Gosh Miles was bloody prolific. It’s always a pleasure to discover a new album by him. When I say discover I mean one that I didn’t even know existed. A little further online digging reveals that this is just one in a series of four similarly themed albums recorded at the time. That should keep me busy over the weekend.

Cookin' starts off with a great underplayed cover of My Funny Valentine. You’re then straight into it with a bit of bebop action as he changes the mood and the pace.

I’m coming to the conclusion that you really can’t go wrong with Miles Davis from any era. That’s quite a stretch, from the ’50s through to his late ’80s output. Jazz remains the perfect music for me in which to get things done. Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet captures this perfectly.

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What a bloody horrid album. What an absolute racket. This sounds like a theremin that was turned up to 11, natch. It’s not even funny. It’s everything music shouldn’t be. It’s crude. It’s sexist. It has absolutely zero soul. There’s not even any song structure to speak of. It’s just noise and not even noise in a good way. What a waste of two minutes that was.

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This sounded a little laboured to be honest. It’s almost as if there’s a desire to craft the perfect pop song. The secret should be simple. You don’t need to add on all the extras and fruity toppings to get pop perfection. A good song is a good song.

The songs seem to stick to the same formula: Poppy, jingly jangly guitar, some killer hooks and then a chorus that even AI would struggle to come up. If that’s your kind of thing then it’s a decent album. But there’s not much grrr in this album.

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I had no idea what to expect from this album beyond the Memphis song. It’s one of those tracks that has grown in popularity over the years despite being something of a low key affair when it was first released. What followed was pretty much the Memphis song from start to finish. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The Memphis song is pleasant enough, with its Bruce Hornsby style light piano, which builds up, backs down, and then builds up once again. Dude can certainly sing and he can pen a half decent pop song. It’s not the music I would turn to by choice but I might listen to it if I wanted to try and doze off. Damned faint praise etc.

The acoustic tracks work best here. They allow the genuine soulfulness in Neil Young’s voice to be showcased. When he plugs in the guitars he reverts to just being any old hairy rocker wearing denim.

The pipedin crowd noise gets on your tits a bit. The Woodstock interjections from a decade previously are just weird. All the tracks drag on. This is something of a Neil Young trademark.

It’s a decent enough album but it also proves that when it comes to Neil Young, he matures like a fine wine.

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Sonny Rollins and What’s New - that’s what’s new, natch. This was another album that appeared on my daily feed as part of Album of the Day. I always knew that Sonny was a saxophone player but that was about it.

And then by pure coincidence the always excellent Late Junction dropped a track from the album the following week. I didn’t recognise it as Sonny Rollins at first. It sounded so contemporary, the kind of tune that GP might play.

This is a great album that not only has Sonny’s distinctive sax playing but also some almost tribalistic percussion sounds. Plus the cover art is simply cool as fuck.

Erm, saxy.

James were always a singles band. They follow a great tradition of English artists such as The Jam, Madness and The Smiths in being perennially on Top of the Pops with a series of absolute bangers week in, week out. Laid captures this moment quite perfectly.

And so what we have here is a series of singles that I’d pretty much forgotten about and don’t ever trouble any FM radio stations these days. That’s a shame. James were always a lot more cleverer than some of their counterparts with their song writing. Plus they had the balls to back this up with Tim Booth up front.

There’s some pretty grand sweeping statements on this album. Sometimes is a great example, building up the sound and creating an almost industrial image of life in a Northern time.

The bass playing on Say Something is exquisite. The track just bounces along, making a very painful lyric somehow uplifting. That’s quite a feat.

Respect for early 1993 gender-swapping vibes.

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Confession: I truly love this album - more so than the debut. I know that’s almost heresy in late 80s, early 90s indie circles but the Second Coming was worth the wait. Sure it’s bloated. It drags on far too long and could have done with some decent editing. It’s worth it for the mix of the funk and some of the killer riffs. It’s also a very bitter album, not surprising given what the band had been through at the time.

I listened to it again this morning for the first time in probably a decade or so. For a short period in ‘95, pre the big Britpop explosion, it was all that I listened to. I became a little obsessed by it to be honest. I’m sure there are some deep dark secrets and messages buried away within. I attached my own personal tales about what was going off in my personal life at the time around the songs. That’s a young person’s thing, right? It’s certainly not how I approach music these days.

I kind of cringed at hearing the lyrics once again this morning and how I used to interpret them. I managed to overcome my embarrassment with the sheer grandness and ambition of the project that is on offer here. The Roses became bigger than they actually were per se. It was the legend that carried this album forward. No wonder they fell apart shortly after it was released. The scale of the Second Coming toppled them. What a memory.

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SHOUT OUT for the new album by JIM, The Curious Case of Existence. This was another find via GP. He dropped a track that sounded almost mid-2000 Ibiza vibes - and then the vocals kicked in.

Woh.

SHIT THE BED. It’s only Jason Williamson from Sleaford fucking Mods. He hasn’t plugged this across any of his channels in the past few weeks. The JIM album is set to drop later in September.

I love the breakbeats and hardcore noise created by Andrew Fearn of Sleaford fucking Mods, but this is quite something else. It allows Williamson to have his distinct NG1 accent against a more chill out vibe.

I often wonder if Sleafords have pushed it as far as they can: two men, one MacBook, and some very, very SHOUTY live vocals over the top. There’s only so much of it that you can take, right?

Actually not. They’ve yet to release a crap album that doesn’t help me to vent my anger.

But this track by JIM opens up all sorts of possibilities for future collabs. Really cool laid-back summer vibes with slightly less anger - and profanities - from the front man.

A woke industrial album before woke and industrial music were even such a thing? Blimey. It’s hardly Marv’s What’s Going On, but I kinda like the general vibe and message here. What saves it for me is the Jam and Lewis production. Jam and Lewis could produce Black Lace and it would still get my feet tapping. It’s such a distinctive production sound that is so tight and identifiable. It’s not a bad album but Lauryn Hill took this to a different level.

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