followed It’s a Shame About Ray, and that matters, because Come On Feel The Lemonheads sounds like a band realising they could write radio-sized hooks without sanding away their odd edges.
The record was made in Los Angeles with the Robb Brothers producing, and Evan Dando very much at the wheel as songwriter, singer and guiding presence. By most accounts, the sessions were loose and sometimes chaotic, which fits Dando’s public image at the time. Yet the album itself is surprisingly tight. Most songs arrive, make their point, and leave in under three minutes. Even with that scrappy atmosphere around the recording, the sequencing feels exact, right down to the strange final sprawl of “The Jello Fund” on your edition.
🎸 Why it sounds so good, and so unlike grunge orthodoxy
What makes this album distinctive is how lightly it wears its craft. The guitars jangle, chime and occasionally bite, but the songs are built like classic pop. “The Great Big No”, “It’s About Time” and “Into Your Arms” are all hook-first songs, compact and direct. Then Dando slips in country colour, softer textures and a very open-hearted streak, especially on “Big Gay Heart”.
That mix set The Lemonheads apart from many early 90s peers. While plenty of American rock was pushing heaviness, angst and distortion, this album let melody lead. It also blurred genre lines with ease, pulling together indie rock, power-pop, country touches and bits of punk brevity. In that sense, it feels more modern than its date suggests. It does not care much for neat genre policing.
📻 Hits, reviews and the making of an alt-rock star
Commercially, this was the band’s high-water mark. The album reached the US Billboard 200, and “Into Your Arms” became a huge modern rock radio hit, spending nine weeks at number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. That song alone gave the band a reach far beyond college radio.
Critically, the response was mostly warm, though never blindly adoring. Some writers loved the melodic ease and emotional looseness, while others were suspicious of Dando’s celebrity and pin-up status. That tension is part of the album’s story. It was a proper alternative rock success, but one with a frontman who scrambled the usual ideas about indie authenticity.
💿 Legacy, reissues and why it still fits today
This album has lasted because the songs are so replayable. In the streaming era, that matters. Most of the tracklist fits present-day listening habits rather neatly, short, catchy, emotionally clear. The one exception is “The Jello Fund”, a long closing piece that feels like a reminder of another age, when albums could still end with a private joke, a hidden-track feel, or a little act of sabotage.
It is not a political record, and it does not speak directly to 2010s social media culture. But its reissue life does say something about modern listening. Records like this now travel through playlists, anniversary editions and online rediscovery. Come On Feel The Lemonheads still works because its combination of sweetness, slackness and strong songcraft never really went out of date.
Modern Life Is Rubbish by Blur 🎡
A difficult birth that changed the band 🔧
Released originally in 1993, and in your collection here as the 2012 European Food/Parlophone vinyl reissue, Modern Life Is Rubbish is the record where Blur dragged themselves out of the hangover of Leisure and became properly Blur. The making of it was messy. Early sessions were done with Andy Partridge of XTC at The Church studio in London, but the partnership went badly and those recordings were abandoned or heavily reworked. That false start matters, because you can hear a band searching for a sharper identity.
Stephen Street then stepped in and helped turn the material into something far more focused. Some tracks also carry co-production from the band and John Smith, which adds to the album’s slightly uneven but very alive feel. On your pressing, “Chemical World” flows into “Intermission”, while “Resigned” ends with “Commercial Break”, and those additions make the album feel almost like a satirical broadcast, broken up by little scene changes.
The sound of Blur becoming English on purpose 🇬🇧
What makes the album distinctive is its refusal to chase American grunge at the exact moment grunge ruled everything. Damon Albarn turned instead towards English pop writing, with clear traces of the Kinks, Small Faces and music hall wit, but filtered through early 90s indie rock. That gave Blur a voice of their own.
The songs swing between sharp, compact pop like “Advert” and “Colin Zeal”, dreamy mood pieces like “Miss America”, and the odd, loping grandeur of “Oily Water”. It is often called an early Britpop landmark, but it is stranger than that tag suggests. There is art-pop fussiness, guitar noise, suburban character sketches and little theatrical touches all over it.
