Spotify Playlist: Now I Know My AB...AB...Ha, I Guess Not

Spotify Playlist: Songs That Are Not About Tennis

Spotify Playlist: If You Suffer from Anthropophobia, The Good News is You're Not Alone

Spotify Playlist: Blame Canada

Johnny Cash & Neil Young - Little Drummer Boy

Spotify Playlist: The Children Are Our Future

                                        

Happy Birthday to the Following Albums

Happy 10th birthday, Arcade Fire's Funeral

Happy 20th birthday, Soundgarden's Superunknown

Happy 30th birthday, Hunters & Collectors' The Jaws of Life

Happy 40th birthday, Neil Young's On the Beach

Happy 50th birthday, Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' and Another Side of Bob Dylan

Polvo - Siberia

"No bell will chime to celebrate an aspiration past its prime" - so wrote Ash Bowie in Polvo's "Time Isn't On My Side" in 1993. Siberia calls bullshit on that. Ash Bowie is in his mid 40s, which admittedly seems like nothing when I see that my top whatever for this year will include My Bloody Valentine, Deathfix (ft. Brendan Canty) and Richard Thompson and makes it read more like a list from 1991. In any case, Siberia sounds like the work of musicians who mentally travelled back to their 20s and got to make an album that captures their youthful exuberance while benefiting from everything they've learnt in the two decades hence. 2009's In Prism was a worthwhile comeback album after 12 years broken up, and it, too, built on Polvo's past without lazily rehashing it. Siberia, however, is more fully realised. The songs are sturdily structured, but manage to find a place for Ash Bowie's circuitous guitar playing, whether he's going off on Neil Young-esque tangents or taking his time and anchoring the song with an arresting arpeggio. His voice, too, has matured and come to embody the wisdom he's accrued over the years. Siberia is one of the strongest cases for bands reuniting; if you can be this good after more than 20 years on and off, why wouldn't you?

Chromatics - My My Hey Hey (Into the Black) (Neil Young cover)

From Kill for Love (2012).

Neil Young - The Needle and the Damage Done (live on the Johnny Cash show)

Neil Young again

You didn't hear it anywhere near here first: Neil Young is headlining the 2009 Big Day Out! WOOHOO!

Radiohead does Neil Young

Radiohead covering Neil Young's Tell Me Why in at the Hollywood Bowl 25-08-08: