Burning Spear - Lion

Be careful not to speak too soon. Who's to tell whether it's a stroke of genius? Or a stroke of luck? Or just a stroke.

Mira Calix - Stockholm Syndrome

You're weary. Lay down your head. It can wait. Don't stress. You've mistaken me for the driver. I am not. I am a tiny cog in a machine. I spin around if a bigger cog needs me to. Just so it has enough motion to turn. But when that big cog isn't there I am still.

Pixies Surfer Rosa

It's taken me a while to discover the Pixies. Having said that, one of the few decent friends that I had as a teenager introduced me to them as early as 1998. She made me a mixed tape and passed it to me during maths with a little wry smile on her face. One of the songs was 'Where is My Mind?'. I remember that it was the song I liked the best. I had to keep rewinding back to it. Maybe she knew that, someday, that song would come in handy. But most likely it was a coincidence. For some reason I never pursued my interest in the band beyond that one song until earlier this year. I was in a car with a friend who happened to have a copy of 'Bossanova' in the glove box. The track Is She Weird came on and I became entranced. As soon as I got home I had to play the album. Loudly. On big speakers. To anyone unfamiliar, it sounds like a chanting street mob trying to catch a witch, set her on fire, throw her in a pot, and eat her in a stew. If you think that sounds extreme then you should talk to people who got into Pixies as young impressionable 14 year-olds. Many will now openly admit to having been "terrified".

Warsaw Village Band - My Fate

The other day I watched a televised football match - it was England v. Italy in the European Cup - and God help me, I cared about the outcome. What does this mean? Does it mean that now I'm normal and the crazy person that instinctively sabotaged all moments of peace and tranquillity is dead? Yes. Yes. It does. And now rise, Sir Lady Sarah for you have been knighted as the Lady of normality with a capital Tea. To top it all off I can no longer watch music videos because they make my blood sugar levels go theme park. It appears I officially have pop music diabetes. Time to eat sausages and get into the sofa. I think the root of it was simple. I didn't think peace was a viable option. I thought that fulfilling my duty as a 'good citizen' meant having my nose on the grindstone. In reality, being a good person is as much about fullfilling the duty towards yourself - resting, eating enough, enjoyment - as it is about 'servicing the community'. Whatever that means. To be honest. If at a particular moment I know that I am in no fit state to be in company (I get an eencie weencie bit grouchy when tired) then surely I do as much service to the community by just going to sleep for a bit. I know that I sound like a lazy person who is trying desperately to justify her reasons for being lazy, and you'd be right. I am bloody lazy. And I am indeed trying to make you see my point of view to no avail. I sleep. I get up. I do something. I spend the rest of the day recovering from that something. Then I sleep again. I am so lazy that I don't believe I merit a lot of the privileges that I have received. I scrounge. And I have not paid back anything that I owe to anyone. And yet somehow I am still here. The only conclusion I can come up with as to why God/Allah/Vishnu has not struck me down with a mighty lightning bolt of doom and failure is that someone in the world is doing the exact same thing as me. Only they don't feel guilty about it. In fact. They don't care. They are laughing at everyone else and asking themselves why other people aren't doing what they do. Which is, by the way, nothing. And the only reason that the other people don't do more like they do is because unlike them they are not LAZY ALIENS. But then that takes us into a whole new territory of who are the aliens and who aren't. And maybe we are all aliens only some of us are much better at disguising it than others?

Jesca Hoop - Born To

Alert. Alert. This new single is distinctly not Hoopy enough. It appears that Jesca Hoop has sold out. However: 1. When I saw her live last year, I made a few observations as follows -- (i) She appeared to be singing in the venue equivalent of a public toilet. (ii) There were not many bodies there at all, which, naturally didn't bother me being the fan of the more intimate performance, but being the calibre of songwriter that she is, she deserves and indeed ought to have an audience size to match the quality of performance, which, by my reckoning, should be a larger one than what she had. Conclusion Yes, it is sad when artists leave the beauty of their original rustic roots for the more smooth finish sheen of the fast track manufactured music mould, but we have to remember that in order to make wonderful noises, musicians have to eat. Boy do musicians get hungry. It is good to know that a few lucky artistic individuals will manage to achieve what Bjork mentions here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-dFRFsQKGQ namely, 'Full Artistic Control'. Thus they continue to make weirdly bizaare sounds within the fiercely constricted mainstream and thus the big money makers and the less savvy guitar hobos finally (albeit haphazardly) shake hands. Aaah, what a nice thought.

Martyn Bennet - Paisley Spin

Okay okay hands in air. It was me. I enabled multiple posts using Maconie's Freak Zone.

Billy Cobham

For the first time ever I am listing this artist in my Music Blog because I genuinely think it's alright. That's not what a music critic is meant to do mind. A music critic is meant to tear it limb from limb and then pat it on the back. I'm not one of those. I'm a musicosaurus.