Guitars, bass and drums make the whole thing bite 🎸
Graham Coxon is a huge reason the album works. His guitar playing is jumpy, abrasive and imaginative, never content to sit politely behind the tune. On “Advert” and “Coping” he slashes through the songs with real impatience. On “Oily Water” and “Miss America” he turns atmospheric, smearing the edges with feedback and texture.
Underneath that, Alex James and Dave Rowntree give the record its movement. James’s bass lines are melodic and restless, often carrying as much hook as the vocal, while Rowntree keeps everything tight without sounding stiff. That rhythm section stops the album becoming merely clever. It has real drive.
Reception, afterlife and why it still feels modern 📻
Commercially, it was a modest success rather than a smash, reaching the UK Top 20, and the singles “For Tomorrow”, “Chemical World” and “Sunday Sunday” helped rebuild the band’s reputation. In hindsight, its reputation has only grown. Many writers now hear it as the opening chapter in Blur’s great run, the point where Albarn became a sharp observer of English life rather than just another indie singer.
Its themes have aged surprisingly well. Advertising, routine, class anxiety, boredom, urban drift, all of that lands neatly in the streaming and social media age. The title sounds even sharper now. Modern life may be different, but Blur caught the weary comedy of it brilliantly. On vinyl, with “Intermission” and “Commercial Break” clearly laid out across four sides, that sly, curated flow comes through especially well.
Adore by The Smashing Pumpkins 🌙
Recording in the aftermath 🕯️
Originally released in 1998, Adore came from a bruised version of The Smashing Pumpkins. Jimmy Chamberlin was out of the band after the 1996 tragedy that also claimed touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, and Billy Corgan was dealing with the death of his mother. You can hear that weight all over the record. This was not a victory-lap follow-up to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It was a retreat inward.
The band recorded across Chicago and Los Angeles, with Billy Corgan, Flood and Brad Wood shaping the final sound. Without Chamberlin’s explosive drumming, the sessions moved towards drum machines, loops and guest players including Matt Walker, Matt Cameron and Joey Waronker. That shift mattered. It changed the pulse of the music from muscular to ghostly. Even on this 2014 European vinyl reissue, the sequencing makes that journey feel deliberate, from the hushed opening of “To Sheila” to the tiny, almost vanishing farewell of “17”.
A dark, elegant left turn 🎹
What makes Adore distinctive is how far it moves from the band’s usual guitar assault without losing their identity. There are acoustic guitars, piano, electronic beats, goth-pop shadows and a kind of candlelit melancholy running through the whole thing. “Ava Adore” has that clipped, mechanical swagger, while “Perfect” gives heartbreak a polished pop shape. Then you get pieces like “For Martha”, which grows into one of Corgan’s most affecting songs, written for his mother.
This is alternative rock, but it keeps slipping its boundaries. There is synth-pop in it, industrial texture, dark cabaret mood, even something close to chamber pop. In that sense, Adore feels oddly modern. Long before playlists made genre borders seem less important, the Pumpkins were already building an album that treated rock as a container rather than a rulebook.
Reception, backlash and rediscovery 📉➡️📈
At the time, the reaction was split. The album debuted strongly, reaching number 2 on the Billboard 200, but compared with the vast success of Mellon Collie, it was treated as a disappointment. Some critics admired its restraint and emotional honesty. Others found it too sombre, too slow, too far removed from the band’s louder past.
That reputation has softened a lot. Over the years, Adore has been reappraised as one of the Pumpkins’ most cohesive records, and for many listeners it is the one that aged best. Streaming has helped that reassessment. Its mood-heavy, late-night character suits modern listening habits beautifully, and online fan culture has given the album a long second life through live clips, deep-cut praise and constant re-ranking.
Rock music with the volume turned inward 🌫️
Adore did not answer the late 1990s with bigger riffs or brighter choruses. It answered with grief, fragility and control. In a decade that often rewarded swagger, this album chose vulnerability. That is why it still feels unusual. It redefined heaviness as emotional force rather than noise, and that remains one of the boldest things The Smashing Pumpkins ever put to tape.
