Category: Album Reviews

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Lily Allen – West End Girl (2025)

Posted on by Michael

Over the last few years, the music world waits with baited breath for each new Taylor Swift album to  carefully dissect the lyrics to figure out who the song are about. While that is happening, Lily Allen snuck in through the backdoor with her recent West End Girl album that outlines in great detail the breakdown of her relationship with actor David Harbour. The album plays like a concept album that The Streets would have released many years ago.  An arms length list of producers help craft an auto tuned album filled with adult styled beats and stories of heartbreak,  but in the Lily Allen spirit of snuck in jokes and classic one liners.

The title track is string laden with a passage that includes a one-sided conversation between Lily and Harbour while she describes getting the lead part in a West End London play. Nothing is held back lyrically and songs touch on lack of sex in their marriage, infidelity (to put it mildly), his own “Pussy Palace”, and calling up one of the girls that he was suspected of not only sleeping with but also playing “Tennis” with. All this while Lily asks, “who’s Madeline?”.

On “Ruminating’, the one-sided open relationship asks “If it has to happen, baby, do you want to know?” while later Lily sings that “A life with you looked good on paper” over the bouncy beats of “Nonmonogamummy”.  Towards the end, a posting on a dating website asks, “I’m almost nearly forty, I’m just shy of five-foot-two/I’m a mum to teenage children, does that sound like fun to you?”

For people following, Lily Allen’s life has been an open book over the years of quotable interviews, addictions, broken relationships, unfortunate miscarriages, and later successfully giving birth to children. West End Girl is a fascinating run through her last relationship and does hold the listener’s attention to wonder, “what’s next”.  Whether it holds up in several years time remains to be seen.

7.5/10

Posted in Album Reviews

Sloan – Based On The Best Seller (2025)

Posted on by Michael

With a full slate of touring across Canada in the late autumn that picks up again in Spring 2026, Sloan released their 14th studio album – Based On The Best Seller. Splitting up the writing duties, each member contributes a few songs including a couple of tracks that date back to the 90s.  Guitarist Patrick Petland enters with a few stompers that incorporate 70s arena rock swagger, shown on “Dream Destroyer” and “So Far Down”.

Fellow guitarist Jay Ferguson’s tracks mix the 60s with some 90s indie rock guitar before throwing in some country guitar strumming on “Collect Yourself”. Drummer Andrew Scott’s contributions are a bit heavier, bringing in crunching guitars on “Baxter” and “No Damn Fears”.  Bassist Chris Murphy reaches back to the 90s to resurrect the sunny 60s pop of the “Open Your Umbrellas” and also throws in the horn driven “Fortune Teller”.

Based On The Best Seller takes in decades of guitar sounds to form twelve decent rock tracks. It can be infectious but overall, Ferguson sums up much of the album with the line, “Trim off some parts and recycle if need be”. The band originally from Nova Scotia is a wildly talented group but here, it does have a feeling of “good enough” for them to have a few new songs to play on tour.

7/10

Posted in Album Reviews

Bob Dylan and The Band – The Basement Tapes (1975)

Posted on by Michael

The Basement Tapes is a batch of songs/demos recorded by Bob Dylan and The Band in 1967-1968. These recordings were later cleaned up by Engineer Rob Frabonie and compiled by Robbie Robertson along with additional tracks that The Band had recorded. After years of bootlegs circulating through the music industry, the official release finally happened in 1975.

The original double album is loose in nature with lots of shorter tracks including a few that would also appear on The Band’s debut album. Dylan handles the vocals on two-thirds of the tracks while various members of The Band handle the rest. There is plenty of great playing here including the organ of Garth Hudson on “Million Dollar Bash” and the funky drumming and bass work on “Yazoo Street Scandal”.

The loose nature of the recordings come out in songs like “Apple Sucking Tree”, the drinking song of “Please, Mrs. Henry” and nonsensical lyrics of “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread”. The first track, “Odds and Ends” is a really catchy 60s rocker. These are evened out with heavier tracks like the excellent “Tears of Rage” with the lyrics, “Come to me now, you know we’re so alone/And life is brief”. This gets followed by “Too Much Nothing” where “Too much of nothing/It just makes a fella mean”.

