A quick flick through the racks

People are always com­ing up to me and say­ing, “Vaughan, you’ve got such an exem­plary taste in music. What albums are cur­rently spin­ning on your CD player?” (To be com­pletely truth­ful, this never hap­pens — but I would be grate­ful if you could humour me).

On the way back from the cinema, the word “SALE” screamed at me from the win­dows of HMV. My res­ist­ance to this tempta­tion las­ted pre­cisely five seconds. On return­ing home with my pur­chases, I relaxed into the sort of even­ing that, on occa­sions, I abso­lutely love. It feels like the tem­per­at­ure is about minus ten out­side, it’s warm in here, I’ve got some hot soup (I’m just so rock ‘n’ roll) and I’m listen­ing to gor­geous music. I’m alone — but it’s a good kind of alone, rather than the tearing-my-hair-out vari­ety. Solitude would be a bet­ter descrip­tion. Reas­sur­ing solitude.

The albums I pur­chased today are a mixed bunch, but they sum up the wide range of what I enjoy listen­ing to. Some­thing old, some­thing even older, some­thing new and some­thing (kind of) blue.

Some­thing old — a bar­gain base­ment reis­sue of Quiet Life by Japan. Preen­ing New Romantic fops they may have been, but at least they were good preen­ing New Romantic fops. This was the cru­cial dif­fer­ence that set them apart from — pluck­ing some names out of the air — Classix Nou­veaux or A Flock of Seagulls, to men­tion only two. Like all good art-rock albums, it has a depress­ing song that is writ­ten and sung in (prob­ably very bad) French. Like all good early ‘80s albums, it fea­tures lots of fret­less bass and glisten­ing elec­tron­ics. And, like all good reis­sues, it includes a couple of extremely point­less extra tracks — the par­tic­u­lar high­light of this col­lec­tion being their ter­rible attempt at cross­ing disco, New Roman­ti­cism and ice-cool European art­ful­ness in a col­lab­or­a­tion with Gior­gio Moroder called Life in Tokyo. Regret­tably, this track is now forever asso­ci­ated in my mind with those tacky reports on the Japan­ese cap­ital city that fea­ture on bad hol­i­day pro­grammes, since they never fail to use it as musical back­ing. How original.

Some­thing even older — The Best of the Ron­ettes. Per­mit me a moment to jump up and down excitedly. I’ve got a Ron­ettes col­lec­tion! I’ve got a Ron­ettes col­lec­tion! Thank you for your indul­gence. If you’ve been read­ing this site long enough, you’ll be well aware of my love for ‘60s girl groups and Phil Spector’s awe­some pro­duc­tions — but The Ron­ettes are the pin­nacle. I defy any­one who calls them­selves human not to go weak at the knees when they hear Ron­nie Spector sing — a voice so clear and per­fect that it could prob­ably craft the edges on dia­monds. I’ve already played Be My Baby about sev­en­teen times this evening.

Some­thing new — by now, you’re prob­ably think­ing that I don’t listen to any of those new­fangled pop­u­lar beat com­bos that clut­ter up the hit parade. To which I would respond by wav­ing the new album from Royk­sopp in your face. I sup­pose it’s what you’d call a “chil­lout” album, although in fair­ness each track is a rel­at­ively short three or four minutes, whereas most other releases in this genre do insist on wib­bling aim­lessly for hours and hours, while their syn­thes­isers go through the entire range of sounds labelled “sooth­ing.” How­ever, I haven’t quite immersed myself in the full Royk­sopp exper­i­ence yet. It’s cur­rently play­ing, and I’m nod­ding along con­ten­tedly. Will that do?

Some­thing (kind of) blue — I’ll admit it, I love Ed Har­court. At the moment, he has replaced Rufus Wain­wright in my affec­tions. The single Apple of my Eye has been buzz­ing round my head so much that when I happened to be near a piano the other day, the first thing I tried to begin work­ing out was that song’s dis­tinct­ive melody. Look­ing at the evid­ence, it’s not sur­pris­ing that I love this album. Ed Har­court is a piano-player and an acous­tic troubadour; there’s a touch of the failed romantic in his lyr­ics; it sounds like he is influ­enced by a huge range of music, most of which he finds in his own extens­ive record col­lec­tion; and, although I’m guess­ing here, I sus­pect that many even­ings find him at home on his own, sit­ting on the floor sur­roun­ded by all his albums, listen­ing to song after song after song.

If I’m not mis­taken, that’s a sim­ilar scene to the one that opened this curi­ously aim­less entry. How sat­is­fy­ing, in a very cir­cu­lar way. Goodnight.