Pisces Iscariot by The Smashing Pumpkins 🎃
🌙 A B-sides album that feels like a real album
Pisces Iscariot first arrived in 1994, gathering material recorded between roughly 1989 and 1993, across the Gish and Siamese Dream years. On paper, it is a compilation of B-sides, outtakes, demos and covers. In practice, it feels like a shadow studio album, one assembled with unusual care by Billy Corgan, who treated the running order more like a mixtape than a leftovers bin. That sense of shape matters. Your 2012 European Virgin vinyl reissue, spread across four sides from “Soothe” to “Spaced”, lets that pacing breathe beautifully.
The recordings came from several moments in the band’s early rise, with links to Smart Studios and Butch Vig on the Gish side of the story, and to the denser, more pressured Siamese Dream era as well. That is why the record moves so freely between homespun intimacy and blown-out fuzz. “Soothe” opens with a fragile, taped-in-a-room feel, while “Frail And Bedazzled”, “Pissant” and “Hello Kitty Kat” hit with the serrated guitar force people associate with prime Pumpkins. Then there is “Blew Away”, sung by James Iha, which shifts the mood completely.
🎸 Why it sounds so distinctive
What makes Pisces Iscariot special is its range. It has acoustic confessionals, psychedelic drift, grunge-adjacent crunch, dream-pop haze and classic rock references all sitting together without sounding forced. “Starla” alone is a small epic, stretching into a long, yearning guitar meditation that hints at how expansive the band could be outside the limits of a single format.
The covers matter too. Their version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” became one of the best-known tracks here, while “Girl Named Sandoz” nods to The Animals. Those choices reveal a band with deep roots, not one boxed into early 90s alt-rock fashion.
📈 Reception, success and afterlife
The remarkable thing is that this supposedly secondary release hit No. 4 in the US and went platinum very quickly. That almost never happens with a rarities set. Critics and fans recognised that these songs were stronger than the usual cast-offs. Over time, Pisces Iscariot gained a reputation as one of rock’s best B-sides collections.
The 2012 remaster and vinyl reissue helped seal that view. In the streaming era, where listeners jump freely between albums, deluxe editions and deep cuts, Pisces Iscariot makes even more sense than it did in 1994. Social media fan culture has helped too, with songs once traded among devoted collectors now discussed, ranked and rediscovered in public.
🔥 How it bends rock rules
This album quietly challenges a lot of rock convention. It blurs the line between “proper” album and archive trawl. It treats non-album tracks as worthy, sequenced art. It refuses genre purity. Most of all, it shows that a major rock band can reveal rough edges, false turns and side roads without losing mystique.
It is not a political album in any direct sense, but it fits the 90s suspicion of polish and corporate neatness. These songs feel exposed, moody and unguarded. That honesty is why Pisces Iscariot still lands so well, and why your 2012 double LP is more than a reissue, it is a reminder that sometimes the scraps tell the best story.
Hackers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Various 💾
⚡ A film soundtrack built like a 90s club night
Released for the 1995 film and revived on this 2020 Varèse Sarabande double LP, Hackers is not the work of a single act at all, but a brilliantly chosen sleeve shared by UK rave royalty, trip-hop architects, alt-dance crossovers and a few left turns. Iain Softley’s film wanted the internet to feel fast, illicit and glamorous, so the music team leaned into the sound of mid-90s clubs rather than a standard Hollywood rock package. That decision is the whole story here.
Your 2020 pressing reshapes the original idea a little. Alongside giants such as Orbital, Leftfield, Underworld and The Prodigy, it folds in Simon Boswell’s score material, plus Massive Attack’s “Protection” and the brief Guy Pratt pieces. That makes the record feel less like a straight greatest-hits compilation and more like a tour through the film’s musical world.
