The Listening Club - 16th August 2020

Greetings folks,

Hope you're all doing okay. Heat is finally breaking a bit in Amsterdam, after what is now "officially" the hottest week here on record ever.. Very glad it's finally dipping a bit, as its been the first week that working from home has become a real pain in the (sweaty) ass, and I've actually been pining for a lovely cool air-conditioned office. Still, right now we're keeping a very close eye on the rain radar, as storms keep passing either side of us and we could really do with some rain to dance around in. Hopefully tonight...

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Last week chez #LC, @zbendr was in the chair, dosing us with Bob Mould's 2014 waxing "Beauty And Ruin", which rocked out the assembled most successfully. Thanks to Ben for the pick, and for sailing the frisb across to @JimMcCauley...

...who sadly is stuck with computer-says-no issues. So, you'll have to wait until next week for Jim's selection; in the meanwhilst, it ME...

"After many years of not having a "Listening Club possibilities" list (well, a list with more than one album in it), I finally started keeping one this year, as I kept remembering albums I love that really deserve to be included. This, then, is one of those.

Also as quite a few folks have been on a 90s tip lately, this fits right in there. The early 90s for me was a time of bountious music discovery, all-night and often all-weekend partying, and, ahem, everything that goes with it. The final chapter of one of those party sessions would inevitably be the "all back to mine" part, and, if the "mine" in question happened to be my actual abode, once the mood had mellowed sufficiently, this was one of the albums that was regularly reached for. Hence this is a record imbued with many good personal memories... 

So much so at the time, that I trekked a good few hundred miles in the Summer of 1992 to see this artist play a free open air festival in Cambridge, not knowing what to expect. After a languid afternoon of rather hit and miss entertainment, the sun started to dip in the skies, the evening's refreshments began to take hold, a small gang of folks started setting up a stack of technology on stage, and as soon as I spotted an accordion in the midst of the tech, I knew it was going to be worthwhile. And it was.

Anyway, enough of the waxing lyrical. This is definitely an album for balmy Summer days. Hope it proves complementary to yours, whatever the weather."

Direct download is here, and the stream's below:

See you at 8pm BST/EST (GMT+1)