Higher Power CD by Big Audio. By this time in the B.A.D. timeline, the band had morphed into something completely different and had dropped the Dynamite part of their name. I should really look this up, but I think the Big Audio phase comes slightly before the B.A.D. II incarnation.

But anyway, you can never go wrong with a bit of Big Audio, whatever they’re called. Mick Jones has such a way in crafting pop melodies and then working them into whatever he sees around him at the time.

Big Audio was the natural progression from punk, moving into something a lot more dance-based. He then took it full circle around a decade or so later with his production duties for the Libertines, etc.

I know little about the Higher Power album. I’m going for the completest set of BAD CDs. I make it now just the rather elusive PUNK album that I’m missing. The only track I know is Looking for a Song. Maybe I’ll find some more buried away once I finally get round to playing this,

I made it track 3, The Wrong Way:

“I’m staring at her tits. It’s the wrong way”

This is a song about a 12 year old girl. I bailed.

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This was a weird one. For some reason I always thought Barenaked Ladies were indie lite shite. But wait! Whats this? There’s a nice breezy start to the opening. I thought Spotify had fucked up, and had served me up the new Paul Heaton album. The accent certainly seemed to suggest this. The first track then even segued into Happy Hour. I was quite enjoying the ex-Housemartins latest release. But it turns out that it was in fact Barenaked Ladies from back in 1992. Blimey. How odd. The album then became very goofy. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, etc. I bailed on the stupid Yoko track. Barenaked Ladies sound more like a pub band.

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Blimey. The new album by The Coral is bloody decent. They’re a band that I’ve always liked, but one that I’ve also not always known too much about.

I managed to keep up with them for the first four or five albums. They then became so prolific that any new music seemed to pass me by.

But here they are, back for the summer of 2026 with an absolute banger of an album, 388. I’m not sure what the 388 stands for. Maybe it’s their 388th album?

I was first alerted to it via the always excellent Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, and then the new Q Online despatch this morning had an extensive interview as well as some useful links for the album. This included an impressive Spotify playlist that clocks up almost five hours.

At first I wasn’t quite sure of some of the track selections that were curated around the album. Most of it appeared to be early to mid-seventies reggae, a lot of it centred around Lee Scratch Perry. I know The Coal are quite a diverse bunch, but even that sounds a little odd for them.

I fired up the 388 album. Straight in there with the first track, and it sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry’s own studio. There’s an incredible amount of detail that has clearly been paid to the production and trying to sound old school analogue with that early ska beat.

The band are a real anomaly. I’m not even sure they know which universe they exist in. You can always blame the hard skunk, but I prefer to view The Coal as being musical geniuses that haven’t exactly slipped underneath the radar, but they should be a lot bigger than what they actually are.

There’s also some genuine soul moments on the new album. It sounds like they had a lot of fun recording it. To their credit, it’s not one of those albums that is a deliberate head nod to all their influences. Springsteen fell very short with his soul covers album from a few years ago.

The Coal are so unpredictable that it might be that their next release is a death metal album. It’s probably already been recorded and will be out next week, soon to be followed by a disco anthems classic.

This isn’t the hippy shit I feared. As the title suggests, it’s actually rather, erm, electric. There’s more of a blues feel than all the peace and love bullshit. I can’t quite place it culturally, but I get the impression that it’s a bit of a piss take in places with plenty of comedy. A pleasant surprise. Still a crap name for a band.

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Never judge a book by its cover. Which is just as well, considering the album art for the McDonald and Giles self-titled CD that landed in my post box this morning. PHWORRR! Talk about pinups etc.

I know very little about the duo apart from the King Crimson connections. Even then the names were new to me. The track Flight of the Ibis stood out on a recent Late Junction early morning listening. Interesting, I thought. I’ll have a bit of that.

The album has early 1970s prog jazz written all over it. I’m increasingly finding myself being drawn towards this type of nonsense. You can get yourself lost in the music and not have to think about 2026.

Modern life is rubbish, etc.

I can’t but help think that this is Dukes of Hazzard outtakes. Country rock is cool; country soul is even cooler. Sadly this is neither really. It’s bloody annoying banjos. They did my nut in tbh. It did pick up right at the end with the Don’t Be Cruel cover. Country rock ‘n’ roll is early Elvis, right?

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I just played my two summer albums. That’s my two summer albums of 2025 - Weller’s excellent El Dorado, and Emma Jean’s Weirdo. Both got rinsed heavily from around July onwards through until Autumn. The recent run of Estuary Wilds SCORCHIO weather triggered a muscle memory within me to fire them up.

I’m clearly in need of some summer jams, as the kids may say, for 2026. I bloody love a good summer album. It’s something that defines those early starts, taking you through into hazy afternoons, and then carrying through until the end of the day. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I’m not sure what’s out there right now tbh.

Weller always finds me. There’s not a lot of algorithm dropping going off there. Emma Jean came via Gilles Peterson. Most of my new music is through GP these days, with occasional input from R over text.

A summer album does have a special quality. The seasonal thing needn’t be obvious, but there has to be a hint of a change of the season. It also helps if it’s running music, something I can fire up, and then head out plodding for an hour long leg stretcher - assuming my six month muscle injury ever heals.

I might just stick with the Weirdo album. It’s lush, introverted and has a head nod at celebrating the freaks. I fit in there quite well.

A sugar rush of a sunshine prog rock album that landed unexpectedly in my feeds this morning. There’s an interesting Beatles non-backstory here. That pulled me in. 3:47 EST is an innocent, often naive album. It tries to create what The Beatles might have been in the mid ’70s. It’s an endless speculation that I find hard to escape. “If The Beatles don’t exist, you don’t exist,” etc. I love the optimism and the bubblegum pop. It’s also why punk had to happen.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Happy Happy Joy Joy. The early 80’s were bleak. Someone needed to soundtrack it. But you can have humour in amongst all the nuclear fall out. The Two Tribes videos shows you how. The Final Cut is so far up its own arse that it can’t connect with the audience - either mainstream or even muso snobs. It’s an empty album that talks to no one but itself. It’s the sound of a band being slowly put to sleep. Instant gratification would have been better.

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