🎛️ What the artists bring to the sleeve
The headline names are obvious for a reason. Orbital’s “Halcyon On And On” is the spiritual centre, all weightless melancholy and rave euphoria. Underworld’s “Cowgirl” stretches out into a proper hypnotic groove, while Leftfield’s “Open Up” adds brute force and John Lydon’s sneer. The Prodigy appear twice, which tells you a lot about the soundtrack’s priorities: this is cyberculture as breakbeats, alarm sirens and bad behaviour.
Then there are the shading artists. Kruder & Dorfmeister bring a dubbed-out, after-hours drift. Massive Attack slow the pulse and add depth. Stereo MC’s “Connected” is the accessible crossover tune, instantly recognisable even outside dance circles. Squeeze’s “Heaven Knows”, on the other hand, is the real surprise, a clean pop-rock closer on a record otherwise wired for neon.
🌀 The scene it captures, and how the sides move
This selection captures the moment when electronic music was moving from specialist clubs into wider pop culture. It is very British and European in flavour, with techno, big beat, ambient and trip-hop all rubbing shoulders. In America, that made the soundtrack feel like a dispatch from another planet.
The running order on your pressing is smart. Side A opens with the long exhale of “Halcyon On And On”, slides through Boswell’s suite, then lands on the confrontational stomp of “Open Up”. Side B is the peak-time side, with “Cowgirl”, “Voodoo People” and “Connected” all pulling in different directions without losing momentum. Side C eases off into downtempo haze before The Prodigy kick the door back in. Side D is the comedown, elegant with Massive Attack, then oddly charming in its closing run through Guy Pratt, David Gilmour and Squeeze.
🖥️ Reception, legacy and the obvious draws
The film was not a big box-office winner, but the soundtrack outlived it by miles. Over time, Hackers became a cult shorthand for how the 90s imagined cyberspace should sound. Its influence is easy to hear in later screen depictions of hacking, digital paranoia and sleek techno-futurism.
The obvious draws are Orbital, Underworld, Leftfield, The Prodigy and Massive Attack. The unexpected inclusions are what make the set memorable: Boswell’s score fragments, the Guy Pratt curios, and that Squeeze finale. Taken together, they make this less a mere soundtrack than a snapshot of a scene, a mood and a very specific fantasy of the online age.
- View Hackers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) on russ.fm
Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush 🐕🌊
🎛️ Built at home, shaped with total control
Released in the UK on 16 September 1985 on EMI, Hounds Of Love was the album where Kate Bush’s studio world fully clicked into place. After the long gap following The Dreaming, she worked in a more self-directed way, using her own home recording setup to build songs patiently, layer by layer. That mattered. It gave her the freedom to treat the studio as part of the writing process, not just the place where songs were tidied up.
The exact running order on your UK vinyl makes the design of the album impossible to miss. Side A, “Hounds Of Love,” is a set of sharply shaped songs. Side B, “The Ninth Wave,” is a continuous song cycle about a woman alone in the water at night, slipping through fear, memory, dreams and survival. Few major pop records of 1985 were this carefully split between immediate singles and a full conceptual suite.
🤖 Fairlight, drum machines, and the new 80s studio language
One of the keys to the album’s sound is the Fairlight CMI, the sampler and workstation Bush used as both a writing tool and an arranging tool. On this record, synthesizers do not sit on top of the songs as decoration. They are inside the bones of the music. The famous pulse of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” shows that beautifully, with sampled textures, programmed rhythm and a dramatic sense of space doing as much work as the melody.
What makes the production so exciting is how Bush mixes machine precision with human movement. The rhythms are firmer and more physical than on much of her earlier work, yet the album never feels cold. Voices overlap, sounds appear like weather, and tracks such as “Waking the Witch” and “Hello Earth” use sampling, layering and edited fragments in ways that still feel strange and alive.
🎸 Pop hooks, art-rock nerves, and a powerful rhythm bed
This is also a far more muscular record than its reputation for dreaminess sometimes suggests. The guitar parts often work as rhythmic accents rather than big rock statements, pushing against the drums and synth patterns. The rhythm section gives the album real force, especially on “Hounds Of Love” and “Cloudbusting”, where the drive of the groove keeps Bush’s more theatrical ideas grounded.
