Queen: Jazz

I loved this album as a teenager so I had no problem paying a fiver for the CD in Fopp. Except, except, rose-tinted glasses and all that...

Some tracks are still excellent dirty blues/funk/hard rock. Let Me Entertain You, Dead on Time, Fun It and in particular More of that Jazz all rock pretty hard. Fat Bottom Girls? It's not holding on to its nostalgic appeal just yet.

Interestingly the highlights are split fairly equally between the members but Taylor definitely was the coolest of the bunch. The album was originally put out in 1978 which is odd because I remember it sounding quite edgy in the Eighties but it's really quite tame compared to something really leftfield like Blondie's Rapture. Listening to it now the most interesting thing going on is the way they manage to marry some pretty different styles into the earlier rock style of their first couple of albums.

Oh, also features the most ballless recording of a thunderclap evar.

Last Harbour: Hold Fast, Pioneer

Sounds vocally like the Tindersticks crossed with Nick Cave but musically it's an interesting intersection between the Godspeed orchestral sound and the Bonny Prince Billy school of American folk revival.

A bit too wierd to comment on the moment.