Nite Songs

Okay, time for the big hitters - we did the first half of our Top 100 albums yesterday and now it's ten a day from now until the New Year. Settle down and let's see how the first part of our Top 50 unfolds, shall we?... *** 50. THE KUT - "Grit" Grit  saw the Kut deliver an album more than worthy of their commercial step up in the world, ironing out their old inconsistencies to deliver a well-rounded effort packing plenty of variety and some great tunes and hooks to boot from the driving riff of Not Here For Love  to the shameless power ballad of Satellite . The sound of a band very much arriving. *** 49. CINDY LAWSON - "New Tricks" Something of a local legend in her home state of Minnesota thanks to her '80s band the Clams, New Tricks  is an album that deserves to take Cindy Lawson to a wider audience. Mixing spiky pop-punk, Runaways style gang chants and even the odd bit of grunge and shoegazing for good measure, this is an album with its fingers in man...

  Maybe the ultimate cult band, it's somewhat reassuring to know that fifteen albums into their career, Wirral indie veterans Half Man Half Biscuit remain their usual scathingly sarcastic selves. With song titles like Tess Of The Dormobiles , Persian Rug Sale At The URC  and Token Covid Song , it really couldn't be anyone other than HMHB really. If there's an overriding theme on The Voltarol Years  then, as the album title suggests, it's the onset of middle age and the depressing realisation that death is creeping up on you. The fact that it starts with I'm Getting Buried In The Morning , an ode to a murderer being sent to the electric chair, is telling and the likes of Big Man Up Front , dealing with a hit and run accident, the self-explanatory Beneath This Broken Headstone  and the reflective closer Oblong Of Dreams which seems to be talking about a dying man's last moments. Yet there's still plenty of room for Half Man Half Biscuit's trademark scabrou...