That balance is why the album moved so well between worlds. It fit the MTV era because the singles were vivid, dramatic and highly visual, helped by memorable videos. But it also kept one foot in the adventurous side of art rock and experimental pop. Bush could reach the charts without sanding down her oddness.
🌟 Reception, success, and long afterlife
The album was a major success, becoming Bush’s second UK number one album and her first to break the US Top 40. Critics loved it on release, and its reputation has only grown. Today it is regularly treated as her finest album and one of the defining records of the 1980s.
Its influence runs through later art-pop, alternative pop and experimental songwriting. You can hear its example in artists who want both hooks and mystery, both studio invention and emotional force. Hounds Of Love proved that a self-produced pop album could be ambitious, strange and widely loved all at once.
Closing Time by Tom Waits 🌙
🎙️ A debut built in the small hours
Your 2010 European Rhino/Asylum vinyl reissue brings back Tom Waits’ 1973 debut in a format that suits it perfectly. Closing Time was recorded in Hollywood, chiefly at Sunset Sound and United Western, with Jerry Yester producing and arranging. Waits was still in his early twenties, already writing songs that sounded older than their years, full of empty streets, dim bars and people who had loved badly but kept going.
The sessions moved quickly, reportedly across about ten days. Waits and Yester had talked through the sound beforehand, and Waits wanted a strong upright bass presence, which says a lot about where his ears already were. He was drawn to jazz and after-hours mood, while Yester leaned more towards folk structure and polish. That push and pull shaped the album. You can hear it all over this running order, from the easy roll of “Ol’ ’55” to the hushed ache of “Martha” and the drifting title track that closes side B like a pub piano after last orders.
🎹 Folk, jazz, blues, and the first sketch of the Waits world
What makes Closing Time distinctive is how gently it blends scenes and styles. It is often filed under singer-songwriter fare, but that misses the smoky detail in the music. There is folk storytelling in “Virginia Avenue”, cool-jazz phrasing in the piano-led ballads, blues feeling in the grain of Waits’ voice, and a soft rock warmth in the band arrangements.
This is not the gravel-throated, junkyard Tom Waits of later years. His voice here is smoother, but the phrasing already drags against the beat in a bluesy way. He sings like someone lingering over the end of a night. Songs such as “Ice Cream Man” lean closest to traditional blues character, with sly humour and a street-corner looseness, while “Grapefruit Moon” reaches towards torch song and late-night jazz balladry.
📰 Quiet arrival, long afterlife
On release, Closing Time did not sell especially well and drew a fairly modest response. In hindsight, that feels odd, because the songwriting is so assured. “Ol’ ’55” soon found another life through the Eagles, and other artists picked up on Waits’ writing early. That helped the album travel further than its first sales suggested.
Its reputation has grown steadily because it offers the first clear map of Waits’ writing world: romantics, drifters, barflies, night workers, and lonely dreamers. Even before his later experiments with clatter, growl and theatrical oddness, he had a rare gift for atmosphere.
📱 An old album in a streaming-age world
The “streaming era” question is a funny one here, because Closing Time belongs to 1973, not the 2010s, despite your reissue date. It was not made for social media, politics-of-the-week commentary, or playlist optimisation. Still, it fits modern listening rather well. Its songs are mood-rich, easy to excerpt, and perfect for late-night playlists. Online, “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” and “Martha” have become the sort of songs people share when they want longing without melodrama.
So while Closing Time is not an answer to a decade’s political climate, it is an answer to something more permanent: solitude, romance, and the blues of staying out too late with your thoughts.
Apples For Isaac by Echo & the Bunnymen 🍎
A long-awaited return, sharpened by time ⏳
Released on 18 September 2026 through BMG, Apples For Isaac is Echo & the Bunnymen’s first album of new material in 12 years, and that gap matters. Rather than sprawling out, the band went the other way. These 11 songs move quickly, with none stretching past four minutes, which gives the record a trimmed, purposeful feel. It is a late-period album by a band who know exactly what they want to keep and what to leave out.
