RECENT SONGS

A CD's worth of the songs I have been playing most in my first two months back in London.

1 Outdoor Miner - Wire (Why start with anything other than the finest ever pop song? I once put this on in a room full of thirty-something men and each let out a contented sigh)
2 Mr Brightside - The Killers (The Chameleons in the Top Ten! Pigs in flight! This song makes me feel fourteen. All together... Jeeeealouseee!)
3 On Top - The Killers ('Hmm, let's see, if we mix Pearl Jam with A Flock of Seagulls, we'll sound great.' And it worked.)
4 Mirror Freak - Cockney Rebel (From the first album I ever bought - in 1975 - out on CD at last. I shouldn't really tell you this, but aged 9, I had a dance routine for the nine-minute epic Death Trip - I was an intense young man)
5 A Certain Love - Chicken of the Woods (A lovely song by the unique poet and songwriter Christopher Twigg)
6 Empty Words - The Passage (Also just out on CD, from Degenerates, their concept album about seedy sex, which somehow didn't go down well when I put in on at the youth club circa 1982)
7 Quattro - Calexico (A band I didn't think I liked, but this is from an album so finely diverse, it sounds like a compilation)
8 Pretty as a Bee - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci (The obligatory long one on their new album)
9 Moments of Pleasure - Kate Bush (Bit of a tearkjerker from the sadly underwhelming Red Shoes CD)
10 Motherland - Natalie Merchant (Title track from good album by my tenage pin-up. My how she has grown)
11 Golden Boy - Natalie Merchant (Especially the Blackheath Sofa Remix - mmm)
12 Postcards - Marquis de Suave (Brilliant, life-affirming romp by on-ice young Americans who play country-ish power pop)
13 You Mean Everything - Marquis de Suave (And they have a wonderful Chiltonish ballad too)
14 Icebound Stream - Laura Veirs (Just sometimes, Uncut magazine's slavish curtseying to Americana is justified)
15 The Saddest Day - Vitesse (Think I played this fifteen times one day. Like poor Elliott covering PC&L-era New Order - what a hook)
16 Somebody Hurt You - A Girl Called Eddy (From the excellent new self-titled CD. Bacharachy, Dustyesque, sad and smoochy songs about the perils of romance)
17 You're Lovely To Me - Lucky Jim (Gordon Grahame is back. Hurrah! Does Britain have a better songwriter?)