Nite Songs

  So here we go then. It took a lot of head-scratching, a lot of re-listening to albums that I'd reviewed months ago and at least ten rewrites but I'm happy to present the Nite Songs Top 50 Albums of 2021. Enjoy! *** 50.      DESPERATE JOURNALIST - "Maximum Sorrow" Desperate Journalist's fourth album sees them on good form with plenty of the same swooping dream-pop epics that recall the Cocteau Twins at their most ethereal as well as a few unexpected diversions into other waters that provide a welcome change of pace when it's needed. One of those groups who definitely deserve to be much better known than they  are. *** 49.      LUKE HAINES - "Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman" Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman   sees Haines on typically acerbic form whether he's skewering his targets or writing sinister whimsical odes to failed historical regimes. He's also on good form musically here veering from gentle folk through atonal po...

  I have to be honest, my relationship with Luke Haines' music over the past 25 years or so has been a bit of an on-off one. Having initially discovered his first band the Auteurs via their almost-hit Lenny Valentino , still a brilliant song all these years later, the band were arguably out there among the very first Britpop bands only for Haines to recoil in disgust at the monster he'd created and quickly set the Auteurs' controls to somewhere else altogether. Apart from a brief return to the hit parade with Black Box Recorder (a band who I have to be honest, I found a bit too clever-clever for my liking) and a much-acclaimed autobiography a few years ago, he's kind of kept his head just below the waves in the intervening years. Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman  is, to be honest, unlikely to really change that but you suspect that's just the way Haines likes it. What is important though is that it's a good album full of the sort of humour and spite tha...