Ian McCulloch produced the album and also took part in the mixing, alongside Alan Moulder and Andrea Wright. That combination helps explain why the record feels both familiar and current. You get the moody Bunnymen atmosphere, but with a crisp, modern finish. Another key detail is drummer Clem Burke, heard on ten of the eleven tracks. His presence gives the album a real snap and force, and it now carries extra weight as part of his final body of work.
Despite the wider habit of framing recent records through lockdown and remote working, this one does not seem to have been sold as a pandemic album. The story around it is much more about return, continuity and getting a proper band performance on tape.
The sound, from chiming guitars to hard-driving drums 🎸
What makes Apples For Isaac distinctive is how neatly it balances atmosphere with momentum. Will Sergeant’s guitar remains the signature element. He fills the songs with chiming lines, light psychedelic haze and that unmistakable sense of melodic unease that has always made the Bunnymen sound like nobody else. Tracks such as “Take Me By The Hand” and “Brussels Is Haunted” lean into that haunted shimmer, while “Hijacked” and “An Unstoppable Force” push a little harder.
The rhythm section is just as important. Burke’s drumming keeps things moving with sharp backbeats and quick, lively fills, stopping the album from drifting into pure mood music. That is why the record lands as rock rather than dream-pop. Even at its most reflective, it has muscle.
Science, cities and anxious times 🌍
The title points straight to Isaac Newton, and that image of the falling apple runs through the album’s ideas. “Hijacked” reportedly references Newton directly, while “Asimov” widens the frame towards science fiction and modern unease. This is a record interested in forces bigger than the self, gravity, systems, history, technology.
“Brussels Is Haunted” is one of the most intriguing songs here, mixing memory with a sense of a city carrying ghosts. Elsewhere, “Lab Rats Ran” and “We Prayed In The Dark” tap into the feeling of living through confusion, control and spiritual exhaustion. McCulloch still prefers suggestion to slogan, which suits the material.
Reception and where it fits now 📰
Early reviews have been warm, especially about the album’s discipline. Writers have praised its concise writing, strong opening run and the chemistry between McCulloch, Sergeant and Burke. Some have noted that it is more refinement than reinvention, which feels fair. Still, that is hardly a weakness when the songs are this focused.
In today’s genre-blurred music world, Apples For Isaac does not chase fashion. It stays rooted in alternative rock, indie rock and pop rock, yet its clean production and compact songwriting let it sit comfortably beside contemporary guitar bands. For a group with this much history, that is no small feat.
Twilight by Jesus Jones 🌆
A late-period return with real forward motion 🚗
Twilight arrives as Jesus Jones’ first full-length album in eight years, and that gap matters. This does not read like a dutiful reunion record or a band simply dusting off an old formula. The story around its release points instead to a group with renewed momentum, still interested in writing new songs rather than living on old glories. Your 2026 vinyl pressing on Bucks Music captures that comeback moment in a neat 11-track sequence, from “All Falls To Me” through to the oddly titled closer “Bad Zoo Rescue”.
Reliable release notes around the album are a bit thin on studio specifics, so there is no solid public trail yet for exact recording locations, producers, or a detailed session diary. What does come through is intent. Jesus Jones approached Twilight as a fresh statement, not a heritage-curio add-on. That makes a difference, especially for a band whose name still carries the afterglow of early 90s crossover success.
Still restless, still mixing wires ⚡
Musically, Twilight fits Jesus Jones in the best sense. The band made its name by treating rock and electronic ideas as natural companions, and this album appears to continue that habit rather than imitate their past. The broad frame is alternative rock, but there are clear hints of dance-minded rhythm, electronic texture, and a refusal to stay in one lane for long.
That genre fluidity feels central to the record’s character. Pre-release coverage singled out “Shot in The Chevy” as a country-tinged ballad, which is not the sort of description many listeners would expect from Jesus Jones. Elsewhere, “Bad Zoo Rescue” was pitched as an anthemic high point. Put those together and you get a sense of an album that values movement and contrast. Even the tracklist suggests that push and pull, with titles like “Brief Flashes Of Light” and “This Perfect Place” sitting alongside something as earthy as “This House”.
