This is a review of the albums that I have been listening to whilst working from home.

Albums listened to for week 6 cover 27 April to 1  May.

Monday 27/04 – Seattle

Kicking off the new working week with a Seattle theme.  No Nirvana here, today’s listening was all about the relationship between Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.  Both bands have a lot of history together.  Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder are friends.  Both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam have shared the same drummer, Matt Cameron.

But it all starts off with Mother Love Bone.  They formed in 1988 consisting of future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament the band were lead by the charismatic singer Andrew Wood.  Days before they were to release their first album, Andrew Wood died of a drug overdose.

Chris Cornell had wrote two songs in a tribute to Wood and the project eventually turned into Temple of the Dog.  The band were made up of Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and MikeMcCready from Pearl Jam.  Matt Cameron and Chris Cornell from Soundgarden made up the rest of the band.  Eddie Vedder was also in the band too and contributed to Hunger Strike (his duet with Cornell).  The self titled album was released in 1991 but got new attention a year later with the mainstream success of both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Concluding the Seattle listening experience today was Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden and Ten by Pearl Jam.

Tuesday 28/04 – The Breeders

I picked up on the idea to have a Breeders day after missing out on Sunday night to Tim Burgess from The Charlatans who was hosting a listening party and it involved The Breeders second album, Last Splash.  Check out on Twitter #TimsTwitterListeningParty for further details.

So it is all about Kim Deal today.  This was a side project by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly alongside their full-time bands, Pixies and Throwing Muses.

All four albums got a listen to, starting off with Pod (1990), Last Splash (1992), Title TK (2002), Mountain Battles (2008) and All Nerve (2018).  All Nerve led to Kim quitting Pixies to go full-time with The Breeders.

In the midst of all that, Kim also formed a side project from The Breeders in 1995 after her sister was involved in a drugs bust.  The Amps album was issued in 1995.

Wednesday 29/04 – Placebo

Continuing the theme of a band day, it was the turn of Placebo.  From my collection I picked out their first four albums to listen to.  I got into the band at the time of the first album and have seen them live a few times.

Placebo (1996), Without You I’m Nothing (1998), Black Market Music (2000) and Sleeping with Ghosts (2003).

The band had a big glam influence, covering T- Rex’s 20th Century Boy with David Bowie at the BRIT awards in 1999.  Bowie would also guest on Without You I’m Nothing which was re-recorded.

Thursday 30-Friday 1 May – Wales

Finishing off the week with another theme, this time to my favourite Welsh bands – Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals and Catatonia.

Quite a lot of music to cover here so I listened to all three bands over the two days.

From my collection I picked two albums by Super Furry Animals and a best of, one Manic Street Preachers album and a best of, plus Catatonia greatest hits collection.

First up is Super Furry Animals who released nine albums including one in Welsh.  I went for their first album Fuzzy Logic (1996) released on the Creation label at the height of Britpop and second album, Radiator (1997).

The best of album, Zoom! The Best of 1995-2016 was released around the same time as the band hit the road to play both Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in their entirety.  I got to them do this at the Limelight and it was a great gig.

Skipping through my CD collection of all Catatonia albums, I opted for the Greatest Hits album from 2002.  Two CDs of their best known songs from Way Beyond Blue and International Velvet as well as duets with Space, The Ballad of Tom Jones and Cerys duet with Tom Jones himself on Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

I have everything the Manic Street Preachers have ever done so what am I going to pick to listen to?  I was late getting into them.  Got interested around the time of The Holy Bible but it was the post-Richey era of the band that I finally got into them with Everything Must Go.  After that I picked up their three earlier albums.

Generation Terrorists (1992) is quite good but I opted for the follow up, Gold Against The Soul (1993) which unfortunately gained a lot of critics from the music press at the time but I think it’s a pretty good album.

In order to get loads of Manics songs played, I had a look at the three compilation albums they had released.  Forever Delayed (2002), Lipstick Traces (2003) and National Treasures -The Complete Singles (2011).

I picked National Treasures as it was as good as getting a complete singles played by them although there are some omissions such as their first single Suicide Alley, Strip it Down (from New Art Riot EP) and You Love Us (Heavenly version).  We get 38 tracks covering all the singles released from each album, plus the non-album single The Masses Against The Classes.  I think that reflected the best of their output.  Last song on the album is a cover of The The’s This Is The Day.

 

 

 

• Playlist