Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#860 in the Series) is Black Star Riders, All Hell Breaks Loose Sometime around Christmas 2005 I caught a taxi in my hometown of Belfast and happened to be wearing a Thin Lizzy T-shirt. The surly driver, spotting this young whipper-snapper wearing his beloved band’s logo, struck up a conversation. “So, you’re a Lizzy fan, yeah?” he asked. When I replied in the affirmative, he decided to test me, guessing I was one of those people who wear band shirts because they’re “cool”, but have no idea about the band, like the endless numbers of kids sporting Ramones shirts these days. “What album is this the first song from, then?” he asked, as...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#822 in the Series) is Tame Impala,  Lonerism There’s a tendency to label bands like Tame Impala – meaning those influenced by the  1966-1971-ish golden period of psychedelic rock – as imitators, mimics, copycats, or even revivalists, but to do that is to do the quintet a grave disservice. The Western Australian band have united fans of contemporary psychedelic rock in rapturous appreciation since their excellent debut album, Innerspeaker, in 2010, and even before that in Australian music circles with their first EP, Antares, Mira, Sun, in 2008. With Innerspeaker, they showed that there is so much more to their sound than fuzz pedals and vocal effects, and with new album Lonerism,...

  Today’s Cool Album of The Day (#815 in the Series) is Thin Lizzy, UK Tour ’75 Everyone knows Thin Lizzy. The music world is awash with their albums, and there are enough bootlegs, greatest hits, extended versions, live albums, compilations, radio cuts, cover bands, and even versions of the band itself out there to choke the airwaves for the rest of time. Of course, almost every music lover is familiar their “big” rock albums Jailbreak, Johnny the Fox, Bad Reputation, and their touring masterpiece Live and Dangerous; all albums filled with rock radio staples we know and love. But to me, their finest and most interesting period was just before Jailbreak and all-conquering single “The Boys Are Back...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#772 in the Series) is King Cannons, The Brightest Light (Capitol) King Cannons are a hardworking band, and they want you to know it. They have fought poverty and hardship every day of their existence to be together. Their songs are full of cliché and nostalgia, being almost exclusively about being flat broke, escaping the oppressive factory dust, and the joys of finding solace in rock ‘n’ roll and the open road. They aren’t exactly original in style or substance, stealing from the slicked-back greaser ’50s style of American rock, to the angry punk-with-a-heart teachings of ’70s Joe Strummer, the anthemic bombast and big drums of ’80s Springsteen, with a sprinkling of...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#721 in the Series) is The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree There’s something about the Mountain Goats that provokes delirious, unbridled reverence amongst a large portion of their fans; a level of veneration that goes beyond that which many bands can claim. I’m not talking about gangs of screaming kids or the usual “I‘m your number one fan!” type of nutcases you get at almost every gig, but a deep, profound respect that comes from a band having touched some part of a fan’s life in an important way. Maybe it’s Mountain Goats’ main man John Darnielle’s way with a witty, insightful lyric. Maybe it’s his way of telling dark tales of...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#704 in the Series) is New York Dolls, New York Dolls The New York Dolls are a band that has, over time, come to be defined more by the drugs, debauchery, and deaths of various members than their actual music, and the original line-up has never been given enough credit for being good musicians, in my opinion. Much like The Sex Pistols and even The Ramones, they are always labelled as ‘influential’ in terms of style and attitude, without being given due respect for their musicianship and the songs they wrote and recorded. Then again, the reputation they had as being hell raisers was well earned. It isn’t a widely-known fact that...

    Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#684 in the Series) is Zeus, Busting Visions (Arts and Crafts Records) It’s heartening that, in a week when the music world is mourning the loss of Levon Helm, we are able to discover a great new rock ‘n’ roll band that has so obviously been influenced by the legendary drummer and The Band’s ‘70s heyday, amongst other classic groups of the era. It’s a cliché to say the show must go on, but that’s exactly what’s happening in terms of the influence Helm had on musicians the world over. One of those bands carrying on his spirit is Canadian four-piece Zeus, on their excellent second full-length release Busting Visions. This...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#676 in the Series) is Queen,  News Of The World It’s hard to believe that it’s over twenty years since the passing of quite possibly the best front man ever to grace a stage. Freddie Mercury, the African-born Briton with the enviable vocal range, ability to write hit after hit, and over-the-top stage theatrics, died in 1991, leaving a gaping hole in the music world. Queen (or at least half of them) has limped on, most notably with Paul Rodgers, but it’s painfully obvious that Mercury is irreplaceable. Unfortunately I never got to see him live; I was only ten when he died, but I first got to know the band’s music...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#664 in the Series) is The Clash, Combat Rock We music fans love to hear stories about how classic songs were recorded, and how some almost never happened. There’s a great part in the Joe Strummer documentary The Future Is Unwritten where drummer Topper Headon talks about how the Clash single ‘Rock the Casbah’ came into being. It was 1982 and the Clash were coming apart at the seams; torn apart by egos, infighting, drug addiction, and the strain of such a heavy touring schedule. Musically, the band had long since left behind their band-of-the-people persona, and were now filling stadiums. Their last two albums London Calling and Sandinista had seen them...

  It speaks volumes about the power of the internet that, even before the release of Lana Del Rey’s debut album Born To Die, she was the most hyped artist in the multiverse. The majority of hype surrounds her shaky, opinion-dividing Saturday Night Live performance of debut single ‘Video Games’, with even Harry Potter himself, host Daniel Radcliffe, quickly jumping to her defence in the face of intense criticism. However, criticism brings attention, which is a good thing for Lana Del Rey. It’s easy to imagine her managers rubbing their hands, the glint of dollar signs in their eyes as the column inches increase and Del Rey goes global. Several modelling contracts and magazine covers later, and the market...