Themes of agency in uneasy times 📖
There is not yet a full bank of lyric-by-lyric commentary in wide circulation, but the themes that have surfaced point towards self-definition, freedom, and living with the weight of time. A title like “Carry The Years Lightly” almost announces that idea on its own. For a band returning after decades in public life, that feels especially resonant.
I could not verify a direct pandemic recording story, so it would be wrong to force one onto the album. Still, Twilight belongs to a period when many artists were rethinking how to make guitar music feel current. Jesus Jones seem to answer that by keeping rock open-ended, letting electronics, balladry and off-centre ideas share the same space.
Reception, context and why it matters now 🌍
Early coverage around Twilight has framed it as an adventurous late-career release. There is not yet a deep pool of major reviews or chart analysis to settle its wider commercial story, but the context matters. Jesus Jones already have a lasting place in pop history through their blend of alt-rock energy and dance-music thinking, plus the long shadow of “Right Here, Right Now”.
That legacy gives Twilight extra interest. It shows a band from the pre-Britpop alternative era still treating rock as something flexible. In 2026, that feels apt. Contemporary music is full of blurred borders, and Jesus Jones sound well suited to that world because they were crossing those borders long before it became standard practice.
The Sound Of… McAlmont & Butler by McAlmont & Butler 🎙️
A brief partnership, captured at full force ⚡
This 2016 Edsel vinyl brings together the core of one of the great near-mythic British collaborations of the 1990s. McAlmont & Butler began when Bernard Butler, newly out of Suede, approached David McAlmont with the music for “Yes”. What followed was never a conventional album campaign. Their first material was closer to an inspired burst of singles, B-sides and studio sessions than a carefully plotted LP, and that history still gives The Sound Of… McAlmont & Butler its shape.
The songs were recorded quickly and instinctively. Butler has described writing and cutting tracks almost in one motion, with much of the music played live and mixed fast, before overthinking could flatten the emotion. You can hear that immediacy all over this running order. On this vinyl edition, Side A moves from the rush of “Yes” through “What’s The Excuse This Time?” and “The Right Thing” to the stop-start drama of “Disappointment/Interval”, then Side B settles into deeper cuts and the sweeping close of “You Do”.
Soul, indie rock and orchestral pop in one breath 🎸
What makes McAlmont & Butler distinctive is how naturally they mix scenes that were often kept apart. Butler brought the dramatic guitar sense he had sharpened in Suede, but here he pushed it towards classic pop and soul arrangements rather than straight Britpop. McAlmont answered with a voice that belongs as much to torch songs, northern soul and grand 1970s pop as to indie.
“Yes” is the perfect example. Its huge chorus, climbing chords and bold rhythm feel like glam rock, Philly soul and 1960s pop all at once. Butler’s guitar work is central. He favours rich chord voicings, forceful rhythm playing and key changes that lift songs into the rafters. The rhythm section matters just as much. The drums hit hard, the bass moves melodically, and together they give these songs their cinematic size.
Reception, break-up and afterlife 📰
“Yes” was a proper hit, reaching the UK Top 10, and it still has an afterlife far bigger than many records that sold more at the time. The parent album did not dominate the charts, but critics have kept returning to it, especially to “You Do” and “Disappointment”, as examples of pop made on a grand emotional scale.
Part of the fascination is the story itself. McAlmont & Butler split after a short, intense run, which made the music feel even more charged. Later reunion work showed the chemistry was still there, but these original recordings remain the most electrifying.
Why the 2016 reissue makes sense now 💿
In the streaming era, this record feels oddly modern. It was assembled from standout songs rather than built as a strict concept album, so it plays beautifully as a sequence of peaks and moods, almost like a perfect playlist before playlists took over. Social media and reissue culture have also helped rescue it from being filed away as a Britpop side-note.
