The 5th Dimension - The Age of Aquarius: I know various other 5th Dimension songs and bits of albums (hello, Portrait) but this is the only 5D record I’ve really absorbed and love from front to back. The title track (actually “Aquarius (The Flesh Failures) / Let the Sunshine In”) is of course their magnum opus, rivalled maybe only by “Up, Up and Away”, but it’s actually a little misleading as the rest of the record is decidedly non-cosmic, Burt-Bacharach-style pop, with several songs penned by Laura Nyro. “Let It Be Me” is the best recorded version of that song made famous by the Everly Brothers, among others, and the just-kinda-there cover of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is the only track to approach the grooviness of the title track. All of the tracks are good and I’m doing the album an injustice by passing them by, but I need the space to give “Those Were the Days” its due. Simply put, it cooks, raw and furious pimpinly and furiously. It’s a translation of a Ukrainian folk song and shit, just hear it for yourself below. The 5th Dimension were actually one of the very best-selling groups of the 1960s and even though they’re inextricably bound to the sunshine pop era, they’re most unjustly forgotten.?si=9tgV2_4JqRFiMvLH?si=qp8F9wypeEWSG7Mk?si=DfDfhK_MNQ7klMvW

The Fall - This Nation’s Saving Grace: This is often given as the ideal entry point to the Fall, but I’d recommend it as of a threesome with Grotesque and Live at the Witch Trials, especially now we’re in the age when getting into a band no longer involves shelling out scarce money for physical albums. I may be biased as those were the first two I downloaded (together with Levitate – lol, that album sucks). Now that I’m no longer 19 and listening to everything the band has ever put out: this album kicks ass. I’d say to get the CD version with five bonus tracks, four from an EP and a single, but I think that’s the only version available on CD (now and ever). You know, at first I thought that Mark E. Smith’s lyrics were great, then I thought they were profound and I was just too stupid to understand them, and now I realize that everybody outside out of the Annotated Fall Lyrics Wiki has too much of a life to parse them. They make for some great lines, though, which brings me to a realization: the Fall are about MES, yes, but they’re also (I guess “equally” overstates things) about Craig Scanlon’s guitarwork and the overall groove, which explains why the band turned to shit shortly after bassist Steve Hanley was fired and everyone was replaced by young star-struck sycophants who encouraged Smith to follow his worst and increasingly addled urges. Qualis artifex periit. Still my favorite band emeritus. Fantastic record.?si=CFQtGcLPQB8ZwmVh?si=7lR9XdXds-jPnFyr?si=LNdMIeNJTLLZ3r6c

The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies: Underrated and overlooked in the wider world, though not the WRC; many don’t get the appeal. I am convinced that this is because they’re ***s. Not country-tinged so much as rootsy (the Charlatans US’ “Codine” anticipates much of this album), Muswell is actually fairly diverse and tuneful. Most ambitious is the opening “21st Century Man”, a track that sounds more brilliant when you’re 20 years old, rich, middle-class, and white whining about a welfare state and bureaucracy (to Ray Davies’ credit, these ideas are much more seductive when they’re out of power and all but out of the Overton window). Still, it’s one of the best songs they ever did. “Here Come the People in Grey” sketches out the political statement much more convincingly, in a way that everyone outside the urban centers can relate to. Alongside the more politically charged numbers are a song about schizophrenia that actually shows the beginnings of an understanding of the condition (don’t get me started on the people who call multiple personalities “schizophrenia”, but other uses are hardly more educated) to songs like “Have a Cuppa Tea” that by all rights ought to be embarrassing but end up being glorious. Davies consistently shows a rather confused grasp of American mountains and geography. Recommended.?si=RuHMmKkClCXDbDtE?si=FY7A6KPBeHX8yuVx?si=F6YUOAI_LI-UN0Zx

Rush - All the World’s a Stage: You know what really annoys me? When Donald Trump says “the [Russo-Ukrainian war] never would have happened if I were president.” As he means it, this statement is ungrammatical. He intends to state a past contrary-to-fact condition and almost gets it right. But he uses the past subjunctive which, despite its tense, is incorrect here. In present contrary-to-fact conditions, the past subjunctive is warranted, but when the condition is moved to the past it takes something placing the being president before the fact of the war. Past-past is like saying “if I am president, I would legalize marijuana”. No, it calls for the past perfect (or more correctly called pluperfect): “if I had been president”. Not “were”. This shows a wider idiocy that you see in constructions like “throw the ball to Bill Studer and I” (happy birthday, btw – this is number 44? I have five days left in my 30s) – taking something with a kernel of correctness in one context being overextended into incorrectness. He wants to show off how smart and/or educated he is, but he doesn’t understand the grammatical point he is trying to illustrate. Next time, just say “was”. You’ll be right in informal English, as the present can substitute for the past in informal contexts.?si=gyG30-3vS_VahIuM?si=ZGQ6UhRsfXiEpl7Z?si=oIE0rDRV4E7hwHCW

Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret: A masterpiece. This is easily in my top 15 albums and maybe even top 10, a genius pinnacle of early ’80s synth-pop. Technically it’s a concept album about an anonymous night out in the seedy underbelly of urban decay, porn theatres and live sex shows and all, to escape the monotony of suburban life but fuck me, it’s just a glorious album. Every track bangs. It’s best known for “Tainted Love”, a song unfairly earning them the label of one-hit wonder; first, that’s not even true in Britain, and second, they have five albums and four of them are great (sorry One Last Night in Sodom). I guess it was their only track on the Hot 100 but American chart performance doesn’t tell the whole picture.?si=pZ8PDbptegrPEbCi?si=eqW2Dksyk-_2qAfX?si=Gnt6_cYHTm4t6f1D

Here’s one more song. Lordy she’s hot!?si=Nx01sxXpGL-J6Kux