The sprawling album does have a few clunkers and a few of the tracks by The Band feel tacked on. Still, other highlights abound like the blue eyed soul of the Richard Manuel sung “Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast)” and highlight “Katie’s Been Gone”. There is a drug deal gone wrong on “Nothing Was Delivered”, a date with Blues legend “Bessie Smith” and a great closer “This Wheel’s On Fire”. Much speculation about other tracks followed for the next 40 years, while others were frustrated by the inclusion of so many tracks by The Band. Finally in 2014 fans got the holy grail in the six disc deluxe edition of “The Basement Tapes Complete”, Volume 11 in Dylan’s celebrated ongoing Bootleg Series.  Even after all these years, the legend of The Basement Tapes continues.

8/10

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David Bowie – Lodger (1979)

Posted on by Michael

The last in David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy was 1979’s Lodger album.  Here he continues to work with producer Tony Visconti and Brian Eno. Leaving behind the soundscapes of the previous two albums, Lodger is more accessible and listening back, fits in well with new wave and the Avant Garde rock coming out of New York around that time. Several of the tracks sing of travel and different parts of the world – Bowie is a traveller, a lodger of the world.

A softer sound, the smooth album opener “Fantastic Voyage” shares the same chord sequence of later track, “Boys Keep Swinging”. With a tongue in cheek, the latter celebrates the youthful exuberance of being male.  As evidence of his influence, 20 years later blur would record the similar sounding single, “M.O.R”. “African Night Flight” is quirkier with a scat like vocal on a track written after Bowie visited Kenya, a few songs later “Yassassin” has a middle eastern feel, where the people “came from the farmlands/to live in the city”.

Leaving behind the esoteric sounds of previous records – several tracks are more rock. Drummer Dennis Davis shines on several of these tracks like the melodic “Move On” and the frantic sounds of “Look Back In Anger”. The bass of George Murray locks down the funky “D.J.” that also sees longtime right hand man Carlos Alomar gets a co-writing credit here. “Repetition” takes a different approach, deadpan vocals with sterile playing, Bowie sings about an abusive husband who feels he deserves better.

Following the experimental sounds of Low and “Heroes”, Lodger is often seen as the lesser of the three Berlin albums. The album reportedly received mixed reviews when initially released, going to #4 on the UK album charts but it lacks any true classic David Bowie track for casual fans. Later reviews have rightly placed Lodger in a more positive light. Filled with several solid rock tracks, it brings some funk and offers several truly great performances from his band. Bowie says goodbye to his incredibly successful run of 70s albums with this fine entry into his cannon.

9/10

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Wednesday – Bleeds (2025)

Posted on by Michael

Led by singer-songwriter Karly Hartzman, Wednesday had a breakthrough with 2023’s album Rat Saw Good. Several months later, guitarist MJ Lenderman had an underground hit with his solo album Manning Fireworks.  As he divides his time, Lenderman appears on Wednesday’s sixth album Bleeds but will not be touring with the band. On their newest album, Wednesday continues to mix a modern take on 90s indie rock with country, tied to a slacker vibe.

The stories that Hartzman sings on Bleeds are like ones taken from a podcast.  A homeless woman with the sweetest voice wearing Juggalo make-up, the Murdaugh murders from the perspective of a neighbour, and her old landlord telling the craziest Appalachian stories. Around crashing guitars, “Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On)” tells the story of a body being pulled out of a lake.  Mixed into the serious and absurd is a re-recording of “Phish Pepsi” with the laugh out loud line – “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede/Two things I now wish I had never seen”.  “Townies” looks back at the more hurtful rumours that spread about high school sex scandals.

A key aspect to the Wednesday sound is the steel/lap guitar played by Xandy Chelmis that adds a country dimension to the band’s sound, this is done to great effect on the excellent “Elderberry Wine”. The band does a fine job of telling the stories of the colourful people around them and amplifies their stories to a wider audience. Capturing the murkiness of the backwoods of North Carolina along the way.

7.5/10