It was never that. With a Black, queer singer at the front and a guitarist writing maximalist pop-soul rather than laddish indie rock, McAlmont & Butler offered a different version of 1990s Britain. This Edsel pressing lets that version ring out again, loud and glorious.
Earthling by David Bowie 🌍
Recording fast, thinking digitally 💻
Your 2015 US vinyl reissue on ISO Records, Columbia and Friday Music brings back one of Bowie’s most restless records, first issued in 1997. Earthling came together quickly at Looking Glass Studios in New York, with Bowie working closely with guitarist Reeves Gabrels and engineer-producer Mark Plati. The pace mattered. They were trying to catch a moment rather than polish it away, often building songs from loops, riffs and rhythmic ideas in the room.
What gives the album its snap is the way live playing and digital editing were fused. Zachary Alford’s drums and Gail Ann Dorsey’s bass were recorded as real performances, then sliced, looped and reshaped inside the computer. That was a big shift for Bowie. Earthling was his first album made fully in a hard-disk recording environment, and you can hear that clean, clipped edge all over it. Even on vinyl, tracks like “Little Wonder” and “Battle For Britain (The Letter)” still feel wired straight into the late-90s future.
Drum’n’bass in a rock body ⚡
Bowie had been listening hard to drum’n’bass and jungle, but Earthling is not a tourist’s version of club music. The songs still have strong hooks, choruses and a proper rock backbone. “Looking For Satellites” and “Dead Man Walking” hit with the force of a band, even while the beats chatter and sprint underneath.
Reeves Gabrels is a huge part of that identity. His guitar work is jagged, strange and elastic, sometimes sounding like a lead instrument, sometimes like a piece of electronic machinery. He does not just decorate the tracks, he helps bend them out of shape. Underneath him, Gail Ann Dorsey and Zachary Alford keep the album muscular. Dorsey’s bass lines stop the songs from floating off into pure texture, and Alford’s drumming gives the programmed elements a human push.
Fear, speed and late-90s nerves 🇺🇸
For all its sonic play, Earthling has a twitchy social mood. “I’m Afraid of Americans” is the obvious example, turning media fear, cultural anxiety and national aggression into a sharp, catchy hook. Bowie was writing in a decade obsessed with globalisation, fast information and identity under pressure, and this album catches that jitter beautifully.
It also has one foot in today’s online music culture. “Telling Lies” was released on the internet in 1996 in a way that felt startlingly new at the time. Bowie treated the web as a real space for first contact with listeners, years before streaming exclusives and timed online drops became normal.
Reception, afterlife and why it still lands 🎧
The first reaction was mixed. Some critics thought Bowie was chasing fashion. Others heard an artist doing what he had always done, jumping into new sounds before most of his peers would dare. Commercially, it did solid rather than spectacular business, but time has been kind to it.
Now Earthling feels less like a period curio and more like a sharp forecast. Its post-genre mix of rock, pop, electronics and drum’n’bass fits neatly with how listeners hear music in the streaming era, where borders between scenes mean less than energy and mood. On this pressing, with Side A charging from “Little Wonder” to “Seven Years In Tibet” and Side B closing on the feverish run from “Dead Man Walking” to “Law (Earthlings On Fire)”, the album still sounds gloriously impatient.
Top Artists (Week 38)
- The Smashing Pumpkins (30 plays)
- The Lemonheads (29 plays)
- Blur (16 plays)
- Kate Bush (12 plays)
- Tom Waits (12 plays)
- Echo & the Bunnymen (11 plays)
- Jesus Jones (11 plays)
- McAlmont & Butler (11 plays)
- David Bowie (9 plays)
Top Albums (Week 38)
- Come on Feel the Lemonheads by The Lemonheads
- Modern Life Is Rubbish by Blur
- Adore by The Smashing Pumpkins
- Pisces Iscariot by The Smashing Pumpkins
- Hackers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Various Artists
- Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
- Closing Time by Tom Waits
- Apples For Isaac by Echo & the Bunnymen
- Twilight by Jesus Jones
- The Sound Of… McAlmont & Butler by McAlmont & Butler
- Earthling by David Bowie