The great Dave Bates – the guy who signed Teardrop Explodes, Def Leppard, Tears for Fears, Texas & Wet Wet Wet and reinvented the careers of giants like Robert Plant & Scott Walker, then and then resurrected the dormant Fontana label with bands like the House of Love & the Cocteau Twins – invited me to send him a playlist. So I did: the favourite 100 tracks (give or take) I’d stream on my desert island.
You can hear ’em here...
Johnnie Johnstone of New Perfect Collection asked me and a bunch of other folks to list their 30 best albums released between January 1st, 1974 and December 31st, 1985. As resistant as I am to lists (as blokey and reductive), I couldn’t, well, resist. So here in no particular order are my platters of choice… no doubt fairly bloody obvious, but still as honest as I can be:
Todd Rundgren: Todd
Burning Spear: Marcus Garvey
Joni Mitchell: Court & Spark
Television: Marquee Moon
Talking Heads: ‘77
Associates: Sulk
Gene Clark: No Other
Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti
Earth, Wind & Fire: I Am
Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Natty Dread
Ramones: Leave Home
Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures
David Bowie: Low
Al Green: Al Green is Love
Bobby Womack: Lookin’ for a Love Again
Neil Young: Tonight’s the Night
Chic: Risqué
Kate Bush: The Dreaming
Prince: Dirty Mind
Rickie Lee Jones: Pirates
Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones
Steely Dan: Gaucho
Dennis Wilson: Pacific Ocean Blue
Fleetwood Mac: Tusk
Randy Newman: Good Old Boys
Suicide: Suicide
Elvis Costello: Get Happy!!
Donald Fagen: The Nightfly
Luther Vandross: Any Love
Thanks to James Brown for asking me to write about the great Zizou for Four Four Two‘s 100 Greatest Players of the Last 25 Years feature. I’ll leave you to guess who came in at No. 2 and No. 1 – or you can buy the magazine!
Very much for my own delectation, I’ve compiled a Best Of The Year playlist… but I figured, why not share it with the World At Large?
Here’s the full track listing for your perusal…
1 Future Islands: ‘Seasons’
2 Slowdive: ‘Sugar for the Pill’
3 Kendrick Lamar: ‘PRIDE.’
4 Jesca Hoop: ‘The Lost Sky’
5 Queens of the Stone Age: ‘The Evil Has Landed’
6 Randy Newman: ‘Wandering Boy’
7 Jessie Ware: ‘Your Domino’
8 Grizzly Bear: ‘Glass Hillside’
9 Everything Everything: ‘Desire’
10 Aimee Mann: ‘You Never Loved Me’
11 Ryan Adams: ‘Anything I Say To You Now’
12 Todd Rundgren w/Robyn: ‘That Could Have Been Me’
13 Feist: ‘A Man Is Not His Song’
14 Elbow: ‘Trust The Sun’
15 Hurray for the Riff Raff: ‘Hungry Ghost’
16 Lindstrom: ‘Under Trees’
17 Loyle Carner w/Kwes: ‘Florence’
18 Nadia Reid: ‘Right on Time’
19 Grandaddy: ‘Evermore’
20 Thundercat: ‘Bus in these Streets’
21 Kelela: ‘Truth or Dare’
22 Perfume Genius: ‘Slip Away’
23 Jay Som: ‘Baybee’
24 Fleet Foxes: ‘Third of May/Odaigahara’
25 Flo Morrissey & Matthew E. White: ‘Look at What the Light Did Now’
26 Chaz Bundick Meets the Mattson 2: ‘JBS’
27 Shabazz Palaces: ‘Shine a Light’
28 Sampha: ‘Incomplete Kisses’
29 Andrew Bird: ‘Truth Lies Low’
30 Sun Kil Moon: ‘God Bless Ohio’
barneyhoskyns.com 